Becoming?
Becoming?
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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collapse of the old society
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just in the last few centuries
IQ is to intelligence as BMI is to obesity.
Loosely correlated at best.
It is strongly correlated. High IQ reliably predicts high performance in a variety of cognitive tasks (even ones not covered by the IQ test).
To pretend that IQ is a sham is dangerous, because that would suggests that definite proof to the contrary makes the fascists right. Which it doesn't.
Firstly because statistical correlation is useless for individual outliers (e.g. high BMI Olympic athletes). It says something about a population, but can only suggest something about an individual (high BMI can mean someone is overweight, but further analysis is required to make a diagnosis).
Secondly and more importantly because using synthetic metrics as a proxy for the value of a human life is an abhorrent practice that has only ever led to misuse and dangerous if not catastrophic or outright genocidal policies. I don't mind IQ tests as an indicator for psychiatric diagnoses, or for aggregate research on human cognition. But if, for any reason, someone's IQ needs to be made public or handed over to an institution, then we're on the road straight to fascism.
It's correlated to a very narrow subset of skills that are a small part of intelligence. It's a predictor of successful outcomes in the broad sense, but considering the strong correlation to access to education and other similar environmental prerequisites to healthy development, claiming there's a particularly strong causal relationship between IQ and success is relatively bold.
My whole assertion is that using IQ as a value measurement is fundamentally not very useful. In the specific case of race (or cultural background, or whatever), there's no functional way to control for the confounding factors, so you can't really draw any conclusions about the "merit" of the relevant population at all, even if IQ did that.
The people who defend it use it because it's racist. That's why they want it used more.
Like I said IQ should never, ever be used as an entry exam or any other kind of social determinant. Not least because of the racist/classist history. However, it does have a signification and legitimate uses, and to pretend otherwise is scientific negationism. We do not have to listen to racist conspiracy theories about why some populations have a lower IQ than "us", when we have known and repeatedly demonstrated for many decades that differences in IQ at the population level is entirely predictable by education and health (the Flynn Effect). That's it, that's the necessary and sufficient counter-argument to the racist arguments you're referring to.
Put another way, education does not just make people educated; it makes them more intelligent. Someone who has gone through standard schooling is empirically proven to be statistically better at novel abstract thinking than someone who never went to school. Which is kind of obvious when put like that, but you can't prove or study that phenomenon scientifically without the use of tools like the IQ test.
Poor african countries have a lower IQ than the world average, and that is an irrefutable fact. Does that mean:
a) Life outcomes are not shaped in anyway by socioeconomic background, therefore [insert racist theory here]
b) I refuse to look into the possible causes and therefore IQ tests are racist
c) We can infer that poor populations would benefit from increased financing of childcare and education, it's a winning move for literally everyone.
The topic of IQ tests is really uncomfortable because it unearths the really uncomfortable fact that socioeconomic and geopolitical factors have not given us all an equal shot at life, even down to how intelligent we are likely to become as adults. It challenges the myth that anyone can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps, work at mcdonald's, and become a triple harvard graduate. But it's not neuroscience's fault that the world is unfair.
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Controlling for confounding factors is, like, half the point.
Racists will tell you [x country] is lower IQ than [y developed country]. Which is probably true. What they won't say is that that average IQ is probably the same as [y developed country 100-200 years ago]. IQ being affected by education is the whole fucking point; widespread access to a good and long education provably leads to a more intelligent population, which we have seen time and time again with industrializing countries (including in the West since the IQ test is old enough that we can see the average IQ rising since the industrial revolution).
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You're getting push back because people loathe the idea than an intrinsic value like IQ might define them. Same reason the bullies kicked my ass up until high school. They thought I had something they weren't born with, couldn't compete with, thought I had an unfair edge.
Sorry folks, IQ is a large component of who you are, and no, you can't control that number. OTOH, back to my childhood ass beatings, I wasn't much smarter than the other kids. 119 IQ, tested the same at 6 and 16-yo, "bright normal", nothing to write home about. I did well in school due to my parents drive and my love for knowledge. None of my friends took a diploma on graduation night and none had as low an IQ as I. Go figure.
IQ is a legitimate part of you, like it or not. Emotional quotient is as well. I know damned well that my IQ is far higher than my wife's, and her EQ is stunning compared to mine, makes a nice balance. But does that mean I'm smarter than her? I would argue it does not. People called my last boss a "dumbass", but only because his IQ outstripped his EQ.
tl;dr: IQ scores are important and defining, but there is much more to get the gestalt of a human being.
I guess when you’re all white and stupid, these things become important to you
IQ is eugenics. It was developed by eugenicists to do eugenics. It's not just a matter of controlling for bias, the whole endeavor is a logical fallacy (reification).
It's a bad instrument and should be abandoned.
it was designed to help find which children needed extra help with school work!
Binet and Simon worked closely to develop more tests and questions that would distinguish between children who did and did not need help in attending regular education. In 1905 they published a preliminary version of their test for measuring intelligence (chased by a committee set up at Bourneville's instigation to decide on this). The full version of the test with age-appropriate standards was published in 1908 and was known as the Binet-Simon scale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Binet#Later_career_and_the_Binet%E2%80%93Simon_test
It was then used by others to push eugenics
In 1908, H.H. Goddard, a champion of the eugenics movement, found utility in mental testing as a way to evidence the superiority of the white race. After studying abroad, Goddard brought the Binet-Simon Scale to the United States and translated it into English.
Following Goddard in the U.S. mental testing movement was Lewis Terman, who took the Simon-Binet Scale and standardized it using a large American sample. The first test was published in 1916 and called “The Stanford revision of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale”. A revision was published in 1937 and now called the Stanford-Binet scale. The name of Simon was all but erased from the record and this has been the reason why Simon's contribution to the development of the test has been overlooked in much of the 20th century and early 21st century.[14]
The Stanford revision of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale was no longer used solely for advocating education for all children, as was the original objective. The new objective of intelligence testing was ultimately "curtailing the reproduction of feeble-mindedness and in the elimination of an enormous amount of crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency".[15]
"becoming"
Definitely the strongest word here, seeing how much lefting it's doing.
People should stop using a term 'race' for humans because there's no scientific evidence that humans have races.
Being white or black doesn't have anything to do with having different race in biology. It's just a skin color that is different.
I think the closest term for genetic and environmental (cultural?) differences in human population would be phenotype, and these definitely exist. But keep in mind I do not know much about biology, so I might be wrong here and there, I only rephrase Wikipedia.
While I dislike the concept and you're right that it's a made up construct, I need to mention that made up constructs still impact our lives. A phenotype is just a phenotype until it costs you a job or makes your home value go down. At that point, race is something you have to confront simply because racists exist.
The problem is, humans instinctually categorize people because it's easier to process. This can be as reasonable as knowing a person in a uniform works at a place, or life saving like identifying someone shady, who very well might harm you. If the phenotype of skin color ends up associated with something incorrect or misleading, however, you then have a very benign thing (appearance) leading to very real outcomes (racism).
Hope that makes sense. Race is stupid, but people judge others for all sorts of things. Otherism is very real.
This is such an interesting topic!
I completely agree that race as an idea as steeped in false science and racism, but I always find it really difficult to consider race when it's used as a positive force as well- movements like US civil rights have massively reduced racism, partly by using race as a concept (such as black pride).
On the flip side, neoliberalism often advocates "color-blindness" as an idea (don't acknowledge/consider people's race) which is a great ideal, but in practice often seems to amount to turning a blind eye to on going racism.
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Framing it this way makes things worse, even though it's true. The focus has to be on moving towards everybody understanding, talking like, and acting like it's the bullshit that it is. We don't want to state the truth in a way that hand waves it away and centralizes the lie.
Race is a bullshit concept and we need to fix the damage caused by idiots not getting it.
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Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice. We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups. In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact. All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of cognitive ability into prejudice models.
We report longitudinal data in which we assessed the relationships between intelligence and support for two constructs that shape ideological frameworks, namely, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO). Participants (N = 375) were assessed in Grade 7 and again in Grade 12. Verbal and numerical ability were assessed when students entered high school in Grade 7. RWA and SDO were assessed before school graduation in Grade 12. After controlling for the possible confounding effects of personality and religious values in Grade 12, RWA was predicted by low g (β = -.16) and low verbal intelligence (β = -.18). SDO was predicted by low verbal intelligence only (β = -.13). These results are discussed with reference to the role of verbal intelligence in predicting support for such ideological frameworks and some comments are offered regarding the cognitive distinctions between RWA and SDO.
I would spend up to $50 for a pay per view of Trump taking a fair IQ test. Mr. Room Temperature IQ would do bigly well.
Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.
Result- 180 IQ
I don’t understand how they square defining themselves as beacons of intelligence when we’ve seen so many times in history how fascists target anyone they deem “intellectual” because they could pose a threat to the regime.
I guess you also have to subscribe to the racist and blatantly untrue ideology, which the majority of truly intelligent people do not subscribe to because it’s racist and fucking stupid.
Big talk from the ham sandwich race
Because they're worried that other races are more attractive and they're idiots?
This is not new at all https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
The far right guy called Adolf Hitler and his little group was also pretty obsessed with it. I have no idea where the author of this piece has been hibernating all this time, because they never stopped obsessing over race.
Phrenology is sooo hot right now.
As a the german hiphop crew K.I.Z. famously said: "Nazis erkenn ich an der Kopfform"
I recognise nazis by the shape of their heads
i didn't click the article because im stupid and lazy, - but all i need is the title to share an old german saying with you:
"he, who sits in a house made of glas shouldn't throw rocks"
"Wer im Glashaus sitzt, solllte nicht mit Steinen werfen"
It's common in the US as well. We say "He who lives in glasshouses should not throw stones."
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What would Adolf make of semi-literate mutts who claim his racial ideals? I like to think it would scare him into normality, or at least convince him to kill Hitler sooner.
He'd use them to achieve his goals like he did the first time.