this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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No, it provably leads to a country that scores higher on an IQ test.
IQ is not intelligence.
Can you please give a definition of intelligence that does not correlate with IQ? Because scientists have been trying, and as far as I know, failing.
Or I guess we can keep pretending that intelligence is fully inquantifiable and therefore we won't be able to quantify how socioeconomic background affect people's wellbeing. I guess that does have the upside that we don't have to face the hard truths of our world, that unequal access to healthcare and education does affect people's cognitive abilities and that the worse life outcomes of poor people being self-inflicted is a myth perpetuated by the ruling class to justify their continued oppression. No, it must be the IQ tests that are racist.
The fact that it's affected by environment is the evidence that it's not intelligence. Intelligence is not malleable. IQ is.
[citation needed]
"Sex, Lies, and Brain Scans" talks about IQ and the problems with IQ. There's also "Delusions of Gender" by Cordelia Fine, and "Neurolinguistics and Linguistic Aphasia."
First, I have had a neuropsych evaluation done and an IQ test. It has areas that are subjective and open to interpretation by the test administrator, already making IQ tests suspect. There is no way to quantify intelligence using actually measurable data. Sound is measured in Hz, light in nanometers, and these things fit nicely on a scale with numbers. Intelligence doesn't require something so discrete. Octopuses, parrots, elephants, all have different brain anatomy from us and each other and are all quite intelligent. It's hard to say what the secret sauce even is, let alone measure it quantifiably.
Many neuropsych tests aren't actually able to prove anything substantial about the brain itself or a person's abilities, short of serious cognitive tests like the clock test which is also fallible. The reason for this is that most human intelligence is pretty close to each other and it's actually hard to find substantial, consistent differences in the population. Think of how close in intelligence a bear is to a human - trash can design at Yellowstone is famously difficult because bear and human intelligence overlap so much. Humans are much more alike cognitively with each other than a bear.
Second, we have the issue of implicit bias and priming. That tells certain groups if they are allowed to be "good" at something, if something is "meant" for them, if they will do well at it. When controlled for cognitive bias, IQ levels across most groups are equal and IQ tends to start to measure persistence/"resiliency" between the groups - which can be affected by something as simple as a coffee that morning or bad sleep.
Last, we have actual medical conditions that make it hard to communicate and pass an IQ test, but the person's IQ is intact/normal for them. There are musical geniuses that aren't picked up by IQ tests, as well as athletic geniuses (Wayne Gretsky), artistic geniuses, and social geniuses.