The Chinese are not smarter than us, they simply have more Willpower
the Chinese are going to conquer us not because they are smarter than us, (which is what we’re all led to believe), but because they have greater WILLPOWER than us…let me explain
For years, I bought into the idea that Chinese and Japanese kids are just smarter—higher IQs, always topping the class. You’ve probably seen the memes, right? “Strict Asian parent”, punishing their kid for an A-. Meanwhile Timi, the next door neighbour’s kid started Beijing corn, a multi-billion dollar company by the age of 8 years old… yeah I guess we can say they pride themselves in being over-achievers. It’s practically common knowledge.
Growing up, my friends and I would watch these East Asian kids crush test scores in high school. We’d sit there, like, “Damn, how are they so freakin’ smart? Must be genetic.”
But plot twist—that ain’t it! I stumbled across this book, Willpower by John Tierney and Roy Baumeister. When i originally came across it I thought it’d be some woo-woo “The Secret - Law of Attraction” nonsense, but nope. It’s actually legit, diving into randomized control studies that treat willpower like a video game mana bar—depleting as you make tough choices or resist temptations. Like, keeping junk food in the house while trying to lose weight? That’s a willpower killer, making you more likely to cave in and break your diet. Decision Fatigue, Control of Thoughts, Impulse Control, Glucose Depletion and how it affects your emotion stability are all topics they go deep into and i highly recommend this book to anyone who finds those topics interesting and would like to know tactics and strategies to help maximize your Willpower. Now, the part of the book i want to get into is how emotional self-regulation & impulse-control (like not failing the marshmallow test) sets you up for success in every part of life.
James Robert Flynn, an IQ researcher, backs this up. In his studies, he found that:
Asians make up a quarter of the student body at elite ivy-league schools like Stanford, Columbia & Cornell (all while making up only 4% of the American population…)
they earn salaries that are 25% above the American norm
After carefully reviewing IQ studies, Flynn concludes that the scores of Chinese-American and Japanese-American people are very similar to whites of European descent. If anything, the Asian-Americans IQ is slightly lower, on average, although they do show up more at both the upper and lower extremes. The big difference is that they make better use of their intelligence.
People working in what Flynn calls elite professions, like physicians, scientists, and accountants, generally have an IQ above a certain threshold. For white Americans, that threshold is an IQ of 110, but Chinese-Americans manage to get the same elite jobs with an IQ of only 103. Moreover, among the people above each threshold, Chinese-Americans have higher rates of actually getting into those jobs, meaning that a Chinese-American with an IQ above 103 is more likely to get an elite job than an American with an IQ above 110. The pattern is similar for Japanese-Americans.
by virtue of self control — hard work, diligence, steadiness, reliability— the children of immigrants from east Asia can do as well as Americans with higher IQ’s
Chinese & Japanese culture puts considerably more emphasis on promoting self-control from earlier ages than is common in American and other Western societies.
Chinese parents and preschools pressure children quite early in life to become toilet trained and acquire other basic forms of impulse control.
2 year old Chinese children are expected to have levels of control that correspond roughly to what American children reach at age 3 or even 4
To summarize, it’s not about being smart—it’s about emotional self-regulation and diligence. Meatheads are out here outpacing us because they act faster and with no hesitation. Meanwhile, the Chinese are out here moving in silence—snagging our dream jobs, buying houses in the neighbourhoods we want to live in, staying fitter than us. All while we’re doomscrolling, watching pure brain-rot content and freaking out over geopolitics…hmm…
Probably because the CHINEESE CONTROL THE TIKTOK ALGORITHM.
…HENCE WHY WE ARE ALL RETARDED…
Here’s what I got from reading this book: WILLPOWER isn’t about heroic resistance. It’s about making the right choice easy and the wrong choice hard. It’s about building systems that let you win by default. Less scrolling through political rage-bait. Less falling into vices that feel productive but drain you dry. More steady, unglamorous progress toward goals that are actually yours.