On the IQ scale.

QPR said:
"I was not good at exams because exams are just memory recall, you do not have to be intelligent to pass them. They didn't have multiple choice when I did them but if they did, my results would have improved massively."

Ryuk9428 said:


I would say at the higher schooling levels, it is more than just memorization in every subject, but in the lower schooling levels a lot of things are just memorize and then later dump the information. A high school history class for example is just memorization which is why a lot of people think high school history is boring.

Its kind of that way in freshman and sophomore year of college too. Or the 100 and 200 level classes so to speak. At the 300 and 400 levels though, it becomes more about drawing connections between events, attempting to understand the motivations of people in the past, and may even involve doing original research on relatively unexplored topics. I actually published a paper along with a podcast last year creating a new historical theory.

Similarly, science in the high school levels is often memorization too. Memorizing the anatomy of the human body, memorizing sub-atomic particles and how they work with molecule bonding. In math, you could say that its memorizing the formula. In English, memorizing grammar structures is a big part of it in the lower schooling levels.

An intelligent person will have a much easier time with memorization than a non-intelligent person though.

In the higher levels though, memorization will not carry you in any of these subjects.

Ryuk9428 said:


That doesn't explain why East Asian countries and Jewish people have higher IQs than we do though? Are white people simply not educated enough?

There's a scientific reason why poorer countries have much lower IQs and its malnutrition. Malnutrition generally results in a body that doesn't function properly and that extends to your brain. Children who experienced severe malnourishment often have IQs normally associated with retardation.

Genetically, however, higher IQ countries may have also had mating practices which resulted in high IQs individuals having more children or a higher percentage of high IQ individuals achieving reproductive success. IQ is strongly genetic no matter what people want to say. If your parents were smart then there is a good chance you are going to be smart as well.

In low IQ nations, it could easily be that the high IQ individuals are not achieving reproductive success or they may simply be leaving the country.

Ryuk9428 said:


Well something being memorization based doesn't necessarily make it easy, it just means a different set of skills are being utilized. A lot of people consider high school math to be pretty difficult, I was one of them. One of the reasons why is because a lot of people simply have no interest in math. If you have no interest in the subject, then no matter how intelligent you may be, your brain will not consider it to be important information.

An example I will give is that I took Spanish for three years in high school. I know basically nothing today. I know, maybe 5-10 words in Spanish. I also took Italian for two years in college. I know pretty much no Italian. I skated by in Spanish by being really good at the cultural information and somewhat sucking at the actual language part. In college Italian, I simply made do with C grades.

As I've mentioned in some of our messages though, I recently started trying to learn Japanese and I've been much more successful at it than Spanish and Italian. I know 161 words now and although I won't say I'm adequately prepared to use the language to visit Tokyo yet, I am far more confident in my ability to get by in Japanese if I needed to talk to someone using it than I ever was in my ability to use Spanish or Italian.

One thing I will say, is that I think speaking Japanese (emphasis on speaking) is objectively easier than Spanish or Italian. The Japanese don't use gendered words. The Japanese also use surprisingly large amount of words that are pronounced almost exactly like English words such as "konpyuta," "Kanada," The easiest part though is that there are no verb conjugations. You don't have to specify whether I'm going somewhere, you are going somewhere, or if we are. People just infer based on context or you simply say boku wa or kimi wa if its truly unclear. For these reasons, Japanese is a much less "busy" language than Spanish or Italian.

The entire reason why Japanese is objectively difficult overall is the writing system. And I will admit that my grasp on hiragana and katakana is not nearly as good as my vocabulary and I'm still struggling with it. I also have not put as much of my time towards trying to learn hiragana as I have towards vocabulary words though.

Ryuk9428 said:


I don't think you can force someone to be intelligent. Trying to push someone beyond their limits will result in them crashing and burning. Its worth mentioning, however, that although Japan's overall suicide rate is worse than America or European countries are. The teen suicide rate in Western countries is actually worse than in Japan. Although it is not worse than South Korea's. In Western countries, the suicide rate peaks in the 18-24 age range while in East Asia, it steadily goes up the older people get and becomes significantly higher in the 75+ age group, which indicates to me that it might not necessarily be the school culture but the pressures of adulthood. This could be the reason why Asian countries love and idealize youth so much.

People in the West may have a mild form of malnutrition but its not going to have anywhere near the effect that malnutrition does to somebody in Pakistan.

Ryuk9428 said:


I'm not sure if you can really train for IQ tests. Tests done for university entrance aren't done the same way as IQ tests are. IQ test questions are usually more based on "what is similar in these images" rather than asking academic based questions.

Ryuk9428 said:


To me, I'd say English is less memory based than math is because some English classes, such as creative writing, involve essentially no memorization whatsoever.

History is not taught very well in school. The main reason I developed an interest in the first place was from playing historical based video games. Interestingly enough, while psychology and sociology is a lot more girls than guys. History is one of the few social sciences that is definitely majority guys. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of guys develop an interest in history from video games as well whereas history based video games don't usually appeal to girls as much.