this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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It is strongly correlated. High IQ reliably predicts high performance in a variety of cognitive tasks (even ones not covered by the IQ test).
To pretend that IQ is a sham is dangerous, because that would suggests that definite proof to the contrary makes the fascists right. Which it doesn't.
Firstly because statistical correlation is useless for individual outliers (e.g. high BMI Olympic athletes). It says something about a population, but can only suggest something about an individual (high BMI can mean someone is overweight, but further analysis is required to make a diagnosis).
Secondly and more importantly because using synthetic metrics as a proxy for the value of a human life is an abhorrent practice that has only ever led to misuse and dangerous if not catastrophic or outright genocidal policies. I don't mind IQ tests as an indicator for psychiatric diagnoses, or for aggregate research on human cognition. But if, for any reason, someone's IQ needs to be made public or handed over to an institution, then we're on the road straight to fascism.
It's correlated to a very narrow subset of skills that are a small part of intelligence. It's a predictor of successful outcomes in the broad sense, but considering the strong correlation to access to education and other similar environmental prerequisites to healthy development, claiming there's a particularly strong causal relationship between IQ and success is relatively bold.
My whole assertion is that using IQ as a value measurement is fundamentally not very useful. In the specific case of race (or cultural background, or whatever), there's no functional way to control for the confounding factors, so you can't really draw any conclusions about the "merit" of the relevant population at all, even if IQ did that.
The people who defend it use it because it's racist. That's why they want it used more.
Like I said IQ should never, ever be used as an entry exam or any other kind of social determinant. Not least because of the racist/classist history. However, it does have a signification and legitimate uses, and to pretend otherwise is scientific negationism. We do not have to listen to racist conspiracy theories about why some populations have a lower IQ than "us", when we have known and repeatedly demonstrated for many decades that differences in IQ at the population level is entirely predictable by education and health (the Flynn Effect). That's it, that's the necessary and sufficient counter-argument to the racist arguments you're referring to.
Put another way, education does not just make people educated; it makes them more intelligent. Someone who has gone through standard schooling is empirically proven to be statistically better at novel abstract thinking than someone who never went to school. Which is kind of obvious when put like that, but you can't prove or study that phenomenon scientifically without the use of tools like the IQ test.
Poor african countries have a lower IQ than the world average, and that is an irrefutable fact. Does that mean:
a) Life outcomes are not shaped in anyway by socioeconomic background, therefore [insert racist theory here]
b) I refuse to look into the possible causes and therefore IQ tests are racist
c) We can infer that poor populations would benefit from increased financing of childcare and education, it's a winning move for literally everyone.
The topic of IQ tests is really uncomfortable because it unearths the really uncomfortable fact that socioeconomic and geopolitical factors have not given us all an equal shot at life, even down to how intelligent we are likely to become as adults. It challenges the myth that anyone can just pull themselves up by the bootstraps, work at mcdonald's, and become a triple harvard graduate. But it's not neuroscience's fault that the world is unfair.