 A list showing which countries have the highest average IQs is going viral right now. Let's talk about it. It's almost like if you train from a very young baby to be a scholar, it makes it easier to get a corporate dollar. Anyway, let's run the clip from Worst Asian Podcast. Ranking the IQs of all the countries around the world. Oh! The first six are all Asian countries. Get the f**k out. Number six, rounding out the losers of the top. Oh, shut the f**k up. South Korea. Yo. Number five, mainland China. You know you're cheating. Number four, number four. It's Hong Kong. Okay. Hong Kong is one of the financial hubs of the world. So maybe that has a lot to do with it. We're not just doing this to, you know, our own horn. Number three, Singapore. Oh, f**k it. Crazy rich and also crazy smart. Zing, I like that. Number two is Taiwan. Congrats to Taiwan. All the semiconductors and sticky tofu makes you really smart. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. What do you think is number one? It has to be like Indians. Number one, Japan. That actually makes a lot of sense. Japanese is number one. Boom! Listen, I had to look into this list. I had to, you know, Google it. I had to look at this chart, that chart. Here it goes. Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Belarus, Finland, Liechtenstein, and Germany rounding out the top 10. So listen, guys, I'm not saying IQ even matters. I'm not saying it's this or it's that. I'm just saying that these are the recorded stats. And East Asia, Andrew, was really high, I guess, to nobody's surprise, right? Right. And, you know, I think lists like this, anytime you see a whole bunch of data, for me, I still question what the scientific method was behind it or I guess what the IQ test that everybody took is. But I guess regardless, it kind of makes sense to people, I guess. Yeah, because, you know, you got a bunch of nerds over there. That's the nerd zone. I just drew a circle around the map. Everybody here is a nerd. Yeah, so whether it's IQ, whether you relate it to amount of college admissions or these Asians who are in the Ivy Leagues or type of engineering jobs or STEM jobs or STEM majors in the country, obviously there is some correlation to that. But whether or not it's actually IQ and how much IQ matters in someone's life, I don't personally know. A lot of people say IQ is just the ability of a government to provide a stable infrastructure to give baseline education to everybody and then also train IQ from a young age. Guys, listen, we're not going to get into that debate. We're just going to assume that it matters a little bit for this one, right? Anyway, make sure you like, subscribe, turn on your notifications, check out SmileEyesSauce at SmileEyesSauce.com. So what I had to do, Andrew, was I had to look at a bunch of other cognition tests, PISA scores, PISA 2022, it goes Singapore, China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Estonia, Canada, Ireland, Switzerland. So I guess there was some other ones in there. I had to go by the intellectual capital index ranking. So then we had to go from that and went South Korea, Singapore, China, Japan, United Kingdom, Germany, US, Switzerland, Israel, France. So, and then we had to look at one more thing, Andrew, the HCI, the HCI has to do with educational potential. Like how well are you utilizing the human capital that already exists within your borders? It went Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Finland, Macau. And China was all the way down at 45 at 0.65. Singapore was at 0.88. According to the HCI human capital index, it means that Singapore is really close to its max potential. Mm, you mean max potential of its people or the country? How they're utilizing the human capital within their country. Interesting. I'm gonna pop up HCI here, guys. Listen, I am not an expert at all. I am not co-signing any of these polls. But obviously, like you said, it kind of just goes along with what people would think, right? This might match up with who you see in your honors class in American high school or candidate, Canadian high school. Yeah, I mean correlation, causation, which one is it? It's a split between the two. But either way, obviously, all these rankings of human capital and GDP and all that stuff, it probably correlates, so. Yeah, I mean, I think that if you look at a lot of East Asian countries, they really focus a lot on early life education really, really young. Like we said, Andrew, you know, the parents, they want the kids to be able to make the corporate dollar. So they're training their kids from a young baby to be a scholar. Right, and I wanna be clear that all these countries on this initial IQ test list, which first of all, I don't know what test they sent to everybody, but regardless, all these countries generally rank high in all these other metrics. So it just means they have like really standard schooling and they're very strict. Even Finland, to Canada, to South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, obviously, if you ever Google what one of those classrooms look like, it's very strict, very organized, they're going to school for long hours. So that's the correlation. It is not like an average American public school. For sure it's not. No, it's even better than the average public school in America. By the way, if people wanna know where America ranked, Andrew, it ranked all the way at 29. For IQ? Yeah, for IQ. Despite, I want to say, near the top per child, per dollar expenditure. Because there's even lists about how much everybody spends. Interestingly enough, Andrew, everybody else on the list was over $1,000 per student per year in terms of government spending. China was at $181. Well, no wonder, David, that the places where the kids have to go to school and it's super strict, like no wonder they end up having, I guess, high IQs and also high achievement. Right, right, right. IQs at least in terms of raw test-taking ability. Anyway, let's get into the comments section. Somebody said, IQ is important, yes, but it does not determine your success in life, hard work, emotional intelligence, educational education, a common sense, work ethic, and knowledge of yourself does. Somebody else said, you know, to me, EI matters more. And other people were talking about book smarts versus street smarts versus experience versus common sense and just plain old regular self-discipline. Yeah, I would say that IQ, your just raw IQ is mattering less and less. It's not that, obviously, you know, probably a lot of smart people still have a decent IQ, but yes, there's all these other factors. And I think in a more complicated world, which we are becoming more and more complicated, handling all these different things, I do think emotional intelligence does matter probably more than it ever did. I mean, let's just be clear here, Andrew. We are East Asian. East Asians are stereotyped as just being book smart and not street smart, right? Right. That is a, especially Chinese people. That is the stereotype. Maybe to the highest extreme, that's a Chinese stereotype. Is it a stereotype for a reason? You guys tell me, I'll say this, it's like saying height and, like, if you say IQ is the only thing that's important in life, that's like saying height and muscle are the only things important in life. I think that having good height and having good muscles can help for a lot of things, especially athletics and getting women and stuff like that, but it's not everything. But nobody would turn it down. I don't think anybody, if they could get a high IQ and just hit the button and get it, or they could get a bunch of muscles and a bunch of height and like a strong body frame, everybody's gonna hit that button too, right? But like, of course, it doesn't mean everything in life. Somebody said, I wish that this was filtered out by income level, but I do think that, like you said, that all the countries are stabilized at a certain income level to be able to even give the early brain cognition exercises to kids. What I disagree or what I question about the IQ statistics is like, some of those countries, like when did they ever get an IQ test? Like whoever gave the test to them, you know, like in some of these super poor countries, like what data do we have to show from that? I'm sure it correlates with other things. So that's why people believe it to be true, but I guess that's my question. Right, right, right. What is the test? It's like access to food typically scales with GDP per capita, right? Because you're just gonna, like why do those correlated, right? Somebody said, I have absurdly high test scores in IQ, but honestly, I lack a lot of common skills that are natural for other people to develop. I lack a lot of self-discipline, motivation, clarity, objectives, and ability to develop new good habits, and I have bad social skills. I think that this is a pretty common stereotype of people who are like 130 and above, right? Like who just have like a lot of IQ. Somebody said, if you look at inventions by country, Asians are very few. They are smart, but they are very not original thinking because their learning is all rote learning, not innovative learning. This is also a common stereotype, right? Yeah, I mean, like I said, I think that they could focus more on creativity and innovation. Japan might be a little bit outside of that, but like, you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, I think that that's the stereotype. I think that the West did invent a lot of stuff, no doubt, but I think that Asians, pretty much like are able to run everything and like maybe what, make things better too. Like, you know what I mean? Like we didn't go through the Reformation. I don't know. I mean, whatever, you know, you guys tell me, is it right or wrong? Somebody said, shout out to Japan. Andrew, Japan was number one. And Andrew, guess what else came out of Japan? Kuman, Sudoku, they still are using the Japanese abacus, the Soroban, which is the version of the Chinese abacus to this day for training. They have those little clay balls that they're supposed to shape into like perfect circles, like for brain training. Basically someone was saying that the way Japan does brain training, it makes it seem fun to the kids, whereas the kids in China, they get brain training, but they just gotta live at the school and it's really harsh and like unappealing. Right. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that even to achieve quote unquote, this IQ score, like it looked different. I think the Japanese kids had more smiles and laughter on their route there, to be honest. That's what I really think. Somebody said, if you're trained to make logic questions and IQ exercises your whole life, of course you're gonna have a high IQ. Yeah, that's like teaching the test, right? Somebody said, it has to do with methodology and balance. You know what I mean? It just has to do with like, basically someone was saying, there's a limit to how useful IQ is. Once you fill up that bucket, it overflows and your time is better spent filling other buckets like EQ or spirituality or just like fulfillment buckets. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that that's the main thing. Somebody said, how come all the higher IQ countries got really high suicide rates, huh? I mean, yeah, there's a lot of pressure out there. I think it's also correlated that the really quote unquote high IQ countries, Andrew, they have like, they're really a religious. And I think that religion sometimes like prevents you from doing that too. That's what I think. Somebody said, why doesn't India make the top five? And then, you know, another person made the comment saying that in India, there's a really disparate distribution of resources on an educational level. Some families might get a lot. Some families may get very little. And that's just due to the structure or the distribution of funds there or the public funding or infrastructure. Somebody just said, of course, a lot of people talking about Hong Kong. Why was Hong Kong, Andrew, measured separately from China? So obviously Hong Kong, it went back to China in 1997, but they still have their own currency. They still have their own language, even though it's switching to Mandarin more recently now. Of course, Andrew, a lot of debate about how hard schooling is in Japan, Korea, and Chinese speaking countries. Why do you think it is that people like literally live at school? It's almost like, you know how some people treat their senior year to like get into college, like UC Berkeley? It's almost like that from the time you're like in first grade. Yeah, I mean, I don't think having a high IQ or even having strict good schooling from a young age makes you happy. So if you, I mean, I'm sure there's the happiness country scale is a little bit different actually. You know, she is different. Yeah, because all the Asian countries on the happiness scale rank a lot lower. They're all in like the 20s and 30s. At the peak. At the best, they're at the 20s and 30s, Taiwan and Singapore, versus there's a whole bunch of countries ahead of them. Oh, Scandinavian countries were super happy. Yeah, now, I don't know, maybe the Scandinavian countries, maybe they have a good balance, I don't know. Listen guys, everybody knows East Asians, I would say the balance in terms of how much they're going to value just cognition and brainwork versus the other aspects of life. It's not a balance that everybody else would pick or distribute. And that's the truth. Different cultures are different. Somebody just said all Chinese related countries, it's all related back to the creation of the ancient national exam during like the Tang dynasty or the Song dynasty. And then yeah, Indian sphere, Sino sphere things. I'll tell you this. Chinese or Oriental countries, they love tests. They love them. Like you think you like them, they love them to a 10 out of 10 max level. And I'm not saying that that's the best plan or it's the most balanced plan. It's the most holistic. But in my experience, that's kind of how those cultures are. Like at a very broad macro bird's eye level. Ultimately, I'll tell you this. I think the way the world is in 2024, I think the discipline, EQ, mental stability and common sense all matter together for sure way more than IQ. And you could argue individually just as if not more important than IQ. Yeah, I think that these lists are interesting but I also think you need to look into all these other things and draw your own conclusions because I think if you take, there's a lot of statistics out there on the internet. So do your own research but ultimately that's why we made this video so that we could have a conversation. So you guys can let us know in the comments down below what you guys think about this. Does it matter? Does IQ matter? How do you even test for it? Is maybe the testing for IQ outdated now, right? Because a lot of those tests are made decades ago but who knows? Anyways guys, let us know if you found this interesting. Please hit that like button. Check out other episodes of the hot pop boys. And until next time, we out. Peace.