Measurement of intelligence is a difficult matter. Ignore cultural biases and you will get wildly differing results from people of comparable intelligence. Work too hard to eliminate bias and you will get an IQ of 100 for everyone.
The single metric is just wrong. There need to be at least six distinct metrics. I can't remember them a…
Measurement of intelligence is a difficult matter. Ignore cultural biases and you will get wildly differing results from people of comparable intelligence. Work too hard to eliminate bias and you will get an IQ of 100 for everyone.
The single metric is just wrong. There need to be at least six distinct metrics. I can't remember them all and Google is hopeless, returning results on intelligence in the espionage sense. A few:
* mathematical ability
* spatial visualization
* language acquisition
* athletic ability
I score high on some, dismally on others.
One big problem is the extent to which intelligence skills have been exercised. I can do arithmetic in my head very well and any time I was stuck at a stoplight I would factor the six-digit number on the license plate in front of me into its prime factors so I got a lot of practice. OTOH I don't have a lot of athletic skill and in high school it took me the entire basketball season to be able to reliably shoot a basket and then the season was over.
3D is an interesting one because it's purely intelligence; we have been out of trees too long for thinking in 3D to be hard-wired. Parrots would score 500 on a 3D test, cats would score 500 on athletic IQ.
It's been a long time since I took an actual intelligence test but I remember being told I am not a genius but a lot closer to genius than to average. So what. Tensors mystify me though they are just one layer of abstraction atop math I know pretty well.
There is no evidence that black people are dumber than white people, but African cultures tend to include a lot more discursive (storytelling) tradition than logical and this inhibits the intellectual skills that lead to high scores on IQ tests. A lot of tests are based on recognition of patterns; a series of numbers, what is the next in the series? Not everyone thinks about numbers.
"The Bell Curve" was a deeply biased book; SJ Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" is a much better text. Murray set out to show that black people are dumb and his predetermined conclusion drove his analysis.
"Murray set out to show that black people are dumb and his predetermined conclusion drove his analysis"
Funny, I was just saying something very similar in a conversation on Medium. I think there are a number of propositions that Murray wants to defend, that black people are dumb is one of them, and then, yes, he's built his analysis around arriving at that conclusion. In an interview with Coleman Hughes he admits (though I think accidentally) that his motivation for his new book is proving that racial disparities are not due to racism.
I think you've nailed the whole IQ issue here. I don't think IQ is meaningless, but as you say, there are certain intellectual skills that lead to high IQ scores. This is quite different to saying that people who haven't developed those skills aren't intelligent. Or even that people who have developed those skills *are* intelligent.
Thanks for the book suggestion. I just bought the Kindle book. I'm a believer in looking at both sides of a coin. "The Bell Curve" seemed like proper scholarship but my thoughts on intelligence as a bundle of attributes left me with questions and doubts.
I've got lots to do and I spend a great deal of time reading when I should be doing them. Right now, go back to sleep. I should know better than you take a "quick" look at email when I wake up to pee ;0)
I'm only 19% thru "The Mismeasure of Man" (lots of stuff on my plate) but something that leaps off the page is how presumably intelligent people can unconsciously err in ways that confirm their existing notions. Not purposeful fraud, but blindness to their own data selections and ignoring things that would be obvious to a child once mentioned. Astounding. Something to examine in myself. I'm really glad that you mentioned this book.
The critique of "The Bell Curve" is an addition at the end. I look forward to something other than a knee-jerk "He's a racist" when I get there. As well written and comprehensible as that book was, my largest doubt was that something as complex as the diversity of human aptitudes can be crunched into a single number for ranking without bias, even if you honestly try. When you have an IQ well above average it is enticing to believe that it is more important than it is. "I'm smart" confirmation.
I wrote about something like this a few weeks ago; when one grows up a lot smarter and more knowledgable then everyone else one gets used to being right, and others wrong, almost all the time. My humbling has been gradual but even now I bristle when challenged, Just today I was telling some vegan that cats will go blind on a diet of vegetable protein he came back with "you're wrong," nothing more, I told him to google taurine and later he conceded. But that bland denial ticked me off.
It is amazing that so many people don't know what herbivore, omnivore and obligate carnivore mean. How can any cat owner not know that cats are obligate carnivores?
Years ago, I worked with a bunch of pranksters - serious pranks that would get you fired today. One of my over-the-top pranks got me paid back with my motorcycle on the roof. That was a good one. Nobody helped me get it down, I deserved that.
We had a guy with a MENSA coffee cup, proud of his IQ. Someone stuck a hose up his tailpipe and funneled a quart of motor oil into his muffler. When he left at the end of the day, he got about a quarter mile, and it looked like he was spraying for bugs. He pulled over and raised the hood. Engine running smoothly and no oil leaks in the engine compartment. The perpetrator followed him to make sure he didn't go to an auto repair shop and get ripped off. The next day was without mercy. "What was up with your car yesterday, GENIUS?" Anyone there other than Mr. MENSA would have said, "Which one of you assholes..." He never figured it out. IQ isn't everything. A really good prank, I wasn't the prankster.
"How can any cat owner not know that cats are obligate carnivores?"
Dogs are omnivorous but of course they can live on meat; most cats never eat anything else and their food is so loaded with protein that it will shorten a dog's life, to say nothing of ours. Cats make their own vitamin C, for example.
A few months ago I gave my torties a can of tuna. The next time I opened a can they came running over; they had only heard the opening sound once and that was several seconds before they had their first tuna. They remembered.
Measurement of intelligence is a difficult matter. Ignore cultural biases and you will get wildly differing results from people of comparable intelligence. Work too hard to eliminate bias and you will get an IQ of 100 for everyone.
The single metric is just wrong. There need to be at least six distinct metrics. I can't remember them all and Google is hopeless, returning results on intelligence in the espionage sense. A few:
* mathematical ability
* spatial visualization
* language acquisition
* athletic ability
I score high on some, dismally on others.
One big problem is the extent to which intelligence skills have been exercised. I can do arithmetic in my head very well and any time I was stuck at a stoplight I would factor the six-digit number on the license plate in front of me into its prime factors so I got a lot of practice. OTOH I don't have a lot of athletic skill and in high school it took me the entire basketball season to be able to reliably shoot a basket and then the season was over.
3D is an interesting one because it's purely intelligence; we have been out of trees too long for thinking in 3D to be hard-wired. Parrots would score 500 on a 3D test, cats would score 500 on athletic IQ.
It's been a long time since I took an actual intelligence test but I remember being told I am not a genius but a lot closer to genius than to average. So what. Tensors mystify me though they are just one layer of abstraction atop math I know pretty well.
There is no evidence that black people are dumber than white people, but African cultures tend to include a lot more discursive (storytelling) tradition than logical and this inhibits the intellectual skills that lead to high scores on IQ tests. A lot of tests are based on recognition of patterns; a series of numbers, what is the next in the series? Not everyone thinks about numbers.
"The Bell Curve" was a deeply biased book; SJ Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" is a much better text. Murray set out to show that black people are dumb and his predetermined conclusion drove his analysis.
"Murray set out to show that black people are dumb and his predetermined conclusion drove his analysis"
Funny, I was just saying something very similar in a conversation on Medium. I think there are a number of propositions that Murray wants to defend, that black people are dumb is one of them, and then, yes, he's built his analysis around arriving at that conclusion. In an interview with Coleman Hughes he admits (though I think accidentally) that his motivation for his new book is proving that racial disparities are not due to racism.
I think you've nailed the whole IQ issue here. I don't think IQ is meaningless, but as you say, there are certain intellectual skills that lead to high IQ scores. This is quite different to saying that people who haven't developed those skills aren't intelligent. Or even that people who have developed those skills *are* intelligent.
Why thank you. I think it's exactly akin to exercise. Whatever one's athletic potential to never use it means that one will not score well.
I think the multiple metrics point is very important and I wonder why it is so rarely discussed.
Thanks for the book suggestion. I just bought the Kindle book. I'm a believer in looking at both sides of a coin. "The Bell Curve" seemed like proper scholarship but my thoughts on intelligence as a bundle of attributes left me with questions and doubts.
I've got lots to do and I spend a great deal of time reading when I should be doing them. Right now, go back to sleep. I should know better than you take a "quick" look at email when I wake up to pee ;0)
I'm only 19% thru "The Mismeasure of Man" (lots of stuff on my plate) but something that leaps off the page is how presumably intelligent people can unconsciously err in ways that confirm their existing notions. Not purposeful fraud, but blindness to their own data selections and ignoring things that would be obvious to a child once mentioned. Astounding. Something to examine in myself. I'm really glad that you mentioned this book.
The critique of "The Bell Curve" is an addition at the end. I look forward to something other than a knee-jerk "He's a racist" when I get there. As well written and comprehensible as that book was, my largest doubt was that something as complex as the diversity of human aptitudes can be crunched into a single number for ranking without bias, even if you honestly try. When you have an IQ well above average it is enticing to believe that it is more important than it is. "I'm smart" confirmation.
I wrote about something like this a few weeks ago; when one grows up a lot smarter and more knowledgable then everyone else one gets used to being right, and others wrong, almost all the time. My humbling has been gradual but even now I bristle when challenged, Just today I was telling some vegan that cats will go blind on a diet of vegetable protein he came back with "you're wrong," nothing more, I told him to google taurine and later he conceded. But that bland denial ticked me off.
It is amazing that so many people don't know what herbivore, omnivore and obligate carnivore mean. How can any cat owner not know that cats are obligate carnivores?
Years ago, I worked with a bunch of pranksters - serious pranks that would get you fired today. One of my over-the-top pranks got me paid back with my motorcycle on the roof. That was a good one. Nobody helped me get it down, I deserved that.
We had a guy with a MENSA coffee cup, proud of his IQ. Someone stuck a hose up his tailpipe and funneled a quart of motor oil into his muffler. When he left at the end of the day, he got about a quarter mile, and it looked like he was spraying for bugs. He pulled over and raised the hood. Engine running smoothly and no oil leaks in the engine compartment. The perpetrator followed him to make sure he didn't go to an auto repair shop and get ripped off. The next day was without mercy. "What was up with your car yesterday, GENIUS?" Anyone there other than Mr. MENSA would have said, "Which one of you assholes..." He never figured it out. IQ isn't everything. A really good prank, I wasn't the prankster.
"How can any cat owner not know that cats are obligate carnivores?"
Dogs are omnivorous but of course they can live on meat; most cats never eat anything else and their food is so loaded with protein that it will shorten a dog's life, to say nothing of ours. Cats make their own vitamin C, for example.
A few months ago I gave my torties a can of tuna. The next time I opened a can they came running over; they had only heard the opening sound once and that was several seconds before they had their first tuna. They remembered.