12 ms·

Studying music will make you better at music. Studying IQ tests will make you better at IQ tests. I think we put too much emphasis on general intelligence when

Studying music will make you better at music. Studying IQ tests will make you better at IQ tests. I think we put too much emphasis on general intelligence when it's not well defined and easily gamed. It's also a talking point for racists.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sn41 6y ago
Chess grandmasters don't make great mathematicians. Similarly, great warriors may not become great scientists. I don't see a lot of people making jumps from one technical field into another. They make a jump from one technical field to a general field, like politics or Venture capital.
- dr_orpheus 6y ago
  Reminds me of one of my favorite comics from Saturday Morning Breakfast cereal https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-29 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-29
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
236dev 6y ago
how is putting an emphasis on general intelligence a talking point for racists?
- mindcrime 6y ago
  The post you're responding to may have been alluding to the controversy around the book "The Bell Curve" and follow-on discussion, where the questions of race and intelligence became a real hot button. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Allegations_of_racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Allegations_of_...
- yboris 6y ago
  I'm thinking that racism in root is the belief of superiority of one race over another. In the past, tests were designed in ways that (perhaps unintentionally) disadvantaged people of color (for example tests included [white] cultural knowledge). While better tests have been developed, if in the end they show that (even if only on average) there is a minor difference in test scores between whites and blacks, racists will point to it as definitive proof (with no care about the tests' external validity).
  - quonn 6y ago
    Can you please give an example of this supposed cultural knowledge? In particular one that PoC raised in the same country and having the same education would supposedly have a disadvantage in?
    - yboris 6y ago
      My memory of the claims I came across during my time in Educational Psychology Ph.D.: tests in the distant past (early 1900s) were often culturally biased (even if unintentionally). I couldn't quickly find examples, but the gist is language or customs more available to rich white kids than otherwise (think playing golf, polo, etc). One quick post I came across when looking just now is about "oarsman" and "regatta", words more-likely to be familiar to rich white kids than otherwise: https://www.clearchoiceprep.com/sat-act-prep-blog/the-most-infamous-example-of-cultural-bias-on-the-sat https://www.clearchoiceprep.com/sat-act-prep-blog/the-most-i...
      - burfog 6y ago
        The complaint about "oarsman" and "regatta" is nonsense. Supposedly it was racist. Supposedly the white kids are all out doing yacht races, so they alone would know the vocabulary. That is ridiculous. The portion of the population of white kids that go yachting is minuscule. Practically all white kids don't even know a person who does that. Practically all white kids have never even been on a yacht. The question was fair. It, and others like it, are a test of reading. If you read well and have read a large variety of books, you'll know the words. The whole point of the test is to see if a student has that sort of college-capable ability (Can you read very well?) so of course the question belongs on the test. The same goes for polo. Nobody does that. The same is nearly true for golf, and I think the desire to watch Tiger Woods might flip any advantage toward the black kids. Really, it's about reading.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jonfw 6y ago
  Most of our attempts to quantify intelligence have shown a correlation with race. That's evidence of something- either bad tests with cultural bias, or differences in intelligence between races. I think most people recognize that the latter idea would be really bad for society, and thus requires a pretty high bar of evidence to consider, and IQ tests are far from good enough evidence.
  - tgv 6y ago
    Which makes IQ a talking point for racists, and "general intelligence" an almost unfalsifiable defence against it.
- DontTellAnyone 6y ago
  Because the data strongly suggests that racial differences in general intelligence exist and exist due to genetic differences between populations. This idea makes certain people almost foam at the mouth (I've witnessed this personally and I'm only barely exaggerating). Stephen Hsu, former VP of research at MSU for example was recently "canceled" from his job because he stated - in a very milquetoast and reasonable way - that even though he's aware that this kind of thing has been used to oppress people in the past, studies (specifically genome wide association studies) suggest that racial differences in intelligence are real and largely due to underlying genetic differences and not just socio-economic factors.
  - rjsw 6y ago
    The genetic differences could be down to socio-economic factors though, such as some of your ancestors having been slaves and restricted in how they could choose a partner.
    - viklove 6y ago
      Evolution works on far, far longer timescales than you're suggesting.
      - brnt 6y ago
        Not really. It works on the timescale that specific causes are affecting the genepool. Europeans with below average immune systems were removed from the gene pool virtually overnight by the black death. Native Americans famously never had the 'benefit' of this event. Similarly, there was an enormous selective pressure on Black slaves in the Americas, so it's certainly possible some effects took only a generation to be reflected in the gene pool. However, when it comes to intelligence, no strong evidence exists saying it is genetically predetermined. Culture and rolemodel of parents are far greater determinants, implying selective pressure is unlikely to affect the general intelligence of a subgroup.
DubiousPusher 6y ago
I have a similar view. The only thing that holds me back from chucking it out in total is the research showing a bunch of better life outcomes correlated with IQ. I'm open to being set straight on this point but my understanding is that research is largely apart and of a better quality than the more race bating stuff of 'The Bell Curve' crowd. Edit: Full disclosure, I am really shooting from the hip here so please go easy. This is an issue I've bumped into a couple times and have never gone super in-depth on.
- chillwaves 6y ago
  Then call it a "successful in capitalist society" test.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    The current name implies it is a measure of a fairly poorly defined thing, general intelligence. So yes, I think changing the name would be a good idea. Of course there is a reason when neurologists do tests for cognitive decline or deficiency they use a range of tests, IQ being only one of several employed.
- kqr 6y ago
  There's something I've read about IQ where the correlation you speak of only applies to the, say, lower half of the range. I.e. someone with an IQ of 90 will do better in life than one with an IQ of 75, but you won't find a significant difference when comparing 110 and 125. So basically IQ "works" in the lower range, and this shows through as a weaker correlation across the entire range, even though it is meaningless in the upper range. This would then make sense too -- in the low end, IQ is affected by things like malnutrition, lead poisoning, and the like, which happen to people who live in areas where everyone are having worse life outcomes, but not because of their IQ. I wish I had a reference for this hypothesis but I lost it. if someone does please hit me up.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    Social skills, family background, and physical looks correlate far more with success than raw IQ. Raw IQ is overrated. See e.g. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20628656?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/20628656?seq=1 ~125 eases entry into well-paid middle class jobs. Over 140 people start to seem weird by median standards. Over 160 they can seem very weird indeed, and are likely to become isolated without a compatible environment. So they're just as likely to fail spectacularly as to become innovative successes.
BurningFrog 6y ago
How are IQ tests "easily gamed"? I suspect that is only true for really smart people :)
- lhorie 6y ago
  Easiest way to "game" it is to take it multiple times or practice/cram for it.
  - skinkestek 6y ago
    At least around here it seems people are allowed to take the Mensa test multiple times. I never took the official one but I understand a lot of effort goes into constructing test sets that doesn't benefit from cramming but (except for getting used to the format, which you can do online) only on raw "processing power". I'm not a scientists or a psychiatrist so take my word for just that: my understanding. Also I note that from what I hear on HN it seems to be that in USA IQ tests contain both spelling and history questions which - in my ears sounds like something very different from a raw IQ test.
  - Symmetry 6y ago
    There are lots of tests out there that all correlate with general mental ability. Some of these, like mental rotation tests, benefit a lot from practice. Some of them, like Raven's Progressive Matrices, don't. The tests used in modern IQ tests are the ones where practice don't give much benefit.
- teachrdan 6y ago
  As a child who was tracked into gifted classes since elementary school, I vividly remember whole lessons dedicated to strategically taking standardized tests. An example of a tricky question we learned to answer correctly: "1. Big is to bigger as little is to ____" is "A. tiny," not "B. big", because the question is looking at changes in intensity, not just increasing size. We were also taught general test-taking strategies like budgeting time for an entire test, making an educated guess on, or skipping & returning to, tricky questions, and so forth. Getting explicitly taught these skills made me perform better on standardized tests. And families like mine, with the socio-economic resources to get their kids taught these skills, will do better on standardized tests--including IQ tests--as a result.
smegma2 6y ago
How is it not well defined when we can observe positive correlations between unrelated cognitive tasks?
threatofrain 6y ago
Studying music will make you way better at music than studying sequences of ravens matrices will make you good at ravens matrices.
vixen99 6y ago
I love the way a whole area of academic endeavour is put in its place. You simply haven't read the literature. Like it or not hundreds of studies have demonstrated that IQ is predictive of life success across many domains. https://archive.ph/PCvgk https://archive.ph/PCvgk

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

sn41 6y ago

Chess grandmasters don't make great mathematicians. Similarly, great warriors may not become great scientists. I don't see a lot of people making jumps from one technical field into another. They make a jump from one technical field to a general field, like politics or Venture capital.

dr_orpheus 6y ago
Reminds me of one of my favorite comics from Saturday Morning Breakfast cereal https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-29 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-29
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

236dev 6y ago

how is putting an emphasis on general intelligence a talking point for racists?

mindcrime 6y ago
The post you're responding to may have been alluding to the controversy around the book "The Bell Curve" and follow-on discussion, where the questions of race and intelligence became a real hot button. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Allegations_of_racism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve#Allegations_of_...
yboris 6y ago
I'm thinking that racism in root is the belief of superiority of one race over another. In the past, tests were designed in ways that (perhaps unintentionally) disadvantaged people of color (for example tests included [white] cultural knowledge). While better tests have been developed, if in the end they show that (even if only on average) there is a minor difference in test scores between whites and blacks, racists will point to it as definitive proof (with no care about the tests' external validity).
- quonn 6y ago
  Can you please give an example of this supposed cultural knowledge? In particular one that PoC raised in the same country and having the same education would supposedly have a disadvantage in?
  - yboris 6y ago
    My memory of the claims I came across during my time in Educational Psychology Ph.D.: tests in the distant past (early 1900s) were often culturally biased (even if unintentionally). I couldn't quickly find examples, but the gist is language or customs more available to rich white kids than otherwise (think playing golf, polo, etc). One quick post I came across when looking just now is about "oarsman" and "regatta", words more-likely to be familiar to rich white kids than otherwise: https://www.clearchoiceprep.com/sat-act-prep-blog/the-most-infamous-example-of-cultural-bias-on-the-sat https://www.clearchoiceprep.com/sat-act-prep-blog/the-most-i...
    - burfog 6y ago
      The complaint about "oarsman" and "regatta" is nonsense. Supposedly it was racist. Supposedly the white kids are all out doing yacht races, so they alone would know the vocabulary. That is ridiculous. The portion of the population of white kids that go yachting is minuscule. Practically all white kids don't even know a person who does that. Practically all white kids have never even been on a yacht. The question was fair. It, and others like it, are a test of reading. If you read well and have read a large variety of books, you'll know the words. The whole point of the test is to see if a student has that sort of college-capable ability (Can you read very well?) so of course the question belongs on the test. The same goes for polo. Nobody does that. The same is nearly true for golf, and I think the desire to watch Tiger Woods might flip any advantage toward the black kids. Really, it's about reading.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jonfw 6y ago
Most of our attempts to quantify intelligence have shown a correlation with race. That's evidence of something- either bad tests with cultural bias, or differences in intelligence between races. I think most people recognize that the latter idea would be really bad for society, and thus requires a pretty high bar of evidence to consider, and IQ tests are far from good enough evidence.
- tgv 6y ago
  Which makes IQ a talking point for racists, and "general intelligence" an almost unfalsifiable defence against it.
DontTellAnyone 6y ago
Because the data strongly suggests that racial differences in general intelligence exist and exist due to genetic differences between populations. This idea makes certain people almost foam at the mouth (I've witnessed this personally and I'm only barely exaggerating). Stephen Hsu, former VP of research at MSU for example was recently "canceled" from his job because he stated - in a very milquetoast and reasonable way - that even though he's aware that this kind of thing has been used to oppress people in the past, studies (specifically genome wide association studies) suggest that racial differences in intelligence are real and largely due to underlying genetic differences and not just socio-economic factors.
- rjsw 6y ago
  The genetic differences could be down to socio-economic factors though, such as some of your ancestors having been slaves and restricted in how they could choose a partner.
  - viklove 6y ago
    Evolution works on far, far longer timescales than you're suggesting.
    - brnt 6y ago
      Not really. It works on the timescale that specific causes are affecting the genepool. Europeans with below average immune systems were removed from the gene pool virtually overnight by the black death. Native Americans famously never had the 'benefit' of this event. Similarly, there was an enormous selective pressure on Black slaves in the Americas, so it's certainly possible some effects took only a generation to be reflected in the gene pool. However, when it comes to intelligence, no strong evidence exists saying it is genetically predetermined. Culture and rolemodel of parents are far greater determinants, implying selective pressure is unlikely to affect the general intelligence of a subgroup.

DubiousPusher 6y ago

I have a similar view. The only thing that holds me back from chucking it out in total is the research showing a bunch of better life outcomes correlated with IQ. I'm open to being set straight on this point but my understanding is that research is largely apart and of a better quality than the more race bating stuff of 'The Bell Curve' crowd. Edit: Full disclosure, I am really shooting from the hip here so please go easy. This is an issue I've bumped into a couple times and have never gone super in-depth on.

chillwaves 6y ago
Then call it a "successful in capitalist society" test.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  The current name implies it is a measure of a fairly poorly defined thing, general intelligence. So yes, I think changing the name would be a good idea. Of course there is a reason when neurologists do tests for cognitive decline or deficiency they use a range of tests, IQ being only one of several employed.
kqr 6y ago
There's something I've read about IQ where the correlation you speak of only applies to the, say, lower half of the range. I.e. someone with an IQ of 90 will do better in life than one with an IQ of 75, but you won't find a significant difference when comparing 110 and 125. So basically IQ "works" in the lower range, and this shows through as a weaker correlation across the entire range, even though it is meaningless in the upper range. This would then make sense too -- in the low end, IQ is affected by things like malnutrition, lead poisoning, and the like, which happen to people who live in areas where everyone are having worse life outcomes, but not because of their IQ. I wish I had a reference for this hypothesis but I lost it. if someone does please hit me up.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Social skills, family background, and physical looks correlate far more with success than raw IQ. Raw IQ is overrated. See e.g. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20628656?seq=1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/20628656?seq=1 ~125 eases entry into well-paid middle class jobs. Over 140 people start to seem weird by median standards. Over 160 they can seem very weird indeed, and are likely to become isolated without a compatible environment. So they're just as likely to fail spectacularly as to become innovative successes.

BurningFrog 6y ago

How are IQ tests "easily gamed"? I suspect that is only true for really smart people :)

lhorie 6y ago
Easiest way to "game" it is to take it multiple times or practice/cram for it.
- skinkestek 6y ago
  At least around here it seems people are allowed to take the Mensa test multiple times. I never took the official one but I understand a lot of effort goes into constructing test sets that doesn't benefit from cramming but (except for getting used to the format, which you can do online) only on raw "processing power". I'm not a scientists or a psychiatrist so take my word for just that: my understanding. Also I note that from what I hear on HN it seems to be that in USA IQ tests contain both spelling and history questions which - in my ears sounds like something very different from a raw IQ test.
- Symmetry 6y ago
  There are lots of tests out there that all correlate with general mental ability. Some of these, like mental rotation tests, benefit a lot from practice. Some of them, like Raven's Progressive Matrices, don't. The tests used in modern IQ tests are the ones where practice don't give much benefit.
teachrdan 6y ago
As a child who was tracked into gifted classes since elementary school, I vividly remember whole lessons dedicated to strategically taking standardized tests. An example of a tricky question we learned to answer correctly: "1. Big is to bigger as little is to ____" is "A. tiny," not "B. big", because the question is looking at changes in intensity, not just increasing size. We were also taught general test-taking strategies like budgeting time for an entire test, making an educated guess on, or skipping & returning to, tricky questions, and so forth. Getting explicitly taught these skills made me perform better on standardized tests. And families like mine, with the socio-economic resources to get their kids taught these skills, will do better on standardized tests--including IQ tests--as a result.

smegma2 6y ago

How is it not well defined when we can observe positive correlations between unrelated cognitive tasks?

threatofrain 6y ago

Studying music will make you way better at music than studying sequences of ravens matrices will make you good at ravens matrices.

vixen99 6y ago

I love the way a whole area of academic endeavour is put in its place. You simply haven't read the literature. Like it or not hundreds of studies have demonstrated that IQ is predictive of life success across many domains. https://archive.ph/PCvgk https://archive.ph/PCvgk