Maybe, maybe not, but how would you know? As of now, IQ is the _only_ measure of intelligence, so there's nothing to compare it against except anecdotes. You can say, "so and so has a low IQ but he seems smart to me", but there's nothing objective to compare it against, so there's really no good way to tell if it does measure that ephemeral quality that we attribute to the term "intelligence". It does track pretty closely with every other objective measure of intelligence, though, like academic performance and financial success.
Of course if the IQ test was flawed and just a measure of where we expend resources on people rather than intelligence, it would strongly track with academic performance and financial success.
Just because something is the only game in town doesn't mean you should use it, that logic doesn't make sense. We need to work on developing better systems rather than saying "oh well, it's the only thing we've got!"
You don't understand. IQ isn't "the only game in town" because there aren't any other games, it's the only game in town because all other games were gradually unmasked to all be the "IQ game". IQ started out being one of about 5 measurements of people. Because of the age, one other measure was "nobility". Well, corrected for IQ, it turned out, that didn't matter. Same happened to many others.
You can characterize and predict how humans will perform in many, many games with this single variable. It's the one that works best. So the current thinking is that there is only one measurement of intelligence. They all converge into a single one. It's called IQ because that was the first one that worked well enough, not because there's just one way to measure it.
(Technically there is also age. Younger people are dumber than older ones up to a pretty high age. But that's the IQ game: age and "raw iq". Nothing else really matters in predicting if someone can succeed at something. IQ, the measure used, is corrected for age, so it should take that out. But a 10 year old with 100 IQ is, in absolute terms, dumber than a 20 year old with IQ 100)
So your criticism is rather a lot beside the point. We have worked, a long and hard and often on developing better systems. We have just never actually succeeded in creating a truly different system (this of course is a "technically incorrect" statement. There are recent research results, there are ... blah blah blah ... there is no halfway decent reason to assume those research directions will lead to anything, but we're still trying. We've been doing that for >100 years, so the odds of the next big thing being in the pipeline right now is small).
The basic observation behind IQ is that "all skills converge" (I would argue this has even been observed in machine learning). If you know one skill, whichever one it is, you become faster, better and quicker to learn almost any other skill. Not much, a little. In machine learning there are papers that point out that the ability to distinguish poodle races in pictures help with music composition. Not "much", but the key is what happens over time. It helps something like 2-5% (measured in time to learn a certain proficiency in music composition). The issue is what happens with kids when you give them new skills regularly over a 10 year period. Then they have 100 more skills, or 100 times 2% easier time to learn a new skill compared to someone who learned nothing. 100 times 2% easier ... is (1.02^100)-1, which is an enormous number (which is why IQ is an exponential score, not a linear one. Someone with 120 should be about double as smart as someone scoring 100. By which we mean that if you take a random intellectual skill, the odds of the person with 120 having some proficiency at that skill is about double that of the person with 100). To add insult to injury IQ compounds on itself. The higher your IQ, the easier it is to get it even higher.
What people hate about IQ is the underlying theory clearly shows that human brains are designed to amplify differences in intelligence over time, not to minimize them. That is a clear and incontestable fact at this point. This is presumably also not a bad thing, or it would have been selected out. This also won't change because of any amount of changes occurring in psychology or the measurement of it. We can prevent ourselves from knowing about it, but we can't change it.
Not my experience. Being a good tester is a different skill than being a good developer. Management/leadership requires different talents than team membership. Folks excel at one but not another. All uncorrelated with IQ.
Not to mention music, boxing, acting, teaching and on and on.
The only thing the silly 'IQ' correlates with is, taking IQ tests. I think its all part of the education vicious cycle. People who were good at school subjects (preparing for tests at root) end up teaching school. So we end up with that skill being held up as the principle valuable skill. Because 'educated' people value it. So it must be true.
And I contradict that. Folks have talents, and interests, and learn some things easily and some evade them forever. There's a lot more going on, and its not just 'IQ greases the skids' for learning.
Oh sure. If someone really doesn't want to learn, they mostly won't. And of course, yes, that happens a lot.
There's a European proverb I quite like which roughly goes "glasses nor lights will help if the owl does not want to see", meaning exactly that. It doesn't matter how easy something is if the person doesn't want to do it.
Still not making myself clear. Some folks will never learn to be a leader, even if they are very intelligent. Things like that are not measured by IQ. Unrelated to being willing to learn. There are many brain-based talents and skills going unmeasured by 'IQ'. Acting. Lying. Empathizing. And on and on.
It may be a symptom of what's wrong with our technological Western view of the world, that we ignore/discount all these when taking the measure of a person.
Maybe it's just me but I resent this way of thinking. The science behind IQ is based around statistics and coming up with rational, reasoned way to measure it, and then testing statistical hypotheses.
It CANNOT be argued against, for me, by any argument assuming that one's "view" of the situation has anything to do with reality. That is the exact opposite of science, and different only in details to any other religion. If you want to have your postmodern view of the world, go and enjoy it. But you've left science behind.
Also: if you believe postmodernism, and that your view can change reality, please explain to me: no matter how much I believe a chair flies, it never flies. I wanted to really test this when I was 19, I literally spent 3 days trying that (2 on a spoon, and this was before the matrix so nothing to do with that, 1 day on a chair). Needless to say didn't work. It wasn't a waste of time, but it proved to me that me spending enormous effort to change my view of the world changes precisely nothing. That science is the only way forward. I have also noticed that me putting in 3 days of sincere effort is far more than anyone I've ever met defending how "one's view changes X" has ever put into it.
If such efforts fail to change a spoon, then please explain how any view can change the outcome of studies involving tens of thousands of participants, over more than a century of study. And yes, it's been tested with people who didn't have a western world view too. Same result.
So go enjoy your postmodern world view. Seriously. I'm sure it gets you many girls around the campfire. But never again suggest that any such view can compete with any insight gained by real science. Science is right, and not just when it comes to IQ. You are no better than a homeopathic doctor. You are wrong and should restrict your views to settings involving alcohol.
Assuming you're asking in good faith: a racist who pretends not to be a racist. They'll often show up asking "Why can't we just have a reasonable discussion about low IQs in the Sub-Saharan African phenotype?" and ready with a Gish gallop list of dubious studies.
If this post stays up, I'm sure they'll make an appearance.
I see. And as soon as someone says something you don't like you're able to tell that they've been pulling this act right? Like, your spidey sense starts tingling or something? That's a neat skill!
Isn't it pretty much proven that IQ is mostly determined by genetics, and that races like the Ashkenazi Jews are extremely above average compared to the rest of the world?
Tell me - what is racist about this scientific fact: Black people are stronger and run faster (indubitably due to slavery / selective breeding.) Jews are smarter (most nobel prizes.)
Races are different, sure. To say that smarter or stronger means superior, is racist. But before that, understanding of differences... that's just science.
Since strength and smartness are both held by society as virtues, it's easy to look like a racist if you simply state science.
> Isn't it pretty much proven that IQ is mostly determined by genetics
The evidence currently seems to suggest that just barely more than half of variation in IQ is genetic.
> and that races like the Ashkenazi Jews are extremely above average
No. Askhenazi Jews specifically (not some group of “races” of which they are an example) are signficantly above average (that is, the tested samples are above average of other samples in a way which is extremely improbable if the real population average of the group isn't actually higher, too), but not extremely higher.
> Tell me - what is racist about this scientific fact: Black people are stronger and run faster (indubitably due to slavery / selective breeding.) Jews are smarter (most nobel prizes.)
Those two claims are not a fact, they are two separate racial stereotypes, one of which is offered with a parenthetical explanation for a potential set of causes, the other with a parenthetical apparently about an putative effect for which the offered stereotype is conjectured as a cause, and both ignore social reasons why the groups involved might be overrepresented in the highly visible top-tier performers in given categories without the group itself having a general advantage, much less a genetic one.
I think the bigger debate is whether eugenics or anti-dysgenics should be a policy goal of the government.
Whether we like it or not - if we don't pass our best genes down to our children we are hurting future generations. I suspect the fact that we've turned so against eugenics goes hand in hand with the fact that we've also destroyed the environment, the financial well-being, and even the mental health of the next generation (especially here in America).
In my observation (completely unbiased, mind you,) brains come from the mother. Therefore it's vitally important for the future of the human race that smart women have children. Certainly the stupid ones are.
Its not for YOU (or your ilk) to pick winners in the "best genes" debate. What you deem to be "good genes" is a garbage hypothesis based on your own personal outlook and bias. Your own personal outlook and bias is not how nature works now should it. (Luckily for those who may not meet your genetic standards)
I think the bigger debate is why you care about eugenics and don't have the courage to just say what you really feel, instead of dressing it up like failed Nazi policy is what America and the west needs right now. (if they could just man up and implement a eugenics policy to save us all)
We don't know what the best genes are or will be. Furthermore as humans we work together to overcome personal shortcomings and develop technological/medical solutions to overcome genetic "issues". ADHD or ASD can be a gift or a curse depending on the environment you live in.
I find different cultures/religions to be quite interesting in their characteristics of families. Mormons seem to have larger families. They require 10% of income goes to the church which increases the church's influence, so the church gets stronger the more people are in it. It's like a self-sustaining organism that gets stronger with each generation.
As an intelligent individual belonging to no particular culture or religion, I feel less inclined to have children than others I know since it's not part of my values. It's likely that people like myself are going to have a difficult time passing on our genetics. If you want to encourage smart people to have kids, create a religion/culture that makes sense to them and give them that directive.
> We don't know what the best genes are or will be.
True, but we know of a LOT of situations which genes won't be any good. ADHD, ASD are survivable, but despite the fact that one of the great physicists of the 20th century had it, I think even he would agree that ALS should not be allowed to occur.
Also interfering in health effectively means everybody is being asked to bear a burden for those faulty genes. Which is where the real argument will come from.
Sex segregation in prisons is based on maintaining discipline, resting (like many other instances of sex segregation) on the unstated (and always known false) assumption that everyone is heterosexual.
It isn't based on eugenics, which is why conjugal visits are a thing.
I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but one thing we can say for sure is that there are differences between sexes and sets of genetic traits associated with the concept of race. Now, whether these differences extend beyond biology - that's what scientists currently would rather not discuss for fear of consequences. The authors of the article argue this attitude is harmful for the society as a whole.
The problem I have with it is that it is not a perfect science, but people talk about its studies/results as if it IS perfect science; And those results in the hands of certain people usually end up being used to classify a chunk of humanity as somehow not worthy of respect or worse, to be eradicated.
It is not and will not be a perfect science. However, other sciences are not used to persecute humans. Introducing a bias which racist's undeniably have, pollutes the science, as we have seen in AI algorithm training recently.
One of the ways that stifling debate on such matters does harm, is that it sure makes it look like kooky opinions like James Watson's or Charles Murray's (seriously, if you don't think Murray is a kook, take a look at his work on "Human Achievement" and the purported measurement thereof - which is of course hopelessly biased to favor Europe and the West) have a lot more currency and more basis in science than they actually do.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 100 ms ] threadYou can characterize and predict how humans will perform in many, many games with this single variable. It's the one that works best. So the current thinking is that there is only one measurement of intelligence. They all converge into a single one. It's called IQ because that was the first one that worked well enough, not because there's just one way to measure it.
(Technically there is also age. Younger people are dumber than older ones up to a pretty high age. But that's the IQ game: age and "raw iq". Nothing else really matters in predicting if someone can succeed at something. IQ, the measure used, is corrected for age, so it should take that out. But a 10 year old with 100 IQ is, in absolute terms, dumber than a 20 year old with IQ 100)
So your criticism is rather a lot beside the point. We have worked, a long and hard and often on developing better systems. We have just never actually succeeded in creating a truly different system (this of course is a "technically incorrect" statement. There are recent research results, there are ... blah blah blah ... there is no halfway decent reason to assume those research directions will lead to anything, but we're still trying. We've been doing that for >100 years, so the odds of the next big thing being in the pipeline right now is small).
The basic observation behind IQ is that "all skills converge" (I would argue this has even been observed in machine learning). If you know one skill, whichever one it is, you become faster, better and quicker to learn almost any other skill. Not much, a little. In machine learning there are papers that point out that the ability to distinguish poodle races in pictures help with music composition. Not "much", but the key is what happens over time. It helps something like 2-5% (measured in time to learn a certain proficiency in music composition). The issue is what happens with kids when you give them new skills regularly over a 10 year period. Then they have 100 more skills, or 100 times 2% easier time to learn a new skill compared to someone who learned nothing. 100 times 2% easier ... is (1.02^100)-1, which is an enormous number (which is why IQ is an exponential score, not a linear one. Someone with 120 should be about double as smart as someone scoring 100. By which we mean that if you take a random intellectual skill, the odds of the person with 120 having some proficiency at that skill is about double that of the person with 100). To add insult to injury IQ compounds on itself. The higher your IQ, the easier it is to get it even higher.
What people hate about IQ is the underlying theory clearly shows that human brains are designed to amplify differences in intelligence over time, not to minimize them. That is a clear and incontestable fact at this point. This is presumably also not a bad thing, or it would have been selected out. This also won't change because of any amount of changes occurring in psychology or the measurement of it. We can prevent ourselves from knowing about it, but we can't change it.
Not to mention music, boxing, acting, teaching and on and on.
The only thing the silly 'IQ' correlates with is, taking IQ tests. I think its all part of the education vicious cycle. People who were good at school subjects (preparing for tests at root) end up teaching school. So we end up with that skill being held up as the principle valuable skill. Because 'educated' people value it. So it must be true.
There's a European proverb I quite like which roughly goes "glasses nor lights will help if the owl does not want to see", meaning exactly that. It doesn't matter how easy something is if the person doesn't want to do it.
It may be a symptom of what's wrong with our technological Western view of the world, that we ignore/discount all these when taking the measure of a person.
It CANNOT be argued against, for me, by any argument assuming that one's "view" of the situation has anything to do with reality. That is the exact opposite of science, and different only in details to any other religion. If you want to have your postmodern view of the world, go and enjoy it. But you've left science behind.
Also: if you believe postmodernism, and that your view can change reality, please explain to me: no matter how much I believe a chair flies, it never flies. I wanted to really test this when I was 19, I literally spent 3 days trying that (2 on a spoon, and this was before the matrix so nothing to do with that, 1 day on a chair). Needless to say didn't work. It wasn't a waste of time, but it proved to me that me spending enormous effort to change my view of the world changes precisely nothing. That science is the only way forward. I have also noticed that me putting in 3 days of sincere effort is far more than anyone I've ever met defending how "one's view changes X" has ever put into it.
If such efforts fail to change a spoon, then please explain how any view can change the outcome of studies involving tens of thousands of participants, over more than a century of study. And yes, it's been tested with people who didn't have a western world view too. Same result.
So go enjoy your postmodern world view. Seriously. I'm sure it gets you many girls around the campfire. But never again suggest that any such view can compete with any insight gained by real science. Science is right, and not just when it comes to IQ. You are no better than a homeopathic doctor. You are wrong and should restrict your views to settings involving alcohol.
If this post stays up, I'm sure they'll make an appearance.
Tell me - what is racist about this scientific fact: Black people are stronger and run faster (indubitably due to slavery / selective breeding.) Jews are smarter (most nobel prizes.)
Races are different, sure. To say that smarter or stronger means superior, is racist. But before that, understanding of differences... that's just science.
Since strength and smartness are both held by society as virtues, it's easy to look like a racist if you simply state science.
The evidence currently seems to suggest that just barely more than half of variation in IQ is genetic.
> and that races like the Ashkenazi Jews are extremely above average
No. Askhenazi Jews specifically (not some group of “races” of which they are an example) are signficantly above average (that is, the tested samples are above average of other samples in a way which is extremely improbable if the real population average of the group isn't actually higher, too), but not extremely higher.
> Tell me - what is racist about this scientific fact: Black people are stronger and run faster (indubitably due to slavery / selective breeding.) Jews are smarter (most nobel prizes.)
Those two claims are not a fact, they are two separate racial stereotypes, one of which is offered with a parenthetical explanation for a potential set of causes, the other with a parenthetical apparently about an putative effect for which the offered stereotype is conjectured as a cause, and both ignore social reasons why the groups involved might be overrepresented in the highly visible top-tier performers in given categories without the group itself having a general advantage, much less a genetic one.
Whether we like it or not - if we don't pass our best genes down to our children we are hurting future generations. I suspect the fact that we've turned so against eugenics goes hand in hand with the fact that we've also destroyed the environment, the financial well-being, and even the mental health of the next generation (especially here in America).
Its not for YOU (or your ilk) to pick winners in the "best genes" debate. What you deem to be "good genes" is a garbage hypothesis based on your own personal outlook and bias. Your own personal outlook and bias is not how nature works now should it. (Luckily for those who may not meet your genetic standards)
I think the bigger debate is why you care about eugenics and don't have the courage to just say what you really feel, instead of dressing it up like failed Nazi policy is what America and the west needs right now. (if they could just man up and implement a eugenics policy to save us all)
I find different cultures/religions to be quite interesting in their characteristics of families. Mormons seem to have larger families. They require 10% of income goes to the church which increases the church's influence, so the church gets stronger the more people are in it. It's like a self-sustaining organism that gets stronger with each generation.
As an intelligent individual belonging to no particular culture or religion, I feel less inclined to have children than others I know since it's not part of my values. It's likely that people like myself are going to have a difficult time passing on our genetics. If you want to encourage smart people to have kids, create a religion/culture that makes sense to them and give them that directive.
True, but we know of a LOT of situations which genes won't be any good. ADHD, ASD are survivable, but despite the fact that one of the great physicists of the 20th century had it, I think even he would agree that ALS should not be allowed to occur.
Also interfering in health effectively means everybody is being asked to bear a burden for those faulty genes. Which is where the real argument will come from.
It isn't based on eugenics, which is why conjugal visits are a thing.
It is not and will not be a perfect science. However, other sciences are not used to persecute humans. Introducing a bias which racist's undeniably have, pollutes the science, as we have seen in AI algorithm training recently.
-Thomas Sowell