Quote (Thor123422 @ 3 Feb 2020 15:55)

The more research I do into the subject the more I am skeptical of IQ's application in any but the most extreme circumstances. Like, yeah, a person with 60 is gonna be slower than a person with an average score, but beyond super obvious differences I don't think there's much meaning behind IQ.

I'm gonna list a few things that have made me increasingly skeptical of the correlations between IQ and success or good decision making
1. You can't really differentiate the genetic component of IQ heritability with it's environmental factors. The best studies, being twin studies, still have a lot of issues behind them.
2. IQ has increasingly been shown to be significantly variable with external factors, such as financial instability, food instability, training at test taking, home stress, etc.
3. The fact that IQ isn't correlated alone with positive outcomes, but merely facilitates other qualities in success, which can then be explained by simply having those other qualities and then tending to be in a more secure environment, etc. which means you just had an advantage to begin with.

Anyway, I'm not an expert, but the more I look into it the more IQ as a concept seems to not be as useful as most people who do a little research think it is. I recently learned that the WW2 American military "IQ Test" was in fact not an IQ test by any means and has just been extrapolated post-hoc to infer IQ scores. Utter garbage methodology. Then I learned that a lot of things like this actually came from some fairly right-wing authors who totally misrepresented the state of literature on IQ to make far-right policy proposals and their book just happened to make it into the public zeitgeist.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Feb 3 2020 09:07am)

Sure, there are a lot of conceptual and methodological issues with IQ testing, but I would assume you agree that such a thing as "intelligence" does exist, even if it's difficult to define precisely or to operationalize. And I just fail to imagine a world in which intelligence is not correlated with success in life and (better) decision making (compared to less intelligent people).

Of course the original question, "why do poor people make poor life decisions", is backwards and should rather be seen as "people who tend to make poor life decisions for whatever reason tend to end up being poor; and they tend to pass on their poor decision making to their children".

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Feb 3 2020 09:07am)

Sure, there are a lot of conceptual and methodological issues with IQ testing, but I would assume you agree that such a thing as "intelligence" does exist, even if it's difficult to define precisely or to operationalize. And I just fail to imagine a world in which intelligence is not correlated with success in life and (better) decision making (compared to less intelligent people).

Of course the original question, "why do poor people make poor life decisions", is backwards and should rather be seen as "people who tend to make poor life decisions for whatever reason tend to end up being poor; and they tend to pass on their poor decision making to their children".

Quote (Black XistenZ @ 3 Feb 2020 16:07)

Sure, there are a lot of conceptual and methodological issues with IQ testing, but I would assume you agree that such a thing as "intelligence" does exist, even if it's difficult to define precisely or to operationalize. And I just fail to imagine a world in which intelligence is not correlated with success in life and (better) decision making (compared to less intelligent people).

Of course the original question, "why do poor people make poor life decisions", is backwards and should rather be seen as "people who tend to make poor life decisions for whatever reason tend to end up being poor; and they tend to pass on their poor decision making to their children".

Quote (Thor123422 @ Feb 3 2020 09:55am)

The more research I do into the subject the more I am skeptical of IQ's application in any but the most extreme circumstances. Like, yeah, a person with 60 is gonna be slower than a person with an average score, but beyond super obvious differences I don't think there's much meaning behind IQ.

I'm gonna list a few things that have made me increasingly skeptical of the correlations between IQ and success or good decision making
1. You can't really differentiate the genetic component of IQ heritability with it's environmental factors. The best studies, being twin studies, still have a lot of issues behind them.
2. IQ has increasingly been shown to be significantly variable with external factors, such as financial instability, food instability, training at test taking, home stress, etc.
3. The fact that IQ isn't correlated alone with positive outcomes, but merely facilitates other qualities in success, which can then be explained by simply having those other qualities and then tending to be in a more secure environment, etc. which means you just had an advantage to begin with.

Anyway, I'm not an expert, but the more I look into it the more IQ as a concept seems to not be as useful as most people who do a little research think it is. I recently learned that the WW2 American military "IQ Test" was in fact not an IQ test by any means and has just been extrapolated post-hoc to infer IQ scores. Utter garbage methodology. Then I learned that a lot of things like this actually came from some fairly right-wing authors who totally misrepresented the state of literature on IQ to make far-right policy proposals and their book just happened to make it into the public zeitgeist.

Quote (Skinned @ Feb 3 2020 10:15am)

IQ is pseudoscience for sure.

As for intelligence there is crystal intelligence, there is fluid intelligence, social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and several other measurable aspects of intelligence.

IQ testing is good the specific traits it tests, spatial reasoning etc.

As a measure of intelligence it is largely pseudoscience.

Quote (Skinned @ 3 Feb 2020 17:15)

IQ is pseudoscience for sure.

As for intelligence there is crystal intelligence, there is fluid intelligence, social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and several other measurable aspects of intelligence.

IQ testing is good the specific traits it tests, spatial reasoning etc.

As a measure of intelligence it is largely pseudoscience.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Feb 3 2020 11:41am)

If IQ is pseudoscience, but you consider the various forms of intelligence measurable, then how exactly are they measured?
Or is your position basically that you postulate intelligence to be measurable in theory, but no one has figured out a scientifically sound way to actually do it yet?

Quote (Thor123422 @ Feb 3 2020 11:34am)

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's pseudoscience, as much as I would say that psychologists are just generally really bad at science. They're attempting a form of science, they're just not that clever with their controls and not that rigorous.

Quote (thesnipa @ Feb 3 2020 11:51am)

Quote (Skinned @ 3 Feb 2020 17:51)

In the phallic scale of sciences physics has been becoming less and less hard compared to the softer sciences like biology and psychology.