7 ms·

Height and eye color are measurable and meaningful. Intelligence is neither.

by throwaway91111 9y ago

wayn3 9y ago
what is particularly meaningful about eye color?
- throwaway91111 9y ago
  Its meaning is evident and reflexive.
justin_vanw 9y ago
Intelligence is measurable and meaningful. It astonishes me that people can claim with a straight face that it is not. I suspect it is sour grapes or something? If intelligence isn't measurable, then you would agree that the average frog cannot be reliably distinguished from the average human in terms of intelligence? Ok, so lets move on from that, and don't give me some painful story about how there are different kinds of intelligence and frogs are 'smarter about eating bugs' or something, please? Maybe with the benefit of the doubt, you are trying to say that human's are genetically not very diverse, and so you can't find significant differences in intelligence. To that I would say you are certainly not claiming this in good faith, and you have some quasi-political reason to deny something that is obviously true to anyone who has interacted with more than 3 people. (and we can skip the lecture along the lines of 'you can't trust what is obvious and have to pretend that all your beliefs are properly cited or they are invalid')
- soVeryTired 9y ago
  So you really think intelligence can be accurately measured using a single number? Do you not agree that different people have different talents? Some are good at constructing clever arguments, some can compose beautiful music, and some can solve partial differential equations in their heads.
  - wayn3 9y ago
    thats just being butthurt because we chose to call it intelligence, and somehow not being classically intelligent is understood as a personal insult. the IQ simply doesnt measure creative genius. if it was called "the test that measures how good a persons brain is at pattern recogniton", you wouldnt care. you'd simply state that you're not particularly interested in logical reasoning. intelligence, in terms of IQ, is a more or less well defined metric. in popular language, its conflated with "not being a mouthbreather". thats why people get pissy when they dont score above average on an iq test. its kinda pointless, really. people only care about iq tests because of the name.
    - lolbutthut339 9y ago
      "butthurt" is such a rigorously defined term. thanks. what value is there for me to use some "standardized measure of intelligence"? i'm more interested in being around people that are capable of helping solve problems we are mutually interested in. if they can do that, why should i give a shit where they rank on some "standardized scale"? thus that score has no value to me, and it's perfectly legit for me to mock it's supposed "worth". makes me think of Goodhart's law.
    - soVeryTired 9y ago
      It's possible to be a very able, erudite person and not do well on an IQ test. Conversely, it's possible to score highly and be incompetent. Intelligence is an ill-defined, nebulous quantity. IQ is a precisely defined quantity. Since intelligence is hard to measure and IQ is easy to measure, it's tempting to use one as a proxy for the other. But I, and the other posters above me, just don't find that very convincing.
      - wayn3 9y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFgXF0a_Yw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFgXF0a_Yw4
        soVeryTired 9y ago
- sdenton4 9y ago
  Intelligence is somewhat measurable, with some nice big error bounds and a big asterisk for the particularly stark replication problem in psychology. You can define genius as a mark on the IQ scale, but that certainly isn't the definition being used when people use the word in conversation. That conversational form of genius is the social construct.
cgmg 9y ago
Intelligence is meaningless? Do you seriously believe that statement? Despite the difficulties involves in measuring it exactly, intelligence does exist objectively and is measurable in principle: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

Height and eye color are measurable and meaningful. Intelligence is neither.

wayn3 9y ago

what is particularly meaningful about eye color?

throwaway91111 9y ago
Its meaning is evident and reflexive.

justin_vanw 9y ago

Intelligence is measurable and meaningful. It astonishes me that people can claim with a straight face that it is not. I suspect it is sour grapes or something? If intelligence isn't measurable, then you would agree that the average frog cannot be reliably distinguished from the average human in terms of intelligence? Ok, so lets move on from that, and don't give me some painful story about how there are different kinds of intelligence and frogs are 'smarter about eating bugs' or something, please? Maybe with the benefit of the doubt, you are trying to say that human's are genetically not very diverse, and so you can't find significant differences in intelligence. To that I would say you are certainly not claiming this in good faith, and you have some quasi-political reason to deny something that is obviously true to anyone who has interacted with more than 3 people. (and we can skip the lecture along the lines of 'you can't trust what is obvious and have to pretend that all your beliefs are properly cited or they are invalid')

soVeryTired 9y ago
So you really think intelligence can be accurately measured using a single number? Do you not agree that different people have different talents? Some are good at constructing clever arguments, some can compose beautiful music, and some can solve partial differential equations in their heads.
- wayn3 9y ago
  thats just being butthurt because we chose to call it intelligence, and somehow not being classically intelligent is understood as a personal insult. the IQ simply doesnt measure creative genius. if it was called "the test that measures how good a persons brain is at pattern recogniton", you wouldnt care. you'd simply state that you're not particularly interested in logical reasoning. intelligence, in terms of IQ, is a more or less well defined metric. in popular language, its conflated with "not being a mouthbreather". thats why people get pissy when they dont score above average on an iq test. its kinda pointless, really. people only care about iq tests because of the name.
  - lolbutthut339 9y ago
    "butthurt" is such a rigorously defined term. thanks. what value is there for me to use some "standardized measure of intelligence"? i'm more interested in being around people that are capable of helping solve problems we are mutually interested in. if they can do that, why should i give a shit where they rank on some "standardized scale"? thus that score has no value to me, and it's perfectly legit for me to mock it's supposed "worth". makes me think of Goodhart's law.
  - soVeryTired 9y ago
    It's possible to be a very able, erudite person and not do well on an IQ test. Conversely, it's possible to score highly and be incompetent. Intelligence is an ill-defined, nebulous quantity. IQ is a precisely defined quantity. Since intelligence is hard to measure and IQ is easy to measure, it's tempting to use one as a proxy for the other. But I, and the other posters above me, just don't find that very convincing.
    - wayn3 9y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFgXF0a_Yw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFgXF0a_Yw4
      - soVeryTired 9y ago
sdenton4 9y ago
Intelligence is somewhat measurable, with some nice big error bounds and a big asterisk for the particularly stark replication problem in psychology. You can define genius as a mark on the IQ scale, but that certainly isn't the definition being used when people use the word in conversation. That conversational form of genius is the social construct.

cgmg 9y ago

Intelligence is meaningless? Do you seriously believe that statement? Despite the difficulties involves in measuring it exactly, intelligence does exist objectively and is measurable in principle: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)