You totally missed the point, didn’t you?
You had an actual point?
:dubious:
Nope. Your point seems to be that ianzin is wrong in thinking that IQ is largely irrelevant. I think he’s right, and I don’t think that the fact that people who tend to do well on tests tend to do well on other tests too shows that he’s wrong. Or are you making some other point that I’m not getting?
But this isn’t an accurate statement of how I formed my views, is it? If you care to read what I actually wrote in that other thread, you’ll see that my view is derived from many sources, not just my own feelings and biases. Far from ignoring evidence to the contrary, I would be fascinated by it. It might help me to form a better opinion! My outlook is simply this: I go where the evidence leads me. No bias, no pre-conceived idea of what the outcome must be.
Until this thread, every bit of relevant experience I had (from personal experience, from listening to other people, from stuff I’d read), told me that IQ tests simply measure how well you did on an IQ test and not much else. Then this thread started, and you offered some sources to the contrary. Fine! I took a look at what you had to offer. Now, as it happens, in this particular case I wasn’t swayed by what you offered. But that’s OK. There’s no reason why we have to see things the same way. But, hey, if you’ve got more, and if you can help me learn something I didn’t know before, that’s fine by me! I’d welcome it.
I didn’t say much about what my own teachers told me. I said I had spoken to lots of teachers in many different environments, and I have. I used to do shows and talks in schools and colleges, all over the world, and I also happen to have known a lot of very experience teachers. That’s ‘teachers’, as in the profession, not necessarily the teachers I had when I was at school.
At the risk of stating the obvious, which shouldn’t be necessary, you have absolutely no idea whether I accepted anything ‘without a lot of thought’. You have no way of knowing how much thought I’ve put into any of my views. No way at all. All you know is that on this issue, I happen to have arrived at a different conclusion than you.
At the risk of stating the obvious again, when you start with the name-calling and silly insults, it doesn’t matter to me at all and doesn’t make me look bad. It just makes you look ridiculous and infantile, and undermines any argument you’re trying to present. I’m sure you’re not ridiculous and infantile. But chucking silly insults around gives that impression. Still, never too late for a simple apology…
Yes, I couldn’t agree more. Which is why I wrote, “There is always the possibility that I’m completely wrong about this. In which case, I’ll be happy to have my ignorance defeated and to learn a thing or two that I didn’t know before. By all means, help me to form better views and opinions in future.” Wasn’t that clear enough for you?
I think this is a statement that you have not taken to heart.
Given that you cannot point to those sources, I would say it’s pretty accurate. But there’s no need to quibble. I did a quick google search for “correlation” and “iq” and found the following chart which was apparently published in Scientific American.
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/~reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfredbox2.html
Contrary to your claims, it shows a strong corellation between IQ and various life outcomes. Do you believe that the data in the chart have been falsified or are some sort of statistical fluke?
Then enjoy. And feel free to do more internet searches for “IQ” and “correlation.”
Correlation is not proof, note the disclaimer too,
I will say that at least by working this way, it avoids the criticism of racism and cultural bias neatly, one wonder why so much trouble was taken to do so.
Note also that this is discussing the so called ‘g’ factor, which extracts data from a number of differant tests, including IQ, and also takes into account other factors to attempt to arrive at a figure for ‘g’
The development of ‘g’ itself is not without critics, but in any case, how do you imagine those other factors were arrived at ?
I’ll help you here - its not just by using IQ tests.
Here is a light introduction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor
I will also point out that the author of the article makes statement of facts when those facts are strongly disputed, Linda S Gottfredon has certainly recieved funding from the Pioneer Fund, which was in its earlier days, without any shadow of doubt a racist organisation which funded any research that looked like it would prove an intellectual differance between races, more specifically, that blacks were genetically disposed to lower intelligence.
Others argue that the Pioneer fund has changed over time, but the smell still hangs around it, but the main criticism of her theory of the ‘g’ factor from most other practitioners in her field is that it is still much too crude, perhaps they mean that it should examine more data, perhaps some say it is a model that can be developed, but whatever their comments, its clear that what the linked artical states as fact, is not held in the same regard by others.
It’s not unusual for scientific development to work this way, and for every theory there are always a number of contrary view, each with their data and reasons.
The relevance of the IQ test alone is only seen as being definative by a few, most other views of intelligence attempt to stitch this into a wider picture, with all kinds of normalising factors, or use it as part of other assessments, it is easily recognised by the public, who likes to have things very simple, it saves having to actually read and think about intelligence, or in a wider view, about the way society is constructed, but simplicity is not always a good explanation, and this is one of those occasions.
Why do some organisations still place such relevance to the IQ test, because its cheap, looks like something is being done, yet nearly all sociologists think it is not acurrate.
lskinner, did you bother to read my post at all? Probably not - for some reason my posts usually get lost in the shuffle. But I have a feeling you’re simply skipping most of the texts of posts that appear to disagree with you.
My point was, correlation to successful outcomes within the same culture does nothing to invalidate the point that an IQ test is highly culture-dependent. Point to any US study you like - it doesn’t invalidate the point. People raised outside or on the fringes of a high-tech, western society will probably not do well on IQ tests AND will probably have less-than-stellar life outcomes within such a society. It doesn’t mark them as stupid. It marks them as unfamiliar with the cultural norms pretty much everyone participating on this board was raised with.
Within OUR culture, and ONLY our culture, IQ tests are a pretty good predictor of future academic performance, and a so-so predictor of life-outcomes, because many things other than academic ability contribute to life success or lack there-of. Beyond that, I don’t think you’ll find much, if anything, that the tests are good for. And even within our culture, the IQ tests don’t test ONLY intelligence, although, again, a very stupid person is unlikely to ever do well on one. But isolation from broadly shared cultural knowledge will cause poor performance on an IQ test without saying a damned thing about the person’s actual intelligence. This happens, for example, among kids raised in very poor, uneducated environments where their exposure to vocabulary and cultural concepts that most of us take for granted is highly limited. Yes, it will probably still serve as a decent predictor of performance in school - such early handicaps are very hard (although not impossible, given sufficient motivation) to overcome. But it’s NOT a measure of intelligence. To use a British example mentioned earlier in this thread, how could you possibly know what a decanter is made from when you have no idea whatsoever what a decanter is? And how WOULD you know if you’ve never heard or read the word in your life?
Are you kidding me? Here’s the statement that started this thread:
“Does scoring well on an IQ test correlate to anything that is useful and seems like intelligent behaviour in real life? No”
Correlation is the subject here. (Proof? Proof of what?)
Your post completely missed the point. The subject of this thread is ianzin’s claims:
“The only thing that any so-called IQ test can measure is someone’s ability, on that one occasion, to get a score on that particular IQ test”
“Does scoring well on an IQ test correlate to anything that is useful and seems like intelligent behaviour in real life? No”
So you didn’t notice that your link only applied to a small subsection of the US poulation then ??
YOUNG WHITE MALES.
Duh!!!
Hardly convincing in any way, it simply uses one word that you have decided to hang it all on - correlation.
Its dead easy to tailor your desired outcome to one small dataset out of a whole picture, its dishonest too.
Why do you think such an unrepresentative group was chosen as the example, is it possible that if a cross section of society was tested the results would be very differant ?
Association and proof are very differant, jaundice is indicative of a liver illness, its not the illness itself, but for centuries that was thoguht to be the case.
No matter how yo measure intelligence, there is always going to be some statistical distribution, and chances are, it will come out as a bell curve, but that is just an effect, it still does not really say much about intelligence, just as the IQ test does not.
By the way, what are ‘young white males’ ?
Its not at all clear what these are, what ages are they ?
What income and social groups are they ?
Does someone who is an apparently white male but with Hispanic backgroubd count ?
etc etc etc, in other words, if this is supposed to be indicative of society as a whole, then this is extremely poor research, and you should recognise it as such.
If we are saying that we have taken a group from a similar background and we can see a general trend, so what ?
It’s not likely to be of much use to any other group, and is completely irrelevant
So your view is that IQ correlates with life outcomes only among young white males in the U.S.?
Wait. That was casdave’s point about you. What is this, the “I’m rubber and you’re glue” debate strategy?
No you dolt!!
My view is that based upon the evidence presented, the IQ test correlates to a group specially selected to fit the theory, rather than the other way around.
Isn’t it convenient that other groups that don’t fit the theory have not been chosen as an example ?
Good grief, you have absolutely no idea about the scientific method.
If you develop a theory, and then filter out all the evidence that is unlikley to match that theory, then the theory itself will come under attack, and it will be unsupportable.
If, however, the threoy had taken all the data available, perhaps it might have shown an association, however, an association itself does not prove the theory either, for that you have to examine the reasons.
I don’t understand this. “IQ test correlates to a group” 
Can you explain further?
I chose that example at random. And will be pleased to look for data from other groups once I understand what your viewpoint is.
We have already pointed out that one reason, among many, that IQ tests fail across populations and across nations is because of cultural dirrences that can arise from income levels, or even that some cultures value numeracy more than others.
Using such a test to predict outcomes across groups is unlikely to work well, and in practice that is what happens.
If you compare relative intelligence within one group, whose cultural and other experiences are similar, then almost any measure of intelligence is going to make predictions within that group.
To formulate a general theory, and use selectively produced evidence to back it up is frought with obvious problems.
IQ tests were partly devised, and certainly research was funded by those wanting to produce evidence that ‘races’ had differing levels of ‘intelligence’, and natuarlly whites were supposed to come out on top.
What you do with an IQ test, is decide what is the standard - the norms - and then compare others to that standard.
Now if your norms are very high, perhaps because they are white, have good income, and the test is culterally biased in that direction, then you will produce certain results, becuase other ‘races’ will likely compare unfavourably.
The premise is supposed to be that ‘intelligence’ can be measured using the IQ test as a tool, but, all it does is prove differantly.
If you take out all the factors that are the main weaknesses of the IQ test, ie by testing a bunch of folk who share common experiences and background, all you can do is score each candidate within that group.
What you cannot do is use that group and set it up as a marker, because ‘intelligence’ is a collection of cognitive properties whose realms expand well beyond what the IQ test is capable of measuring.
Here we have a case of someone with a theory, who obviously understands these limitations, and so selects a group purposefully to reduce much of the data ‘noise’.
If you go into almost any class in any school, you don’t need an IQ test to work out which of those students will likely have better academic perfomance and better life chances than others in the same class.
All you do is ask the teacher.
Your problem comes from trying to compare differant groups with differing formative components in their lives, and then you are more or less comparing apples to oranges.
The problem is an old one, also known as ‘The Ghost in the Machine’
Its trying to determine how much of our pesonalities and intelligence etc are determined by birth - genetics - and how much by learned experiences, which includes opportunity, good or bad parenting etc.
The idea being that the human body is a machine which has a ‘soul’.
There is no doubt that intelligence runs in familes, how much is genetic and how much is a good supportive family is wide open to dispute, but yes, genetics will tend to play a part, along with nutrition, and illness.
IQ testing has a nasty habit of trying to divide the world up into races and setting one race above another, yet it hasn’t really proven a great deal, and certainly nothing that the astute school tutor could not spot.
Now, wait a minute, folks.
If lskinner’s *only * point is that this statment:
is not entirely true, then I think we have to grant it to him. IQ correlates pretty well with academic performance in high-tech western societies, and I think that academic performance is something that could be described as “useful and seems like intelligent behavior in real life.” It’s certainly not, by any means, the *only * thing that qualifies for that description, but it does meet the description fairly well. And there is some correlation between real-life outcomes and IQ scores, just as there is some correlation between real-life outcomes and academic perforance. No one is claiming (as far as I can tell), at least in this thread, that only people with high IQ scores are successful, or that IQ tests have universal applicability.
Was the originator (I guess it was Ianzin) pitworthy for making a slightly hyperbolic statement? I wouldn’t think so, but apparently lskinner does, and that’s his choice.
On preview, I see that casdave has covered this point in far more depth, but I felt like posting anyway.
I don’t have to choose either of the options that you present to me. I don’t even have to agree with you that it indicates what you think it indicates.
Look, I don’t know anything about this chart. I don’t know if the people who gathered the data on which it’s based did so using good methodology or not. I don’t know if they’re biased or not, or stupid or not, or prejudiced or not, or accurate or not. I don’t know if the data was processed correctly and fairly. I don’t know if the graph / chart was prepared in a satisfying way from the data, or whether some of the data was omitted, or massaged in some way. I’ve read ‘200% of nothing’ and ‘Innumeracy’ and other books and I know that it pays to be very cautious when trying to handle statistical data or draw any conclusions based on it. And I also know that enlightenment about any subject is unlikely to derive from one graph found via a quickie Google search on the internet.
I suppose I could spend some time trying to discover more about this chart and whether it actually tells us anything useful, but I haven’t got the time and I’m not the least bit interested in trying to create the time or, indeed, devoting any more time to this question at all. I’ve got other things to do. I’ve got a business to run, and friends to write to and keep up with, and new stuff to think up and books and routines to write, and trips to plan, and fun stuff to schedule time for, and meals to cook, and visits to the gym, and time to read books and watch a bit of TV or a movie and play the guitar and make the framed set of impossible objects I’m making as a thank you present for someone in Malaysia who arranged for me to handle some snakes while I was out there, and a show to plan for the end of the month that’s intended to raise money for a children’s charity.
So am I going to spend any time investigating this chart you found and what it means? No, of course not. I’m not interested. I don’t care. It’s not important. I believe one thing about IQ tests and I’ve stated my position. Lots of people around here agree with me. You don’t. Big deal. So what? Maybe you’re right. What the heck difference does it make to anything? I don’t base anything on IQ tests (mine or anyone else’s) because I neither want or need to. They can be safely ignored. You may do so if you wish. You’re welcome to your life, and I’m welcome to mine.
i.e. you don’t care to examine evidence that might threaten your cherished beliefs. You’re comfortable and happy wallowing in your ignorance.
So you’re an ignorant fool.