4 ms·

The only insight IQ tests can give you is that anyone who gives them any merit is either a moron or uninformed.

by orng 3y ago

tordrt 3y ago
Not happy with your results eh?
dang 3y ago
Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? Comments like this break the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You're welcome to make substantive points thoughtfully, of course, whatever you're for or against.
tasuki 3y ago
Why?
erinaceousjones 3y ago
This is quite a dismissive stance, and I understand the context behind it: IQ was devised to measure broad population academic performance for schoolkids and has big flaws in how it measures that. But it still has merit as another psychological test battery you can do to determine areas in which you may struggle to process information. My working memory sucks [compared to the standard for my age range and demographic]. I've had access to stuff like RBANS (Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status), through psychologist friends working in memory clinics. IQ tests correlate that finding, and are much more readily available (ie. free and not locked behind institutional firewalls). Sure, the most thorough IQ tests are paywalled, but as a concept it's readily available online, though tests will yield you huge variation in scores. We can choose not to treat IQ as a tool to compare ourselves to other people, but rather as a tool to identify our own strengths and weaknesses within different areas of the test. Ignore the single score at end of test, think on what felt hard, and performance in the score breakdown. I would love to see more (better designed, statically rigorous) neuropsychological assessments become open and free to access. It would definitely have helped me growing up as an unknown AuDHD kid, to understand I really wasn't "a bright kid just making excuses for things I don't want to do".
wizzwizz4 3y ago
That's the only insight IQ scores can give you. But each IQ test tests for something, and IQ being a bunk concept doesn't invalidate that. Reading comprehension tests test end-to-end ability to process that test and those questions in this circumstance. What comes next? tests test your ability to understand and solve a particular set of puzzles: they're a decent proxy for pattern-recognition skills if you share cultural context with the test author and can handle the administrative overhead of that style of examination. And so on. It's nonsense to give yourself some overall score at the end (though this can make sense for populations), but that doesn't mean the tests are worthless.
- peterfirefly 3y ago
  > IQ being a bunk concept It's not.
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    If IQ was a bunk concept then the US military could save tens of billions of dollars a year by admitting people who don't meet the current threshold. Imagine the promotion you'd get for saving tens of billions a year, every year, in perpetuity.
cdrini 3y ago
I recently shifted my opinion on IQ tests a bit after watching a recent Veritasium video. He goes into the background/history/controversy of the test as well as some of the concrete impacts of the test and places where it's used. For example did you know the US military has an IQ minimum cutoff? And furthermore they have a second 'soft' cutoff, where only 20% of the military can have an IQ under a certain value. In the past they tried removing this second restriction, but had to reinstate it after seeing increases in casualties/indicators of reduced efficiency! So are IQ tests everything? No. But do they have no merit? Also no. It's somewhere in between. Would highly recommend a watch https://youtube.com/watch?v=FkKPsLxgpuY https://youtube.com/watch?v=FkKPsLxgpuY
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  IQ tests being invalid is more politics than science. Among other things, rejecting the existence of cognitive inequality is necessary to justify systemic racism via the continued existence of Asian quotas (Affirmative Action). Since lots of people benefit from this racism, there’s a huge interest in denial. In western countries, when there’s a few billion people in Asia, and you let a tiny amount in gatekeeping them on the basis of education/wealth/skills, it isn’t really all that much of a shock that they and their children are smarter then average. The only way this could NOT happen is if Asians were LESS intelligent than other groups on average. IQ tests are hilariously predictive of success if you’re doing a task which is similar to taking an IQ test like academics. They strongly indicate certain mental disorders. Low IQ is more predictive of success than High IQ. Maybe people take the difference between scoring a FSIQ of 110 vs 140 entirely too seriously, but the difference between somebody with 60 vs 90 is staggering.
  - indigoabstract 3y ago
    > Low IQ is more predictive of success than High IQ. I'm curious what you meant by that. Could you please explain?
    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
      A very low IQ has a very clear and predictable effect on life. A very high IQ does not.

The only insight IQ tests can give you is that anyone who gives them any merit is either a moron or uninformed.

by orng 3y ago

The only insight IQ tests can give you is that anyone who gives them any merit is either a moron or uninformed.

tordrt 3y ago

Not happy with your results eh?

dang 3y ago

Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? Comments like this break the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. You're welcome to make substantive points thoughtfully, of course, whatever you're for or against.

tasuki 3y ago

Why?

erinaceousjones 3y ago

This is quite a dismissive stance, and I understand the context behind it: IQ was devised to measure broad population academic performance for schoolkids and has big flaws in how it measures that. But it still has merit as another psychological test battery you can do to determine areas in which you may struggle to process information. My working memory sucks [compared to the standard for my age range and demographic]. I've had access to stuff like RBANS (Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status), through psychologist friends working in memory clinics. IQ tests correlate that finding, and are much more readily available (ie. free and not locked behind institutional firewalls). Sure, the most thorough IQ tests are paywalled, but as a concept it's readily available online, though tests will yield you huge variation in scores. We can choose not to treat IQ as a tool to compare ourselves to other people, but rather as a tool to identify our own strengths and weaknesses within different areas of the test. Ignore the single score at end of test, think on what felt hard, and performance in the score breakdown. I would love to see more (better designed, statically rigorous) neuropsychological assessments become open and free to access. It would definitely have helped me growing up as an unknown AuDHD kid, to understand I really wasn't "a bright kid just making excuses for things I don't want to do".

wizzwizz4 3y ago

That's the only insight IQ scores can give you. But each IQ test tests for something, and IQ being a bunk concept doesn't invalidate that. Reading comprehension tests test end-to-end ability to process that test and those questions in this circumstance. What comes next? tests test your ability to understand and solve a particular set of puzzles: they're a decent proxy for pattern-recognition skills if you share cultural context with the test author and can handle the administrative overhead of that style of examination. And so on. It's nonsense to give yourself some overall score at the end (though this can make sense for populations), but that doesn't mean the tests are worthless.

peterfirefly 3y ago
> IQ being a bunk concept It's not.
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  If IQ was a bunk concept then the US military could save tens of billions of dollars a year by admitting people who don't meet the current threshold. Imagine the promotion you'd get for saving tens of billions a year, every year, in perpetuity.

cdrini 3y ago

I recently shifted my opinion on IQ tests a bit after watching a recent Veritasium video. He goes into the background/history/controversy of the test as well as some of the concrete impacts of the test and places where it's used. For example did you know the US military has an IQ minimum cutoff? And furthermore they have a second 'soft' cutoff, where only 20% of the military can have an IQ under a certain value. In the past they tried removing this second restriction, but had to reinstate it after seeing increases in casualties/indicators of reduced efficiency! So are IQ tests everything? No. But do they have no merit? Also no. It's somewhere in between. Would highly recommend a watch https://youtube.com/watch?v=FkKPsLxgpuY https://youtube.com/watch?v=FkKPsLxgpuY

faeriechangling 3y ago
IQ tests being invalid is more politics than science. Among other things, rejecting the existence of cognitive inequality is necessary to justify systemic racism via the continued existence of Asian quotas (Affirmative Action). Since lots of people benefit from this racism, there’s a huge interest in denial. In western countries, when there’s a few billion people in Asia, and you let a tiny amount in gatekeeping them on the basis of education/wealth/skills, it isn’t really all that much of a shock that they and their children are smarter then average. The only way this could NOT happen is if Asians were LESS intelligent than other groups on average. IQ tests are hilariously predictive of success if you’re doing a task which is similar to taking an IQ test like academics. They strongly indicate certain mental disorders. Low IQ is more predictive of success than High IQ. Maybe people take the difference between scoring a FSIQ of 110 vs 140 entirely too seriously, but the difference between somebody with 60 vs 90 is staggering.
- indigoabstract 3y ago
  > Low IQ is more predictive of success than High IQ. I'm curious what you meant by that. Could you please explain?
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago
    A very low IQ has a very clear and predictable effect on life. A very high IQ does not.