Why Can't We Talk About IQ?

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

Jason Richwine gets a chance to defend himself in Politico. I'm glad he refused to apologize to the cry babies in the media and the masses who were upset about him noticing facts and daring to mention that they exist. He explains how work, such as The Bell Curve, that is generally accepted by experts receives the label "discredited" from non-experts outside the field - of course we know that those labels are later absorbed by people who have never read the work in question, and that they use the label to justify their ignorance of it. "The Bell Curve is racist, discredited nonsense... I heard!" "Oh? Have you read it?" "Why would I read racist discredited nonsense?" "Err..."

The kind of person he is describing is familiar to many on this forum: people who, when confronted with facts that make them uncomfortable resort to name-calling and accusations of racism.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/o ... 95353.html

“IQ is a metric of such dubiousness that almost no serious educational researcher uses it anymore,” the Guardian’s Ana Marie Cox wrote back in May. It was a breathtakingly ignorant statement. Psychologist Jelte Wicherts noted in response that a search for “IQ test” in Google’s academic database yielded more than 10,000 hits — just for the year 2013.

But Cox’s assertion is all too common. There is a large discrepancy between what educated laypeople believe about cognitive science and what experts actually know. Journalists are steeped in the lay wisdom, so they are repeatedly surprised when someone forthrightly discusses the real science of mental ability...

What scholars of mental ability know, but have never successfully gotten the media to understand, is that a scientific consensus, based on an extensive and consistent literature, has long been reached on many of the questions that still seem controversial to journalists.

For example, virtually all psychologists believe there is a general mental ability factor (referred to colloquially as “intelligence”) that explains much of an individual’s performance on cognitive tests. IQ tests approximately measure this general factor. Psychologists recognize that a person’s IQ score, which is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, usually remains stable upon reaching adolescence. And they know that IQ scores are correlated with educational attainment, income, and many other socioeconomic outcomes...

Snyderman and Rothman then systematically analyzed television, newspaper, and magazine coverage of IQ issues. They were alarmed to find that the media were presenting a much different picture than what the expert survey showed. Based on media portrayals, it would seem that most experts think IQ scores have little meaning, that genes have no influence on IQ, and that the tests are hopelessly biased. “Our work demonstrates that, by any reasonable standard, media coverage of the IQ controversy has been quite inaccurate,” the authors concluded...

Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve was published in 1994, and real science was hard to find in the media circus that ensued. Herrnstein and Murray’s central claim about IQ differences shaping class divisions continues to be the subject of reasoned debate among social scientists. But non-experts in the media questioned whether IQ is even a valid concept. Intelligence research – psychometrics — is a pseudoscience, they said. The tests are meaningless, elitist, biased against women and minorities, important only to genetic determinists. And even to discuss group differences in IQ was called racist.

In short, the media did everything Snyderman and Rothman had warned against six years earlier. As a consequence, the interesting policy implications explored by Herrnstein and Murray were lost in the firestorm.

The American Psychological Association (APA) tried to set the record straight in 1996 with a report written by a committee of experts. Among the specific conclusions drawn by the APA were that IQ tests reliably measure a real human trait, that ethnic differences in average IQ exist, that good tests of IQ are not culturally biased against minority groups, and that IQ is a product of both genetic inheritance and early childhood environment. Another report signed by 52 experts, entitled “Mainstream Science on Intelligence,” stated similar facts and was printed in the Wall Street Journal...

So when Larry Summers, then the president of Harvard University, speculated in 2005 that women might be naturally less gifted in math and science, the intense backlash contributed to his ouster.

Two years later, when famed scientist James Watson noted the low average IQ scores of sub-Saharan Africans, he was forced to resign from his lab, taking his Nobel Prize with him.

When a Harvard law student was discovered in 2010 to have suggested in a private email that the black-white IQ gap might have a genetic component, the dean publicly condemned her amid a campus-wide outcry. Only profuse apologies seem to have saved her career.

In none of these cases did an appeal to science tamp down the controversy or help to prevent future ones.

So what did I write that created such a fuss? In brief, my dissertation shows that recent immigrants score lower than U.S.-born whites on a variety of cognitive tests. Using statistical analysis, it suggests that the test-score differential is due primarily to a real cognitive deficit rather than to culture or language bias. It analyzes how that deficit could affect socioeconomic assimilation, and concludes by exploring how IQ selection might be incorporated, as one factor among many, into immigration policy.

Because a large number of recent immigrants are from Latin America, I reviewed the literature showing that Hispanic IQ scores fall between white and black scores in the United States. This fact isn’t controversial among experts, but citing it seems to have fueled much of the media backlash...

Reporters pulled the dissertation quotes they found “shocking” and featured them in news stories about anti-immigration extremism. Well-established scientific findings were treated as self-evidently wrong — and likely the product of bigotry.

The professional commentators eagerly ran with that theme. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post called me a “fringe character.” Will Wilkinson of the Economist decried my “repugnant prejudice.” The New York Daily News published an unsigned editorial describing me as “the most twisted sort of intellectual” who is “peddling offensive tripe.” The Guardian’s Ana Marie Cox, whose quote began this article, called me a “bigot” and a “more subtle and dangerous kind of extremist.”

For too many people confronted with IQ issues, emotion trumps reason. Some are even angry that I never apologized for my work. I find that sentiment baffling. Apologize for stating empirical facts relevant to public policy? I could never be so craven. And apologize to whom — people who don’t like those facts? The demands for an apology illustrate the emotionalism that often governs our political discourse.

What causes so many in the media to react emotionally when it comes to IQ? Snyderman and Rothman believe it is a naturally uncomfortable topic in modern liberal democracies. The possibility of intractable differences among people does not fit easily into the worldview of journalists and other members of the intellectual class who have an aversion to inequality. The unfortunate — but all too human — reaction is to avoid seriously grappling with inconvenient truths. And I suspect the people who lash out in anger are the ones who are most internally conflicted.

But I see little value in speculating further about causes. Change is what’s needed. And the first thing for reporters, commentators, and non-experts to do is to stop demonizing public discussion of IQ differences. Stop calling names. Stop trying to get people fired. Most of all, stop making pronouncements about research without first reading the literature or consulting people who have.

[Ibrahim]

He explains how work, such as The Bell Curve, that is generally accepted by experts receives the label "discredited" from non-experts outside the field

This is, of course, a falsehood. The Bell Curve isn't even a work of scholarship, let alone one that was subjected to any kind of real academic rigor. Its pseudo-scholarship aimed at a specific demographic. Its amusing to watch members of that target demographic hop up and down trying to defend it, but there isn't really much to be said beyond that.


Really this is just a fringe entry point to the larger topic of the validity of IQ tests themselves. This itself is hotly disputed among scholars, which is simply further evidence that the above statement is a laughable fabrication. Scholars can't agree on IQ but they allegedly agree on the merits of a single volume that accepts IQ tests as objective data? Pesudo-intellectuals are forever tripping themselves up like this.

Jason Richwine gets a chance to defend himself in Politico.

Jason Richwine is paid handsomely to write pseudo-intellectual drivel for conservative rubes to lap up like starving dogs. So to see him defending like examples, indeed other examples funded in part by the same organization, isn't so much an example of him "getting a chance" as him doing what he exists to do, and what the Koch bros pay him to do.

There is something about conservatives who rant on about people being brain-washed slaves to the media that is especially endearing. It must be the total lack of self-awareness or irony.

[Enki]

Because people are afraid that if we consider racial inferiority to be a fact that we are justiofying slavery, because why shouldn't the smart people make decisions for the dumb?

I honestly worry for the dumb here in the near future. And I just hope that my level of intellect is not on the wrong side of the dumb line.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

Because people are afraid that if we consider racial inferiority to be a fact that we are justiofying slavery, because why shouldn't the smart people make decisions for the dumb?

I honestly worry for the dumb here in the near future. And I just hope that my level of intellect is not on the wrong side of the dumb line.

Slavery is what happens if we don't talk about it. Refusing to talk about differences in ability or intelligence is what give us ridiculous one-size fits-all public policies like No Child Left Behind, where every student is expected to reach similar standards of performance at certain ages. It's what allows conservatives to put off any talk of social welfare under the dogmatic mantra that every single person in society ought to find an economic niche that will allow them to support themselves, when the truth is that there are always going to be a percentage of people in any society that isn't going to be able to get it together no matter how much money you waste trying to make it so. Not that we should cut these people a welfare check and forget about them, but that's just it: we aren't allowed to discuss how to handle them because we're all supposed to pretend they're going to go to the University of Phoenix and get their computer science degree. There are a myriad other issues that arise from assuming people have the same capabilities.

The only hope for a reasonable public policy debate is through honesty, and we have to ignore people like Ibrahim whose sole goal every time he opens his mouth is to ensure that honesty doesn't occur, and that facts that do not support his ideology are suppressed.

[Parodite]

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/o ... 95353.html

What scholars of mental ability know, but have never successfully gotten the media to understand, is that a scientific consensus, based on an extensive and consistent literature, has long been reached on many of the questions that still seem controversial to journalists.

For example, virtually all psychologists believe there is a general mental ability factor (referred to colloquially as “intelligence”) that explains much of an individual’s performance on cognitive tests. IQ tests approximately measure this general factor. Psychologists recognize that a person’s IQ score, which is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, usually remains stable upon reaching adolescence. And they know that IQ scores are correlated with educational attainment, income, and many other socioeconomic outcomes...

[bold is mine]

Question then is: how much is genetic and how much is environmental?

It is possible, a serious risk, to draw wrong conclusions here. Environmental factors are zillions and very complex, also include food beginning with the pregnant mother.

If there is no complete picture of all relevant causal factors, how much can be said about genetic factors with certainty? And to make it worse, is it possible that environmental factors do change the genetic make-up during the early years from fetus to adolescent?

And how much do we actually know about genes correlating with intelligence? I doubt that the picture is complete there either. As with the social sciences.. these are it seems to me all but learned guesses... at best.

Adding that IQ tests only test certain cognitive abilities.. not other abilities that are also important for a successful career. Such as motivation, drive, emotional stability, sociability, flexibility.. what have you. Let alone abilities in other circumstances, environments.. Times of war, crisis..

[Endovelico]

"I'm as good as anybody!" is a statement often heard, mostly by people who fear they may not be... If we give credit to IQ measurement than we would have a way to actually prove which people are less intelligent, and these people would fear being unable to continue claiming they were as good as anybody. Also people who are less smart prefer to hide that fact from others, so that they can continue publicly claiming wisdom and knowledge. So IQ tests will always be reviled by a large number of people, independently of their trustworthiness.

Of course the mistake is thinking that intelligence is the only evaluative factor in assessing our worth as human beings. People less intelligent than others can be quite useful to the community and have a rich and satisfactory life. Besides, no one has any merit in respect of his intelligence. It's genetic. But we are responsible on what concerns what we do with that intelligence.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/o ... 95353.html

What scholars of mental ability know, but have never successfully gotten the media to understand, is that a scientific consensus, based on an extensive and consistent literature, has long been reached on many of the questions that still seem controversial to journalists.

For example, virtually all psychologists believe there is a general mental ability factor (referred to colloquially as “intelligence”) that explains much of an individual’s performance on cognitive tests. IQ tests approximately measure this general factor. Psychologists recognize that a person’s IQ score, which is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors, usually remains stable upon reaching adolescence. And they know that IQ scores are correlated with educational attainment, income, and many other socioeconomic outcomes...

[bold is mine]

Question then is: how much is genetic and how much is environmental?

It is possible, a serious risk, to draw wrong conclusions here. Environmental factors are zillions and very complex, also include food beginning with the pregnant mother.

If there is no complete picture of all relevant causal factors, how much can be said about genetic factors with certainty? And to make it worse, is it possible that environmental factors do change the genetic make-up during the early years from fetus to adolescent?

And how much do we actually know about genes correlating with intelligence? I doubt that the picture is complete there either. As with the social sciences.. these are it seems to me all but learned guesses... at best.

Adding that IQ tests only test certain cognitive abilities.. not other abilities that are also important for a successful career. Such as motivation, drive, emotional stability, sociability, flexibility.. what have you. Let alone abilities in other circumstances, environments.. Times of war, crisis..

Presently, the data seems to indicate not that your specific IQ is genetically set, but that the range is genetically determined and environmental factors influence where you end up within your range. Obviously, this isn't certain, but that's the thing. When deciding between policies, you are not shooting for scientific truths. You're only interested in achieving more desirable outcomes. We don't have to know if IQ is associated with specific genes to design policy levers that take advantage of observed correlations. As Richwine mentioned in the article, all researchers recognize the correlation, but most are wisely withholding judgment until a gene is identified. And that's good. That is what scientists should do. But policy makers don't have to wait until proof or disproof comes in.

Same with the correlation of IQ to economic/career success and successful social integration. No one is saying that IQ is the only factor, but the correlation is consistent and strong. By ignoring that fact because of ideology, we end up pursuing self-defeating policies. We end up acting as if the endemic problems among inner-city African American communities, whose average IQ in our major metro areas is 78, is that their high school physics programs aren't well enough funded, or that we aren't making college loans available.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

Really this is just a fringe entry point to the larger topic of the validity of IQ tests themselves. This itself is hotly disputed among scholars,

No. It isn't. The debate is between semi-educated lay people who oppose the idea on ideological grounds (like you) - the same kind of people who said the fire fighter advancement exams were biased because black people weren't doing well enough on them - and scholars who actually study the issues in question. Scholars like those represented by the American Psychological Association who, as the article mentioned, tried to set the record straight on this poorly reported issue by attempting to tell everyone that there is no real debate as to the validity of the measure. I'm sure the APA is racist, though.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

"I'm as good as anybody!" is a statement often heard, mostly by people who fear they may not be... If we give credit to IQ measurement than we would have a way to actually prove which people are less intelligent, and these people would fear being unable to continue claiming they were as good as anybody. Also people who are less smart prefer to hide that fact from others, so that they can continue publicly claiming wisdom and knowledge. So IQ tests will always be reviled by a large number of people, independently of their trustworthiness.

Of course the mistake is thinking that intelligence is the only evaluative factor in assessing our worth as human beings. People less intelligent than others can be quite useful to the community and have a rich and satisfactory life. Besides, no one has any merit in respect of his intelligence. It's genetic. But we are responsible on what concerns what we do with that intelligence.

Of course. Lower intelligence does not mean having less value as a human being. Of course there will always be those people who would use it to justify such thinking, but those people exist now and simply key on other factors. Being honest about a legitimate phenomenon isn't going to make things worse. In general, unless an asteroid is about to hit the earth and we don't tell the public to prevent a panic, I am generally against the Ibrahim approach of simply trying to deny facts and using personal invective in an attempt to exclude them from consideration. Truth can be uncomfortable at first, and may require some adjustment, but over the long haul it is almost always better to simply let it see the light of day and deal with it, rather than trying to keep a lid on it forever, which never works anyway.

[Parodite]

Presently, the data seems to indicate not that your specific IQ is genetically set, but that the range is genetically determined and environmental factors influence where you end up within your range. Obviously, this isn't certain, but that's the thing. When deciding between policies, you are not shooting for scientific truths. You're only interested in achieving more desirable outcomes. We don't have to know if IQ is associated with specific genes to design policy levers that take advantage of observed correlations. As Richwine mentioned in the article, all researchers recognize the correlation, but most are wisely withholding judgment until a gene is identified. And that's good. That is what scientists should do. But policy makers don't have to wait until proof or disproof comes in.

Yes, it is enough to know that what we are is a product of nature and nurture and that there are too many unknowns to say much else about it. Obviously what we can possibly be or become in terms of skills and any or other behavior.. is within a certain range.

Same with the correlation of IQ to economic/career success and successful social integration. No one is saying that IQ is the only factor, but the correlation is consistent and strong.

Could also be that a good career (good environment in general) pumps up your IQ, i.e. that the causal arrow works the other way, or in both. A bad environment where you hear all the time you ain't no good for academics will bring it down. Not trying to be a funny contrarian.. I'm seriously suspicious of people correlating IQ measurements with career success and social integration.

By ignoring that fact because of ideology, we end up pursuing self-defeating policies. We end up acting as if the endemic problems among inner-city African American communities, whose average IQ in our major metro areas is 78, is that their high school physics programs aren't well enough funded, or that we aren't making college loans available.

In my view it is better to drop the issue of IQ altogether as it tests a limited skill set anyways and is hardly relevant for policy makers as you noted.

Also me thinks, the curriculum of any high school and university suffices to test people's skills and knowledge sufficiently already. With later on experience in jobs etc that adds to the skill sets really important.

Employers never ask for IQ test results. Why would they? They want to know what education you completed successfully and what job experience you have. Most importantly, the final decision to hire you is on your character and personality. Motivation, drive, do you fit in the team.. do they like you.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

IMO, it becomes much more about other factors once you reach a certain threshold. But a good portion of people fall below that threshold and I think failing to deal with that has negative consequences. Fully one-sixth of inner-city African Americans have IQs floating around 70. At that point, we need to stop talking about how to find people jobs and, from a humanitarian perspective, start talking about how to 1) socialize them, and 2) care for them. Once you are above, say, 90, and certainly once you hit the peak of the bell curve, your success or failure is determined much more by personality factors, etc. I am not interested, from a policy standpoint, in sorting people by IQ and figuring out how to make sure they end up in appropriate socioeconomic roles... as has been said, life is an IQ test, so those things have a way of working themselves out on their own. I am more interested in changing the debate about how we handle the millions of people who fall low enough on the scale that they qualify for diagnoses of mental impairment. Pretending as if they need the same kind of help as the kid with the IQ of 102 trying to figure out how pay for college is counterproductive.

[Parodite]

I am not interested, from a policy standpoint, in sorting people by IQ and figuring out how to make sure they end up in appropriate socioeconomic roles... as has been said, life is an IQ test, so those things have a way of working themselves out on their own. I am more interested in changing the debate about how we handle the millions of people who fall low enough on the scale that they qualify for diagnoses of mental impairment. Pretending as if they need the same kind of help as the kid with the IQ of 102 trying to figure out how pay for college is counterproductive.

Wherever people with mental impairment exist all you need to do is make sure their quality of life conforms to a minimum; a society as a whole decides how that minimum should look like. I agree it is pointless to try educate a dow syndromer into a rocket scientist.

[Endovelico]

I am not interested, from a policy standpoint, in sorting people by IQ and figuring out how to make sure they end up in appropriate socioeconomic roles... as has been said, life is an IQ test, so those things have a way of working themselves out on their own. I am more interested in changing the debate about how we handle the millions of people who fall low enough on the scale that they qualify for diagnoses of mental impairment. Pretending as if they need the same kind of help as the kid with the IQ of 102 trying to figure out how pay for college is counterproductive.

Wherever people with mental impairment exist all you need to do is make sure their quality of life conforms to a minimum; a society as a whole decides how that minimum should look like. I agree it is pointless to try educate a dow syndromer into a rocket scientist.

I second that. The trouble are those people who, not being mentally impaired, are in fact incompetent to subsist exclusively on their own.

[Nonc Hilaire]

I am not interested, from a policy standpoint, in sorting people by IQ and figuring out how to make sure they end up in appropriate socioeconomic roles... as has been said, life is an IQ test, so those things have a way of working themselves out on their own. I am more interested in changing the debate about how we handle the millions of people who fall low enough on the scale that they qualify for diagnoses of mental impairment. Pretending as if they need the same kind of help as the kid with the IQ of 102 trying to figure out how pay for college is counterproductive.

Wherever people with mental impairment exist all you need to do is make sure their quality of life conforms to a minimum; a society as a whole decides how that minimum should look like. I agree it is pointless to try educate a dow syndromer into a rocket scientist.

Dow syndrome? Like Mr. P?

[Ibrahim]

Because people are afraid that if we consider racial inferiority to be a fact that we are justiofying slavery, because why shouldn't the smart people make decisions for the dumb?

I honestly worry for the dumb here in the near future. And I just hope that my level of intellect is not on the wrong side of the dumb line.

Slavery is what happens if we don't talk about it. Refusing to talk about differences in ability or intelligence is what give us ridiculous one-size fits-all public policies like No Child Left Behind, where every student is expected to reach similar standards of performance at certain ages. It's what allows conservatives to put off any talk of social welfare under the dogmatic mantra that every single person in society ought to find an economic niche that will allow them to support themselves, when the truth is that there are always going to be a percentage of people in any society that isn't going to be able to get it together no matter how much money you waste trying to make it so. Not that we should cut these people a welfare check and forget about them, but that's just it: we aren't allowed to discuss how to handle them because we're all supposed to pretend they're going to go to the University of Phoenix and get their computer science degree. There are a myriad other issues that arise from assuming people have the same capabilities.

The only hope for a reasonable public policy debate is through honesty, and we have to ignore people like Ibrahim whose sole goal every time he opens his mouth is to ensure that honesty doesn't occur, and that facts that do not support his ideology are suppressed.

There is nothing honest in either the book or article you are defending, nor are your claims about the book/article honest. So insofar as you want "more honesty" in this debate, I support that initiative.

[Ibrahim]

Really this is just a fringe entry point to the larger topic of the validity of IQ tests themselves. This itself is hotly disputed among scholars,

No. It isn't.

Simply false.

[Ibrahim]

Because people are afraid that if we consider racial inferiority to be a fact that we are justiofying slavery, because why shouldn't the smart people make decisions for the dumb?

I honestly worry for the dumb here in the near future. And I just hope that my level of intellect is not on the wrong side of the dumb line.

I don't think its about slavery per se, but its certainly a justification for racism in the most technical sense of the word. If you argue that ethnic group X is inherently more intelligent than ethnic group Y, and that this is objectively and quantifiably true, then you are a proponent of racism. That's what "racism" literally is.

Today we're used to neo-Nazis stomping around and talking about Aryan mythology, but racism from the Victorian era onwards form has always been had a scientific or pseudo-scientific basis. IQ tests, phrenology, measuring feet and hands and so on.

Its instructive that the only people pushing this are extreme-right think tanks and their uneducated audience.

[Nonc Hilaire]

Really this is just a fringe entry point to the larger topic of the validity of IQ tests themselves. This itself is hotly disputed among scholars,

No. It isn't.

Simply false.

Kinda yes and no. Both the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet series are reliable, but they require trained administrators and are lengthy. This makes them expensive and they are not applicable for group administration, so researchers often use other measures. The Slosson is a popular fast IQ test in education, and it is terrible.

The real problem is the tests don't really have a good purpose. It's not like you can really do much about IQ even if can slap a number on it.

[Ibrahim]

Really this is just a fringe entry point to the larger topic of the validity of IQ tests themselves. This itself is hotly disputed among scholars,

No. It isn't.

Simply false.

Kinda yes and no. Both the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet series are reliable, but they require trained administrators and are lengthy. This makes them expensive and they are not applicable for group administration, so researchers often use other measures. The Slosson is a popular fast IQ test in education, and it is terrible.

The real problem is the tests don't really have a good purpose. It's not like you can really do much about IQ even if can slap a number on it.

Hey now, you can always join MENSA.




Aside from methodological critiques of testing itself, the greater issue is indeed the value of the data produced. What has been tested exactly, and to what end? But crucially here, what value does ranking the average IQs of different ethnic groups have besides promoting racism? And why is this being pushed by extreme-right think tanks funded by the same people that back the political party that minorities don't vote for?

[Nonc Hilaire]

Really this is just a fringe entry point to the larger topic of the validity of IQ tests themselves. This itself is hotly disputed among scholars,

No. It isn't.

Simply false.

Kinda yes and no. Both the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet series are reliable, but they require trained administrators and are lengthy. This makes them expensive and they are not applicable for group administration, so researchers often use other measures. The Slosson is a popular fast IQ test in education, and it is terrible.

The real problem is the tests don't really have a good purpose. It's not like you can really do much about IQ even if can slap a number on it.

Hey now, you can always join MENSA.




Aside from methodological critiques of testing itself, the greater issue is indeed the value of the data produced. What has been tested exactly, and to what end? But crucially here, what value does ranking the average IQs of different ethnic groups have besides promoting racism? And why is this being pushed by extreme-right think tanks funded by the same people that back the political party that minorities don't vote for?

MENSA? I'm married. If I wanted to pick up ugly women I'd become a Unitarian

The racial IQ idiocy cuts both ways. I've seen it used to push affirmative action agendas and fudge testing criteria too.

[Ibrahim]

I'll happily agree that it can be used as a pseudo-scientific political football by any ideological faction or vested interest.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

Really this is just a fringe entry point to the larger topic of the validity of IQ tests themselves. This itself is hotly disputed among scholars,

No. It isn't.

Simply false.

Kinda yes and no. Both the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet series are reliable, but they require trained administrators and are lengthy. This makes them expensive and they are not applicable for group administration, so researchers often use other measures. The Slosson is a popular fast IQ test in education, and it is terrible.

The real problem is the tests don't really have a good purpose. It's not like you can really do much about IQ even if can slap a number on it.

Hey now, you can always join MENSA.




Aside from methodological critiques of testing itself, the greater issue is indeed the value of the data produced. What has been tested exactly, and to what end? But crucially here, what value does ranking the average IQs of different ethnic groups have besides promoting racism? And why is this being pushed by extreme-right think tanks funded by the same people that back the political party that minorities don't vote for?

When trying to decide on public policy, more information is generally better. I would be less suspicious of people taking note of factual information than the people trying to suppress it. The fact that you ascribe ideological motives to the former and not the latter is, to borrow a term you really ought to switch up from time to time, laughable.

[Ibrahim]

Really this is just a fringe entry point to the larger topic of the validity of IQ tests themselves. This itself is hotly disputed among scholars,

No. It isn't.

Simply false.

Kinda yes and no. Both the Wechsler and Stanford-Binet series are reliable, but they require trained administrators and are lengthy. This makes them expensive and they are not applicable for group administration, so researchers often use other measures. The Slosson is a popular fast IQ test in education, and it is terrible.

The real problem is the tests don't really have a good purpose. It's not like you can really do much about IQ even if can slap a number on it.

Hey now, you can always join MENSA.




Aside from methodological critiques of testing itself, the greater issue is indeed the value of the data produced. What has been tested exactly, and to what end? But crucially here, what value does ranking the average IQs of different ethnic groups have besides promoting racism? And why is this being pushed by extreme-right think tanks funded by the same people that back the political party that minorities don't vote for?

When trying to decide on public policy, more information is generally better. I would be less suspicious of people taking note of factual information than the people trying to suppress it. The fact that you ascribe ideological motives to the former and not the latter is, to borrow a term you really ought to switch up from time to time, laughable.

Its not clear what factual information an IQ test really presents, other than measuring the ability of an individual to take an IQ test, so it seems like a poor datum on which to base public policy. Considering average IQs based on race is even more problematic, since it takes a measurement of dubious value and tosses in generalization and potential discrimination.

But as I asked Nonc, why is all of this being pushed by extreme-right think tanks? Do they have the best interests of the nation and mankind at heart? Or is it that the blacks and browns don't vote for the party they already bought and paid for, and it would be nice to keep those groups as marginalized as possible. To assume that the former is more likely than the latter is... wait for it... laughable.

You're not speaking truth to power here, you're shilling for billionaires who want to be able to draft more laws from their boardroom than they already do. This isn't even conspiracy theory stuff, they are pretty open about it.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

Its not clear what factual information an IQ test really presents, other than measuring the ability of an individual to take an IQ test, so it seems like a poor datum on which to base public policy. Considering average IQs based on race is even more problematic, since it takes a measurement of dubious value and tosses in generalization and potential discrimination.

But as I asked Nonc, why is all of this being pushed by extreme-right think tanks? Do they have the best interests of the nation and mankind at heart? Or is it that the blacks and browns don't vote for the party they already bought and paid for, and it would be nice to keep those groups as marginalized as possible. To assume that the former is more likely than the latter is... wait for it... laughable.

Extreme-right think tanks? Like the American Psychological Association? Frightening indeed. But let's pretend what you're saying is true (it isn't). The reason the issue is being pursued by "extreme-right" is because to people like you, pursuing the issue puts you on the extreme right. (If you think people don't see through such obvious circular reasoning, you're wrong.) And because the majority of people have allowed themselves to be cowed and frightened by the victim industries, and rightfully so, since even respected a Nobel prize winning scientist like James Watson cannot state scientific facts or offer theories without being hounded out of their jobs by people outside the field who have no idea what they're talking about. The state of affairs is such that journalists and Pan African Studies majors can get Nobel Prize winning biologists fired and retired from public life for doing his job. Ninety-nine percent of them are like you, not understanding his work and only having heard third-hand that it was somehow racist. The same thing happened to EO Wilson, who never even mentioned race in Sociobiology and who was merely suggesting that the same evolutionary forces we know to exist for every animal species on the planet might possibly apply, gasp, to human beings as well. His primary academic detractors, Gould and Lewontin, were avowed Marxists who openly shared their view that the purpose of science was to promote (what they considered to be) social justice. You apparently share that view of the purpose of science, I suppose because it feeds your disturbingly obsessed need to feel self-righteous and indignant, but I don't. Arthur Jensen was another researcher respected by specialists and reviled by people like you. There has been no doubting the power you've wielded although, thankfully, after years of overplaying your hand time after time, the mainstream is catching up and getting tired of your act. Outside the victim wing of the left people are saying, amongst themselves mostly, that they are sick of being called names for committing the crime of noticing things.

People on the left avoid the issue because they think it's immoral, people in the middle avoid it out of fear, people on the right say screw it, you're going to hate us regardless of what we do. Add that to the circular reason I described above, and you have the answer to a question that would only be relevant if your assumption was valid (which, as has been repeatedly shown, it isn't).

And, by the way, my above stated reason for thinking this issue is important is race neutral. Go watch the documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. Everything I've said above about inefficient and wasted public policy applies equally to communities like that.

Furthermore, as I've said, I believe that although the range of possibilities is genetically limited, I believe the range is wide enough to allow for nurture to potentially render genetic limitations largely irrelevant. Nevertheless, that some communities have persistent IQs lower than is considered necessary for basic social life in a modern democracy and information economy is a piece of information that ought not be suppressed simply because you're afraid that bogeymen might use it as another reason to dislike those communities. Whether it is genetic is not really the point (although I have no doubt that if a geneticist is ever stupid enough to actually find the intelligence gene, he will be hounded as a racist by people like you); the point is that the solutions that have been in place for years have not worked. In the face of such failure, excluding information on ideological grounds is unwise and, IMO, has played a role in the failure of policies up to this point.

[Endovelico]

People whose survival throughout the ages depended mostly on their wits will have developed differently from people whose survival depended mostly on their physical strength. It would not be surprising if the former tended to have higher IQ than the latter, and the latter would tend to be more proficient athletes. Having said that I know for a fact that some individuals from the second group have high IQ, and some individuals from the first group are top athletes.