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The article covers reproducibility. The test does reliably reproduce results, at least if you don't quantize to boolean. Jung doesn't matter. Being a cash cow d

The article covers reproducibility. The test does reliably reproduce results, at least if you don't quantize to boolean. Jung doesn't matter. Being a cash cow doesn't matter. There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. If you aren't going to accept IQ, then you've entirely tossed out the field of psychology. There is nothing left.

feanaro 6y ago
> There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. If you aren't going to accept IQ, then you've entirely tossed out the field of psychology. There is nothing left. Huh. That's quite a bold and incorrect claim. Are you a psychologist?
- exfalso 6y ago
  Perhaps the word "psychometry" would have been better. There isn't any psychometric test more stable than IQ.
  - feanaro 6y ago
    That's a bit better, but confusing the statements "IQ is the most temporally stable psychometric construct" and "IQ is the only valid psychometric construct" is still egregious.
    - rcxdude 6y ago
      I don't read it that way, I think it's meant as 'if you reject IQ, you have raised your standards of evidence so high you must logically reject everything else in psychology/psychometry as well'. It's meant to highlight a contradiction.
      - feanaro 6y ago
        Yes, if interpreted like that, I agree with it. What threw me off was "There's nothing left" part. I see now that I might've misinterpreted the meaning.
  - cannabis_sam 6y ago
    How do you define/consider “stable” this specific context?
- mudita 6y ago
  Let's hear it from a psychologist: "If you don’t buy IQ research, you might as well throw out all the rest of psychology." (Jordan Peterson) https://youtu.be/D7Kn5p7TP_Y?t=2938 https://youtu.be/D7Kn5p7TP_Y?t=2938 For anybody interested in personality research, I warmly recommend this lecture series, by the way. These are the basics, which psychology students learn at university.
  - 0x737368 6y ago
    Ah yes, a comment about Jordan Peterson that immediately gets downvoted, despite Peterson being competent in the field and the people that are downvoting this are almost most certainly not. I've noticed this every time his name gets mentioned, and I always wondered why that is. Whenever I'd ask one of his "critics" about what's the issue with him I can't get a good answer. So what is it? Can someone maybe explain to me why is there such animosity towards him? Is it just because he's considered to be a "conservative" by hard leftists(despite mostly being a classic liberal). Have we really reached the point where people will automatically go against somebody just because he's "not one of us", and not even consider the ideas. If so we have a really dark road ahead of us. It is even more disappointing to see this on HN. I expect this sort of hivemind on Reddit and Twitter, but I used to have a higher opinion of the userbase on HN.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      For the record, I didn't downvote your original comment and I don't have any opinion on Jordan Peterson's expertise as a psychologist. But as a public speaker, he is not a "classical liberal" he is a reactionary conservative with a bent for sophism. His views on culture and on the left are simply wrong, obviously so, but they are presented with academic gravitas and conviction. He implies, though is careful to not outright state, that men are superior to women in intellect and rationality, as are white people when compared to black people (though Ashkenazi Jews are even smarter, so he's not racist!). He does often outright state that "Western" culture is superior to other cultures, that Marxism and post-modernism are not the products of "Western" culture, that Hitler was actually a leftist, and many other obvious falsehoods. he conflates marxism and post-modernism, two diametrically opposed views of history and culture (not to imply that they are the only possible ones, of course). In short, he is a conman who rides his (quite real, as far as I've heard!) academic and clinical credentials in Psychology to make it seem that he is an authority worth listening to on other topics; and he tries to sell damaging, reactionary falsehoods on those other topics.
- feanaro 6y ago
  Thank you for the reactionary downvotes, but how about making an actual argument? (self-reply because I can no longer edit the comment)
erhk 6y ago
There are a lot of people who agree with throwing out the field as it is entirely already. Many of them are published in the field. Freud is a name that comes to mind when thinking of things to throw out
wizzwizz4 6y ago
> There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. This is not true. See Wikipedia[0][1][2]. IQ actually holds little support, compared with (e.g.) bilateral sound recognition, or somatotopic arrangement on the postcentral gyrus. (Among psychologists, that is; IQ probably has more support amongst the general population, because it's pop-pseudoscience.) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_race_and_intelligence_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_race_and_intell... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#IQ_testing_and_the_eugenics_movement_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#IQ_testi... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Validity_as_a_measure_of_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Validity...
- bjoli 6y ago
  What we can say about iq tests is that they test something, and those results remain consistent through life. The results are positively correlated to many things (such as academic success. The people scoring a 9, the maximum result, on the tests used in the Swedish conscription live longer, etc...). Had it been completely pop-pseudoscience it would not be used by, say, the Swedish school system as a tool to gauge whether someone has special needs that warrant another form of school with extra support. The tests used are however not the same as most people have done online, like WAIS (but for kids. Can't remember the name of it).
  - wizzwizz4 6y ago
    > The results are positively correlated to many things (such as academic success. They would be so correlated even if they were a bad metric. Imagine a score that multiplies academic success and the highest Tetris score obtained within 100 miles of your birthplace, then subtracts 50 points if you're a girl. That would also be positively correlated with academic success. IQ tests measure something, yes, but they're not magic. (See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) I received a high-quality education including what amounts to IQ-test tuition (to pass an entrance exam); do you know of any studies that attempt to factor out this particular confounder?
runarberg 6y ago
IQ—or more accurately the theory of general intelligence—is highly controversial inside the field of psychology. In fact a part from developmental psychologists—which might use IQ tests to determine if a child requires special needs—I bet by far most psychologists go their entire career without ever touching an IQ test or citing a paper because of IQ results. It is true that the debate about general intelligence is huge. So you see a lot of papers written about it. But this is a subfield inside psychology (in fact a subfield of psychometrics which is a subfield of psychology; the whole field of psychometrics invoking skepticism among many scientist). I’m gonna do you a favor and list sub-fields of psychology that work regardless of the theory of general intelligence and therefor work just fine without IQ: * Cognitive psychology (and computational psychology) * Neuropsychology * Social psychology (and psychological sociology) * Pathological Psychology and Psychiatry * Developmental psychology (although they might use IQ tests; but for different reason as psychometricians do) * Psychological first aid (not a science but a method; similar to paramedics but for trauma victims) And here are some generic theories inside psychology which have nothing to do with—and might reject—the theory of general intelligence. * Behaviorism * Neurological determinism * Evolutionary psychology * Psychoanalysis Even inside psychometrics (which is the believe that any psychological effect that exists is measurable; and that operational definition is a legitimate way to describe psychological effect) I bet there are people that reject the theory of general intelligence on the grounds that IQ is not measuring general intelligence, but something else.

feanaro 6y ago

> There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. If you aren't going to accept IQ, then you've entirely tossed out the field of psychology. There is nothing left. Huh. That's quite a bold and incorrect claim. Are you a psychologist?

exfalso 6y ago
Perhaps the word "psychometry" would have been better. There isn't any psychometric test more stable than IQ.
- feanaro 6y ago
  That's a bit better, but confusing the statements "IQ is the most temporally stable psychometric construct" and "IQ is the only valid psychometric construct" is still egregious.
  - rcxdude 6y ago
    I don't read it that way, I think it's meant as 'if you reject IQ, you have raised your standards of evidence so high you must logically reject everything else in psychology/psychometry as well'. It's meant to highlight a contradiction.
    - feanaro 6y ago
      Yes, if interpreted like that, I agree with it. What threw me off was "There's nothing left" part. I see now that I might've misinterpreted the meaning.
- cannabis_sam 6y ago
  How do you define/consider “stable” this specific context?
mudita 6y ago
Let's hear it from a psychologist: "If you don’t buy IQ research, you might as well throw out all the rest of psychology." (Jordan Peterson) https://youtu.be/D7Kn5p7TP_Y?t=2938 https://youtu.be/D7Kn5p7TP_Y?t=2938 For anybody interested in personality research, I warmly recommend this lecture series, by the way. These are the basics, which psychology students learn at university.
- 0x737368 6y ago
  Ah yes, a comment about Jordan Peterson that immediately gets downvoted, despite Peterson being competent in the field and the people that are downvoting this are almost most certainly not. I've noticed this every time his name gets mentioned, and I always wondered why that is. Whenever I'd ask one of his "critics" about what's the issue with him I can't get a good answer. So what is it? Can someone maybe explain to me why is there such animosity towards him? Is it just because he's considered to be a "conservative" by hard leftists(despite mostly being a classic liberal). Have we really reached the point where people will automatically go against somebody just because he's "not one of us", and not even consider the ideas. If so we have a really dark road ahead of us. It is even more disappointing to see this on HN. I expect this sort of hivemind on Reddit and Twitter, but I used to have a higher opinion of the userbase on HN.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    For the record, I didn't downvote your original comment and I don't have any opinion on Jordan Peterson's expertise as a psychologist. But as a public speaker, he is not a "classical liberal" he is a reactionary conservative with a bent for sophism. His views on culture and on the left are simply wrong, obviously so, but they are presented with academic gravitas and conviction. He implies, though is careful to not outright state, that men are superior to women in intellect and rationality, as are white people when compared to black people (though Ashkenazi Jews are even smarter, so he's not racist!). He does often outright state that "Western" culture is superior to other cultures, that Marxism and post-modernism are not the products of "Western" culture, that Hitler was actually a leftist, and many other obvious falsehoods. he conflates marxism and post-modernism, two diametrically opposed views of history and culture (not to imply that they are the only possible ones, of course). In short, he is a conman who rides his (quite real, as far as I've heard!) academic and clinical credentials in Psychology to make it seem that he is an authority worth listening to on other topics; and he tries to sell damaging, reactionary falsehoods on those other topics.
feanaro 6y ago
Thank you for the reactionary downvotes, but how about making an actual argument? (self-reply because I can no longer edit the comment)

erhk 6y ago

There are a lot of people who agree with throwing out the field as it is entirely already. Many of them are published in the field. Freud is a name that comes to mind when thinking of things to throw out

wizzwizz4 6y ago

> There is nothing in the field of psychology with better support than IQ. This is not true. See Wikipedia[0][1][2]. IQ actually holds little support, compared with (e.g.) bilateral sound recognition, or somatotopic arrangement on the postcentral gyrus. (Among psychologists, that is; IQ probably has more support amongst the general population, because it's pop-pseudoscience.) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_race_and_intelligence_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_race_and_intell... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#IQ_testing_and_the_eugenics_movement_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#IQ_testi... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Validity_as_a_measure_of_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Validity...

bjoli 6y ago
What we can say about iq tests is that they test something, and those results remain consistent through life. The results are positively correlated to many things (such as academic success. The people scoring a 9, the maximum result, on the tests used in the Swedish conscription live longer, etc...). Had it been completely pop-pseudoscience it would not be used by, say, the Swedish school system as a tool to gauge whether someone has special needs that warrant another form of school with extra support. The tests used are however not the same as most people have done online, like WAIS (but for kids. Can't remember the name of it).
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  > The results are positively correlated to many things (such as academic success. They would be so correlated even if they were a bad metric. Imagine a score that multiplies academic success and the highest Tetris score obtained within 100 miles of your birthplace, then subtracts 50 points if you're a girl. That would also be positively correlated with academic success. IQ tests measure something, yes, but they're not magic. (See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) I received a high-quality education including what amounts to IQ-test tuition (to pass an entrance exam); do you know of any studies that attempt to factor out this particular confounder?

runarberg 6y ago

IQ—or more accurately the theory of general intelligence—is highly controversial inside the field of psychology. In fact a part from developmental psychologists—which might use IQ tests to determine if a child requires special needs—I bet by far most psychologists go their entire career without ever touching an IQ test or citing a paper because of IQ results. It is true that the debate about general intelligence is huge. So you see a lot of papers written about it. But this is a subfield inside psychology (in fact a subfield of psychometrics which is a subfield of psychology; the whole field of psychometrics invoking skepticism among many scientist). I’m gonna do you a favor and list sub-fields of psychology that work regardless of the theory of general intelligence and therefor work just fine without IQ: * Cognitive psychology (and computational psychology) * Neuropsychology * Social psychology (and psychological sociology) * Pathological Psychology and Psychiatry * Developmental psychology (although they might use IQ tests; but for different reason as psychometricians do) * Psychological first aid (not a science but a method; similar to paramedics but for trauma victims) And here are some generic theories inside psychology which have nothing to do with—and might reject—the theory of general intelligence. * Behaviorism * Neurological determinism * Evolutionary psychology * Psychoanalysis Even inside psychometrics (which is the believe that any psychological effect that exists is measurable; and that operational definition is a legitimate way to describe psychological effect) I bet there are people that reject the theory of general intelligence on the grounds that IQ is not measuring general intelligence, but something else.