Astral Codex Ten

Richard Lynn

4 min read

Richard Lynn

Article

Richard Lynn is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between December 28, 2022 and October 30, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “35: Related: Richard Lynn, who is somehow still around and not too cancelled to publish new papers”; “Richard Lynn, who is somehow still around and not too cancelled to publish new papers”; “Richard Lynn was a scientist who infamously tried to estimate the average IQ of every country”. It most often appears alongside China, Freddie DeBoer, Peter Wildeford.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: December 28, 2022
  • Last seen: October 30, 2025

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.

Links For December 2022
December 28, 2022 · Original source
35: Related: Richard Lynn, who is somehow still around and not too cancelled to publish new papers, finds that “IQ gaps between countries are still large but are diminishing world-wide” because of Flynn effects.
Inline links: “IQ gaps between countries are still large but are diminishing world-wide”
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?
Links For October 2025
October 30, 2025 · Original source
22: Earlier this year, I wrote about Richard Lynn’s IQ estimates - what do we do with data suggesting that the average IQ in poor countries is in the 60s or 70s? Should we think of these groups as similar to intellectually disabled people in First World countries? Or are the IQ tests failing to classify them correctly? Andrew Hammel (X) writes about a remarkable case in Germany that hinged on this question: a Syrian terrorist murdered three people. The defense argued that since he had an IQ of 71 (borderline intellectually disabled by German standards) he couldn’t be held responsible for his actions. But a psychiatric expert witness counterargued that IQ 71 is normal for Syria, and you can hardly argue that no Syrian can be regarded as a moral actor. The argument seems to have carried the day, and the Syrian man will face a normal sentence.
Inline links: wrote about, Andrew Hammel (X)