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Relatedly, playing a videogame will make you better at that videogame. Whenever we speak of education and intelligence, you really have to remember the limits
by jrm4 5y ago
Relatedly, playing a videogame will make you better at that videogame.
Whenever we speak of education and intelligence, you really have to remember the limits and inclinations of the tools you're using to measure the things. IQ tests are a very good measure of how good you are at IQ tests, and success in school is a very good measure of how good you are at taking other kinds of tests.
But concluding anything more than that requires something more rigorous than tends to happen in this area.
- jononomo 5y agoThere is no such thing as a test that is not an IQ test. That is why the term "g" is used -- it stands for "general". The thing people discovered was that performing well on an "IQ test" predicted that you will perform well on any general test. Whatever an IQ test measures generalizes to other domains.
- HPsquared 5y ago"Exam technique" is definitely a thing, though. For example on a timed test, not wasting excessive time on a question you don't know the answer to.
- enchiridion 5y agoIt seems like scheduling and prioritization are important elements of intelligence.
- Pyramus 5y ago> something more rigorous than tends to happen in this area. This is a great example of an ad-hominem attack, but against a whole profession, that tends to pop up fairly regularly on HN. I saw somebody else call it "hackers are better X" or something like that. So yes, there is this whole profession, that do nothing else but debate the subtleties of said profession. That's what they do, they go to great length, setting up experiments, writing papers, and trying to outshine their opponents at conferences. They have been doing this for decades. But they couldn't think if a simple counter-argument? How likely is that?
- sudosysgen 5y agoThey have, and did, and many psychologists, psychopedagosists, and other people in the cognitive sciences agree with the OP. I don't see how they were being arrogant and snarky when the exact argument he said does indeed show up in academia.
- jrm4 5y agoSo, I work in this profession. I teach in academia for a living. And I don't think it's particularly controversial to say you can find lots of examples where yes, the whole state-of-the-profession is wrong for long periods of time. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, in a way it's kind of the point -- come up with ideas, beat them up a bit, see what's left, sometimes very little.
- gmadsen 5y agosure to some extent. But I'm sure "good at iq tests" is also a good measure of other things. "Intelligence" is a bit of a loaded word, but it wouldn't be surprising for example if a group scoring >90% on iq tests, have higher scores on average on the SAT than the bottom 10% of iq test scores. You can also see fairly strong correlation between profession and iq scores. Doctors and professional mathematicians score higher on iq tests on average.
- PedroBatista 5y agoGiven a large part of society works and revolves around the dynamics of a school, if you do "good" in school you'll have a better change to do "good" in life. It's very far from being an 1-to-1 relationship, but if you know and play the game of society and their institutions you'll be in the "system" with all the pros and cons. The life of an outcast is both romantic and brutal.