Book review: Hive Mind: How your nation’s IQ matters so much more than your own, by Garett Jones.
Hive Mind is a solid and easy to read discussion of why high IQ nations are more successful than low IQ nations.
There’s a pretty clear correlation between national IQ and important results such as income. It’s harder to tell how much of the correlation is caused by IQ differences. The Flynn Effect hints that high IQ could instead be a symptom of increased wealth.
The best evidence for IQ causing wealth (more than being caused by wealth) is that Hong Kong and Taiwan had high IQs back in the 1960s, before becoming rich.
Another piece of similar evidence (which Hive Mind doesn’t point to) is that Saudi Arabia is the most conspicuous case of a country that became wealthy via luck. Its IQ is lower than countries of comparable wealth, and lower than neighbors of similar culture/genes.
Much of the book is devoted to speculations about how IQ could affect a nation’s success.
High IQ is associated with more patience, probably due to better ability to imagine the future:
Imagine two societies: one in which the future feels like a dim shadow, the other in which the future seems a real as now. Which society will have more restaurants that care about repeat customers? Which society will have more politicians who turn down bribes because they worry about eventually getting caught?
Hive Mind describes many possible causes of the Flynn Effect, without expressing much of a preference between them. Flynn’s explanation still seems strongest to me. The most plausible alternative that Hive Mind mentions is anxiety and stress from poverty-related problems distracting people during tests (and possibly also from developing abstract cognitive skills). But anxiety / stress explanations seem less likely to produce the Hong Kong/Taiwan/Saudi Arabia results.
Hive Mind talks about the importance of raising national IQ, especially in less-developed countries. That goal would be feasible if differences in IQ were mainly caused by stress or nutrition. Flynn’s cultural explanation points to causes that are harder for governments or charities to influence (how do you legislate an increased desire to think abstractly?).
What about the genetic differences that contribute to IQ differences? The technology needed to fix that contributing factor to low IQs is not ready today, but looks near enough that we should pay attention. Hive Mind implies [but avoids saying] that potentially large harm from leaving IQ unchanged could outweigh the risks of genetic engineering. Fears about genetic engineering of IQ often involve fears of competition, but Hive Mind shows that higher IQ means more cooperation. More cooperation suggests less war, less risk of dangerous nanotech arms races, etc.
It shouldn’t sound paradoxical to say that aggregate IQ matters more than individual IQ. It should start to seem ordinary if more people follow the example of Hive Mind and focus more attention on group success than on individual success as they relate to IQ.
Many thanks for the generous review. FYI I used IQ data for OPEC countries to test for reverse causation in my paper with Schneider, “IQ in the Production Function.” The thin data are only suggestive, but point in the same direction you find: the 1973 price shock didn’t show up in higher IQ scores in OPEC countries, even decades later.
You might find pages 12 and 13 of our paper of interest, on OPEC, East Asia, and tests for reverse causation. I presume the link to the paper will show up in my name, it’s on my homepage at GMU.
Thanks again for the thoughtful review!