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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.
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?
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
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".
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."
People with high IQ will use Linux and doesn't need piracy!
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
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