Slashdot Mirror
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.
In this context, at best it is a measure of how well the country's culture conditions people to taking standardized tests.
... are more likely to use open source software.
Gee, considering the source, this couldn't be clumsy propaganda, could it?
perhaps
One of the New Year's resolution he listed was, "Do not read the latest breakthrough experiment in psychology about, say, the effect of taking cold showers on grammatical ability. Better even read nothing about these 'experiments.'"
Every summer ice cream sales go up. Every summer reported numbers of rapes go up.
Therefore ice cream must cause rape.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
> 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.
congratulations on being diagnosed mediocre
'Cuz I trust a word that anyone from that organization says. Oh wait, not trust. The other thing.
Imagine all the people...
It doesn't surprise me that the Slashdot audience has forgotten who the Business Software Alliance is, but I'm a little shocked that TorrentFreak seems to have.
Breakfast served all day!
Top 7 by IQ:
Hong Kong
Singapore
South Korea
Japan
North Korea
China
Taiwan
<eyeroll>No piracy ever in those countries</eyeroll>
It's not income, it's disposable income. Even that is relative to software pricing. They could have very comfortable lives otherwise based on their local cost of living and still have problems paying what companies want for software.
Plus there's the whole availability problem.
Most simple scientific models are wildly innaccurate.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What about complex licenses where is it's easy to be listed as piracy due to not using the right ones or not following all of the very complex rules.
I suspect high-IQ countries are just so good at piracy that they make it look like somebody else did it.
-SR
Most content comes from "developed" nations because such nations have more entertainment consumers and people who can afford devices to play/run content. Therefore such nations have a vested interest in reinforcing intellectual property (IP). Piracy thus "hurts" the less-developed nations less, and therefore there is less incentive to enforce IP laws there.
Developed nations generally have higher average IQ's because they have better education systems and better average nutrition.
These two factors are likely unrelated. Correlation is not necessarily causation.
Table-ized A.I.
Research can say anything you want. For example... Lets say that those high "IQ" nations also most likely have the highest income levels. Meaning, another way to say this "research" shows that poorer nations pirate more software, which seems reasonable when you consider that these same people probably can't afford the software licenses and/or do not have companies that they work for that can actually buy the software. "Hackers" don't typically hack software because they are bad or low IQ people. They do it because most of the time they can't afford it otherwise.
Wouldn't many pirates' actual country of origin be hidden by the VPN they are using? So their findings are skewed, and there's no way to tell by how much. But I'm guessing the folks who commissioned this "study" don't want to be showing that VPN is a viable pirate attack vector anyway.
The Book "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" I think says it best... Wealth and IQ is highly correlated. Meaning, if you are wealthy, you are much more likely not to pirate software.
About saying country A has a higher IQ than country B.
Country #1 in the world in economic freedom? Hong Kong. Country #1 in the world in IQ? Hong Kong.
Country #2 in the world in economic freedom? Singapore. Country #2 in the world in IQ? Singapore.
South Korea enjoys a higher IQ than North Korea.
Also compare the Han majority countries in order of economic freedom:
Highest of 4: Hong Kong 107
2nd of 4: Singapore 105
3rd of 4: Taiwan 104
4th of 4: China 101
There is a nearly perfect correlation between US spending on science and suicides by hanging/strangulation/suffocation.
Seriously, this is just a taunting and a very bad one to say the least.
Just read the 29 pages of this "study", I just flipped it through and laughed.
If someone would have looked at the data supporting this conclusion, one would say that even a six year old that is taught how to "insert a trend line" into excel could come up with this conclusion.
Ohh yeah, but there is a correlation matrix .. (*laughter*)
Another conclusion that could be drawn (or painted) based on this data, is that people of colour are dumb, which is an outrages conclusion.
However another conclusion that could also be drawn is that african countries where sufficient nutrition is not provided for the people leads to generally lower IQ scores, and less money leads to software piracy.
You cannot live of eating a floppy disc but of eating mangnoc.
Also the question is if a legal software trader is availiable, is not answered, this could explain the outlier South Africa, develloped infrastructure.
And there is the "british civil law" factor .. as statistical sound as the "americanized hamburger restaurant factor".
To give a picture:
A somewhat correlation is no proof, and only sometimes a hint.
Also all three authors are from business and management schools.
Btw. if you need three authors for these 29 pages and the 2 hrs. minitab than this correlates business schools and voodoo magic.
yeah, MENSA: Or the intellectual equivilant of comparing penis sizes and determining the value of a person based on these factors.
Go to the meetings, you will see what I'm trying to say. Haven't seen so many dickheads in my life, and the women also had "dicks".
We find things. We are smart.
Since when are we taking anything the BSA claims without a dump truck load of salt.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
There's no other viable explanation for this "story".
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
Or number of teeth..... so people with more teeth more likely to buy software licenses.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Really?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://jakubmarian.com/averag...
https://www.quora.com/What-is-...
https://fellowshipoftheminds.c...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's a classic example of methodological incompetence. Got your popcorn? Let's start the show.
Their dependent variable is piracy rates (between 0 and 100) as published by the BSA. Not one word about measurement uncertainty in those data. Remember how the MPAA and the BSA used to estimate sales losses due to piracy? That's right: list_price x (penetration_fraction x population of PC's - license sold). I kid you not. And they calmly rely on piracy data from those sources.
Then their explanatory variable: the so-called IQ measure. They cite the "seminal" work of Lyn,R. VanHaanen, T ()
Unfortunately for the authors of the latest "correlation paper", the work of Lyn and VanHaanen is anything but uncontroversial. I quote from one of the Lyn and VanHaanenpapers:
Just look at their graph. It's a big, uncorrelated smudge of dots - through which they have drawn a line and announced their conclusion. The data is worthless, the analysis is worthless.
Take a look at the publications for the first author:https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lzywJN4AAAAJ&hl=en
Looks like a good part of his career consists of plotting various things against IQ in search of things that correlate. IQ is a dubious enough metric for intelligence already, and there's no possible way to determine a causal link from that sort of quest for interesting correlations.
It's a classic example of methodological incompetence. Got your popcorn? Let's start the show.
Their dependent variable is piracy rates (between 0 and 100) as published by the BSA. Not one word about measurement uncertainty in those data. Remember how the MPAA and the BSA used to estimate sales losses due to piracy? That's right: list_price x (penetration_fraction x population of PC's - license sold). I kid you not. And they calmly rely on piracy data from those sources.
Then their explanatory variable: the so-called IQ measure. They cite the "seminal" work of Lyn,R. VanHaanen, T ()
Unfortunately for the authors of the latest "correlation paper", the work of Lyn and VanHaanen is anything but uncontroversial. I quote from one of the Lyn and VanHaanenpapers:
Gettit? The fact that there are high correlations "proves" the validity of their inference that there are meaningful relationships. Did they go to Trump University or what?
In this vein I especially like the high correlation (see http://www.tylervigen.com/spur... ) between per-capita cheese consumption and people who died by becoming entangled in their bedsheets.
I wonder if the authors thought to control for that.
As far as serious research is concerned, this is the end of the line, but lets go on and have a look at their model, shall we?
They model the value of a fraction through a straightforward regression model: SP_i = \alpha + \beta IQ_i + \lambda X_i + \epsilon_i
Oops, and there we have the little matter of using straightforward regression to model a fraaaaction, instead of something like logistic regression. For those who don't immediately spot the problem, see e.g. here: http://www.theanalysisfactor.c...
Ordinary linear models are simply unsuitable to model fractions. A point that's common knowledge with statisticians, but one that's apparently lost on the authors (and the authors on which they base their work).
Right, lets continue and look at the graph they show with their regression line. Each country counts as one (China has the same weight as the e.g. Senegal and the US has the same weight as the Comores. Look ma, no weights! Sounds good eh? When you look at their graph, China shows up as one serious outlier with an "IQ" score of about 110 and a "piracy" score of about 80%. Only 1 bln people up there. Close by, in the bottom-right corner of their graph is the good ole US of A, weighing in at about 270 mln people, with almost the same score
There is nothing even remotely scientific about this.
Firstly the IQ test was originally developed by a French doctor in the late 1800's as a way of diagnosing mental retardation. It was never meant to be an intelligence test. It's a stupidity test.
Secondly for an IQ test to have any meaning it has to be conducted in a way that is culturally relevant to the place your doing the testing. So comparing IQ from people of 2 different cultures doesn't tell you a whole lot because the people crafting the test are going to design it in such a way to produce the bell curve for a culture that you would expect from standard distribution.
Thirdly this is just obvious bullshit on its face and can be torn apart with the most basic critical thinking. Like the fact that China is one of the biggest piracy hubs and there supposedly a high IQ country.
Or the fact that its generally more intellectually challenging to pirate something that it is to just go to a store and buy it.
I'd be willing to bet that this is a PR artifact funded by some lobby if the study even exists.
You can file this right along side the study "Scientists find correlation between penis size and paying your taxes on time."
That was precisely my thought. It is of course a bullshit article but it raises so many interesting questions:
Where did they get country based IQ data? Is it normalised to 100 over the entire sample?
Why do most countries in their scatterplot have an IQ less than 100? The only counterweight of significance is China.
Who did they test? China has higher IQ than pretty much the entire western world. I very much doubt that since china is HUGE and mostly rural.
What IQ test did they use? Note that five countries have scores of about 70 or below. Are they really suggesting about 90 million people in Nigeria (NGA) are mentally retarded? There's 180M people in Nigeria, half should be above 70 and half below, i.e. mental retardation (assuming normal distribution). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_disability
People with high IQ will use Linux and doesn't need piracy!
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Had to read a bit more. It is based on the IQ data from this book. The "Reception and Impact" section was fun to read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations
Additionally IQ and criminality is very inversely correlated. A nation with high IQ is likely more aware of the negative side of potential piracy and pushes back more strongly against it.
From that map it strikes me that it correlates strongly with *naval* piracy as well.
Or more likely they just find/write Free Software.
People with higher IQ's know very little is worth pirating to begin with.
Even less worth paying exhorbant amounts of money for.
People with higher IQ's tend to read a lot. They don't get their entertainment from Television.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, really.
Also read your own wikipedia link.
But maybe the other countries has street smarts, or a really high EQ?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't know if you're serious or not, but I had a similar thought. I will watch movies or television programs if others are doing so, but seldom seek them out myself. This is partly because I can find some things irritating, which many other people apparently don't. e.g. I (vaguely) remember an exchange between my wife and myself after watching the movie Dragonheart. In the closing scene, the dragon dies and ascends to the sky as a star, to join a constellation that rearranges itself. If I remember right, she asked me if I found it moving, I said I found it implausible, she asked why, I said because the light from stars takes years to reach Earth, and she laughed. I assumed this was because it wasn't something she'd thought of, and therefore it didn't mar her suspension of disbelief or her enjoyment of the movie. (I was going to add that I didn't actually check, but she's just come past, read what I've written over my shoulder, and confirmed that.) To be fair, I guess this isn't really intelligence, but rather specific knowledge, or the inability to disregard it. Also, I've heard Stephen Hawking enjoys Star Trek, and I'm quite sure it's not because the writers are so clued up on physics that they don't make mistakes he would notice. Anyway, just my 2c.
IQ tests tend to be culturally biased, so it would be interesting to know if the same tests are being used in both 'high IQ' and 'low IQ' countries.
If so, my guess would be that the IQ tests are (unintentionally) biased in favor of the culture of the 'high IQ' country or countries.
If not, then there would probably be no point in comparing the test results as the tests themselves are different.
Google 'IQ test cultural bias' for a bunch of links around this.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
That being said, the same study puts the corruption perception index as a greater contributing factor.
Anything that comes from the Business Software Alliance can be assumed to be shite.