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I think that might be on purpose. Proponents of general IQ really want IQ to be immutable (i.e. mostly hereditary) and really don’t want it to be diverse and nu

I think that might be on purpose. Proponents of general IQ really want IQ to be immutable (i.e. mostly hereditary) and really don’t want it to be diverse and nuanced (hence general intelligence). I.e. they don’t want IQ test to resemble fitness tests. So they try their best to design their tests in a way that it stays consistent across time and exercise does not affect test scores that much. A test that actually measures a specific thing and increases with exercise (e.g. the SAT) is discounted as a factor. In fact the foundations of IQ tests lies heavily on the eugenics movement which wanted to prove the superiority of able bodied white men. They actually started by assuming brain size correlates with intelligence (it doesn’t) and then set out and proved that on average white men had the biggest brain of them all (which is also false). The nuances of fitness does not help in this goals as one can easily just pick a type of intelligence/fitness which white men perform poorly at in general so their claim was that there exists a general intelligence to remove this nuance. Their current IQ tests are all set up to assume this is true, and hence you can see it in the results. If you can’t then you are not really measuring intelligence.

polski-g 5y ago
Brain size is actually correlated r=0.41 with IQ
ryan93 5y ago
Yeah some racists thought black people are stupid because of brain size. Has less than nothing to do with modern IQ tests. I’m not following your argument that the racist behavior of people in the general study of intelligence invalidate all study of it forever.
- runarberg 5y ago
  I drew the parallels because we know the brain size studies were pseudo science with an agenda to prove a ludicrous statement. IQs are still up for debate, but we do know that modern IQ tests have their foundations in the eugenics movement. And they certainly had the same agenda as the brain size hacks, so I don’t think the parallels are unfair. There has been a high profile literature as early as the 1990s (The Bell Curve) which tries to use the IQ to prove this nonsense. So even if the brain size hacks are all gone, and the eugenics movement died with WW2, there are still people with an agenda where a nuanced free immutable “intelligence” is their goal.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    Saying the “foundations” isn’t an argument. Many geneticists used to be hard core eugenicists doesn’t invalidate the whole field or it’s developments. The validity of modern iq exams has been studied by hundreds or thousands of modern non racist psychologists and the evidence is public info
    - runarberg 5y ago
      The evidence is still disputed, and the validity is encoded in the tests. Modern IQ tests are adjusted to be robust across multiple trials, that doesn’t prove that intelligence is immutable by a long shot, it is merely a self fulfilling prophecy. Books such as The Bell Curve are not in and of them self racist. This book in particular makes zero racist claims. However it relies on deeply racist studies as its premise, so if you want to conclude anything from it, that conclusion is racist. I don’t think every proponent of IQ is racist, however there is a lot of racism embedded in the research, sometimes directly, but most often by association.

polski-g 5y ago

Brain size is actually correlated r=0.41 with IQ

ryan93 5y ago

Yeah some racists thought black people are stupid because of brain size. Has less than nothing to do with modern IQ tests. I’m not following your argument that the racist behavior of people in the general study of intelligence invalidate all study of it forever.

runarberg 5y ago
I drew the parallels because we know the brain size studies were pseudo science with an agenda to prove a ludicrous statement. IQs are still up for debate, but we do know that modern IQ tests have their foundations in the eugenics movement. And they certainly had the same agenda as the brain size hacks, so I don’t think the parallels are unfair. There has been a high profile literature as early as the 1990s (The Bell Curve) which tries to use the IQ to prove this nonsense. So even if the brain size hacks are all gone, and the eugenics movement died with WW2, there are still people with an agenda where a nuanced free immutable “intelligence” is their goal.
- ryan93 5y ago
  Saying the “foundations” isn’t an argument. Many geneticists used to be hard core eugenicists doesn’t invalidate the whole field or it’s developments. The validity of modern iq exams has been studied by hundreds or thousands of modern non racist psychologists and the evidence is public info
  - runarberg 5y ago
    The evidence is still disputed, and the validity is encoded in the tests. Modern IQ tests are adjusted to be robust across multiple trials, that doesn’t prove that intelligence is immutable by a long shot, it is merely a self fulfilling prophecy. Books such as The Bell Curve are not in and of them self racist. This book in particular makes zero racist claims. However it relies on deeply racist studies as its premise, so if you want to conclude anything from it, that conclusion is racist. I don’t think every proponent of IQ is racist, however there is a lot of racism embedded in the research, sometimes directly, but most often by association.