5 ms·

That's because in the past, the IQ tests were not fair, objective and colour-blind, but were set up in such a way as to bias against poorer people (which will b

by moldbug 15y ago

That's because in the past, the IQ tests were not fair, objective and colour-blind, but were set up in such a way as to bias against poorer people (which will be mostly black in the USA). Is this a conspiracy theory? It sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory to me. Just sayin'. Conspiracies do happen. However, when you're trying to persuade me of a conspiracy theory, the burden of proof is high. I expect links - lots of them - and good ones. Try to avoid linking to frauds: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/06/did_stephen_jay_gould_fudge_hi.html http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/06/did_stephen_jay_gould_f... FYI, the most accurate IQ tests available at this time were Raven's matrices: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravens_Progressive_Matrices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravens_Progressive_Matrices I think these have lost some reliability because of a training effect from the general popularity of cognitive brainteasers (probably the cause of the Flynn effect). However, it would be interesting to hear someone explain how they were designed by racists to be racist. (Wikipedia tells me they were originally the Coloured Progressive Matrices, which does sound mighty suspicious...)

raganwald 15y ago
Is this a conspiracy theory? At the risk of dragging this thread back onto the topic of the story... The story describes a number of people who put obstacles in Gwen’s way. None of them are described as being malicious, none of them got together and “conspired.” Some of them genuinely thought they were acting in Gwen’s best interests. So if someone says that IQ tests were set up in such a way as to create bias, perhaps we can believe that yes they were biased, and possibly deliberately so, without thinking about conspiracies or racism, just people attempting to do what they thought at the time was in everyone’s best interests.
- moldbug 15y ago
  "Set up in such a way as to" is a deliberately ambiguous construction. It allows the reader to believe that there is, or is not, a conspiracy. If I say, "Harvard admissions are set up in such a way as to admit large numbers of Jews," someone believing in a Jewish conspiracy will hear my dog-whistle and agree with me. But to someone not believing in a Jewish conspiracy, I can deny everything. A highly useful and malignant propaganda device. And when you add "possibly deliberately so," you prove this point completely. What else could "deliberately so" mean? So, it may be a Jewish conspiracy that Harvard admits lots of Jews. But it might not be. That's some compromise position. Normally, when we think of conspiracy theories (like Holocaust denial), we classify Holocaust deniers and "Holocaust agnostics" in the same bin. And rightly so. I'm certainly not interested in compromising on the position that maybe the Holocaust happened, but maybe it didn't. Also, when I believe things, I prefer to believe them on better evidence than "perhaps we can believe." Sorry - I know it's an inspiring story and you're not looking for a flamewar. This is Asperger-infested HN, however. Geeks like their facts cold, hard, and entirely factual - don't they?
  - raganwald 15y ago
    I am often deliberately ambiguous about the motives of people I don’t know well. For example, you may or may not be deliberately grinding your pet axe about race and IQ tests in a story which is not really about intelligence but actually about overcoming obstacles. And I choose to believe that you are capable of adding more signal and less noise. On very poor evidence, so far.
    - moldbug 15y ago
      I wasn't responding to the original story, but to a comment which I felt made unfair and scurrilous accusations about scientists of the past whom I respect. It's true that these charges are conventional in our society. Most people would let them pass without notice. However, most people would not endorse letting the unacceptable pass without notice - so I don't think I'm being antisocial.
    - blasdel 15y ago
      He is capable of adding extraordinary quantities of both signal and noise, as evidenced by his collected writings: http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/ http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/
  - mindcrime 15y ago
    Geeks like their facts cold, hard, and entirely factual - don't they? Sort of. Those of us who live in the real world, where there are shades of grey around every corner, and where subtlety and nuance count for a lot, have realized that we can't always have things served up to us like that. Unfortunately real life stubbornly refuses to bend to the will of us geeks (and yes, I definitely am one) who want things to behave in ways that can be modeled strictly by cold, hard facts.
  - VigUi7vv8G2 15y ago
    "If I say, "Harvard admissions are set up in such a way as to admit large numbers of Jews," someone believing in a Jewish conspiracy will hear my dog-whistle and agree with me." Actually, in the past Harvard deliberately restricted the number of jews they admitted: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/harvard.html http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/ha...
phillmv 15y ago
It's not a conspiracy theory. >However, it would be interesting to hear someone explain how they were designed by racists to be racist. No one in this thread has claimed this. Stop trying to invent a polemic. It just turns out that whatever IQ does measure correlates heavily with income and where you were born which in turn correlates with race.
- spindritf 15y ago
  > It just turns out that whatever IQ does measure correlates heavily with income Yes, also with high job performance. Actually, IQ correlates with income regardless of family background. That's exactly why it's useful. I tried to pry the source from JSTOR but failed miserably so here's a crappy pdf copy of "Income Inequality and IQ" http://www.aei.org/book/society-and-culture/citizenship/income-inequality-and-iq/ http://www.aei.org/book/society-and-culture/citizenship/inco...
- moldbug 15y ago
  No one in this thread has claimed this. Stop trying to invent a polemic. Note that this comment was posted before raganwald wrote "and possibly deliberately so," above. So it's not as obtuse as it looks.
dailyllama 15y ago
A test needn't be purposefully bigoted to be effectively bigoted. If I were to sit down and try to create a test of intelligence right now, I'd almost certainly include dozens of biases based on my own abilities, perceptions and experiences. Many of these biases would translate into higher scores for people like me, and lower scores for those whose lives differed. This would create a situation where, either by malice of negligence, the process would be bigoted. ---- Sperazzo published a paper in 1959 documenting racial differences between Negros and Whites in these tests, and also noting as a previous given that "the performance test is sensitive to socioeconomic background". As such, it seems like it was known, at the time, that it wasn't so much a test of intelligence but a test of race and socioeconomic status.
wickedchicken 15y ago
> Is this a conspiracy theory? It sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory to me. Just sayin'. On the contrary, it was probably a mixture of ignorance and 'common knowledge.' I'm going to assume that if you're posting on this site that you probably are involved with making websites or software. Were you aware that a portion of your customers are colorblind in some way? Did you actively design your site to be hard for them to use? Probably not. Does that mean it is a non-issue? No. Much in the same way, white male test-makers make IQ tests that they think "anyone should know," without realizing that capable people with different backgrounds would not score very well at all.
rmc 15y ago
For many IQ tests there is a correlation between wealth and high IQ results (and conversely, poverty and low IQ tests). IQ tests, do no measure 'innate intelligence' (mostly because no-one really knows what that even is or how to measure it). As a result if you have more, and better education and schooling, you more more likely to have a higher IQ. So if you're in a group that has worse and less education, you're more likely to have lower IQ. As an example of how IQ test results aren't too reliable: IQ tests have been rising year on year for decades (the Flynn effect). Either we're all a pile of geniuses (which makes you wonder what score people in the middle ages got), or IQ test is inflenced by external things.
- spindritf 15y ago
  > For many IQ tests there is a correlation between wealth and high IQ results [...] As a result if you have more, and better education and schooling, you more more likely to have a higher IQ. But the causal link between parents' income and kid's academic success is small to non-existent[1] so even if there are factors influencing IQ, wealth doesn't seem to be one, at least not in this way. [1] "Low Family Income Not a Major Reason For Poor Student Achievement" http://educationnext.org/low-family-income-not-a-major-reason-for-poor-student-achievement/ http://educationnext.org/low-family-income-not-a-major-reaso...
- nostrademons 15y ago
  You said correlation, not causation, and that's an important point. Wealth is also correlated with what's presumed to be "innate intelligence", as is education. We don't know what the direction of causation is - whether intelligence causes education which causes wealth, or whether intelligence causes both education and wealth, or whether wealth results in more education which result in higher scores on IQ tests. The measure we usually associate with "innate intelligence", the so-called "G-factor", is actually defined as the correlation between several different factors (education, grades in several subjects, various standardized tests including IQ, career success, socioeconomic status) that all trend in the same direction. It's basically a PCA on the observed metrics. There's no way to measure intelligence directly or even know for sure that it exists as a separate innate "thing" - all we know is that a large number of observable metrics are positively correlated, and then we give a name to the correlation.

by moldbug 15y ago

raganwald 15y ago

Is this a conspiracy theory? At the risk of dragging this thread back onto the topic of the story... The story describes a number of people who put obstacles in Gwen’s way. None of them are described as being malicious, none of them got together and “conspired.” Some of them genuinely thought they were acting in Gwen’s best interests. So if someone says that IQ tests were set up in such a way as to create bias, perhaps we can believe that yes they were biased, and possibly deliberately so, without thinking about conspiracies or racism, just people attempting to do what they thought at the time was in everyone’s best interests.

moldbug 15y ago
"Set up in such a way as to" is a deliberately ambiguous construction. It allows the reader to believe that there is, or is not, a conspiracy. If I say, "Harvard admissions are set up in such a way as to admit large numbers of Jews," someone believing in a Jewish conspiracy will hear my dog-whistle and agree with me. But to someone not believing in a Jewish conspiracy, I can deny everything. A highly useful and malignant propaganda device. And when you add "possibly deliberately so," you prove this point completely. What else could "deliberately so" mean? So, it may be a Jewish conspiracy that Harvard admits lots of Jews. But it might not be. That's some compromise position. Normally, when we think of conspiracy theories (like Holocaust denial), we classify Holocaust deniers and "Holocaust agnostics" in the same bin. And rightly so. I'm certainly not interested in compromising on the position that maybe the Holocaust happened, but maybe it didn't. Also, when I believe things, I prefer to believe them on better evidence than "perhaps we can believe." Sorry - I know it's an inspiring story and you're not looking for a flamewar. This is Asperger-infested HN, however. Geeks like their facts cold, hard, and entirely factual - don't they?
- raganwald 15y ago
  I am often deliberately ambiguous about the motives of people I don’t know well. For example, you may or may not be deliberately grinding your pet axe about race and IQ tests in a story which is not really about intelligence but actually about overcoming obstacles. And I choose to believe that you are capable of adding more signal and less noise. On very poor evidence, so far.
  - moldbug 15y ago
    I wasn't responding to the original story, but to a comment which I felt made unfair and scurrilous accusations about scientists of the past whom I respect. It's true that these charges are conventional in our society. Most people would let them pass without notice. However, most people would not endorse letting the unacceptable pass without notice - so I don't think I'm being antisocial.
  - blasdel 15y ago
    He is capable of adding extraordinary quantities of both signal and noise, as evidenced by his collected writings: http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/ http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/
- mindcrime 15y ago
  Geeks like their facts cold, hard, and entirely factual - don't they? Sort of. Those of us who live in the real world, where there are shades of grey around every corner, and where subtlety and nuance count for a lot, have realized that we can't always have things served up to us like that. Unfortunately real life stubbornly refuses to bend to the will of us geeks (and yes, I definitely am one) who want things to behave in ways that can be modeled strictly by cold, hard facts.
- VigUi7vv8G2 15y ago
  "If I say, "Harvard admissions are set up in such a way as to admit large numbers of Jews," someone believing in a Jewish conspiracy will hear my dog-whistle and agree with me." Actually, in the past Harvard deliberately restricted the number of jews they admitted: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/harvard.html http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/ha...

phillmv 15y ago

It's not a conspiracy theory. >However, it would be interesting to hear someone explain how they were designed by racists to be racist. No one in this thread has claimed this. Stop trying to invent a polemic. It just turns out that whatever IQ does measure correlates heavily with income and where you were born which in turn correlates with race.

spindritf 15y ago
> It just turns out that whatever IQ does measure correlates heavily with income Yes, also with high job performance. Actually, IQ correlates with income regardless of family background. That's exactly why it's useful. I tried to pry the source from JSTOR but failed miserably so here's a crappy pdf copy of "Income Inequality and IQ" http://www.aei.org/book/society-and-culture/citizenship/income-inequality-and-iq/ http://www.aei.org/book/society-and-culture/citizenship/inco...
moldbug 15y ago
No one in this thread has claimed this. Stop trying to invent a polemic. Note that this comment was posted before raganwald wrote "and possibly deliberately so," above. So it's not as obtuse as it looks.

dailyllama 15y ago

A test needn't be purposefully bigoted to be effectively bigoted. If I were to sit down and try to create a test of intelligence right now, I'd almost certainly include dozens of biases based on my own abilities, perceptions and experiences. Many of these biases would translate into higher scores for people like me, and lower scores for those whose lives differed. This would create a situation where, either by malice of negligence, the process would be bigoted. ---- Sperazzo published a paper in 1959 documenting racial differences between Negros and Whites in these tests, and also noting as a previous given that "the performance test is sensitive to socioeconomic background". As such, it seems like it was known, at the time, that it wasn't so much a test of intelligence but a test of race and socioeconomic status.

wickedchicken 15y ago

> Is this a conspiracy theory? It sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory to me. Just sayin'. On the contrary, it was probably a mixture of ignorance and 'common knowledge.' I'm going to assume that if you're posting on this site that you probably are involved with making websites or software. Were you aware that a portion of your customers are colorblind in some way? Did you actively design your site to be hard for them to use? Probably not. Does that mean it is a non-issue? No. Much in the same way, white male test-makers make IQ tests that they think "anyone should know," without realizing that capable people with different backgrounds would not score very well at all.

rmc 15y ago

For many IQ tests there is a correlation between wealth and high IQ results (and conversely, poverty and low IQ tests). IQ tests, do no measure 'innate intelligence' (mostly because no-one really knows what that even is or how to measure it). As a result if you have more, and better education and schooling, you more more likely to have a higher IQ. So if you're in a group that has worse and less education, you're more likely to have lower IQ. As an example of how IQ test results aren't too reliable: IQ tests have been rising year on year for decades (the Flynn effect). Either we're all a pile of geniuses (which makes you wonder what score people in the middle ages got), or IQ test is inflenced by external things.

spindritf 15y ago
> For many IQ tests there is a correlation between wealth and high IQ results [...] As a result if you have more, and better education and schooling, you more more likely to have a higher IQ. But the causal link between parents' income and kid's academic success is small to non-existent[1] so even if there are factors influencing IQ, wealth doesn't seem to be one, at least not in this way. [1] "Low Family Income Not a Major Reason For Poor Student Achievement" http://educationnext.org/low-family-income-not-a-major-reason-for-poor-student-achievement/ http://educationnext.org/low-family-income-not-a-major-reaso...
nostrademons 15y ago
You said correlation, not causation, and that's an important point. Wealth is also correlated with what's presumed to be "innate intelligence", as is education. We don't know what the direction of causation is - whether intelligence causes education which causes wealth, or whether intelligence causes both education and wealth, or whether wealth results in more education which result in higher scores on IQ tests. The measure we usually associate with "innate intelligence", the so-called "G-factor", is actually defined as the correlation between several different factors (education, grades in several subjects, various standardized tests including IQ, career success, socioeconomic status) that all trend in the same direction. It's basically a PCA on the observed metrics. There's no way to measure intelligence directly or even know for sure that it exists as a separate innate "thing" - all we know is that a large number of observable metrics are positively correlated, and then we give a name to the correlation.