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We all "sort of" recognize intelligence, but it stops there. > The entire edifice of research which makes these claims is a product of a pseudoscientific use o

by tgv 4y ago

We all "sort of" recognize intelligence, but it stops there. > The entire edifice of research which makes these claims is a product of a pseudoscientific use of statistics by amateur statisticians. That's bollocks. It's just a topic that's too complex. Unfortunately, everybody likes it and draws conclusions from it. Even the HR department. If you would say we should ignore IQ measurements in society, I would agree. But it's not pseudo-scientific use of statistics. Nor all done by amateurs. It might even be more scientific than string theory or dark matter.

mjburgess 4y ago
Alas, it is. It's severely pseudoscientific. None have PhDs in statistics. They're all people who got into psychology and were given GUIs by the maths department. Their papers are a symptom of what happens when you press the "ANONVA" button and print the results. The entire field is an egregious testament to pseudo-intellectual pseudoscience. It's shocking. There's nothing there. It's unfathomably bad.
- tgv 4y ago
  The statisticians I knew were only too happy to go along with some ANOVA. They're usually consulted at the start of the study, but rarely co-author. A lot of psychology is bad research. There's a reason there's a reproduction crisis. Statisticians are to blame for that, too. They've been teaching and using NHST, even though all arguments point away from it. But statisticians can't fix a bad design, because they rarely know the factors involved, and they can't fix errors in the methods, because they've got no idea about the subject matter. The statistician in your argument comes across as some kind of totem. > There's nothing there. There's something there, but since we don't know what, it's best to take it with a grain of salt. However, if even the bloody HR department looks at IQ scores, it gets a lot of attention. And one explanation is that it predicts better than nothing. If you have to choose between two candidates, and one has an IQ of 80 and the other of 120, you know who (on average) who fits best.
  - mjburgess 4y ago
    Neither "have" an IQ of anything. They neither "have" a star-sign. A score of 80 suggests a possible clinical issue with mental retardation. Few such people apply to roles who compete with people at average or above scores. What is much more the case is people 95-145 "competing" with each other based, effectively, on what star sign they have.
    - Jensson 4y ago
      If IQ didn't matter above 95 then we would expect most STEM professionals to have about 100 IQ since that is the biggest bump on the curve, but that is very far from the case. The test probably breaks down at some level since it is hard to test higher intelligence, but it seems to me like it is still valid below about 120 IQ.

by tgv 4y ago

mjburgess 4y ago

Alas, it is. It's severely pseudoscientific. None have PhDs in statistics. They're all people who got into psychology and were given GUIs by the maths department. Their papers are a symptom of what happens when you press the "ANONVA" button and print the results. The entire field is an egregious testament to pseudo-intellectual pseudoscience. It's shocking. There's nothing there. It's unfathomably bad.

tgv 4y ago
The statisticians I knew were only too happy to go along with some ANOVA. They're usually consulted at the start of the study, but rarely co-author. A lot of psychology is bad research. There's a reason there's a reproduction crisis. Statisticians are to blame for that, too. They've been teaching and using NHST, even though all arguments point away from it. But statisticians can't fix a bad design, because they rarely know the factors involved, and they can't fix errors in the methods, because they've got no idea about the subject matter. The statistician in your argument comes across as some kind of totem. > There's nothing there. There's something there, but since we don't know what, it's best to take it with a grain of salt. However, if even the bloody HR department looks at IQ scores, it gets a lot of attention. And one explanation is that it predicts better than nothing. If you have to choose between two candidates, and one has an IQ of 80 and the other of 120, you know who (on average) who fits best.
- mjburgess 4y ago
  Neither "have" an IQ of anything. They neither "have" a star-sign. A score of 80 suggests a possible clinical issue with mental retardation. Few such people apply to roles who compete with people at average or above scores. What is much more the case is people 95-145 "competing" with each other based, effectively, on what star sign they have.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    If IQ didn't matter above 95 then we would expect most STEM professionals to have about 100 IQ since that is the biggest bump on the curve, but that is very far from the case. The test probably breaks down at some level since it is hard to test higher intelligence, but it seems to me like it is still valid below about 120 IQ.