C2, they are certainly an amazing race; far superior to Indians and Nigerians and much more impressive than Chinese and Amerindians. <There isn't a single inarticulate Irishman; as a nation their verbal skills are amazing. > Their verbal skills are probably in the Guiness Book of Records.
Kidding aside, such racist suggestions are really beneath you C2. Suggesting that whole racial groups are superior to others isn't allowed these days.
Meanwhile, Griffe didn't say that there aren't other variables which determine GDP per capita, just that by crunching the numbers, he finds that the variable which correlates best is verbal intelligence.
Where private property rights are involved, you'll probably find that they are strongly associated with verbal intelligence. You can't enforce private property rights with chimpanzees, so first has to come the verbal intelligence, THEN you can overlay that with private property rights.
I think you'll find that the visual spatial elites you mention with the high creativity are ALSO supersonic at the verbal part too. Brains aren't like see-saws where if you have one up, the other will be down. People can, and usually do, have it all, with some aspects more than others.
Griffe showed that verbal intelligence is the dominant effect. What causes the verbal intelligence is another matter. And it doesn't mean that other things such as private property rights don't matter, nor that numeracy is irrelevant.
People are not just free-floating verbal intelligence units. There is a LOT more to us. But that doesn't mean the main issue isn't the verbal intelligence aspect.
Think of weight lifters. While "will power" matters, along other things, the dominant variable is great big muscles without being too tall. Muscle mass is not the only variable which determines weight lifting success, but a nation of Mike Tysons is going to do a lot better than a nation of bean poles.
Of course smart people without capital, having been hidden in the back of a Brazilian jungle for 1000 years, are NOT going to have a GDP like Singapore which sits at the confluence of trade with freely flowing capital and private property strongly protected, along with public property.
That's not what his mathematics and theory demonstrates.
<The more I type, the more I think my original use of 'bunk' and 'wacko' were on the mark. >
The more you typed, the more you needed to go back and read
Griffe's Smart Fraction Theory again, with less speed.
When you think about it, brains don't just sit there on top of our heads doing nothing. They really are highly useful for making us better off, which is wealth by another name which is GDP per person by another. That's why brains got there. Those with less useful ones went by the wayside. It isn't really surprising that the more there are, the better countries do [on average, statistically speaking].
Mqurice |
