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Its an modern open-source and collaborative resource of IQ style questions for research studies. IQ has a lot of flaws, not the least of which is its usage outs

Its an modern open-source and collaborative resource of IQ style questions for research studies. IQ has a lot of flaws, not the least of which is its usage outside of academic research, as a measure of job aptitude and hiring potential (spoiling its utility as a metric since the questions can be trained... setting aside its dubious usefulness as a hiring tool anyway). It seems like ICAR is spending a-lot of effort to remain scientific, and i feel like a website like this goes against that by spoiling the test utility for future potential participants.

fsckboy 1y ago
>i feel like a website like this goes against that what do you mean "a website like this", HN? or the destination of the link at the top of this discussion? The link for this discussion goes to the test on the same site that you link to. Are you saying people need to make their way to that test from the front page of the site following particular breadcrumbs? that people from HN shouldn't go there till they're ready to participate in a scientific manner? i just don't understand your point...
- aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
  These tests serve no purpose outside of academic studdies. Distributing them for people to self-score sully their scientific value, and perpetuate their use for unsound usecases.
  - fsckboy 1y ago
    so you're saying you have an agenda and you're pushing it. Psychologists are scientists and the replicability of IQ testing is extremely high and repeatedly confirmed. And despite how much psychosocially challenged nerds here like to complain about psychology, they are in good company: psychology itself is not normie opressors, psychologists are also psychosocially challenged nerds. before you say anything else, the statistical methods we use today across medical testing were first applied and developed to psychometric testing, so if you are going to attack that, you are attacking all of medical science.
    - 5123123 1y ago
      [flagged]
    - aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
      Im honestly not sure what you're trying to get across here. IQ is a dated but good scientific tool to measure cognitive differences across large samples of humans. I never said they're not scientific. They're invaluable statistical tools. I'm saying their use outside of academia for hiring (among other things) is a fundamental missuse of both the tests and statistics. Online versions of ICAR tests like these serve little purpose for anyone, and at worst encourage people to abuse ICAR in a similar way.
    - tptacek 1y ago
      No, I think he's closer to the science than this comment is. IQ has validity for its intended purpose of as a diagnostic tool for cognitive deficits. It is in fact not a valid tool for casually ranking ability based on individual tests, both because of test-retest consistency and because ordinality of IQ breaks down as scores get higher. I think you could have written a reasonably strong argument that the parent commenter overstated their case, but you didn't do that: you just overstated the opposite pole of the argument and then declared the discussion off limits due to politics.
      - fsckboy 1y ago
        >ordinality of IQ breaks down as scores get higher ordinality of any sample from a Gaussian process breaks down as the thin part of the population density is approached, but that will only affect those at least three sigmas above or below, so it's an edge case that doesn't matter for the fat part of the curve. you are cherry picking pieces of arguments that might threaten your "nobody is better than anybody else" anti-merit ideology. "From those who have the ability to those who have the need" is a merit-based sickle, comrade, and IQ is its hammer, is my argument. >I think you could have written a reasonably strong argument that the parent commenter overstated their case, but you didn't do that: you just overstated the opposite pole of the argument and then declared the discussion off limits due to politics I don't think you really think any of that. You are disingenuous if you claim that your (collective (in more than one sense of the word)) side wants to actually discuss the science of IQ; you simply want it removed from the discussion because it does not support your politics. If the economy rewards high IQs, and people have social mobility, you will see an economic sorting from top to bottom, and you don't like that. If IQ has genetic factors (which it seems to) that's a bigger disaster because once the economic sorting takes place, social mobility goes away (the latter half of the 20th century) A true scientific socialist would not try to imagine/censor these problems away in a central committee, but would admit them and try to figure out better ways. I talked about the science of IQ in my comment something that you did not actually engage with. the correct wording would have been for you to say "g does not exist" and provide some basis for that belief
rasebo 1y ago
IQ is limited because it only looks at one facet and it generalizes a lot. Tests that look both into ability and aptitude, and especially those who split them by domain are much more relevant and applicable to real world scenarios.
- aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
  IQ does actually measure quite widely, but only one of many parts (the visual pattern matching part) is widely know outside of academic use. But even then it should not be used for hiring or intelligence scoring people against one-another. If you actually want to test people for hiring, using domain specific interview questions and tests is a-lot more reasonable and usefully correlated with real-world job performance.
anonym29 1y ago
>IQ has a lot of flaws, not the least of which is its usage outside of academic research, as a measure of job aptitude and hiring potential Isn't IQ one of the best predictors of job training success, across both civilian and military, blue collar and white collar? It's also one of, if not the single most generalizable predictors that we know of right now, even more so than nationality, race, gender, SES (socioeconomic status), parental SES, you name it. It predicts just about everything - from hard biological measures like reaction time and brain mass to lifetime odds of being in a car accident (distinct from causing a car accident - higher IQ people are statistically less likely to be hit by another driver), divorce rates, lifetime income, longevity, the list goes on and on. IQ is not the strongest predictor for every one of these, but every stronger predictor for any one of those fails to predict as many things as IQ does. Parental SES, controlling for IQ, provides no predictive power for your reaction time, for instance, despite predicting educational attainment better than IQ does. The critique that IQ is an imperfect proxy for g is totally valid. The self-assuaging fantasy that g itself doesn't exist is a classic example of a psychological defensive mechanism of rejection, one rooted in a need to defend a worldview that holds all people as inherently equal, when we're measurably, biologically not.
- aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
  IQ is meant for population statistics. For that purpose it's a great scientific tool. > socioeconomic status No. A real IQ test tries to cancel out educational level from the score by comparing people in buckets of age, education and a few other importance factors. A systematic deviation of education quality in the same "level" is not possible to cancel out, making IQ indirectly measure socioeconomic status. Hence why the us governments banned IQ on the basis or racism for government hiring. You cannot measure two prople with 1/4th of a IQ test (logic puzzle is only one part of a full test) and make any useful statistical conclusions. A domain specific interview question or aptitude test a much clearer value to hiring prococess.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    ... no it isn't? IQ tests were explicitly designed as individual diagnostics. They're clinical tools. From where did you get the idea that IQ was meant for population statistics?

fsckboy 1y ago

>i feel like a website like this goes against that what do you mean "a website like this", HN? or the destination of the link at the top of this discussion? The link for this discussion goes to the test on the same site that you link to. Are you saying people need to make their way to that test from the front page of the site following particular breadcrumbs? that people from HN shouldn't go there till they're ready to participate in a scientific manner? i just don't understand your point...

aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
These tests serve no purpose outside of academic studdies. Distributing them for people to self-score sully their scientific value, and perpetuate their use for unsound usecases.
- fsckboy 1y ago
  so you're saying you have an agenda and you're pushing it. Psychologists are scientists and the replicability of IQ testing is extremely high and repeatedly confirmed. And despite how much psychosocially challenged nerds here like to complain about psychology, they are in good company: psychology itself is not normie opressors, psychologists are also psychosocially challenged nerds. before you say anything else, the statistical methods we use today across medical testing were first applied and developed to psychometric testing, so if you are going to attack that, you are attacking all of medical science.
  - 5123123 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
    Im honestly not sure what you're trying to get across here. IQ is a dated but good scientific tool to measure cognitive differences across large samples of humans. I never said they're not scientific. They're invaluable statistical tools. I'm saying their use outside of academia for hiring (among other things) is a fundamental missuse of both the tests and statistics. Online versions of ICAR tests like these serve little purpose for anyone, and at worst encourage people to abuse ICAR in a similar way.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    No, I think he's closer to the science than this comment is. IQ has validity for its intended purpose of as a diagnostic tool for cognitive deficits. It is in fact not a valid tool for casually ranking ability based on individual tests, both because of test-retest consistency and because ordinality of IQ breaks down as scores get higher. I think you could have written a reasonably strong argument that the parent commenter overstated their case, but you didn't do that: you just overstated the opposite pole of the argument and then declared the discussion off limits due to politics.
    - fsckboy 1y ago
      >ordinality of IQ breaks down as scores get higher ordinality of any sample from a Gaussian process breaks down as the thin part of the population density is approached, but that will only affect those at least three sigmas above or below, so it's an edge case that doesn't matter for the fat part of the curve. you are cherry picking pieces of arguments that might threaten your "nobody is better than anybody else" anti-merit ideology. "From those who have the ability to those who have the need" is a merit-based sickle, comrade, and IQ is its hammer, is my argument. >I think you could have written a reasonably strong argument that the parent commenter overstated their case, but you didn't do that: you just overstated the opposite pole of the argument and then declared the discussion off limits due to politics I don't think you really think any of that. You are disingenuous if you claim that your (collective (in more than one sense of the word)) side wants to actually discuss the science of IQ; you simply want it removed from the discussion because it does not support your politics. If the economy rewards high IQs, and people have social mobility, you will see an economic sorting from top to bottom, and you don't like that. If IQ has genetic factors (which it seems to) that's a bigger disaster because once the economic sorting takes place, social mobility goes away (the latter half of the 20th century) A true scientific socialist would not try to imagine/censor these problems away in a central committee, but would admit them and try to figure out better ways. I talked about the science of IQ in my comment something that you did not actually engage with. the correct wording would have been for you to say "g does not exist" and provide some basis for that belief

rasebo 1y ago

IQ is limited because it only looks at one facet and it generalizes a lot. Tests that look both into ability and aptitude, and especially those who split them by domain are much more relevant and applicable to real world scenarios.

aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
IQ does actually measure quite widely, but only one of many parts (the visual pattern matching part) is widely know outside of academic use. But even then it should not be used for hiring or intelligence scoring people against one-another. If you actually want to test people for hiring, using domain specific interview questions and tests is a-lot more reasonable and usefully correlated with real-world job performance.

anonym29 1y ago

>IQ has a lot of flaws, not the least of which is its usage outside of academic research, as a measure of job aptitude and hiring potential Isn't IQ one of the best predictors of job training success, across both civilian and military, blue collar and white collar? It's also one of, if not the single most generalizable predictors that we know of right now, even more so than nationality, race, gender, SES (socioeconomic status), parental SES, you name it. It predicts just about everything - from hard biological measures like reaction time and brain mass to lifetime odds of being in a car accident (distinct from causing a car accident - higher IQ people are statistically less likely to be hit by another driver), divorce rates, lifetime income, longevity, the list goes on and on. IQ is not the strongest predictor for every one of these, but every stronger predictor for any one of those fails to predict as many things as IQ does. Parental SES, controlling for IQ, provides no predictive power for your reaction time, for instance, despite predicting educational attainment better than IQ does. The critique that IQ is an imperfect proxy for g is totally valid. The self-assuaging fantasy that g itself doesn't exist is a classic example of a psychological defensive mechanism of rejection, one rooted in a need to defend a worldview that holds all people as inherently equal, when we're measurably, biologically not.

aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
IQ is meant for population statistics. For that purpose it's a great scientific tool. > socioeconomic status No. A real IQ test tries to cancel out educational level from the score by comparing people in buckets of age, education and a few other importance factors. A systematic deviation of education quality in the same "level" is not possible to cancel out, making IQ indirectly measure socioeconomic status. Hence why the us governments banned IQ on the basis or racism for government hiring. You cannot measure two prople with 1/4th of a IQ test (logic puzzle is only one part of a full test) and make any useful statistical conclusions. A domain specific interview question or aptitude test a much clearer value to hiring prococess.
- tptacek 1y ago
  ... no it isn't? IQ tests were explicitly designed as individual diagnostics. They're clinical tools. From where did you get the idea that IQ was meant for population statistics?