4 ms·

If the test administered to Feynman only went to 130, as some do, then a test score anywhere close to that, such as 125, can be assumed to have "ceilinged the t

If the test administered to Feynman only went to 130, as some do, then a test score anywhere close to that, such as 125, can be assumed to have "ceilinged the test." It can be viewed as a floor for the person's IQ, a minimum score suggesting it is at least that high. Thus, Stephen Hsu's assertion that it must have just been a bad test with a low ceiling suggests to me that Mr. Hsu knows a great deal less about IQ tests than I know, so I see no reason to defer to his opinion. Maybe there is some nuance I'm missing, but those two paragraphs seem to be arguing the same point - that a 125 score was probably not accurate, but hitting the ceiling of the test? I.e. you and Hsu agree. Here is Hsu's full quotation (never said "bad"). To understand this score we have to remember that typical IQ tests (e.g., administered to public school children) tend to have low ceilings. They are not of the kind that Roe used in her study. One can imagine that the ceiling on Feynman's exam was roughly 135 (say, 99th percentile). If Feynman received the highest score on the mathematical portion, and a modest score of 115 on the verbal, we can easily understand the resulting average of 124.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
TLDR: Stephen Hsu and I are coming from very different mental models. His mental model asserts that it is very, very important that we keep promoting this elitist intellectual stuff. Note how he has fancy degrees and is important enough to get interviewed, while I remain some big fat nobody, having walked away from my National Merit Scholarship and done the full time homemaker thing for a lot of years, in part because I could not stomach the toxic environment involved in being One Of The Smart Kids (that all the teachers trained everyone else to hate). I elaborated some on my mental model in this paragraph: Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge, good scores in kids strongly correlate to kids coming from upper middle class families with well educated parents, etc. So I think there is quite a lot of room for saying that if you take any child and feed them excellently well, dote on them, invest a lot of parental and societal time, effort and other resources in them, they will tend to perform better than average, both on IQ tests and in life generally. Part of what I am arguing is that we make up a measurement that validates that our "best" people -- like well educated, well heeled white males -- are best because they have this innate quality called high IQ and then we channel the "smart kids" from "good homes" into classes that cause them to test well. The mental model that some kids are inherently more deserving of investment at school because they are smarter and do better than other kids winds up being self-fulfilling prophesy. Sort of like redlining of Black neighborhoods was self-fulfilling prophesy, causing Blacks to remain poor and their neighborhoods to remain not worth investing in by banks. So, hopefully that clarifies it for you because I already said I am stepping away from this discussion. Adieu.
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  Your greater disagreement with Hsu seems to be clouding your view on narrow point that you actually agree with him on.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    That feels to me a little like someone telling me "We both agree that this person is currently a slave, so let's not allow your heartfelt belief that slavery is immoral interfere with our use of this slave. Moving on." And I imagine I will regret saying that, but I can't see letting that stand and saying nothing.
    - WillPostForFood 9y ago
      No. It is actually one person saying, that's a slave, and you responding, no you are wrong, that's a slave, and you are wrong because we disagree about slavery. Hsu said there was a ceiling on the test, you said he was wrong, there was a ceiling on the test, and IQ is flawed.
- wavegeek 9y ago
  > we make up a measurement that validates that our "best" people -- like well educated, well heeled white males The only trouble with your theory is that IQ actually does a very good job of predicting how well members of various minorities will do in life. Half a century you could argue the cultural bias hypothesis but it no longer flies. The tests have been updated and taking "culturally biased" questions out actually made minority scores go down (possibly due to lower G loading on those questions). > The mental model that some kids are inherently more deserving of investment at school because they are smarter Of course the test would be "what is the marginal benefit of education to this person" a very different question from what is their IQ level. You just seem to be making stuff up to fit your ideological preconceptions.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

TLDR: Stephen Hsu and I are coming from very different mental models. His mental model asserts that it is very, very important that we keep promoting this elitist intellectual stuff. Note how he has fancy degrees and is important enough to get interviewed, while I remain some big fat nobody, having walked away from my National Merit Scholarship and done the full time homemaker thing for a lot of years, in part because I could not stomach the toxic environment involved in being One Of The Smart Kids (that all the teachers trained everyone else to hate). I elaborated some on my mental model in this paragraph: Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge, good scores in kids strongly correlate to kids coming from upper middle class families with well educated parents, etc. So I think there is quite a lot of room for saying that if you take any child and feed them excellently well, dote on them, invest a lot of parental and societal time, effort and other resources in them, they will tend to perform better than average, both on IQ tests and in life generally. Part of what I am arguing is that we make up a measurement that validates that our "best" people -- like well educated, well heeled white males -- are best because they have this innate quality called high IQ and then we channel the "smart kids" from "good homes" into classes that cause them to test well. The mental model that some kids are inherently more deserving of investment at school because they are smarter and do better than other kids winds up being self-fulfilling prophesy. Sort of like redlining of Black neighborhoods was self-fulfilling prophesy, causing Blacks to remain poor and their neighborhoods to remain not worth investing in by banks. So, hopefully that clarifies it for you because I already said I am stepping away from this discussion. Adieu.

WillPostForFood 9y ago
Your greater disagreement with Hsu seems to be clouding your view on narrow point that you actually agree with him on.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  That feels to me a little like someone telling me "We both agree that this person is currently a slave, so let's not allow your heartfelt belief that slavery is immoral interfere with our use of this slave. Moving on." And I imagine I will regret saying that, but I can't see letting that stand and saying nothing.
  - WillPostForFood 9y ago
    No. It is actually one person saying, that's a slave, and you responding, no you are wrong, that's a slave, and you are wrong because we disagree about slavery. Hsu said there was a ceiling on the test, you said he was wrong, there was a ceiling on the test, and IQ is flawed.
wavegeek 9y ago
> we make up a measurement that validates that our "best" people -- like well educated, well heeled white males The only trouble with your theory is that IQ actually does a very good job of predicting how well members of various minorities will do in life. Half a century you could argue the cultural bias hypothesis but it no longer flies. The tests have been updated and taking "culturally biased" questions out actually made minority scores go down (possibly due to lower G loading on those questions). > The mental model that some kids are inherently more deserving of investment at school because they are smarter Of course the test would be "what is the marginal benefit of education to this person" a very different question from what is their IQ level. You just seem to be making stuff up to fit your ideological preconceptions.