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Your Visual Skills Are Not Correlated To Your IQ (vanderbilt.edu)
Science_afficionado writes:
Psychologists at Vanderbilt University have conducted the first study of individual variation in visual ability. They have discovered that there is a broad range of differences in people's capability for recognizing and remembering novel objects and this ability is not associated with individuals' general intelligence, or IQ.
Or, as the article puts it, "Just because someone is smart and well-motivated doesn't mean he or she can learn the visual skills needed to excel at tasks like matching fingerprints, interpreting medical X-rays, keeping track of aircraft on radar displays or forensic face matching."
Or, as the article puts it, "Just because someone is smart and well-motivated doesn't mean he or she can learn the visual skills needed to excel at tasks like matching fingerprints, interpreting medical X-rays, keeping track of aircraft on radar displays or forensic face matching."
This is not new information. Millennials should be banned from science until they are at least 45. They 'discover' the already discovered with alarming regularity, and for some reason feel compelled to publish their 'findings'. Newsflash: science is not instagram. It'd be a freaking miracle if they read an old book or paper (formerly known as 'research') instead of conducting their endless science fair projects. Newsflash #2: refusing to acknowledge the work of others is not the same thing as independence, especially not independence of *thought*. If anything, it is the sheep mentality exemplified, and more important still, it doesn't work. Management, please reimburse the ten minutes I spent on this. Thank you.
Is that what you took away from that?
Interesting, and a bit ironic given the subject matter.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
As a pedophile I find this association to republicans offensive.
IQ must not be allowed to correlate to any positive traits whatsoever. Whites have higher IQs than blacks and, because whites and blacks must not be allowed to be unequal in anything*, the stated result is a necessary conclusion.
* Unless the difference favors blacks. Then, and only then, must the difference be reiterated ad infinity in all forms of mainstream media. This is necessary to emphasize and underscore the striking equality of blacks and whites.
I take it then that you didn't like your score.
IQ tests aren't meaningless, they're just not the solution to every question about intelligence. They're mainly useful in measuring things relevant to formal education before all the new changes.
I have a high IQ and I can tell you that it's not meaningless, it's just not what people think it is. I can push far more data than anybody else I've met before going crosseyed and I can count cards with the best of them using my own system.
As for visual skills the tests don't really focus on anything too intensive which is probably why there's so little correlation. I can't visualize at all, but I'm roughly 3 stdevs out.
Regardless of your intelligence, you can greatly enhance your visual skills by playing video games. Some games are better for this than others.
The most important thing to remember is that IQ tests are neither meaningless nor harbingers of all types of intelligence.
There are several 'recognized' intelligences, and arguably many more.
words (linguistic intelligence), numbers or logic (logical-mathematical intelligence), pictures (spatial intelligence), music (musical intelligence), self-reflection (intrapersonal intelligence), physical experience (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence), and social experience (interpersonal intelligence).
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Everyone knows that visual centers have no correlation with IQ. In fact, autistic people excel in certain tasks that no high IQ person can do. And obviously just because you are blind it does not mean you will have low IQ.
I have kept one eye on IQ research over several decades, and this is not what anyone seriously involved actually thinks.
g factor (psychometrics)
Hmmm. The g is not strong in this editor: either that last sentence should read "unrealistically reified view" or it should read "unrealistic, reified view". Furthermore, that last bit is not actually a criticism of g, it's a criticism of the entire field of applied psychometrics, up to and including Duckworth and Kahneman. People are extraordinarily complex. You put something extraordinarily complex into an extraordinarily complex environment, and unpredictable things happen, regardless of whether your metric is perfectly sound when isolated in simpler, more controlled environments.
The actual argument here is whether any justifiable isolate of human potential (meaning: some kind of number on a solid research footing) solves more problems than it creates when deployed in a messy, real world by messy, real people.
This problem is not any different with the big five personality traits.
OCEAN probably provides a good starting point from which to explore where a person can best pursue their future potential and deliver present value, modulo some specific organizational context. It doesn't provide a good basis for lumping people into buckets.
Nothing we've ever discovered provides a good basis for lumping people into buckets, not even the man/woman buckets that were already old and tired by the time of Christ's first, brief reconnaissance.
Memo from Sally Ride to Genghis Kahn: Suck. My. Dick.
We've learned subsequently that it was information originating from Sally Ride that was "leaked" to a perceptive Feynman (while talking small-engine shop, in somebody's actual garage) that lead to Feynman getting enough of a jump on the technical investigation to thence succeed in decoding the political smoke screen, just in the nick of time to drum up huge waves.
You had better believe that a valid IQ test has never been invented that Feynman wouldn't have aced. So you purport to believe his ability to ace any manner of test whatsoever concerning fluid intelligence had no real connection to his ability to ace life? (As physicist, teacher, author, and reluctant politician.)
Marge von Fargo: I'm not so sure I agree 100% with your police work there, Lou.
There weren't many people with low IQ in my pde or quantum classes. Statistically, there is a high correlation, so I wouldn't call it meaningless.
Bingo... Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't spacial/vision tasks comprise a huge chunk of IQ tests anyway?
Intelligence is our primary survival tool. Other living things have claws, teeth, camouflage, speed, etc. Our secondary survival tools include our senses, including vision, and hands and various motor skills including the ability to run like hell.
To the extent that we survive and excel in our environment and achieve our goals, we can be said to be intelligent. I don't understand the TFS' association of visual memory with intelligence. Visual memory as described is probably a good thing, but even total blindness has nothing to do with intelligence.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Intelligence also manifests in a number of different areas, from mathematics to politics. Spend some time with a cohort of people who have scored high on IQ tests, and you will see what I mean.
Yeah. What a strange coincidence that exactly the tasks solvable with todays' mindless "AIs", are not related to intelligence. Color me surprised.
Wild guess: 86.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That would mean women are smarter than men, and we all know that's not true.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Who? If it was meant to be that they'd have called it WQ, wouldn't they?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's pretty simple.
I want to work with, be with, or interact with people who are as intelligent as me. There is a test which measures what I consider to be a good assessment of that trait, based on reasonably objective and repeatable criteria. It can never be perfect, because all people are different, but that doesn't mean it's 100% wrong as you incorrectly assert.
It doesn't matter if you think it is accurately assessing intelligence, or that you've convinced yourself intelligence cannot be measured. I can see that someone who the test has revealed to be of low intelligence is also, typically, someone who has objectively low social and mental qualities. The lower the number, the more likely that is to be true. The test works as true quantified predictive science.
A thought experiment for you: Do you think the NBA has more black players because they are better at basketball, or for some other untestable reason?
"Just because someone is smart and well-motivated doesn't mean he or she can learn the visual skills needed to excel at tasks like matching fingerprints, interpreting medical X-rays, keeping track of aircraft on radar displays or forensic face matching."
In other news:
Just because someone is smart and well-motivated doesn't mean he or she can learn to run fast.
Just because someone is smart and well-motivated doesn't mean he or she can learn to shoot accurately.
Just because someone is smart and well-motivated doesn't mean he or she can learn to paint.
Just because someone is smart and well-motivated doesn't mean he or she can learn to play a music instrument.
---
Find me someone with downs syndrome with a score above 120, and a physicist with a score below 100.
It's measuring something, and can be used objectively to make scientific predictions.
Your attempt to redefine intelligence does not invalidate the test.
about it's inaccuracy.
Genius
Indeed, and your score can easily be improved with practice which means it can't be a measure of raw intelligence unless practicing IQ tests is also the most effective way to boost your innate intelligence.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
A developed, specific skill is not the same as general skills. Duh ! That is about like saying that a person who is a musical genius might not do well with foreign languages. There are all kinds of abilities and as the savants demonstrate one can be a super genius in one area and unable to walk to the corner store and return home without being totally lost. There are also some really challenging tests with the colored blocks that psychologists have used for decades. Being able to remember the colors and geometries of all six sides of a cubs and solve a complex puzzle quickly can be more strenuous than many test subjects can tolerate.
What, for ever? Does that mean there are people who start out being literally cretins who practice for ten years and score over 200?
It couldn't possibly be that there is some penalty from being unfamiliar & inexperienced and it gets eroded with practice, could it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
People who can't read are extremely rare in most developed countries, so they're irrelevant to the matter at hand. You might have a point if we were talking about the middle ages, but we aren't.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Some people just want to believe that there is a scientific, objective way to measure a person's worth. They usually think they are near the top of the ranking, especially if they also cling to the idea of racial intelligence.
IQ is very strongly correlated with success. Multiple replicated studies have added support for that.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Sure, but success is not the same thing as intelligence. And success is strongly correlated with wealth and access to good schooling (although there are plenty of exceptions), which suggests that IQ is not measuring some kind of innate ability or mental processing limit.
I'm not suggesting that IQ doesn't measure anything. I'm saying it measures a variety of non-fixed things. I guess you could compare it to CPU benchmarking, which as we know often has little relation to real world performance and if often artificially inflated or reduced by external or largely irrelevant factors, like small variations in RAM speed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You overstate the case. IQ is correlated with many useful skills. But it sure hasn't been shown to correlate with others.
For that matter, IQ itself is not a unitary measure. The tests measure different, and perhaps independent (but certainly not varying identically) capabilities. Sometimes the capabilities are correlated, but not identical, as, e.g., the ability to maintain focus and the ability to memorize. But as I know of no accepted separation of the capabilities measured by IQ, I doubt that there's even been significant research as to exactly WHAT is measured. But it does predict with reasonable accuracy your ability to do well on the average school test (without even attempting to measure motivation to do well over time).
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
IQ tests aren't meaningless, they're just not the solution to every question about intelligence. They're mainly useful in measuring things relevant to formal education before all the new changes.
Actually, no. IQ is a measure of how good you are, compared to your age group, at solving unfamiliar problems applying common knowledge all test takers are expected to have, or knowledge given by the test itself. The education level should not influence the score at all - if it does, the test is flawed.
What's expected common knowledge differs for age groups. A six year old can be expected to know that water flows downwards, while a sixteen year old can be expected to know about exceptions like siphons and capillary actions. The individual tests should reflect this, and a test for a six year old might ask which way wooden shingles should be put on a roof, while a test for a sixteen year old might ask which edge of wooden shingles is most important to seal.
Ideally, a test subject should flag all tests that they already know the answer to, and it should be excluded from the result. So someone whose father is a roof layer should not have the answer count.
Unfortunately, people (shock!) cheat and don't flag questions that they get for free, so generally this is not done, and more theoretical question are used instead of practical ones, which introduces a bias.
All that said, there is a correlation between higher education and IQ score, with people with a higher than average IQ score being more likely to attend higher education. But that does not mean that the education level is the cause. External factors that affect both IQ score and education level, like nutrition, health care and wealth/poverty are more likely causes.
For people who test to the same score as young, when tested later in life, after adjusting for external factors like alcohol/drug use and health issues, there should not be a significant difference in score on the later test based on education level.
Education generally doesn't change a person's intelligence, it just gives more resources that the intelligence can be applied to.
Sure, but success is not the same thing as intelligence. And success is strongly correlated with wealth and access to good schooling (although there are plenty of exceptions), which suggests that IQ is not measuring some kind of innate ability or mental processing limit.
Your lack of a background in science is showing again. Success is strongly correlated with wealth, and also strongly correlated with IQ. IOW, look up what "controlled study" means. For IQ, especially, it's easy to control for socioeconomic effects, hence the "IQ is strongly correlated with success" assertion.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
practicing IQ tests is also the most effective way to boost your innate intelligence.
In don't think anybody claims that IQ tests measure your innate intelligence. They aim to measure your actual intelligence level, and that's something that could be improved with practice and study.
Of course, if a standardized IQ test has a limited sampling of questions, and you only practice those particular types of questions, you'll skew the results.
Performance at certain tasks that may or may not be biased towards one or more cultures, which require some degree of practice to reach full potential at?
Pretty much, yes. And the tasks are probably designed to reflect useful skills in life, which are also biased towards the culture you're in.
But that does not mean that the education level is the cause.
What happens if a 6 year old goes to an accelerated education program, and learns about siphons and capillary actions, and which edge of a shingle to seal ? Wouldn't she be able to answer the questions for the 16 year old ?
And what if the 16 year old grew in a country where they don't use shingles for roofing, but clay tiles ? Would they know which edge to seal ?
So you are saying it's a test of aptitude in various disciplines... I agree, but that's not how some people treat it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You keep saying IQ is correlated with various things... But not intelligence.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I agree, but that's not how some people treat it.
That's their problem.
Until your boss thinks your skin colour correlates with your innate intelligence.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There are limitations to how much studying will get you. There's also a sever cost in doing so as you'd not be doing other things that are more relevant to your life.
The IQ tests are really best thought of as being similar to being born into money. People with high IQs start off with an advantage in certain areas and if they don't put the effort into developing them, they can easily fall behind before too long. Those who start out with lower IQs can and do catch up in many cases because they have to develop the process necessary to succeed, along with the actual habit of working hard.
But you can't make them smart.
I recently left an R&D group that gave its operation over to a megalomaniacal "Key Expert".
This guy insisted on reinventing the wheel badly every time, because he had never actually built anything himself, or done anything IRL.
He could quote any formula, but was sadly unaware of reality.
There's a lot of those in America, which is why foreigners who can easily take their jobs and do better at them.
And why the idiots are afraid of immigrants...
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
This shoudn't come as a surprise, as the first IQ was invented by Alfred Binet to work as a test for school children to sort them in the right class.
You keep saying IQ is correlated with various things... But not intelligence.
That's what I started with - "IQ is strongly correlated with success".
IQ tests don't measure "intelligence" because that word, for many people, depends on context. IQ tests measure problem solving ability. This is probably why it correlates so strongly to success: a strong ability to solve problems probably results in a large measure of success anyway.
IQ tests are like BMI - mostly accurate, for most of the population, in the ways that actually matter. If I were to bet on a random high-IQ person successfully performing an unfamiliar task while you bet on the low-IQ person successfully performing an unfamiliar task, after a few iterations you'd lose your money and I would not.
IQ is a great indicator of a person's problem-solving abilities. Many people do not consider problem-solving ability to be 'intelligence'.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
We agree. They should remove the I from IQ.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
We agree. They should remove the I from IQ.
I said 'many people don't consider problem-solving to be a sign of intelligence'. I did not say 'most'. The overwhelming majority do, and llike BMI, for most people, in most contexts, it's mostly accurate for what most people consider to be intelligence.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
It has long been known that memory of the arbitrary is uncorrelated with IQ.
So what are you claiming it actually measures?
Within 20 points of the mean (80 to 120), IQ scores are strongly correlated with income and financial success. Outside that range, the correlation breaks down. If you have an IQ of 140, you are unlikely to earn much more than someone with an IQ of 120. Likewise, someone with an IQ of 60 won't earn much less than someone with an IQ of 80.
IQ is strongly and negatively correlated with incarceration. People in prison tend to be dumb. This could mean that dumb people commit more crimes, or that they are more likely to get caught and be convicted. Mostly likely it is a bit of both.
IQ is not correlated with happiness.
IQ tests made in the last 30 years have no knowledge questions and are designed by teams of scientists to be culture-fair. Nothing that you have said is on any IQ test. Perhaps online quizzes called IQ tests, but those are not made by neuroscientists.
Perhaps read up on them before embarrassing yourself further.
What happens if a 6 year old goes to an accelerated education program, and learns about siphons and capillary actions, and which edge of a shingle to seal ? Wouldn't she be able to answer the questions for the 16 year old ?
Your question breaks down at the "and".
1: If she learns about siphons and capillary actions to the same level as a 16 year old, she should be able to deduce the same answers as the 16 year old. The 16-year old test question would be appropriate for her too, but not for her contemporaries that lack this knowledge. Thus it won't be asked, unless it's a personalized test.
2: If she learns about which edge of a shingle to seal, she should not be asked the question, and it should not be counted. It would be as invalid whether answered by a knowledgable 6 year old or by a 50 year old roof layer.
It's the ability to deduce an answer that the tests aim for, not knowledge. In order to test the ability to deduce, questions should be about things the question taker does not know, but have enough underlying knowledge to be able to think their way to an answer.
And what if the 16 year old grew in a country where they don't use shingles for roofing, but clay tiles ? Would they know which edge to seal ?
I'm glad you asked. That does not affect their ability to deduce the answer.
A test taker not knowing anything about wood in general would affect the validity of the question, but basic knowledge of wood combined with unfamiliarity with its use as shingles would be a plus for the validity of the answer - then you can assume that you're testing their ability to figure out the answer.
So a question about wood shingles might lead to more accurate test results in Arizona or New York City.
A Vermont teen could instead be asked questions they are unlikely to have the knowledge to directly answer, like if a potted plant balancing on the sill on the only open window in a house is more likely to fall inwards or outwards - something a big city dweller might be more likely to know from experience.
In short, an IQ test should test "given understanding of A, but not B, does the test taker have the ability to deduce B?"
Not knowing A or already knowing B both invalidate the result, and the challenge is to devise the tests in a way that minimizes the risk of either.
A few tests have early questions that simply intend to establish what the test taker knows or doesn't know, so answers to later questions can be filtered out based on this. Whether it's "what is 2 to the 3rd power" or "what is the shape of cells in a bee hive" or "pick the elliptic shape from the above pictures", these questions establish knowledge, which allows for excluding answers to the real IQ test questions later, when the participant doesn't know A or does know B.
Someone not familiar with the test might think that these early questions actually affect the score directly, and may incorrectly conclude that the test is biased, while the exact opposite is the case.
It does, with certain groups by a very big amount (1 full standard deviation, 15-16 points, between US whites and blacks in Rushton and Jensen (2005) and Roth et al (2001)). Whatever the reason. People like to immediately devolve into why there are observed IQ differences (assuming they even accept this scientific fact to be true to begin with, many don't, against evidence is so strong it makes climate deniers seem reasonable), and that's certainly important to look into... but the reality is these differences persist even after factors like poverty and education level are factored in. What's worse, it's been turned into a white supremacy thing even though white people aren't even the group with the highest average (Japan/Korea/China). Now for 99% of jobs someones IQ isn't really important, and even if it is other factors remain more important, so there's absolutely no way to justify discriminating based on it, but it's simply factually wrong to assert that no difference exists between major race groups, and the denial isn't going to help anyone. If you just close your eyes and pretend everyone is the same IQ, you're never going to address the problems that prevent that from actually being true.
And if you were going to reply criticizing that I'm talking only about IQ score, you're going to be sad when you look up if this issue is better or worse for test areas most strongly correlated to general intelligence rather than IQ score.
We need to fix the gap, not deny it exists (or fudge the numbers to make it look like it doesn't, some people want to adjust scores with a 'we're all obviously equal so the test is wrong and needs an offset').
I kind of agree that the gap needs to be addressed, I'm just not in agreement about what the gap represents. For example, in the 1930s white Americans were 20 points below today's level. That is, the average white American from the 30s is equivalent to a modern American who dropped out of school before age 8.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is what I find hilarious when SJWs start with this "IQ is racist" shit.
White Guy1: Let's find some way to scientifically prove we're smarter than the bally darkies!
White Guy2: Capital idea! How about a sort of quiz, with questions about regattas, cutlery and the like?
WG1: Great! But just make sure that the slitty-eyed little yellow devils and the red sea pedestrians score higher than us!
WG2: Why not!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If you have perfect pitch hearing you might be good at tennis. But equally, you might be bad at it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But by how much? Like any other kind of training, diminishing returns sets in. I could train an hour a week and run 5% faster. I could train two hours a week and maybe run 10% faster. If I train 100 hours a week I am totally not going to run faster than a cheetah with its arse on fire.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
By that logic the 100m sprint isn't a measure of who can run fastest.
Cultural bias is a red herring, it's so old it stinks.
I do. Patronising wanker.
I doubt it's because people who did their first test in 1900 are now doing their 23,074th and by now have seen all the possible questions at least twice, and memorised them. let's see: better nutrition? Less pollution?
It says nothing about it one way or the other. Completely irrelevant.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Probably? If you think it's so then show us an actual example. A current one, not from before WW1.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You mean like how once Indians get into management they predominantly hire other Indians?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's the part I'm wondering. Maybe somebody willing to read the article can tell me. The summary says, "this ability is not associated with individuals' general intelligence, or IQ."
My question in, since when the fuck did anybody invent a useful test of general intelligence?! That is a way more exceptional claim than there being a lack of correlation between IQ and visual object memory.
I'd also be a lot more interested in visual classification vs IQ than visual object memory. Especially if the click-line is going to say "visual skills."
After a lot of tutoring, my son recently graduated to moron. We still don't let him play with the neighborhood children because those kids are idiots.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Since a regatta isn't a boat I don't see what your point is. You probably know what a horse is. I doubt you can even spell gymkhana.
Not getting such a well known reference is rather like asking what ls does in a thread about Linux; it pretty much disqualifies you from the discussion.
Can't copy-paste properly indeed.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
For example, if you're from a culture where people expect you to have high IQ score it is more likely that you'll discover that the fish is always 72 inches, because the people who write the tests don't enjoy algebra and they all copy the same word problem. POW! Unless you're already scoring in the 99th percentile, your IQ went up. And if your IQ is in the 99th percentile, I just lowered your relative score by increasing the IQ of a few random credulous idiots.
Another, if you regularly engage in word games in English-language newspapers you'll be more familiar with re-ordering the letters in words, and you'll already have exposure to word games that make use of the English spellings of the capital cities of certain cities with spellings convenient for use in the test. Those are the same cities with spellings convenient for use in newspaper word games. And yet, playing crossword puzzles doesn't make you smarter. If anything it makes you stupider; just look at the "answers" they come up with for their "questions!"
Also, some cultures expose children to number sequence games in school, while other cultures focus on practical applications of math. The number patterns give an advantage to people who have seen the same sequences in the past, even if they don't "remember" them. In general intelligence the need is to pick out the pattern that has relevance to a context, so having the relevant context of a game is very important to if this "skill" is developed in the abstract or not. And context-free numerical pattern matching has dubious (potentially negative) utility in most fields.
By that logic the 100m sprint isn't a measure of who can run fastest.
It isn't. It's a measure of who can sprint over short distances fastest. Using it as a measure of general running performance clearly disadvantages distance runners who are not fast but have exception endurance.
better nutrition? Less pollution? ...
It says nothing about it one way or the other. Completely irrelevant.
What?
It's like you know the answers, you use them when it suits your argument, but then completely ignore them when they don't...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yes, that's an example.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
By that logic the 100m sprint isn't a measure of who can run fastest.
It isn't. The person who wins the 40m might have achieved a higher top speed. Also the guy in last place might have run faster than the winner while warming up. No way to know. You've got a lot of narrowing to do before you figure out what was measured by that test!
Cultural bias is a red herring, it's so old it stinks.
A red herring is something irrelevant that distracts. However, your complaint seems to instead be that it is wrong. On its face the accusation of cultural bias is obviously important to the utility of the test, so it can't be a red herring. You need to have a valid accusation in the first place if you want people to take your reasons seriously.
SJWs
If it is growing out of your neck, it isn't a "beard."
"The More You Know!"
You keep saying IQ is correlated with various things... But not intelligence.
That's what I started with - "IQ is strongly correlated with success".
Up until they banned sword duels being good with a sword was strongly correlated with financial and political success. It is really not a very way to start off if you're trying to prove even that is a test of general problem-solving. It clearly tests things, but there is no reason to assume that it is testing something generalized.
You say all that, but actually rich parents send their kids to tutoring designed to increase the scores by studying the types of knowledge that would allow for scoring high on the test without deducing anything.
And many of the questions actually have wrong answers if you're deducing the answer, because the required answers are the same wrong things you'll find in a "n Lies My Teacher Told Me" type of book! There were other kids giving the correct answer and being scored as wrong all along, and the reason it doesn't get caught and corrected is that the system ____(insert politics)____.
In many cases the "correct" answer is actually the simplification known to be incorrect that is taught to physics underclasspeople, and if you're "deducing" it isn't a sign of anything good. Maybe a sign a of simple mind. Maybe the next person say the simplification and realized it was too simple, and actually tried for a real answer? Guaranteed to be "wrong" by the test, all those real answers. ;) So then you get a curve that goes up, but then goes back down, and you might even end up with a majority of outliers simply having strong memory skills.
Education generally doesn't change a person's intelligence: your point is weak. If a persons education constantly involved solving a spectrum of novel problems, then experience teaches a student so trained will perform better in the next round of problem solving
That does not follow. IQ tests are deliberately made and changed to combat the effect of rote learning, because that is not what they want to measure.
Nor is it relevant to a person's intelligence - getting better at something does not mean getting more intelligent.
If anything, while there is a correlation between higher education and IQ test scores, individual scores do not increase during education. (The scores actually decrease slightly, like for other groups that have a higher score than average, due to mortality rates and the baseline shifts),
And in the 1930s, black people were below white people of the time, and below black people of today; I'm not sure what you're getting at there. The Flynn Effect applies against all groups, but largely ceased for those born after the 70s. Everyone's IQ went up for those decades before that, but it wasn't limited to only one group. All I'm pointing out is that there is a gap; I'm not speculating on why it exists, only that it is a consistent observed effect that is not in serious dispute. And it does matter, because the outcomes IQ is associated with don't change; the outcomes and other test correlates (SAT, LSAT, etc) for an IQ of a given range don't change with race.
What is clear though, the gap is not entirely attributable to genetics. Whether there's some influence is up for debate, but that there are other factors in play means there's a lot we can do to narrow the gap even if there is.
IQ scores are strongly correlated with income and financial success.
IQ is strongly and negatively correlated with incarceration.
IQ is not correlated with happiness.
Doesn't financial success make you more happy than being in prison? I know it makes me happier...
15-16 points, between US whites and blacks
What is the definition of White and Black? This may sound obvious if you're dealing with pure bred Somalians vs Icelanders, but in the modern world this is no longer clearly cut.
In this case, self-identified. Test takers are asked what their race is, and the group that checks 'white non-hispanic' and the group that checks 'black' are being compared. You can argue details all you want but it's silly to suggest that in the US, 'black' and 'white non-hispanic' are not valid racial groups; you can even restrict it to something really as superficial as skin color; I'm aware of the path your comment intends to go down, attempting to muddle clear sociocultural distinctions that apply to a large majority of individuals with genetic analysis indicating only small differences between races or large differences within races; that doesn't apply to what we're talking about and I think you know that. Edge cases that would identify as both aren't a statistically significant influencer, especially given parity with historical trends that are not correlated with increased intermarrying. If these divisions had no real meaning, then no differences would be found.
I said 'many people don't consider problem-solving to be a sign of intelligence'. I did not say 'most'. The overwhelming majority do, and llike BMI, for most people, in most contexts, it's mostly accurate for what most people consider to be intelligence.
I think your analogy works very well. BMI is a fine overall statistic for plunking onto a chart in a power point presentation about how we might want to allocate more money to health education due to increasing teen health problems. But it easily fails when used for individuals, where there are many other more useful measures on hand. We should endeavor to not be like the dumbass doctor who looked at my young son's BMI number and did not actually look at him before pronouncing he should lose some weight. (My son is having a little difficulty learning to swim because he naturally sinks below the surface -- which means it is impossible for his body fat level to be unreasonable. A doctor astute enough to actually look at her patient could have easily figured that out.)
If it were only named "Scholar Quotient", it might have been less likely to be an abused notion. But having attached the word "intelligence" to this kind of testing early on, it has been abused. And thus it is rightly challenged as meaning much less than most people think it means.
You keep saying IQ is correlated with various things... But not intelligence.
That's what I started with - "IQ is strongly correlated with success".
Up until they banned sword duels being good with a sword was strongly correlated with financial and political success.
Even if true, that doesn't mean that IQ is incorrectly correlated with success. Like I keep saying, for most people in most contexts, IQ is a mostly correct measure of what most people consider to be intelligences.
It is really not a very way to start off if you're trying to prove even that is a test of general problem-solving. It clearly tests things, but there is no reason to assume that it is testing something generalized.
I'm not trying to prove anything - IQ is a test of problem-solving ability, and it is mostly correct. Most high-IQ people would be considered intelligent (even if their IQ were not known) while most low IQ people would be considered less intelligent (even if their IQ were not known).
Humans put each other into "stupid" and "smart" categories all the time; IQ is a relatively good indicator of intelligence in general. It's like BMI, where you have it accurate for most of the population but with a few outliers where the measurement is not accurate.
IQ is mostly accurate.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
2: If she learns about which edge of a shingle to seal, she should not be asked the question, and it should not be counted. It would be as invalid whether answered by a knowledgable 6 year old or by a 50 year old roof layer.
It's the ability to deduce an answer that the tests aim for, not knowledge. In order to test the ability to deduce, questions should be about things the question taker does not know, but have enough underlying knowledge to be able to think their way to an answer.
That is an excellent textbook answer as to how an "intelligence test" ought to be designed. But where the rubber meets the road, standard instruments are standard instruments. No one ever does a detailed pre-test of each subject to figure out if certain questions might be problematic. If the subject is showing a confused look on their face, the test administrator is bias towards assuming that demonstrates the question is working the way it should, not rock the boat with questions about whether their chosen career is a sham.
There is actually a lot of excellent research about how to make tests in general that will be more reliably valid. That research is routinely ignored because it is too expensive to do things the right way. As a practical matter, you get what you pay for. The problem comes in when pretending standard instruments are better than they are -- that is the sham.
Furthermore, I think it is routinely downplayed how the emotion context matters to the results of these tests, and how draining the experience can be to young children. That is why throwing in just one inappropriate question early in the battery of questions can skew the results, because the psychological toll of one or two bizarre questions (bizarre in the subjects eyes) can hurt the stamina of the subject in a way that really matters.
I'm not disputing that there is a gap, merely disputing what it is that the IQ test actually measures. And the genetic component seems to be very small, and the evidence for it is not very compelling since it is impossible to control for other factors.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
In this case, self-identified.
Right so like how Barack Obama calls himself black even though he is actually 50:50, so technically he could equally call himself white if he wanted? Sounds legit...
I mean to answer phones at a help desk role surely requires the right answer like do you own a shed with a drafting table and how quickly you can organize puzzle pieces questions in 3 mins.
http://saveie6.com/
And many of the questions actually have wrong answers if you're deducing the answer, because the required answers are the same wrong things you'll find in a "n Lies My Teacher Told Me" type of book!
And often as in "There's more than one way to skin a cat".
A typical wrong test is:
Insert the missing value:
1 2 4 [ ]
There are dozens of valid answers for this one, and the two most common ones, 7 and 8 are both equally valid.
Similar for some of the common shape tests, where the test maker might be unfamiliar with concepts like both OR and XOR being valid operations. So a valid result might be scored as incorrect.
And yes, there are cultural differences too. A test description that says "blue" and elements of the test have both blue and green colors does not work well for someone from a culture that doesn't distinguish between blue and green.
Anyone who thinks identifying and remembering novel objects requires a significant IQ has never been around cattle, or for that matter, sheep.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
We need to fix the gap, not deny it exists
Indeed, and there are plenty of things we can do:
1. Black children have nearly twice the average blood lead levels of white children. This depresses IQ and causes antisocial behavior. Blood lead levels have declined since the banning of leaded gasoline, with big benefits to society including lower crime rates. But clearly we still have work to do, and we need to find and eliminate other sources of environmental lead. While we are at it, we should work on reducing other neurotoxins such as mercury and cadmium as well.
2. Black mothers consume significantly less folic acid while pregnant. Folic acid is critical to neurological development. If black women are drinking soda instead of eating broccoli, then maybe we should be putting folic acid in soda pop.
3. Black women are less likely to breastfeed. The reasons for this are mostly cultural. Breastfeeding is correlated with a 3 point gain in IQ.
4. Blacks are less motivated to do well on IQ tests. While a test is in progress, blacks are more likely to have relaxed postures, more likely to be looking around the room, more likely to finish early and put down their pencils rather than checking their answers, etc. This could be due to a culture of low expectations.
Interestingly, Asians and Jews (who are technically Asian) have mean IQ scores above whites, and they "win" on all 4 of these points. They have lower average blood lead levels, they consume more folic acid, they are more likely to breastfeed, and they have cultural pressure for academic success.
There is historical evidence that IQ gaps can be closed. The average soldier in WW1 had an IQ score nearly 15 points lower than today. In the early 1900s, there was a 10 point gap between Irish protestants and Irish catholics, and that gap has completely disappeared.
Since a regatta isn't a boat I don't see what your point is.
The word "regatta" was used in a test from the 1970s. If "cultural bias" is really a big problem, then we wouldn't have to go back 45 years to find an example of it.
Also, the highest scores in America are achieved by the children of Asian immigrants. How does "cultural bias" explain that?
Now for 99% of jobs someones IQ isn't really important.
Not true. For many jobs IQ is a strong predictor of job performance.
You keep saying IQ is correlated with various things... But not intelligence.
That's what I started with - "IQ is strongly correlated with success".
Up until they banned sword duels being good with a sword was strongly correlated with financial and political success.
Even if true, that doesn't mean that IQ is incorrectly correlated with success. Like I keep saying, for most people in most contexts, IQ is a mostly correct measure of what most people consider to be intelligences.
OK, stop there. Is that what you think I claimed? Re-read what I said, and see if it says that. And, you just admitted that you understand you're just repeating assertions. Did you consider I might be engaged in something other than simply asserting conclusions? Do you understand that what I said doesn't refute what you said, it is simply something else that is even more strongly correlated. It is a claim of higher quality than yours, and yet it is clearly lacking on its face. That doesn't prove anything about what you said, rather it underlines that lack of proof for your statement; and it would be illogical to believe what you claim without proof because there are other theories offered to explain the known facts. You're wrong in that you have a well-formed belief about something known to be an unresolved issue.
Why would that be an interesting basis for a conversation, and why would anybody talking about knowledge even want to listen to you repeating yourself? I sure wouldn't, that's why I stopped reading there and just replied to the first part.
You're wrong in that you have a well-formed belief about something known to be an unresolved issue.
IQ and the definition thereof is not an "unresolved" issue - not only is IQ well-understood lay people also have no trouble understanding it. For *you* it might be unresolved - the rest of the world understands it just fine.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
You're supposed to correlate what is true, not correlate things that are not true. When you detected that IQ isn't the word with disputed meaning, then instead of jumping straight to "yer rong" you should have instead realized your mistake and understood that we weren't even arguing over the definition of IQ. Figure out the context of your argument. Then you might even be able to comprehend what I said.
As for now I'm just going to mark you down as "failed." I don't really care what the numerical representation of your failure would be, either. Or the underlying causes.
You're supposed to correlate what is true, not correlate things that are not true. When you detected that IQ isn't the word with disputed meaning, then instead of jumping straight to "yer rong" you should have instead realized your mistake and understood that we weren't even arguing over the definition of IQ. Figure out the context of your argument. Then you might even be able to comprehend what I said.
As for now I'm just going to mark you down as "failed." I don't really care what the numerical representation of your failure would be, either. Or the underlying causes.
Regardless of your incoherent ramblings, for most people, in most contexts IQ is correlated with higher intelligence. Also, please look up what "correlate" means. I don't get to correlate what is true and what is not true, the fact is that intelligence as understood by the clear majority of the population, including scientists, mental health professionals and lay people is very strongly correlated with IQ.
Please, FCOL, look up what the word "correlate" means. You look like an ass when you say such blunders like "correlate things that are true' as then it is clear that you do not know the meaning of the word.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Some people just want to believe that there is a scientific, objective way to measure a person's worth.
Actually, after having it thought it over, I am genuinely curious - do you believe everyone has the same worth or that some people are worth more than others?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I also think trying to measure a person with a single number like IQ is both deeply flawed and undesirable from a social point of view because we all benefit from everyone having opportunities to reach their potential.
No one was arguing that opportunities must be limited, only that IQ is an accurate enough indicator of intelligence to be useful most of the time. Intelligent people score higher on IQ tests, outliers notwithstanding.
Regardless, if your aversion to intelligence is because it is socially undesirable, what do you propose? That we get rid of intelligent people? That we find a different test so that stupid people can score high too? After all, no one is proposing to use IQ scores as a restriction to opportunities, so I'm left wondering why you brought up the whole question of "worth".
Some people are worth more than others. Their IQ has nothing to do with it, and in most cases we assign worth without looking at the IQ score.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
No one was arguing that opportunities must be limited, only that IQ is an accurate enough indicator of intelligence to be useful most of the time.
That's the same thing. If you rely on IQ as an indicator of intelligence you must have some purpose in doing so, e.g. filtering job applicants or provision of schooling to children. And if IQ is a flawed measure then some people will be denied opportunities that they should have access to.
Regardless, if your aversion to intelligence is because it is socially undesirable, what do you propose?
I like intelligence, I just don't think you can encapsulate it in a single number determined by a written test.
After all, no one is proposing to use IQ scores as a restriction to opportunities
That's exactly what happens. Job applicants are filtered by IQ test scores, funding for education is diverted to children who score highly on IQ tests. And some people go even further, arguing that some skin colours are also mentally superior and should be supreme. It's that kind of thing that I object to.
I want everyone to be as intelligent as possible, which means having access to good education and opportunities to fix social problems like poverty. I don't accept the argument that "these people have a low IQ, therefore will always be poor and dumb and doing anything to change that is anti-intellectual and anti-science."
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No one was arguing that opportunities must be limited, only that IQ is an accurate enough indicator of intelligence to be useful most of the time.
That's the same thing. If you rely on IQ as an indicator of intelligence you must have some purpose in doing so, e.g. filtering job applicants or provision of schooling to children. And if IQ is a flawed measure then some people will be denied opportunities that they should have access to.
But a) IQ isn't a flawed measure, and b) we aren't relying on IQ for filtering purposes.
Regardless, if your aversion to intelligence is because it is socially undesirable, what do you propose?
I like intelligence, I just don't think you can encapsulate it in a single number determined by a written test.
You make a 6-hour test sound like a thumb-suck. The IQ test isn't a social science, you understand; it's an actual science.
After all, no one is proposing to use IQ scores as a restriction to opportunities
That's exactly what happens. Job applicants are filtered by IQ test scores, funding for education is diverted to children who score highly on IQ tests. And some people go even further, arguing that some skin colours are also mentally superior and should be supreme. It's that kind of thing that I object to.
I want everyone to be as intelligent as possible, which means having access to good education and opportunities to fix social problems like poverty. I don't accept the argument that "these people have a low IQ, therefore will always be poor and dumb and doing anything to change that is anti-intellectual and anti-science."
No one made that particular argument, and yet, even if they did you can argue against using a criteria (not just IQ score, any criteria) to prevent opportunities to people.
Right now, as things stand, the IQ score is an indicator. Sure there's outliers, but as far as "worth" goes, higher IQ people have given more to society than lower-IQ people, so they're objectively, empirically, worth more.
That assertion is not the same as "we must limit opportunities for individuals who fail to meet this bar *points at IQ chart*"
.
Unless you want to argue that all individuals are equally valuable to society, you have to face the fact that some groups are not as valuable as other groups. High-IQ groups are a great deal more valuable than low-IQ groups. That does not mean that we need to bar low-IQ groups from attempting anything. It just means that their chance of success is small (which is why I proposed the gambling approach in a previous thread).
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Are we talking about the same IQ tests? Most take 60-90 minutes, with the Mensa one taking a little over 2 hours. And in the US the eugenics movement advocated forced sterilization of people with low scores, so I'd say those numbers have been used to people's detriment at times.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Are we talking about the same IQ tests? Most take 60-90 minutes, with the Mensa one taking a little over 2 hours.
A 2 hour (by your account) test is hardly a guesttimate.
And in the US the eugenics movement advocated forced sterilization of people with low scores, so I'd say those numbers have been used to people's detriment at times.
The movement advocating culling based on IQ score is tiny - it's not even a rounding error. IOW, they are no threat at all to society, so why are you using *their* arguments to demonstrate your position on IQ scores? Do you base your position on any given arguments only on the the most extreme, most fringe adversaries?
At any rate, I was hoping to see your position in response to this: Unless you want to argue that all individuals are equally valuable to society, you have to face the fact that some groups are not as valuable as other groups. High-IQ groups are a great deal more valuable than low-IQ groups. That does not mean that we need to bar low-IQ groups from attempting anything. It just means that their chance of success is small (which is why I proposed the gambling approach in a previous thread).
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Unless you want to argue that all individuals are equally valuable to society, you have to face the fact that some groups are not as valuable as other groups. High-IQ groups are a great deal more valuable than low-IQ groups. That does not mean that we need to bar low-IQ groups from attempting anything. It just means that their chance of success is small (which is why I proposed the gambling approach in a previous thread).
I'm not sure what kind of response you want... I don't want to argue that everyone is equally valuable to society, no, and the rest follows. But that's not why I dislike IQ tests, or the conclusions people draw from that number.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Unless you want to argue that all individuals are equally valuable to society, you have to face the fact that some groups are not as valuable as other groups. High-IQ groups are a great deal more valuable than low-IQ groups. That does not mean that we need to bar low-IQ groups from attempting anything. It just means that their chance of success is small (which is why I proposed the gambling approach in a previous thread).
I'm not sure what kind of response you want... I don't want to argue that everyone is equally valuable to society, no, and the rest follows. But that's not why I dislike IQ tests, or the conclusions people draw from that number.
TBH the clear majority of conclusions I'm aware off are of the form "high-IQ = smarter, low-IQ=stupider", which is true anyway.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.