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High IQ Countries Have Less Software Piracy, Research Finds (torrentfreak.com)
Ernesto Van der Sar, writing for TorrentFreak (edited and condensed): There are hundreds of reasons why people may turn to piracy. A financial motive is often mentioned, as well as lacking legal alternatives. A new study from a group of researchers now suggests that national intelligence can also be added to the list. In a rather straightforward analysis, the research examined the link between national IQ scores and local software piracy rates -- from data provided by the Business Software Alliance. They concluded that there's a trend indicating that countries with a higher IQ have lower software piracy rates.
> the researchers carried out robustness tests with various variables including the strength of IP enforcement, political factors, and economic development.
So they did take into account some factors like economic development, which makes this more interesting. However, why not analyze w.r.t. to the education levels of the area as well, since that would also affect the region's 'collective IQ' and probably indicate how many people are too poor to afford education, not to mention buying software. I searched the paper and 'education' as a search term only appeared twice, both times in references (so, its never mentioned in the actual text).
The researchers probably didn't consider the prevailing views of property rights or agreement with international treaties either. In some countries, its just more culturally acceptable to share software which makes it easier to average people to do so without feeling guilty. Other countries might have low income groups that are forced to buy licenses because their leadership got some incentives for IP treaties and are eager to show their enforcement to attract more FDI. Also, often countries with limited software exposure don't even know about good alternatives so its basically, either pirate or buy what everyone else uses.
Look at the position of China. Higher IQ than the US, but also a very high piracy rate.
It's obvious what this graph is actually showing. In general, more affluent countries have both better education and more money to spend on software. The exception is countries like China where they have a very efficient public school system but also low wages.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
IQ is correlated with education for several valid reasons. IQ is predictive of income, heritable, and correlated with smaller family size. So you might find that the educational opportunities parents are able to provide correlates with the IQ of their children. Especially so when you consider local control and funding of education and the regional disparities in IQ. Also IQ is predictive of educational attainment. Starting in elementary school students are sorted by academic ability and achievement. Those with IQ deficiencies tend to be held back and/or receive remedial instruction. Those with high and exceptional IQ are given accelerated coursework, advanced placement, and they stay in school for more years. None of this means that education improves IQ, though I agree some children score lower because of poor preparation and imperfect tests.