6 ms·

Lots of research has been done controlling for income, adoption studies, and such, showing your words to be completely untrue.

peter422 4y ago
So you believe that IQ alone is the most predictive metric for a person’s ability to what? Seriously who cares about a couple of IQ points?
- water-your-self 4y ago
  IQ is generally thrown out entirely. Im shocked to see it treated as a legitimate metric on hacker news
  - peter422 4y ago
    Only on HN would the prevailing thought be that leet-code interviews are stupid but IQ is a magical, unbiased metric of a person’s ability and potential.
  - paledot 4y ago
    Really? HN in 1822 would be filled with educated people seriously defending phrenology. 1922 HN would be falling over itself to defend eugenics. Apparently 2022 HN hasn't come very far from 1922. No one falls for pseudoscientific groupthink like communities of affluent, well-educated people.
  - kansface 4y ago
    The military still uses it because it is highly predictive. They also have a hard cutoff at the bottom which wasn’t always the case (see McNamara’s Folly for the history of when the army accepted literally retarded people - it didn’t end well). We also see a very strong correlation between eg IQ and occupation. It is a legitimate metric of *something*.
    - peter422 4y ago
      The U.S. marine corp promoted its first black 4 star general this year. I don’t think it’s the shining example of a race-blind institution, at least as far as leadership is concerned.
      - kansface 4y ago
        You are cherry picking data. The US military has historically been far more progressive than the country as a whole. It integrated in 1948 - long before the voting rights act or the end of Jim crow. We had a black chair of the joint chiefs long before we elected a black president. Rights and privileges were extended to gay members long before they existed elsewhere.
  - sacrosancty 4y ago
    What are you talking about? It has statistical predictive ability when used on groups of people. Of course it can be very inaccurate for an individual but the reality of being able to make testable predictions makes it pretty hard to throw out, except for ideologically motivated people who don't like what it reveals.
- Vecr 4y ago
  I thought IQ was correlated quite well with the idea of "Spearman's G", and unless people actually use something else on a massive scale over decades I'm not sure how you can avoid using it as a metric.
Latty 4y ago
Please cite it. Every time someone claims this, they come back citing something laughably easy to disprove like The Bell Curve, which claims this, and is just an absolute mess of obvious nonsense: Using deeply culturally and/or language biased IQ tests. Using IQ tests that essentially just test the quality of education they received. Sampling unrepresentative populations. Using studies from an Apartheid state as an example of "a state without systemic racism". Using tests that aren't IQ tests and the author explicitly say isn't equivalent and "converting" them with arbitrary systems. Literally just making up data. Cherry picking the worst data from studies which the original study explicitly calls out as less likely to be accurate. Every correlation vs causation mistake you can possibly make. Just discounting every environmental factor except parental socioeconomic status. Assuming environmental factors are a result of genetic factors (which is literally just assuming their conclusion). Regularly citing a literally white-supremacist funded source as unbiased.
- Ferrotin 4y ago
  I don’t care to get in some debate at all, but first you’d have to offer up a very precise question and not some general smear campaign. If it’s some of the sentences you’re arguing with upthread, I might agree with you.
  - educaysean 4y ago
    You refuse to cite studies because you don't care to get in some debate?
TrinaryWorksToo 4y ago
A lot of that research is flawed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo
- Latty 4y ago
  A very good video, and goes over a lot of the points I've made in this thread in good detail, I also recommend it.

peter422 4y ago

So you believe that IQ alone is the most predictive metric for a person’s ability to what? Seriously who cares about a couple of IQ points?

water-your-self 4y ago
IQ is generally thrown out entirely. Im shocked to see it treated as a legitimate metric on hacker news
- peter422 4y ago
  Only on HN would the prevailing thought be that leet-code interviews are stupid but IQ is a magical, unbiased metric of a person’s ability and potential.
- paledot 4y ago
  Really? HN in 1822 would be filled with educated people seriously defending phrenology. 1922 HN would be falling over itself to defend eugenics. Apparently 2022 HN hasn't come very far from 1922. No one falls for pseudoscientific groupthink like communities of affluent, well-educated people.
- kansface 4y ago
  The military still uses it because it is highly predictive. They also have a hard cutoff at the bottom which wasn’t always the case (see McNamara’s Folly for the history of when the army accepted literally retarded people - it didn’t end well). We also see a very strong correlation between eg IQ and occupation. It is a legitimate metric of *something*.
  - peter422 4y ago
    The U.S. marine corp promoted its first black 4 star general this year. I don’t think it’s the shining example of a race-blind institution, at least as far as leadership is concerned.
    - kansface 4y ago
      You are cherry picking data. The US military has historically been far more progressive than the country as a whole. It integrated in 1948 - long before the voting rights act or the end of Jim crow. We had a black chair of the joint chiefs long before we elected a black president. Rights and privileges were extended to gay members long before they existed elsewhere.
- sacrosancty 4y ago
  What are you talking about? It has statistical predictive ability when used on groups of people. Of course it can be very inaccurate for an individual but the reality of being able to make testable predictions makes it pretty hard to throw out, except for ideologically motivated people who don't like what it reveals.
Vecr 4y ago
I thought IQ was correlated quite well with the idea of "Spearman's G", and unless people actually use something else on a massive scale over decades I'm not sure how you can avoid using it as a metric.

Latty 4y ago

Please cite it. Every time someone claims this, they come back citing something laughably easy to disprove like The Bell Curve, which claims this, and is just an absolute mess of obvious nonsense: Using deeply culturally and/or language biased IQ tests. Using IQ tests that essentially just test the quality of education they received. Sampling unrepresentative populations. Using studies from an Apartheid state as an example of "a state without systemic racism". Using tests that aren't IQ tests and the author explicitly say isn't equivalent and "converting" them with arbitrary systems. Literally just making up data. Cherry picking the worst data from studies which the original study explicitly calls out as less likely to be accurate. Every correlation vs causation mistake you can possibly make. Just discounting every environmental factor except parental socioeconomic status. Assuming environmental factors are a result of genetic factors (which is literally just assuming their conclusion). Regularly citing a literally white-supremacist funded source as unbiased.

Ferrotin 4y ago
I don’t care to get in some debate at all, but first you’d have to offer up a very precise question and not some general smear campaign. If it’s some of the sentences you’re arguing with upthread, I might agree with you.
- educaysean 4y ago
  You refuse to cite studies because you don't care to get in some debate?

TrinaryWorksToo 4y ago

A lot of that research is flawed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo

Latty 4y ago
A very good video, and goes over a lot of the points I've made in this thread in good detail, I also recommend it.