Say you’re a country full of people and you have a lot of vital business to conduct to keep everybody fed and housed and healthy and safe. What do you do?
Well, you reach first for this immense tool you have, the most flexible and creative problem-solving device on the planet — the intelligent, educated human brain.
Unless you’re Iran, in which case you forbid HALF your population — half of those problem-solving brains — from getting a full education:
Iranian women banned from 77 university courses
It’s like you take the massed brainpower of an entire country, and with one stroke you lower the total of usable I.Q. by half. That’s like the difference between an I.Q. of 150 and one of 75. Between genius and borderline mentally challenged.
Ha! Think that has no side effects?
Any society that does such a thing, I can’t imagine it has much of a future.