6 ms·

At the risk of replying seriously to a flippant comment, it is a stretch to say that the IQ test is a rock solid method to identify intelligence. It's already

by jbm 16y ago

At the risk of replying seriously to a flippant comment, it is a stretch to say that the IQ test is a rock solid method to identify intelligence. It's already common knowledge that African Americans, as a group, score poorly on IQ tests as opposed to other groups. I personally find it strange that people feel it is all that important. After all, what if it was provable that a racial group was less intelligent than other groups? How could one reasonably and humanely find that information actionable?

tomjen3 16y ago
I don't find that information actionable, I was more interested in how they made that politically correct.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  Patricks summary was just the basics of the case. The background is that Duke Power originally segregated employees, only employing African-Americans in the labor sector. Then the civil rights laws came in and they introduced requirements, including an IQ test, that didn't violate the laws, but had the same effect. ''Did the US Supreme Court really find that African Americans are less intelligent than people of other races?'' Simple answer is no, they didn't. The court basically found that because African-Americans had suffered a lower standard of education (their wording: ''Because they are Negroes, petitioners have long received inferior education in segregated schools, and this Court expressly recognized these differences in Gaston County v. United States, 395 U.S. 285 (1969)'') and that DP knew this the whole point of the new scheme was to continue segregation. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. (it's an interesting case) Whether that would be the same now, I don't know. On the other hand I could completely believe that companies are still worried by it, and so avoid IQ tests etc.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - gjm11 16y ago
    > The court basically found [...] that DP knew this the whole point of the new scheme was to continue segregation. The court didn't actually find quite that. From the judgement: The Court of Appeals held that the Company had adopted the diploma and test requirements without any "intention to discriminate against Negro employees." 420 F.2d at 1232. We do not suggest that either the District Court or the Court of Appeals erred in examining the employer's intent; [...] Incidentally, your WP URL didn't work for me, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v_Duke_Power_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v_Duke_Power_Co does. (And yet it then displays the title with "v." rather than "v", saying it's redirected. I don't know quite what's going on there.)
  - gjm11 16y ago
    > The court basically found [...] that DP knew this the whole point of the new scheme was to continue segregation. The court didn't actually find quite that. From the judgement: The Court of Appeals held that the Company had adopted the diploma and test requirements without any "intention to discriminate against Negro employees." 420 F.2d at 1232. We do not suggest that either the District Court or the Court of Appeals erred in examining the employer's intent; [...] Incidentally, your WP URL didn't work for me, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v_Duke_Power_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v_Duke_Power_Co does. (And yet it then displays the title with "v." rather than "v", saying it's redirected. I don't know quite what's going on there.)
  - gjm11 16y ago
    [I attempted to reply to this, got a weird error code from HN, tried again, saw two copies of my reply both marked as "dead", and am now very confused. I'm trying again in different words in case there's some dupe-checker thing at work.] > The court basically found [...] that DP knew this the whole point of the new scheme was to continue segregation. No, not quite. The WP article (which incidentally I couldn't get at with your URL, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v_Duke_Power_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v_Duke_Power_Co worked) quotes the judgement as saying that they didn't question the company's motive, but that its policies were illegally discriminatory regardless of motive.
    - ErrantX 16y ago
      Yeh you are right on both points (HN mungs the period on the end of the URL... grr). The WP article was a bit of a mess so I've been rewriting/sourcing it - and, yes, the court carefully states that it didn't believe it was deliberate discrimination. That part of my comment was incorrect. :)
      - btilly 16y ago
        Useless trick. If you want to include the period at the end of the URL, you just have to put another punctuation mark following the URL. Like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co., or (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.. (I figured this out from reading the source code after getting tripped up by wrong URLs when the URL finished the sentence in a parenthetical comment. I can't promise that it won't break at some point.)
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
temphn 16y ago
Well, there are certain mission critical kinds of areas -- like medicine or bridge engineering -- where this knowledge is actionable. Certainly people here on Hacker News don't need to be convinced of the value of finding elite engineers, or the very real wealth they can generate from book learning. The problem is the doublethink that allows the IQ elite -- graduates of highly selective institutions like Harvard and Stanford -- to pretend that there is no such thing as an IQ elite, while simultaneously selecting their peers (coworkers, marriage partners, fellow students, etc.) from that very same ostensibly nonexistent IQ elite. The contrast is whiplash inducing. One minute IQ doesn't matter, the next minute everyone is talking about how all these "idiots" can't solve FizzBuzz... Very big blind spot here, which many Asian countries don't share in the same way.
- sethg 16y ago
  I took an IQ test in fifth grade. I will never forget one of the questions on the “general knowledge” section: “Who discovered America?” Aha, fifth-grade-me thought, a trick question! “The Indians,” I said confidently. The woman administering the test rephrased the question: “Who is generally credited with discovering America?” Even though I scored well enough to qualify for the “IQ elite”, that experience gave me a livelong skepticism about how seriously to take IQ tests. I don’t need to ask for someone’s IQ scores before deciding whether or not to work, hang out, or have sex with them. The comparison with FizzBuzz is not apposite, because nobody is claiming that FizzBuzz is a measure of general intelligence or even a measure of general programming aptitude. If candidate A solved the FizzBuzz problem twice as fast as candidate B, no sane hiring manager would conclude that candidate A is going to be twice as good at programming.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    I'd be extremely surprised if you aren't misremembering. IQ tests are never supposed to have sections like "general knowledge", "history", "celebrity gossip", etc. "Who discovered America" is a textbook example of a non g-loaded question. If such a section was used on a test they described as an "IQ test", it was almost certainly there only for statistical validation purposes. There have been a number of studies done which ask obviously knowledge based questions, obviously g-loaded questions, and unknown questions. They then compare the statistical distribution of answers to the unknown questions to the obviously bad questions ("who discovered America") and the obviously good questions ("you want to carry a fox and two goats across the river in a 2 seated boat, but if you leave the fox alone with the goat the fox eats the goat..." [1]). If you aren't misremembering, I suspect you were participating in such a study. [1] This is unbiased because all information is given. You don't need to know what a fox or goat is, or have ever seen a boat. It could be rephrased "you want to transport a X and two Y's from location A to location B. But if you leave an X and a Y alone, you fail."
yummyfajitas 16y ago
How could one reasonably and humanely find that information actionable? It completely debunks the theory of disparate impact, assuming you believe IQ drives general problem solving ability. This information would be useful in rejecting a huge number of baseless lawsuits. It also suggests that racial gaps in education are here to stay, and nothing can be done about them. Therefore, we should accept them and move on.
- tptacek 16y ago
  No it doesn't. It suggests the fact that one component of racial gaps in education may be immutable, and that when we identify the extent of that immutable genetic gap, we may be able to avoid wasting effort trying to eliminate it directly. I don't accept for a moment the notion that "blacks" are "less intelligent" than "whites", or even that we can with any useful precision define what these terms are, but the way you've summarized the points seems to illustrate well the reason people have such a hard time discussing this issue.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    I'm responding to a hypothetical: "After all, what if it was provable that a racial group was less intelligent than other groups? How could one reasonably and humanely find that information actionable?" I didn't feel the need to carefully explain the exact policy implications of this fact since the hypothetical didn't give enough info to work from. I also don't feel the need to couch a conversation on this topic in terms of "I'm not racist" "scare" "quotes" and genuflections towards diversity since I think most HN readers can distinguish a positive claim from a normative one.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      I don't think you're a racist but I disagree with your conclusion and further think you took it to an extreme that inhibits reasonable discussion. Apparently in the hypothetical. Our politics clearly couldn't be more different, but I didn't set out to offend you. I'm sorry.
sethg 16y ago
It’s less-common knowledge that in Northern Ireland, Catholics score lower on IQ tests than Protestants.
euroclydon 16y ago
what if it was provable that a racial group was less intelligent than other groups This is provable. Suppose that all racial groups were equally intelligent by some metric. Then the average value of that metric for each racial group would be the same. Assuming a sufficient resolution for the value range and millions of people taking the test, the odds of any racial groups average value being equal to any others is astronomically small.
- thrill 16y ago
  Quoting odds is not proof.
  - euroclydon 16y ago
    Clearly I'm engaged in hand-waving. But proving something is getting others to agree with you, and I think what I said is very agreeable, without me delving into more formality.

by jbm 16y ago

tomjen3 16y ago

I don't find that information actionable, I was more interested in how they made that politically correct.

ErrantX 16y ago
Patricks summary was just the basics of the case. The background is that Duke Power originally segregated employees, only employing African-Americans in the labor sector. Then the civil rights laws came in and they introduced requirements, including an IQ test, that didn't violate the laws, but had the same effect. ''Did the US Supreme Court really find that African Americans are less intelligent than people of other races?'' Simple answer is no, they didn't. The court basically found that because African-Americans had suffered a lower standard of education (their wording: ''Because they are Negroes, petitioners have long received inferior education in segregated schools, and this Court expressly recognized these differences in Gaston County v. United States, 395 U.S. 285 (1969)'') and that DP knew this the whole point of the new scheme was to continue segregation. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. (it's an interesting case) Whether that would be the same now, I don't know. On the other hand I could completely believe that companies are still worried by it, and so avoid IQ tests etc.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- gjm11 16y ago
  > The court basically found [...] that DP knew this the whole point of the new scheme was to continue segregation. The court didn't actually find quite that. From the judgement: The Court of Appeals held that the Company had adopted the diploma and test requirements without any "intention to discriminate against Negro employees." 420 F.2d at 1232. We do not suggest that either the District Court or the Court of Appeals erred in examining the employer's intent; [...] Incidentally, your WP URL didn't work for me, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v_Duke_Power_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v_Duke_Power_Co does. (And yet it then displays the title with "v." rather than "v", saying it's redirected. I don't know quite what's going on there.)
- gjm11 16y ago
  > The court basically found [...] that DP knew this the whole point of the new scheme was to continue segregation. The court didn't actually find quite that. From the judgement: The Court of Appeals held that the Company had adopted the diploma and test requirements without any "intention to discriminate against Negro employees." 420 F.2d at 1232. We do not suggest that either the District Court or the Court of Appeals erred in examining the employer's intent; [...] Incidentally, your WP URL didn't work for me, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v_Duke_Power_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v_Duke_Power_Co does. (And yet it then displays the title with "v." rather than "v", saying it's redirected. I don't know quite what's going on there.)
- gjm11 16y ago
  [I attempted to reply to this, got a weird error code from HN, tried again, saw two copies of my reply both marked as "dead", and am now very confused. I'm trying again in different words in case there's some dupe-checker thing at work.] > The court basically found [...] that DP knew this the whole point of the new scheme was to continue segregation. No, not quite. The WP article (which incidentally I couldn't get at with your URL, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v_Duke_Power_Co http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v_Duke_Power_Co worked) quotes the judgement as saying that they didn't question the company's motive, but that its policies were illegally discriminatory regardless of motive.
  - ErrantX 16y ago
    Yeh you are right on both points (HN mungs the period on the end of the URL... grr). The WP article was a bit of a mess so I've been rewriting/sourcing it - and, yes, the court carefully states that it didn't believe it was deliberate discrimination. That part of my comment was incorrect. :)
    - btilly 16y ago
      Useless trick. If you want to include the period at the end of the URL, you just have to put another punctuation mark following the URL. Like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co., or (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.. (I figured this out from reading the source code after getting tripped up by wrong URLs when the URL finished the sentence in a parenthetical comment. I can't promise that it won't break at some point.)
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

temphn 16y ago

Well, there are certain mission critical kinds of areas -- like medicine or bridge engineering -- where this knowledge is actionable. Certainly people here on Hacker News don't need to be convinced of the value of finding elite engineers, or the very real wealth they can generate from book learning. The problem is the doublethink that allows the IQ elite -- graduates of highly selective institutions like Harvard and Stanford -- to pretend that there is no such thing as an IQ elite, while simultaneously selecting their peers (coworkers, marriage partners, fellow students, etc.) from that very same ostensibly nonexistent IQ elite. The contrast is whiplash inducing. One minute IQ doesn't matter, the next minute everyone is talking about how all these "idiots" can't solve FizzBuzz... Very big blind spot here, which many Asian countries don't share in the same way.

sethg 16y ago
I took an IQ test in fifth grade. I will never forget one of the questions on the “general knowledge” section: “Who discovered America?” Aha, fifth-grade-me thought, a trick question! “The Indians,” I said confidently. The woman administering the test rephrased the question: “Who is generally credited with discovering America?” Even though I scored well enough to qualify for the “IQ elite”, that experience gave me a livelong skepticism about how seriously to take IQ tests. I don’t need to ask for someone’s IQ scores before deciding whether or not to work, hang out, or have sex with them. The comparison with FizzBuzz is not apposite, because nobody is claiming that FizzBuzz is a measure of general intelligence or even a measure of general programming aptitude. If candidate A solved the FizzBuzz problem twice as fast as candidate B, no sane hiring manager would conclude that candidate A is going to be twice as good at programming.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  I'd be extremely surprised if you aren't misremembering. IQ tests are never supposed to have sections like "general knowledge", "history", "celebrity gossip", etc. "Who discovered America" is a textbook example of a non g-loaded question. If such a section was used on a test they described as an "IQ test", it was almost certainly there only for statistical validation purposes. There have been a number of studies done which ask obviously knowledge based questions, obviously g-loaded questions, and unknown questions. They then compare the statistical distribution of answers to the unknown questions to the obviously bad questions ("who discovered America") and the obviously good questions ("you want to carry a fox and two goats across the river in a 2 seated boat, but if you leave the fox alone with the goat the fox eats the goat..." [1]). If you aren't misremembering, I suspect you were participating in such a study. [1] This is unbiased because all information is given. You don't need to know what a fox or goat is, or have ever seen a boat. It could be rephrased "you want to transport a X and two Y's from location A to location B. But if you leave an X and a Y alone, you fail."

yummyfajitas 16y ago

How could one reasonably and humanely find that information actionable? It completely debunks the theory of disparate impact, assuming you believe IQ drives general problem solving ability. This information would be useful in rejecting a huge number of baseless lawsuits. It also suggests that racial gaps in education are here to stay, and nothing can be done about them. Therefore, we should accept them and move on.

tptacek 16y ago
No it doesn't. It suggests the fact that one component of racial gaps in education may be immutable, and that when we identify the extent of that immutable genetic gap, we may be able to avoid wasting effort trying to eliminate it directly. I don't accept for a moment the notion that "blacks" are "less intelligent" than "whites", or even that we can with any useful precision define what these terms are, but the way you've summarized the points seems to illustrate well the reason people have such a hard time discussing this issue.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  I'm responding to a hypothetical: "After all, what if it was provable that a racial group was less intelligent than other groups? How could one reasonably and humanely find that information actionable?" I didn't feel the need to carefully explain the exact policy implications of this fact since the hypothetical didn't give enough info to work from. I also don't feel the need to couch a conversation on this topic in terms of "I'm not racist" "scare" "quotes" and genuflections towards diversity since I think most HN readers can distinguish a positive claim from a normative one.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    I don't think you're a racist but I disagree with your conclusion and further think you took it to an extreme that inhibits reasonable discussion. Apparently in the hypothetical. Our politics clearly couldn't be more different, but I didn't set out to offend you. I'm sorry.

sethg 16y ago

It’s less-common knowledge that in Northern Ireland, Catholics score lower on IQ tests than Protestants.

euroclydon 16y ago

what if it was provable that a racial group was less intelligent than other groups This is provable. Suppose that all racial groups were equally intelligent by some metric. Then the average value of that metric for each racial group would be the same. Assuming a sufficient resolution for the value range and millions of people taking the test, the odds of any racial groups average value being equal to any others is astronomically small.

thrill 16y ago
Quoting odds is not proof.
- euroclydon 16y ago
  Clearly I'm engaged in hand-waving. But proving something is getting others to agree with you, and I think what I said is very agreeable, without me delving into more formality.