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Parasites may explain regional differences in intelligence

economist.com

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Re: Parasites may explain regional differences in intelligence

#31

Post by anamax »

nooneelse wrote: post #30
anamax wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's been successful in every country that has tried it. Doesn't that depend on the starting point? For example, NHS started during the post WWII depression in the UK. The US isn't starting from there. I'm trying to track down the stats, but I've heard that the US lifespan is world-longest if you adjust for accidents and homicide, two things that aren't affected by healthcare. > Granted, the US has a bad habit of p…

> "...if you adjust for accidents and homicide, two things that aren't affected by healthcare." Healthcare is quite involved in dealing with the effects of accidents on humans. So I would think that death rate from accidents, broadly speaking, is not independent from level of healthcare. Or is that a technical term that already distinguishes between those that survive the accident long enough to possibly receive trea…

> So I would think that death rate from accidents, broadly speaking, is not independent from level of healthcare.

There are two numbers - the accident rate, which is independent of healthcare, and the "how good was treatment for accident victims" number, which does depend on healthcare. Their product is the death rate from accidents.

Here are two populations that demonstrate these effects.

In population 1, everyone has an accident each year and 90% survive. That's 10% deaths due to accidents.

In population 2, 10% of the population has an accident, and only 50% of accident victims survive. That's 5% deaths due to accidents.

If the accidents are the same, it's silly to argue that population 2 has better "accident healthcare" even though its death rate due to accidents is half of population 1's.

If the accidents are different, it's impossible to say which population has better accident healthcare without more information.

Here's another way to look at it. The death rate for automobile accidents in 2000 in the US was significantly higher than the death rate for automobile accidents in 1850. Does that imply that 1850 accident healthcare was better?

Re: Parasites may explain regional differences in intelligence

#32

Post by Gormo »

ars wrote: post #24
Ardit20 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of Blacks outside Africa and I hear that in South Africa there are loads of whites.

If you look at the data you'll notice it's very noisy. And I bet the noise is entirely (or mostly) made up of race. Note that one of the things they did not control for was race. It's racist to say this, I know, and more importantly it's not nice. But if you are going to make a study, you have to deal with reality. Control for race, and then check the correlation with parasites.

How would you even define "race"? Does the concept as used in the common socio-cultural context have any consistent meaning with respect to physiology? If so, how would you measure it?

Being a member of a category isn't an inherent property of an individual thing; rather, including a specified set of individuals is what defines the category. If you try to study a phenomenon in general, but with preconceived notions about how each individual subject should be categorized, you're skewing your results straight from the outset.

Re: Parasites may explain regional differences in intelligence

#33

Post by kragen »

miked wrote: post #27
kragen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've heard that the US lifespan is world-longest if you adjust for accidents and homicide, two things that aren't affected by healthcare. Other measures of health care quality, such as infant mortality, are worse in the US than in many other countries. So I doubt it.

Other measures of health care quality, such as infant mortality, are worse in the US... Nope. The US spends far more on trying to save the lives of premature and sickly newborns than any other country. Many these don;t make it after being born and show up in the stats as "high infant mortality". This approach also drives up health care costs. One can argue (having met two crack babies that survived, I personally woul…

The US spends far more on trying to save the lives of premature and sickly newborns than any other country.

[citation needed]

Many these don;t make it after being born and show up in the stats as "high infant mortality".

That's true in every country, regardless of how hard you try to save their lives. More of them make it after being born if you try very hard to save their lives.

I also have personally experienced health care in other countries (Greece, Mexico, China

So have I. I surely don't need to point out to you, with your wide travel experience, that not all other countries are equal. The Argentine health care I've experienced is head and shoulders above anything I've experienced in the US, although that's mostly because I live in the capital where things are good.

The US's infant mortality rate is about .0063. Greece's is about .005 to .007. Mexico's is .017 or .018. China's is about .020 to .023. Your personal experience that care is much worse in those countries, with the exception of Greece, supports the validity of infant mortality as a measure of care quality; it does not undermine it.

There are around 25 countries with better infant mortality than the US, but that doesn't include the three you listed. Several of them have less than half the infant mortality level of the US. Have you personally experienced health care in any of them? What was your experience?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_count...

I recognize that statistics do not always capture the reality of a situation. However, in this case, I don't think it's adequate to simply deny their validity without any evidence. (The evidence you have adduced so far, from your personal experience, supports their validity rather than undermining it.)

Re: Parasites may explain regional differences in intelligence

#34

Post by anamax »

kragen wrote: post #33
miked wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other measures of health care quality, such as infant mortality, are worse in the US... Nope. The US spends far more on trying to save the lives of premature and sickly newborns than any other country. Many these don;t make it after being born and show up in the stats as "high infant mortality". This approach also drives up health care costs. One can argue (having met two crack babies that survived, I personally woul…

The US spends far more on trying to save the lives of premature and sickly newborns than any other country. [citation needed] Many these don;t make it after being born and show up in the stats as "high infant mortality". That's true in every country, regardless of how hard you try to save their lives. More of them make it after being born if you try very hard to save their lives. I also have personally experienced he…

> There are around 25 countries with better infant mortality than the US,

With comparable populations?

For example, Scandanavians do well everywhere. (However, the US ones do better than the ones who didn't leave.) A population dominated by Scandanavians will do better than one that is more "typical".

I'm pretty sure that the US healthcare system is not responsible for crank and crack mothers, but it gets "credit" for their birth problems.

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