Astral Codex Ten

Lynn

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Lynn

Article

Lynn is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between January 15, 2025 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “Lynn’s position would make better anti-racist advocacy”; “If Lynn is right and Malawi has an IQ of 60”; “I think Lynn’s IQ data is, in some sense, reason for optimism”. It most often appears alongside ACX, Africa, Aporia.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: January 15, 2025
  • Last seen: April 01, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

How To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love Lynn's National IQ Estimates
January 15, 2025 · Original source
Richard Lynn was a scientist who infamously tried to estimate the average IQ of every country. Typical of his results is this paper, which ranged from 60 (Malawi) to 108 (Singapore).
Inline links: this paper
People obviously objected to this, and Lynn spent his life embroiled in controversy, with activists constantly trying to get him canceled/fired and his papers retracted/condemned. His opponents pointed out both his personal racist opinions/activities and his somewhat opportunistic methodology. Nobody does high-quality IQ tests on the entire population of Malawi; to get his numbers, Lynn would often find some IQ-ish test given to some unrepresentative sample of some group related to Malawians and try his best to extrapolate from there. How well this worked remains hotly debated; the latest volley is Aporia’s Are Richard Lynn’s National IQ Estimates Flawed? (they say no).
Inline links: Are Richard Lynn’s National IQ Estimates Flawed?
Lynn’s national IQ estimates (source) People obviously objected to this, and Lynn spent his life embroiled in controversy, with activists constantly trying to get him canceled/fired and his papers retracted/condemned. His opponents pointed out both his personal racist opinions/activities and his somewhat opportunistic methodology. Nobody does high-quality IQ tests on the entire population of Malawi; to get his numbers, Lynn would often find some IQ-ish test given to some unrepresentative sample of some group related to Malawians and try his best to extrapolate from there. How well this worked remains hotly debated; the latest volley is Aporia’s Are Richard Lynn’s National IQ Estimates Flawed? (they say no).
Inline links: source, Are Richard Lynn’s National IQ Estimates Flawed?
Highlights From The Comments On Lynn And IQ
January 16, 2025 · Original source
Doesn't Lynn's IQ measure also suffer from the IQ/g discrepancy that causes the Flynn effect?
That is, my understanding of the Flynn effect is that IQ doesn't exactly measure g (the true general intelligence factor) but measures some proxy that is somewhat improved by literacy/education, and for most of the 20th century those were getting better leading to improvements in apparent IQ (but not g). Shouldn't we expect sub Saharan Africans to have lower IQ relative to g (since their education and literacy systems are often terrible)?
Lynn’s data and analysis were bad.
Open Thread 365
January 20, 2025 · Original source
2: More comments on Lynn and IQ: Lizzard attacks, Cremieux defends, Lyman Stone thinks there’s something off about how national IQ estimates change over time (still paywalled, sorry!), Sebjenseb responds to Lyman (free to read, there’s lots of other stuff, CTRL+F “change over time”).
Inline links: Lizzard attacks,, Cremieux defends, change over time, responds to Lyman
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Lynn Contact Info: acx[.]vilnius[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 11th, 3:00 PM Location: Lukiškių aikštė (Lukiškių square) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9G67M7QC+V8 Group Link: https://discord.gg/R8E [remove this bit] bg2bVaM Notes: Anyone interested is welcome. RSVPs not required.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9G67M7QC+V8