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That only matters if IQ is a measure of something that matters. There are several arguments which suggest it's not. 1. How good someone is at taking a test ≠ i

That only matters if IQ is a measure of something that matters. There are several arguments which suggest it's not. 1. How good someone is at taking a test ≠ intelligence. https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-... 2. The IQ test may have been specifically designed to be difficult for certain populations, which were comparatively less educated. And those populations are still less educated today. So it's a circular argument. https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/racist-beginnings-standardized-testing https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/racis...

dudeinjapan 4y ago
The fact that Europeans "specifically designed" a racist test to make all other races look dumb, but then failed when Asians took it, may in-and-of-itself be an indicator of the relative intelligence of the races.
mightyham 4y ago
I find the suggestion that IQ was designed to be racist highly unlikely considering that many studies have shown Asians to have higher average IQs than Europeans. Even in regards to SAT testing, Chinese American immigrants are extraordinarily over represented in upper percentiles.
- saghm 4y ago
  Are you saying you don't think it's likely for the test to be designed to make a certain group perform worse than another as long as some groups outside either of those score better than the group that designed the test? Or that if it was actively designed to make one group perform worse than the one who designed the test, it's not racist because some third group scored even better? Neither of those claims sound particularly persuasive to me
  - mightyham 4y ago
    Let's put this in the proper context. Many modern studies and analysis show similar disparities in intellectual abilities between ethnicities and races, based on a number of tests designed in the modern day by many different institutions globally. The suggestion that IQ tests are on the whole are a racist ploy is very conspiratorial. Furthermore, it's pretty hard to imagine how one would design visuospatial and pattern matching problems so that they are discriminatory.
    - saghm 4y ago
      > Let's put this in the proper context. Many modern studies and analysis show similar disparities in intellectual abilities between ethnicities and races, based on a number of tests designed in the modern day by many different institutions globally. The suggestion that IQ tests are on the whole are a racist ploy is very conspiratorial. The parent comment that original suggested this claim linked to an article tracing the academic influences of the I.Q. test and other similar standardized testing frameworks, and it doesn't seem "very conspiratorial" to me in the absence of any specific critiques. > Furthermore, it's pretty hard to imagine how one would design visuospatial and pattern matching problems so that they are discriminatory. Maybe my imagination is more active than yours, but it doesn't seem that hard to imagine for me. Broadly speaking, I'd imagine that the process of coming up with any sort of test like this would consist of the following steps: 1. Come up with potential questions for the test 2. Assess people with the test in a controlled environment 3. Revise the set of questions based on the results of step 2, then repeat steps 2 and 3 until you're satisfied To tailor the results to a certain group, give the test to both people in and outside of that group in step 2, then in step 3 revise the questions towards the type that the favored group scored better on (e.g. throw out questions that the disfavored group scored better on, come up with more questions similar to the type that the favored group scored better on, etc.). You wouldn't be guaranteed to find a set of questions that ended up statistically favorable to the favored group, but it certainly doesn't seem very hard to imagine it might work sometimes, and for it to have happened, it only would need to have worked once.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
- pazimzadeh 4y ago
  For your argument to be valid, you would have to show that Chinese immigrants have always had higher than average IQ's (i.e. at the time the IQ test was first designed). Otherwise, all it means is that Chinese immigrants may have a higher capacity for work/studies (unless you are also arguing that Chinese people have rapidly been evolving intelligence in the last 100 years. And if so, why?). Which may or may not be genetic, but is definitely not the same thing as intelligence. I could not find that data, but I found this which is also interesting: Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology who has written an excellent book about intelligence, cites a study that followed a pool of Chinese-American children and a pool of white children into adulthood. The two groups started out with the same scores on I.Q. tests, but in the end 55 percent of the Asian-Americans entered high-status occupations, compared with one-third of the whites. To succeed as a manager, whites needed an I.Q. of 100, while Chinese-Americans needed an I.Q. of only 93. So the Asian advantage, Nisbett argues, isn’t intellectual firepower as such, but how it is harnessed. From https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/the-asian-advantage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/the-asian-... Plus, it's well known that one of the most reliable ways of improving IQ (and SAT scores) is to be born in a wealthier family. At the end of the day, it still not particularly important if different races score higher or lower on measures of intelligence. It is the environment which selects the traits in a population. There is no adaptive advantage to investing in intelligence if your environment does not require it. It would be "dumb" to be "too smart" if that makes sense. The right question is why is the environment selecting for these traits, whether they are passed down genetically or culturally.

dudeinjapan 4y ago

The fact that Europeans "specifically designed" a racist test to make all other races look dumb, but then failed when Asians took it, may in-and-of-itself be an indicator of the relative intelligence of the races.

mightyham 4y ago

I find the suggestion that IQ was designed to be racist highly unlikely considering that many studies have shown Asians to have higher average IQs than Europeans. Even in regards to SAT testing, Chinese American immigrants are extraordinarily over represented in upper percentiles.

saghm 4y ago
Are you saying you don't think it's likely for the test to be designed to make a certain group perform worse than another as long as some groups outside either of those score better than the group that designed the test? Or that if it was actively designed to make one group perform worse than the one who designed the test, it's not racist because some third group scored even better? Neither of those claims sound particularly persuasive to me
- mightyham 4y ago
  Let's put this in the proper context. Many modern studies and analysis show similar disparities in intellectual abilities between ethnicities and races, based on a number of tests designed in the modern day by many different institutions globally. The suggestion that IQ tests are on the whole are a racist ploy is very conspiratorial. Furthermore, it's pretty hard to imagine how one would design visuospatial and pattern matching problems so that they are discriminatory.
  - saghm 4y ago
    > Let's put this in the proper context. Many modern studies and analysis show similar disparities in intellectual abilities between ethnicities and races, based on a number of tests designed in the modern day by many different institutions globally. The suggestion that IQ tests are on the whole are a racist ploy is very conspiratorial. The parent comment that original suggested this claim linked to an article tracing the academic influences of the I.Q. test and other similar standardized testing frameworks, and it doesn't seem "very conspiratorial" to me in the absence of any specific critiques. > Furthermore, it's pretty hard to imagine how one would design visuospatial and pattern matching problems so that they are discriminatory. Maybe my imagination is more active than yours, but it doesn't seem that hard to imagine for me. Broadly speaking, I'd imagine that the process of coming up with any sort of test like this would consist of the following steps: 1. Come up with potential questions for the test 2. Assess people with the test in a controlled environment 3. Revise the set of questions based on the results of step 2, then repeat steps 2 and 3 until you're satisfied To tailor the results to a certain group, give the test to both people in and outside of that group in step 2, then in step 3 revise the questions towards the type that the favored group scored better on (e.g. throw out questions that the disfavored group scored better on, come up with more questions similar to the type that the favored group scored better on, etc.). You wouldn't be guaranteed to find a set of questions that ended up statistically favorable to the favored group, but it certainly doesn't seem very hard to imagine it might work sometimes, and for it to have happened, it only would need to have worked once.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
pazimzadeh 4y ago
For your argument to be valid, you would have to show that Chinese immigrants have always had higher than average IQ's (i.e. at the time the IQ test was first designed). Otherwise, all it means is that Chinese immigrants may have a higher capacity for work/studies (unless you are also arguing that Chinese people have rapidly been evolving intelligence in the last 100 years. And if so, why?). Which may or may not be genetic, but is definitely not the same thing as intelligence. I could not find that data, but I found this which is also interesting: Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology who has written an excellent book about intelligence, cites a study that followed a pool of Chinese-American children and a pool of white children into adulthood. The two groups started out with the same scores on I.Q. tests, but in the end 55 percent of the Asian-Americans entered high-status occupations, compared with one-third of the whites. To succeed as a manager, whites needed an I.Q. of 100, while Chinese-Americans needed an I.Q. of only 93. So the Asian advantage, Nisbett argues, isn’t intellectual firepower as such, but how it is harnessed. From https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/the-asian-advantage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/the-asian-... Plus, it's well known that one of the most reliable ways of improving IQ (and SAT scores) is to be born in a wealthier family. At the end of the day, it still not particularly important if different races score higher or lower on measures of intelligence. It is the environment which selects the traits in a population. There is no adaptive advantage to investing in intelligence if your environment does not require it. It would be "dumb" to be "too smart" if that makes sense. The right question is why is the environment selecting for these traits, whether they are passed down genetically or culturally.