Traoré has won fans across Africa with anti-French and anti-western rhetoric that often invokes the legacy of the revolutionary Burkinabé leader Thomas Sankara. Sankara, a Marxist, was president of Burkina Faso, which he renamed from Upper Volta, from 1983 until his assassination in 1987.
Clearly, there will be fans. The usuals, but there we are:
“We’re not even talking about elections, first of all … People need to forget about the question of democracy … We must tell the truth, democracy isn’t for us,” Traoré said in an interview on Thursday with the state broadcaster Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina (RTB).
Democracy was “false”, the 37-year-old said, adding: “Democracy, we kill children. Democracy, we drop bombs, we kill women, we destroy hospitals, we kill civilian population. Is that democracy?”
My word that is a surprise, no?
He is commiting the logical fallacy known as a Non Sequiteur.
Burkina Faso receives around $1.5 billion in aid from Western democracies every year, equivalent to around 7% of its GDP.
Don’t give them a single penny, and don’t allow a single one of them into your country.
After all, we know that wicked colonialism was wrong. They’re perfectly capable of looking after themselves!!
Burkina Faso has an estimated literacy rate of 37.75%, and an average IQ of approximately 73.80. [A person is generally considered to have an “intellectual disability” (ie retarded) if they have an IQ score below 70–75.] So Traoré has a point: the Burkina Faso electorate is probably not ready for democracy – yet. Also, besides voting, democracy requires an institutional framework of free media, independent judiciary etc, and that framework is absent.
You love this IQ thing, don’t you Theo? IQ scores are culturally specific. They’re devised to elevate those who set the tests. Take someone with a “high” IQ & drop them in Burkina Faso, I wouldn’t rate their chances of surviving until nightfall.
That depends on whether they look like a local and can understand the language – your “street smarts” wouldn’t be enough.
There is no universal “street smarts”, John. It’s a case of thinking in a way that’s appropriate for the culture in which you’re operating.
Thomas Sowell points out that the amount of knowledge in a human’s head hasn’t really changed over the millennia, but its nature has. An Abo’s head is stuffed with everything you need to know to live in the Outback; an Oxford PPE graduate’s isn’t. Put the Abo in SW1 and you’ll get complete bewilderment; put the grad in the Outback and you’ll get a stiff, in short order. See “Walkabout” for an illustration, and Jenny, of course.
Problem is, the modern, industrialised society that produces the vastly easier living and nice goodies that everyone on the planet wants, almost without exception, is founded on an aptitude set and knowledge base that correlates well with “IQ”.
This isn’t about Democracy. Confucian-based cultures don’t really do it, but those cultures also correlate with highly-organised, disciplined societies with a strong work ethic also capable of providing the industrialised goodies. Those societies correlate with the world’s highest average “IQ”.
is founded on an aptitude set and knowledge base that correlates well with “IQ”.
And you now have a society being run by people who would score high on the IQ index. How’s that working out for you? I’d suggest what created that industrialised society wasn’t quite what they think it was. It wouldn’t necessarily correlate well with “high IQ”.
I’m sure they think they would, but would they though?
I haven’t done that sort of test for years, but isn’t it usually about pattern-recognition? Once you get to the more difficult ones, those ‘which comes next in this sequence’ questions are more about working out what the pattern is rather than applying it.
My impression is that the lanyard class are good at applying rules, so would be good at applying the pattern in IQ tests, but very poor at working out what the pattern actually is. They are given the rules, their principles, and so on by others, rather than looking at reality and working out what is actually behind it. So I would expect them to do well on the easier questions in an IQ test, but fail at the more difficult ones.
It would be an interesting experiment; do IQ tests on politicians, snivel servants and successful entrepreneurs, and see which group came out best. Then we’d know whether the tests were showing us anything useful.
Thing is, IQ measurements don’t measure your relationship with reality or what you can expects humans to do. That’s how a high IQ person can be a socialist but even if put in charge cannot improve a society which operates in the real world with real people. AND he can’t see why it doesn’t work or why some other folks with equal IQ might have a different opinion unless it’s because they’re evil.
I’d say when you’re dealing with people you have to understand what incentivises them not you. The you can stack the incentives to get them to do what you want. Work with them, not against them. But that means you have to understand people. Most people do not understand people who are not the same as them. To do that, you first have to understand yourself. And to genuinely understand yourself is never as easy as you think. You have to look at yourself from other people’s perspective. Not a pleasant process.
Couldn’t agree more.
Of course, IQ doesn’t measure a person’s understanding of the real world. But high IQ score in early life is a very strong predictor of a postive life outcome – in income, in wealth, in status, in health, in longevity, etc. So many high-IQ people clearly have an understanding of reality, or that would not be the case.
Some high-IQ individuals may be academics in ivory towers; but the rest are widely dispersed among us – the ingenious, innovative and problem-solving people, eg some plumbers, electricians, carpenters, GPs, lawyers, accountants, architects, handymen…etc.
I have never met a high-IQ and fully committed socialist: when probed, they equivocate. But perhaps they exist. That said, I do know many left-liberal types of average-to-mid IQ and some of high IQ in the ‘clever sillies’ category.
Generally, in my experience of Whitehall and local government over many years, the lanyard class are average-to-mid IQ.
And even when I was at Oxford in the late 70s, PPE (aka then as Modern Greats) was regarded as a soft option – a superficial general studies degree…
I’m sure they think they would, but would they though?
They wouldn’t. But whatever IQ tests measure, what is measured is a strong statistical predictor of life outcomes – in income, wealth, status, health, life satisfaction, etc. Empirically, this is undeniable.
Several decades ago ICI (when it was still run by scientists) did an IQ test on all its “staff” (as distinct from “works” employees) and found that IQ was not significantly correlated with progression up the management ladder: its reponse included creating a category of “Research Associate” for a handful of geniuses which gave them status equivalent to a divisional director but *no management responsibilities whatever*. IQ tests *do* show us something useful but not whether one would be a sudccessful entrepreneur. IMHO it shows us who will be a valuable “back-room boy”.
You’re forgetting the Jappers, Chinky-chonks, Koreans and Singaporeans, BiS. Major difference, certainly in China: engineers in charge, not Humanities grads. Empiricists rather than Believers.
They’re not religions, Norm. They’re philosophies. There’s no all powerful Creator going to fly down from its cloud & make everything right for them. So they do their own thinking. Hence the work ethic. They know, to get what you want requires graft not thumbing a rosary. It’s a problem I have in dealing with the people I have to, who were brought up Catholic. They don’t really get cause>effect. Because they’ve been brainwashed to believe The Acrobat, his Mum, assorted angels & saints can intervene directly in their lives. So 2+2=?
There’s something similar with the lanyard classes.
They’re (mostly*) polytheistic religions, which provide plenty of gods you can propitiate or pray to in order to improve your odds of success in life.
* except perhaps Confucianism, a mixture of philosophy and religion (though I get the impression you don’t rate philosophy either).
Religions, philosophies… both create narratives. The difference is that with religions, gods are specifically in charge and above humans.
Empiricists deal with objective reality rather than narrative; engineers especially. The bridge or building holds up, the plane flies. Or not. That’s their peer review. It’s bracingly healthy, as I’m sure you’d agree.
And you now have a society being run by people who would score high on the IQ index.
No, we don’t; and you have no solid evidence for that – and your prejudices don’t count as evidence.
And a high-IQ person with relevant life experience will do better than a low-IQ person with relevant life experience in a given situation.
I have to agree with you BiS.
I don’t really believe in IQ and I think it can’t be made to apply anywhere outside a select few societies ( even then etc… ).
IQ is measured by one’s ability to pass IQ tests (except for border collies where it is estimated by their observed ability to solve problems in real life). It has been shown to be highly correlated with ability to solve academic problems and successfully perform “intellectual” tasks.
It is a common schoolboy howler to suggest that PPE graduates have a very high IQ – they generally have a significantly lower IQ than those who read Maths, Science or “Greats” (my oft-quoted example is the guy in my year who dropped out from Maths and got an Honours degree in PPE based on one year’s study of PPE). It follows that we are not ruled by those with a very high IQ but a group of people with a moderately above-average IQ and very high ambition.
IQ appears not to be significantly correlated with natural talent in managing people nor with ambition to rule.
It is a common schoolboy howler to suggest that PPE graduates have a very high IQ – they generally have a significantly lower IQ than those who read Maths,
Depends what you mean by maths. Before we went decimal I used to work out stock market prices in my head. No alternative before pocket calculators. That meant working in base 8, 10, 12 & 20 simultaneously. Does that signify intelligence? Personally I don’t think so. It was done by memory. Knowing the results of a lot of calculations, breaking down the numbers into parts I knew the answers to, then stitching the answers back together. Is memory intelligence? Because memory passes exams & gains qualifications. I’ve also known people reputed to be good at pure maths. They didn’t seem to be particularly clever in other fields, though. To me intelligence is simply having the right mental toolkit for the situation & maybe recognising when you haven’t & being able to learn & adapt.I see little sign of that amongst our current political class. Africans seem to be able to operate in Africa.
Mental arithmetic is a relatively small (relatively very small) part of mathematics. I could do mental arithmetic as a child which was part memory (the times tables) and part the application of the rules of arithmetic to numbers inside one’s head. Post ‘O’ level Mathematics. however includes a lot of analysis, of logic (Euclidean Geometry is almost entirely logic), and (for those not lucky enough to be “gifted”) hard work, and occasionally, some inspiration.
Working out stock market prices and valuations of portfolios requires skills that I had acquired by the age of ten – it is quite possible that you applied them faster than my ten-year-old self (I can remember being impressed by how fast, and seemingly easily, the Actuaries would check (and where necessary correct – fortunately they never had to correct my sums) the sheets on which we calculated the value of each investment as at midnight 31/12 and the total for each sheet. When it was computerised it took umpteen times as long!
Working out stock market prices and valuations of portfolios requires skills that I had acquired by the age of ten
No, this is doing it on the hoof..Selling 5 shares & reinvesting across 3, how many to buy of each allowing for commissions & stamp duty. Didn’t have to be to a penny accurate because it could be trimmed in the checking, but one tried. It’s having a feeling for numbers. And which ones are important. Something that seems to be absent these days. They get it correct to three decimal places but two orders of magnitude out. Later doing bar work before electric tills. A round of 8 assorted drinks, prices from memory, whilst simultaneously carrying on a conversation. And if the second round didn’t come to the same as the first round, you’d never hear the end of it.
What fascinates me about mathematics is you could ask a mathematician how to hit a cricket ball. And after calculating vectors & velocities, gravitational potential, wind speed & direction & temperature he’d probably come back in a couple of days with an answer. A good batsman does the same thing in a tenth of a second. They’re menials to be hired by the hour when you need them.
The best batsman in my school subsequently got a Maths degree so your pseudo-fact is immediately disproved. And you’re still talking about mental arithmetic not Mathematics.
To continue the above. Anyone like to try & explain why evolution would have developed a talent for higher mathematics? And restricted it to white N. Europeans? It’s been an utterly useless ability until the last 100 or so years. It’s not going to enable you to hunt game more effectively or avoid predators. At least you can translate a cricketers ability to hit a ball to throwing a spear at a moving animal. The two need to arrive at the same point in the immediate future. Nature has been killing off the least intelligent Africans (as have Africans) for just as long as it’s been killing off less intelligent whites. What evolutionary advantages does a high IQ score bring? One could just about see why ability to do mental arithmetic might be useful in commerce & thus feed the next generation. But I’d suggest it’s need coupled with practice & largely redundant now.
I can’t see any marked lacking in African intelligence. My amiga has similar genetics to Burkinabés & she’d give you lot a run for your money. The one thing I can think of may differentiate Africans is it’s generally accepted that poor nourishment in childhood can adversely affect mental abilities. Other than that I think it’s entirely cultural. People use their intelligence for different things.
And something worth pointing out. People have a long history of devising tests, the results of which show they are superior to others.
Talent for higher mathematics has NOT been restricted to white Europeans (and certainly not to Northern Europeans – most of Geometry was codified by the Ancient Greeks); There are records of Indian mathematical geniuses.
Why should evolution have produced a talent for higher mathematics? Well, because some of it useful – Geometry helped building houses and temples; astronomy was used to tell farmers when to plant crops as well as navigate ships (in either case the guys who got it wrong starved); mechanics was used to build houses and bridges that didn’t fall down; (it was also used to build trebuchets to knock walls and houses down); after the “Mary Rose” sank to widespread dismay and embarassment people started to use mathematics to design ships that would not capsize; calculus was required to design aqueducts; Archimedes was crucial in winning a war …
When the error in “trial and error” gets too expensive the “practical, down-ro-earth” guys ask mathematicians for advice.
The Greeks calculated the curvature of the earth thousands of years ago so your “last 100 years or so” demonstrates your ignorance of the topic.
Mental arithmetic still has its uses when half the world believes any computer output as if its the Gospel truth and I can spot it’s wrong by 100% – or an order of magnitude – just by looking at it.
Having actually done a lot of these things, John, I can tell you you don’t need higher mathematics to do them. The Mary Rose was no doubt a management problem. Like HS2. If you’re told to build something, you build it. Archimedes was someone who wrote things down. So he gets attributed with them. They’re things had been known for millennia. Of course N. Europeans weren’t the only ones to do math. Various cultures have. The S. Americans must have.But you don’t do things you don’t need to. Cultures tend to be optimal for where & when they’re operating Humans have had the basic mental hardware for at least the last 25,000 years. So why’s it only been running the software for 5? You suffer from higher education bias like a lot of people these days. I believe it’s why we’re becoming increasingly dysfunctional. The IQ scoring. It biases towards people who assimilate information in a certain way. It’s why I find the Ikea flat pack test amusing. The information’s there but it’s being presented in a different way. Interesting the sort of people who score low. And it never ceases to amaze me what supposedly intelligent educated people believe these days. To any practical person they’re so obviously bollocks
Archimedes did not just write things down – he solved practical problems, such as his “screw” which could lift water. It is *your* bias which is showing.
“The Mary Rose was doubtless a management problem” – that looks a lot like “buck passing”. The ignorance/innumeracy of the designers led them to design a ship that capsized on its first voyage. A marine architect with a knowledge of ‘A’ level maths wouldn’t have done so. You can look up “unstable equilibrium”.
Thinks – are you confusing Archimedes with Euclid? Some of what Euclid recorded had been known for centuries (and sometimes just a practical application – the Babylonians had known that a 3.4.5 triangle contained a right angle and used that to build vertical walls but they didn’t know how to predict which other triangles would have a right-angle).
IQ is measured by one’s ability to pass IQ tests.
And the ability to drive a car is measured by one’s ability to pass a driving test! So??
[IQ] has been shown to be highly correlated with ability to solve academic problems and successfully perform “intellectual” tasks.
And with general problem-solving ability. Many high-IQ people do not work in academic or intellectual fields…
True, but (except for border collies) the academic problem-solving is more highly correlated and so is the one that is more noticed.
It has been reported (I haven’t personally checked the data) that Belgium has the easiest driving test and the highest number of traffic accidents per capita in Western Europe.
Priorité au droit.
While it is diffculty to assess the ease of pasing a driving test, there are figures for road safety. The most comparable are the road deaths, since it’s pretty easy to tell if someone is dead, while other consequences are more subjective and suffer from selective reporting.
Belgium is better than France, Italy, and Luxembourg, so not the highest in Western Europe.
Thanks for the info – what I saw must have been one of the easily memorable but not accurate comments
You could try looking at the empirical evidence…
IQ scores are culturally specific.
That’s one of the classic leftist tropes about IQ scores, and, like all leftist tropes, it’s false. IQ tests are carefully designed to avoid cultural specificity. Read about it…
They’re devised to elevate those who set the tests.
[1] If that were so, IQ tests would not be so statistically reliable in predicting life outcomes. [2] Devised by westerners, the tests nevertheless indicate that orientals have higher average IQs than westerners – which would be odd if the tests were “devised to elevate” those who devise and set them.
Take someone with a “high” IQ & drop them in Burkina Faso, I wouldn’t rate their chances of surviving until nightfall.
That would depend on the individual’s life experience. A high IQ individual with experience of dangerous situations is more likely to survive in Burkina Faso than a low IQ individual with experience of dangerous situations.
The son of a neighbour is a high IQ engineering graduate who lives in Burkina Faso. He has survived negotiating with hostile tribes, not least because of his language skills (he rapidly learned the three main languages + speaks French); and he negotiated the purchase of his wife for several sacks of kola nuts.
Sowell is happy with IQ tests. That’s pretty well good enough for me.
Didn’t he used to play for Chelsea ?
The guy has a point…. It’s not as if “Democracy” + Africa has had a happy marriage…
Might well be that bit of the world still has to go through the Absolute Monarchy bit first before they say goodbye to their tribalism.
And I can’t help but notice that there too there’s a Problem in the form of fanatics of a specific religious denomination..
They *certainly* aren’t in for that “Democracy” thing…
I reckon they’ll win out eventually. He’s just another in the constant stream of petty warlords in that part of Africa who make it big for a while. The Islamists have a Cause and a Creed, and that binds better than favour for those who get no favours.
And that’s a Good Thing™?
We’re not even *allowed* to have a Cause and a Creed anymore…
Upsets the ruling Salon Socialist classes because it disturbs their Elevenses…
It’s definitely not a Good Thing! We are going to have the same problem but we might have a better chance of resisting it. It’s by no means a cert though.
Africa had plenty of Absolute Monarchy in the past. By the time the Portuguese turned up, the heyday of the huge empires had passed, but there were still plenty of medium sized kingdoms that persisted up to the end of the 19thC.
In fact I’d say that the dictatorships since decolonisation are the successors to these monarchies. Problem is very few of them last more than a few years. Those who wish to overthrow their leaders have more sophisticated weapons with which to do so. All it needs is some malcontents, or worse ‘concerned’ individuals complaining about the corruption and repression
Unfortunately the problem of tribalism is insoluble unless one breaks the tribal structures completely. However it happens: deportations, genocide, imposition of religion; it takes generations to break these ties. We saw in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, we see it in Asia, we even see it in Jock and Taffshire, how these binds persist.
“the dictatorships since decolonisation are the successors to these monarchies. Problem is very few of them last more than a few years”
A monarchy is probably more stable because there’s an expectation, a default, for who is going to be in charge. And when the leader is overthrown, it’s usually just a family squabble.
Until things go absolutely pear-shaped of course, but that seems to happen less often than under a dictatorship.
The problem seems to come when the lanyard class (or their predecessors) decide they want power. Then once they’ve taken over, that seems to end the taboo on the military having a go, and then the whole thing descends into chaos.
ISTM the key difference is in a certain stable small number of people being superior to you by default, because lineage, and everyone largely accepting this. Which leads me to gods, again superior to humans, which tend to put the turbulent masses in their place. Hence the Divine Right of Kings.
“that seems to happen less often than under a dictatorship.”
People die. When you have a monarchy, there’s an heir. When the king dies, the default new leader is the heir, and every other potential leader else has to work against that. At least if it’s settled.
A dictator doesn’t have that, because lots of people remember when he wasn’t leader. Even if he designates one, that heir probably has to work hard when it’s dropped on him to make it so.
You can add legitimacy via various means. If the common religion treats the heir as legitimate then other candidates are working against heaven not just other men. See North Korea for a recent example.
The third generation might have an easier time of it. If he’s relatively competent and the previous two generations were too.
Of course the usual course of things is that the third generation is not a competent leader, because he’s been a coddled rich man’s son.
And yes, I’m talking about males for this. See the relative frequency of female dictators for why.
I’ll be interested to see if Kim Ju-ae actually is the next ruler of North Korea.
I reckon her hot Aunty will take over.
ps The best system was the Ottoman way pre 1600ish. All the sons and brothers of the lately deceased Sultan try and kill each other off. Last Man Standing wins.
Yes, she is oddly hot, isn’t she? In a praying mantis sort of way.
Has Murphy had him on YouTube show? Sounds like they’d get along well.
Is Burkina what Muslim women wear to the pool?
Shame Ian Smith isn’t around anymore.