IQ is a Valid Metric

Author: Mesmer

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(1) IQ has the capacity to (decently) predict a lot of life outcomes.

From "The Scientific American Book of the Brain", there is a researched table (on page 65) that shows the percentage of undesirable life outcomes occurring, relative to the IQ of the person: WwSHDHN.png (602×140) (imgur.com) . There isn't any instance of undesirable life outcomes percentage chance increasing as IQ increases, whilst a decrease in IQ always lead to an inflated chance of undesirable life outcomes.

IQ is able to predict job performance to some degree. Schmidt and Hunter (1990) examined the correlation between job performance and IQ Individual Differences in Output Variability as a Function of Job Complexity (gwern.net) . Methodologically speaking, they used coworker's assessments of work and tested it against metrics (such as IQ) to see correlation. IQ was the 2nd best metric, tying for second with a "Structured Interview", and beaten only by "Work Sample Tests" VA8gjB7.png (284×250) (imgur.com) . IQ beat things like "Job Experience," "Job Tryout," and even "Years of Education".

Schmidt and Hunter (1984) also did a review of job performance studies, which was assessed by Huffcutt and Arthur (1994) Huffcutt & Arthur (1994) Interview.pdf (radford.edu) . In this review, IQ was the best predictor of job performance across all the metrics measured: kssZoa7.png (411×232) (imgur.com) (there was only an interview, not a "Structured Interview", and there was no "Work Samples Test" this time). 

Strenze (2006) performed a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies (average group size being 97,083) that compared various life factors (e.g. IQ, Grades, SES index etc.) with education, occupation and income levels doi:10.1016/j.intell.2006.09.004 (emilkirkegaard.dk) . With education, occupation and income levels, IQ consistently produced the best correlation qIGdGqI.png (378×564) (imgur.com) . 

Clearly, IQ measures something that is valid, otherwise these decent correlations wouldn't be produced.

(2) "Intelligence" is probably measured by IQ (to some degree)

Heuristically, people can guess the intelligence of something. We certainly shouldn't measure IQ based on how smart people think something is, but this heuristic guess correlates very well with IQ. Denissen et al. 2011 provides the data to make this case: Antecedents and consequences of peer‐rated intelligence - Denissen - 2011 - European Journal of Personality - Wiley Online Library (sorry for paywall).

A limitation to this correlation was found in Morgan 1997, wherein they showed that the amount someone talked in the short-run (in a group discussion), actually inflated their perceived level of intelligence. However, if people in the group were allowed to speak for long enough, this effect subsided, and people's guess of people's IQ correlated very well with that of the actual IQ test results (PDF) Perceptions of Intelligence in Leaderless Groups: The Dynamic Effects of Shyness and Acquaintance (researchgate.net) .

===================================================================================================================================
 
So, IQ (1) measures something valid (better than most other things), and (2) that valid thing it measures is probably intelligence.

Credit to Ryan Faulk as most of this argument is his arguments reworded.
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@Mesmer
I do not disagree that IQ is a valid metric of something, just not intelligence.

I think the results are repeatable enough to conclude that IQ measures some aspects of the human intellect but hardly encompasses what humans mean when we say intelligence.  We were just recently discussing Bobby Fisher's high IQ although that sad bastard was an unemployable schizophrenic who pissed himself to death because he wasn't smart enough to go to a doctor.  Was Bobby Fisher therefore intelligent?   I know a fair number of brilliant manic depressives but the people I know with a real genius for living an admirable life would probably score about 100 on that test.  I think IQ is over-rated and fairly slanted towards a 19th century European male model of success- lawyers and doctors and engineers.  What of empathy?  What of self-awareness? What of leadership and problem-solving?  What of wit and humor- clearly signs of intelligence  that no IQ test can capture.  What of instinct- which is often the smartest part of us though we don't understand how or why?   IQ might correlate with job performance because it favors those  intellects which dot their i's and cross their t's, but tidy thinkers are seldom inspired and the truly creative seldom score high in IQ.

We can recognize that dogs are smarter  than sheep but an IQ test can't tell us why.  Or why some dogs are smarter than others.  Clearly adults are smarter than children in most ways so intelligence changes and adapts as we grow and age.   Obviously, there's more to intelligence than can be expressed in letters and numbers and in fact those abstractions came along only recently, long after humans had distinguished themselves as more intelligent than any other species.

Overall, I'm IQ skeptical and my experience tells me (hey, what about experience?)  that applying numbers to people's capacity is often self-defeating or at least self-limiting.  Tell people that a 4 minute mile is the limit of human capability and for some reason everybody believes it until one day that record is broken and suddenly thousands more find that ability within themselves.

How would you define intelligence?
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@Mesmer
IQ is able to predict job performance to some degree. Schmidt and Hunter (1990) examined the correlation between job performance and IQ Individual Differences in Output Variability as a Function of Job Complexity (gwern.net) . Methodologically speaking, they used coworker's assessments of work and tested it against metrics (such as IQ) to see correlation. IQ was the 2nd best metric, tying for second with a "Structured Interview", and beaten only by "Work Sample Tests" VA8gjB7.png (284×250) (imgur.com) . IQ beat things like "Job Experience," "Job Tryout," and even "Years of Education".
What was this "degree"?

Strenze (2006) performed a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies (average group size being 97,083) that compared various life factors (e.g. IQ, Grades, SES index etc.) with education, occupation and income levels doi:10.1016/j.intell.2006.09.004 (emilkirkegaard.dk) . With education, occupation and income levels, IQ consistently produced the best correlation qIGdGqI.png (378×564) (imgur.com) . .
Let's scrutinize these correlation coefficients as it concerns I.Q.:

Correlation with education level:

I.Q. : .49

Correlation with occupation level:

I.Q. : .41

Correlation with income level:

I.Q. : .22

And while the strength of correlation coefficients varies among researchers' metrics, these coefficients are weak to, at best, moderate.

Clearly, IQ measures something that is valid, otherwise these decent correlations wouldn't be produced.
I.Q. does not measure intelligence. Intelligence is not quantifiable. It, at best, gauges classroom discipline.

So, IQ (1) measures something valid (better than most other things), and (2) that valid thing it measures is probably intelligence.
I.Q. is as "valid" as a dance score, or rating of attractiveness.
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@Mesmer
The problem with old and correlative data with no explanatory power:
LMAO - sure - let's let the people who "know what they're doing" run everything let's see how well that does

Supporters of IQ testing have been quick to point to correlations between IQ and job performance as evidence of test validity. A closer look at the data and results, however, suggests a rather murkier picture. Here we have acknowledged the methodological advances in meta-analyses from which such evidence has been drawn, while drawing attention to the problems surrounding them in this particular area. We conclude with a summary of the main points:
  1. Much in developmental theory, and psychology in general, depends upon the validity of IQ tests.
  2. In the absence of agreed construct validity this has weighed heavily on indirect validity using correlations with criterion outcomes among which job performance has a special status.
  3. Hundreds of studies prior to the 1970s reported low and/or inconsistent correlations between IQ and job performance.
  4. These correlations have been approximately doubled using corrections for supposed errors in primary results and combining them in meta-analyses. Such corrections have many strengths, theoretically, but are compromised in these cases by the often uncertain quality of the primary studies.
  5. The corrections to sampling errors, measurement errors, and to range restriction have required making a number of assumptions that may not be valid and have created a number of persistently contentious issues.
  6. The claim that the IQ-job performance correlation increases with job complexity is not born out in more recent studies.
  7. A range of other—including noncognitive—factors could explain a correlation between IQ and job performance, and even constitute part or all of the enigmatic “general factor.”
  8. There remains great uncertainty about the interpretation of IQ-job performance correlations and great caution needs to be exercised in using them as a basis for the validity of IQ tests and associated concepts.
As others have pointed out, statistical corrections are no magical compensation for weak data and that it is risky to reach conclusions about test validities from those currently available (Oswald & McCloy, 2003; Russell & Gilliland, 1995). The only solution is properly conducted primary studies, with larger representative samples, better measures, and so on. Until they are available, investigators should be extremely cautious about disseminating conclusions about IQ test validities, from correlations between IQ and job performance.
We don't even know if IQ tests can accurately predict job success much less if they're leaders. 
(This was my post from another place, running out of time for this site tonight, so this is the best you get, lol - I agree with Oromagi basically)
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@Mesmer
Life outcomes are influenced by a plethora of social factors.

IQ is influenced by life outcomes and inherent predisposition.

Therefore research would suggest that life outcomes + predisposition = IQ = life outcomes.

Though a high IQ is no guarantee of social success.

Research and statistics are  indicative of  trends and expectancies....The normal expectancies relative to a particular social environment, as it were.

So basically, IQ is a valid metric of IQ expectancy, relative to social and physiological  factors that might or might not positively or negatively influence life outcomes.

So are we proving anything that we didn't already know?
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@oromagi
I think the results are repeatable enough to conclude that IQ measures some aspects of the human intellect but hardly encompasses what humans mean when we say intelligence.  We were just recently discussing Bobby Fisher's high IQ although that sad bastard was an unemployable schizophrenic who pissed himself to death because he wasn't smart enough to go to a doctor.

Schizophrenia has nothing to do with IQ. Though schizotypal personalities are more common with high IQ individuals than low IQ one. However it alone does not determine intelligence. 

High IQ just means the delusions will have better premises. IQ is a good measure of intelligence. It does something though.

For example bobby fisher could probably make a better argument to support any one of his delusions than you can for any one of your truths. 

It's good for holding general knowledge over a lot of things, making it easier to see connections. IQ is pattern recognition, so these people will more easily see things like the disproportionate members of Jews in power and the state of the world being less than Ideal and jump to conclusions.

It doesn't make the conclusions right, but it explains why they have better premises for their belief systems which are false than most people do for beliefs that are correct.

Here are some common reasons a high IQ individual would believe conspiracies.

1. The sharp shooter fallacy- an intelligent person is more likely to be able to shape complicated theories to fit around sets of facts than a low IQ individual can. It's a myth that conspiracy theorists want to make a complicated world simply. Often conspiracies complicate the world. It is easier to think somebody landed on the moon than to believe the hundreds of complicated and interweaved evidence for the opposite. 

2. Motivated thinking, such as being a paid witness, or for example you don't want people in the coal industry to lose their jobs, so you obfuscate the truth by pretending coal mining is actually good for the environment. 

3. The conspiracy is the truth, but the average person just watches CNN or fox and accepts whatever worldview is handed to the. This is why you can say something like "Ted Kazynski was a victim of the MKultra program" and most midwits will assume you are stupid for believing in a conspiracy. 

IQ is still an indicator of a brains better ability to recognize patterns, comprehend things and formulate new ideals. However sometimes superior brains have flaws rarely seen among the stupid. Visa versa is true also. For example you can almost tell a person's IQ by asking them the following question.

It takes 2 people 2 minutes to wrap 5 gifts. How long will it take 4 people to wrap 10 gifts?

Most stupid people will say it will take 4 people 4 minutes to wrap 10 gifts. However smart people are more likely to get the next question wrong.

How many animals did Moses take on the ark?

The stupid people reading this already have the answer correctly to the above question and did it quickly, because their brain doesn't take the same shortcuts as one one a smart person does. 


Let's also not forget that IQ is not the same thing as wisdom. Tesla was more of a genius than Edison, but Edison was more wealthy because of wisdom. Both were very intelligent people. 

IQ does matter. If you hire a low IQ guy for a job and a high IQ one, the high IQ one will typically be able to give you better value for your money. 

If you give a high IQ person 3 weeks to learn a concept and a low IQ one 6 weeks, the high IQ person will know more after 3 weeks than the low IQ person after 6weeks. So it matters. 
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@oromagi
I do not disagree that IQ is a valid metric of something, just not intelligence.
Do you see any issue with the data I provided?

I think the results are repeatable enough to conclude that IQ measures some aspects of the human intellect but hardly encompasses what humans mean when we say intelligence. 
According to the data I provided, that isn't true. That's why a heuristic evaluation of people's intelligence correlated really well with a formal I.Q. test.

We were just recently discussing Bobby Fisher's high IQ although that sad bastard was an unemployable schizophrenic who pissed himself to death because he wasn't smart enough to go to a doctor.  Was Bobby Fisher therefore intelligent?
Firstly, this is an anecdote. I'm making a case for macrosocietal trends, not an exhaustive list of every single possibility for any human that has existed or will exist.

Secondly, intelligence only correlates with positive life outcomes (as I specified in the OP), it DOES NOT dictate them. It's perfectly possible for someone to be highly intelligent (pretty sure Bobby had 160 I.Q.) and fail with intersubjective 'success' metrics in life.

I know a fair number of brilliant manic depressives but the people I know with a real genius for living an admirable life would probably score about 100 on that test.
You love anecdotes lol.

I think IQ is over-rated and fairly slanted towards a 19th century European male model of success- lawyers and doctors and engineers.  What of empathy?  What of self-awareness? What of leadership and problem-solving?  What of wit and humor- clearly signs of intelligence  that no IQ test can capture.  What of instinct- which is often the smartest part of us though we don't understand how or why?   IQ might correlate with job performance because it favors those  intellects which dot their i's and cross their t's, but tidy thinkers are seldom inspired and the truly creative seldom score high in IQ.
General intelligence ('g', of which I.Q. is a proxy for) has built-in a calculation of these facets. In other words, general intelligence does not reject the notion that things like "empathy" and "humor" (to some degree) are part of general intelligence. So, in essence, I agree with you that I.Q. should factor these attributes into it, and it already does to some degree.

The reason why it only factors these attributes "to some degree" is because a lot of those traits you listed can be learned. Clearly, "leadership" can be taught to people to some degree, and whilst you could argue that some people have a natural affinity for leadership (I agree), the environment will play a large part in a person's ability to acquire leadership skills (and thus make them better at leadership). It makes no sense when assessing I.Q., which attempts to assess genetic general intelligence, to have factors which are purely environment factors. In other words, testing "leadership skills" isn't going to provide us a strong correlate for raw general intelligence because it is muddied too much by environmental factors, defeating the purpose of measuring general intelligence. Instead, it is better to test for general intelligence and let the genetic components of "humor", "leadership", "empathy" etc. be naturally integrated into the general intelligence assessment.

We can recognize that dogs are smarter  than sheep but an IQ test can't tell us why.  Or why some dogs are smarter than others.  Clearly adults are smarter than children in most ways so intelligence changes and adapts as we grow and age.   Obviously, there's more to intelligence than can be expressed in letters and numbers and in fact those abstractions came along only recently, long after humans had distinguished themselves as more intelligent than any other species.
You're moving the goalposts when you demand of I.Q. to explain "why". I.Q. is designed to be a proxy for general intelligence. That's it. Is it a valid metric in that regard? I've argued yes.

To analogize, a sheep doesn't need to understand why eating grass makes it feel better. It just eats the grass and feels better. Does that mean that because it doesn't understand "why" eating grass makes it feel better, eating grass shouldn't be done? Similarly, we don't completely understand why brains generate different I.Qs. We see general intelligence proxy tests (I.Q. tests) and see that some people perform better than others. Does that mean we shouldn't use I.Q. tests?

Overall, I'm IQ skeptical and my experience tells me (hey, what about experience?)  that applying numbers to people's capacity is often self-defeating or at least self-limiting.  Tell people that a 4 minute mile is the limit of human capability and for some reason everybody believes it until one day that record is broken and suddenly thousands more find that ability within themselves.
Applying numbers (based on I.Q. results) to people's capacity produces moderate correlations to desirable life outcomes. It's also often the best metric for predicting performance. Clearly, I.Q. is having some impact on performance.

I agree that if you inspire people in various ways, you'll have them performing better. But you'll never have 55 I.Q. Pygmies becoming competent neuro-scientists at Yale, and you'll frustrate everyone involved if you force it.

How would you define intelligence?
Any definition that describes 'general intelligence' is what I'm referring to. But I'll give a specific one:

General intelligence is the fluid ability to integrate multiple cognitive abilities in the service of solving a novel problem and thereby accumulating crystalized knowledge that, in turn, facilitates further higher-level reasoning General Intelligence - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics .
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@Athias
What was this "degree"?
I screenshotted and linked the relevant correlations in the OP. Depending on the life outcome, it's anywhere from 0.22-0.53. Most studies produce moderate correlation.

Let's scrutinize these correlation coefficients as it concerns I.Q.:

Correlation with education level:

I.Q. : .49

Correlation with occupation level:

I.Q. : .41

Correlation with income level:

I.Q. : .22

And while the strength of correlation coefficients varies among researchers' metrics, these coefficients are weak to, at best, moderate.
Almost all the correlations are moderate, from across the studies.

There isn't any scrutinizing of what I wrote. You've mostly restated what I wrote.

I.Q. does not measure intelligence... It, at best, gauges classroom discipline.
Through the studies I've cited, I've shown that I.Q. mostly has moderate correlates with positive life outcomes, so I.Q. is measuring something to some degree. The fact that I.Q. is a proxy for general intelligence, and general intelligence is consistently a top-performer amongst these measurements of life outcomes (often the top-performer), shows that intelligence is probably measuring intelligence to some degree, at the very least. We can add to this the fact that what people generally consider to be intelligent correlates very well with I.Q. test performance.

Flatly asserting that "I.Q. does not measure intelligence" requires argumentation and evidence, none of which you've provided.

Also, you haven't provided any evidence to assert that I.Q. "at best, gauges classroom discipline".

I.Q. is as "valid" as a dance score, or rating of attractiveness.
I can mostly agree with you on the dancing point. Although, Olympic gymnastics does have components wherein there is a dance score Balance Beam at the Olympics: Guide to Scoring, Moves and More - The New York Times (nytimes.com) . It's pretty damn hard to operationalize dance into scorable metrics, but it can be done with some success.

As for attractiveness, it's funny how you've picked something that is relatively objective. For example, things like higher cheekbones Why Cheekbones Matter In Modelling | What Makes A Face Attractive Ep. 1 - YouTube and the eye region Why The Eyes Make Or Break A Face | What Makes A Face Attractive Ep. 2 - YouTube have impacts on whether someone is objectively more attractive.

Perhaps you're like Ragnar and that other guy who most things in life are subjective, but that's just a guess.






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@zedvictor4
Life outcomes are influenced by a plethora of social factors.
Agree, although some life outcomes are more affected by I.Q. than others (e.g. income only being 0.22 correlate with I.Q, but job performance clearing 0.5 on different studies).

IQ is influenced by life outcomes and inherent predisposition.
It's another thread topic (because it requires a lot of citations), but I'd argue that I.Q. is mostly genetic. So whilst "life outcomes" can change your I.Q, your inherent predisposition has a greater impact.

Therefore research would suggest that life outcomes + predisposition = IQ = life outcomes.
True.

Though a high IQ is no guarantee of social success.
True, but you're more likely to be successful the higher your I.Q. is.

Research and statistics are  indicative of  trends and expectancies....The normal expectancies relative to a particular social environment, as it were.

So basically, IQ is a valid metric of IQ expectancy, relative to social and physiological  factors that might or might not positively or negatively influence life outcomes.
I.Q. is a proxy for general intelligence. That's why we can substitute the word "intelligence" with "I.Q." and have it make a lot of sense in various scenarios, as the data I provided in the OP suggests.

So are we proving anything that we didn't already know?
I've encountered several people on here that outright reject the concept of I.Q. influencing anything.

I'd say most people I've met on here reject I.Q. being valid for measuring intelligence to some degree.
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@Mesmer
Ok.


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I took the American SAT once. Irrelevant, I know, but I just want to say that it made absolutely no sense to me. I failed it while international schools enjoyed a huge jump because there was a sizeable Australian expats scoring high in the SAT. I'm guessing non-whites mingle with them to score well on it too. My point: tests are region-specific. They have no validity outside of their intended audience. The IQ test doesn't measure intelligence because if it did, the test would score accurately across different cultures. 
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@Mesmer
Yes, new research suggests that the layer of insulation coating neural wiring in the brain plays a critical role in determining intelligence. In addition, the quality of this insulation appears to be largely genetically determined, providing further support for the idea that IQ is partly inherited.
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@MarkWebberFan
I took the American SAT once. Irrelevant, I know, but I just want to say that it made absolutely no sense to me. I failed it while international schools enjoyed a huge jump because there was a sizeable Australian expats scoring high in the SAT. I'm guessing non-whites mingle with them to score well on it too. My point: tests are region-specific. They have no validity outside of their intended audience. The IQ test doesn't measure intelligence because if it did, the test would score accurately across different cultures. 
SATs are not by default IQ tests, but they can be (to some degree) if you control for whatever cultural/learned bias there is. Obviously, to exaggerate your point of "tests are region-specific", the SAT isn't going to be a good IQ test if the participants don't know English, seeing that the test is written in English. 

IQ tests mostly control as many confounding variables as possible so that it best deduces general intelligence (g).

So, saying that an SAT isn't a good IQ test does not mean that IQ tests are invalid.

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@oromagi
I do not disagree that IQ is a valid metric of something, just not intelligence.
Do you see any issue with the data I provided?
I wasn't going to bring it up but your data is no good

  •  WwSHDHN.png (602×140) (imgur.com) 
    • You claim that this is a snapshot from a Scientific American book but that particular data set has a much longer history.  I assume the article to which you refer is a reprint of Gottfredson's The General Intelligence Factor in which your table is reprinted.  Gottfredson is best known for leading the tepid scientific defense of Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve (in which this table is also reprinted).
      • Let's note that the Southern Poverty Law Center defines Gottfredson as a promoter of eugenicism, scientific racism, and white nationalism.
      • Gottfredson has taken more than a quarter million dollars in grants from the White Supremacist Pioneer Fund to advance eugenics research.
    • The table also appears in "The Bell Curve"
    • Ultimately, this data comes from the  National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 which began in 1979 with 12,686 men and women born in 1957-64 (ages 14–22).  Members were interviewed annually from '79 to '94 but this table was published in '94 so this data cover outcomes over a 14 year period.  Oversamples of military and poor white respondents were dropped after these stats were generated.
      • For these statistics, only white non-Hispanic respondents were included.
      • Only a few of the people in the sample took IQ tests in high school.  Of these, a median correlation of .81 was inferred between IQ tests and Armed Services Vocational Aptitude test.  That is, in spite of your claim, that top number is not IQ but an estimated IQ inferred from the ASVA.  
    • Your claim, " there is a researched table that shows the percentage of undesirable life outcomes occurring, relative to the IQ of the person" is false.
      • This is a highly abridged table, showing selected results from a table intended to show that intelligence is a better predictor of individual outcomes over 14 years than socio-economic status.  Obviously, using the Armed Services test as means of quantifying intelligence introduces significant bias (nobody's looking at musical aptitude or sense of humor in an Armed Services aptitude test) and confining data to non-Hispanic whites obviously distorts the assessment of socio-economic status.
      • The data is so old fashioned that to qualify as middle class you had to have a high school diploma, never been incarcerated, remain married to first wife and never give birth to a child out of wedlock.  Better than 40% of modern women have children out of wedlock but Herrnstein and Murray throw all of these women into the failed end of socio-economic outcomes.
      • Super old fashioned, kind of racist, and not using IQ.

  • You claim that  "Schmidt and Hunter (1990) examined the correlation between job performance and IQ" but that is false.
    • But Hunter and Schmidt explain, "The hypothesis was tested that the standard deviation of employee output as a percentage of mean output  increases as a function of the complexity level of the job."  The paper broadly found that as a job grew more complex, a wider variety of output was delivered by employees.  Nothing about intelligence or IQ at all.  In fact, a quick search for terms "IQ" "Intel" and "Quotient" all came up zero.
    • The table you snapshot and the data you describe are not in the paper you linked to.
  • You claim that Huffcutt & Arthur found that IQ was the best predictor of job performance but that is false.
    • Huffcutt & Arthur found that Hunter & Hunter (1984) had totally under-represented the value of the job interview and went on to conclude, "highly structured interviews provide essentially the same validity as ability tests"
    • The paper concluded the opposite of what you claimed it concluded.
    • Huffcutt & Arthur did not specify Intelligence as the ability tested, nor IQ as the test of Intelligence.
    • You claim "with education, occupation and income levels, IQ consistently produced the best correlation." 
      • We should note that more than a hundred different types of intelligence tests were used- which raises plenty of questions regarding the correlations between one kind of intelligence test and the next.
      • This data claims that neither intelligence nor socio-economic index correlates very strongly to income.
        •  I would think socio-economic status would correlate with income far more than claimed here.

    • You claim "this heuristic guess correlates very well with IQ"
      • but, in fact, Dennison only reported  "weakly correlated with objective intelligence"

    • As you say, this study reduces the value of perceived intelligence because shy people's intelligence is consistently undervalued in the first few meeting and talkative people's intelligence is consistently overvalued in the first few meetings.  This weakens further Denisson's "weak correlation"

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    @oromagi
    • Let's note that the Southern Poverty Law Center defines Gottfredson as a promoter of eugenicism, scientific racism, and white nationalism.
    • Gottfredson has taken more than a quarter million dollars in grants from the White Supremacist Pioneer Fund to advance eugenics research.
    These notes are both Ad Hominem attacks and are thus logically invalid.

    I'm surprised a debater of your caliber would make such a worthless argument.

    • The table also appears in "The Bell Curve"
    Your point?

    • Ultimately, this data comes from the  National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 which began in 1979 with 12,686 men and women born in 1957-64 (ages 14–22).  Members were interviewed annually from '79 to '94 but this table was published in '94 so this data cover outcomes over a 14 year period.  Oversamples of military and poor white respondents were dropped after these stats were generated.
      • For these statistics, only white non-Hispanic respondents were included.
      • Only a few of the people in the sample took IQ tests in high school.  Of these, a median correlation of .81 was inferred between IQ tests and Armed Services Vocational Aptitude test.  That is, in spite of your claim, that top number is not IQ but an estimated IQ inferred from the ASVA.  
    Well this is a much better argument.

    I'm not yet sure why it's important that "only white non-Hispanic respondents were included". Are you arguing that the results would have been significantly different if the other racial groups were included?

    For your second dot-point, we should note that I.Q. only correlates with itself at 0.87. Still, the researcher's  estimates have this 0.06 gap because ASVA is 0.06 less correlate than I.Q. is for I.Q, so you're right in arguing that this is a limitation of the study. However, an unaccounted 0.06 correlation effect is quite small and we should regard the impact it could have as such.

    • Your claim, " there is a researched table that shows the percentage of undesirable life outcomes occurring, relative to the IQ of the person" is false.
      • This is a highly abridged table, showing selected results from a table intended to show that intelligence is a better predictor of individual outcomes over 14 years than socio-economic status.  Obviously, using the Armed Services test as means of quantifying intelligence introduces significant bias (nobody's looking at musical aptitude or sense of humor in an Armed Services aptitude test) and confining data to non-Hispanic whites obviously distorts the assessment of socio-economic status.
      • The data is so old fashioned that to qualify as middle class you had to have a high school diploma, never been incarcerated, remain married to first wife and never give birth to a child out of wedlock.  Better than 40% of modern women have children out of wedlock but Herrnstein and Murray throw all of these women into the failed end of socio-economic outcomes.
      • Super old fashioned, kind of racist, and not using IQ.
    I've already addressed your first dot-point's sentiment in my other response to you this notion that I.Q. doesn't take into account the intelligence components within "musical aptitude" or "sense of humor". I specifically referred to your criticism of lacking "leadership skills", but the general sentiment of the rebuttal should apply for "musical aptitude" or "sense of humor":

    General intelligence ('g', of which I.Q. is a proxy for) has built-in a calculation of these facets. In other words, general intelligence does not reject the notion that things like "empathy" and "humor" (to some degree) are part of general intelligence. So, in essence, I agree with you that I.Q. should factor these attributes into it, and it already does to some degree.

    The reason why it only factors these attributes "to some degree" is because a lot of those traits you listed can be learned. Clearly, "leadership" can be taught to people to some degree, and whilst you could argue that some people have a natural affinity for leadership (I agree), the environment will play a large part in a person's ability to acquire leadership skills (and thus make them better at leadership). It makes no sense when assessing I.Q., which attempts to assess genetic general intelligence, to have factors which are purely environment factors. In other words, testing "leadership skills" isn't going to provide us a strong correlate for raw general intelligence because it is muddied too much by environmental factors, defeating the purpose of measuring general intelligence. Instead, it is better to test for general intelligence and let the genetic components of "humor", "leadership", "empathy" etc. be naturally integrated into the general intelligence assessment.

    For you second dot point, the data remains valid because the cultural snapshot applied to *all* participants at the time. Effectively, controls for environment. I'd also argue that, "high school diploma, never been incarcerated, remain married to first wife and never give birth to a child out of wedlock" are all positive life outcomes, hence the data remains valid. 40% of modern women, I would argue, are likely to have lower I.Q. for making a bad decision (child out of wedlock). Albeit, this point probably requires its own thread (I might make one). Hence, this data remains valid, in regards to I.Q.

    Your final dot point is mostly Ad Hominem against the data. "Not using IQ" is addressed above.

    • You claim that  "Schmidt and Hunter (1990) examined the correlation between job performance and IQ" but that is false.
      • But Hunter and Schmidt explain, "The hypothesis was tested that the standard deviation of employee output as a percentage of mean output  increases as a function of the complexity level of the job."  The paper broadly found that as a job grew more complex, a wider variety of output was delivered by employees.  Nothing about intelligence or IQ at all.  In fact, a quick search for terms "IQ" "Intel" and "Quotient" all came up zero.
      • The table you snapshot and the data you describe are not in the paper you linked to.
    So Hunter and Schmidt use the term "mental ability" and "cognitive ability" instead of "IQ". It's fair enough to say that I should have noted this in the OP.

    The table I snapshotted was not directly from the study, but rather a compilation of data from the study. For example, Hunter and Schmidt refer to mental ability specifically here:

    "On the basis of Hunter's (1980) findings, the true-score correlations for general mental ability and supervisory ratings are .65 for high-complexity jobs, .57 for medium-complexity jobs, and .44 for low complexity jobs (when complexity is as defined in the text and in Footnote I)." 

    The average of: 0.65+0.57+0.44 = 0.5533 (to 4 d.p.), but the data they used had a higher percentage of medium complexity and low complexity jobs, and so the average of the data they used makes "mental ability" correlate at roughly 0.51 in their study (as depicted in the table).

    Hopefully that makes it clear where the data is coming from.

    • You claim that Huffcutt & Arthur found that IQ was the best predictor of job performance but that is false.
      • Huffcutt & Arthur found that Hunter & Hunter (1984) had totally under-represented the value of the job interview and went on to conclude, "highly structured interviews provide essentially the same validity as ability tests"
      • The paper concluded the opposite of what you claimed it concluded.
      • Huffcutt & Arthur did not specify Intelligence as the ability tested, nor IQ as the test of Intelligence.
    Claiming that "highly structured interviews provide essentially the same validity as ability tests" doesn't detract from the validity of I.Q as a metric. It's possible that both "highly structured interviews" and I.Q. are valid metrics. Furthermore, the Huffcutt and Arthur themselves gave 0.14 correlation for "interview", and specify that as the structure of the interview increases, its validity (read: correlation) increases:

    "[Under the heading 'Discussion'] "...our relatively sophisticated system of structure classification results in several insights into the relationship between level of structure and the validity of the interview. Specifically, these results (a) confirm that structure is a major moderator of interview validity, (b) demonstrate that validity generally increases with increasing structure..."

    It's worth noting that intelligence/I.Q. is denoted as "Ability Composite" in this paper (which is admittedly a strange way to say intelligence).

    • You claim "with education, occupation and income levels, IQ consistently produced the best correlation." 
      • We should note that more than a hundred different types of intelligence tests were used- which raises plenty of questions regarding the correlations between one kind of intelligence test and the next.
      • This data claims that neither intelligence nor socio-economic index correlates very strongly to income.
        •  I would think socio-economic status would correlate with income far more than claimed here.
    We don't need to know how well I.Q. tests correlate with each other. All we need to know is how well the I.Q. test correlates with general intelligence, and then we can take an average of all the I.Q. tests in question.

    You can think your final dot-point if you like, but you don't have any data to back you up. I do.

    • You claim "this heuristic guess correlates very well with IQ"
      • but, in fact, Dennison only reported  "weakly correlated with objective intelligence"

    • As you say, this study reduces the value of perceived intelligence because shy people's intelligence is consistently undervalued in the first few meeting and talkative people's intelligence is consistently overvalued in the first few meetings.  This weakens further Denisson's "weak correlation"
    I'll address these together because they're essentially the same point.

    Yes, the correlation is stated as "weakly correlated" in Dennison's abstract. However, as stated in both studies, this correlation improves over time as participants talked more and more with each other. The increasing correlation compounds upon itself until it correlates very well with an I.Q. test. That's how people can heuristically determine people's I.Q. -- definitely not with a glance or short conversation.

    So, for clarity: people guessing other people's I.Q. has weak correlation, BUT, when given enough time with the person, the correlation with an I.Q. test becomes quite strong. Without that caveat (time), I agree with you.

    oromagi
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    @Mesmer

    I think the results are repeatable enough to conclude that IQ measures some aspects of the human intellect but hardly encompasses what humans mean when we say intelligence. 
    According to the data I provided, that isn't true. That's why a heuristic evaluation of people's intelligence correlated really well with a formal I.Q. test.
    But then when I ask for a definition of INTELLIGENCE you give me the definition for GENERAL INTELLIGENCE.  I say that IQ doesn't cover all of what we recognize as  intelligence.

    • You disagree with me by saying that perception correlates well  with test outcomes but in a later post agree that Dennison found that the correlation was weak for starters and only improved over time.  Dennison only claims correlation to objective intelligence, which more or less agrees with my contention.
    • You agree with me by limiting your definition of INTELLIGENCE to the smaller subset, GENERAL INTELLIGENCE.  
    My contention was only that GENERAL INTELLIGENCE or objective intelligence is not the same thing as intelligence generally.  Huffcutt & Arthur would seem to agree with my point as does Dennison, as do you at some points in spite of your objection here.

    We were just recently discussing Bobby Fisher's high IQ although that sad bastard was an unemployable schizophrenic who pissed himself to death because he wasn't smart enough to go to a doctor.  Was Bobby Fisher therefore intelligent?  I know a fair number of brilliant manic depressives but the people I know with a real genius for living an admirable life would probably score about 100 on that test.
    You love anecdotes lol.
    All good writers do, in the ranks of whom I hope  to prove worthy someday.   Let's agree that anecdote should not be used to represent generalization but that's not how I employed Bobby Fisher here.  I used examples to illustrate why everything we call intelligence is not summed up in a score.  Consider meeting the raging, deluded, self-destructive Fisher and being asked to evaluate his intelligence.  In that specific case, you might actually require a fairly advanced understanding of the game of chess before you could reconcile Fisher's IQ with your perception of the man....but then, there it is, a clear correlation in one extraordinarily limited application.   By your definition of GENERAL INTELLIGENCE (ability to integrate multiple cognitive abilities in the service of solving a novel problem) doesn't really apply to Mr. 180 IQ at all but people still think of Fisher as intelligent, even a genius in spite of his lack of integrated abilities.  The anecdote illustrates my contention: GENERAL INTELLIGENCE is clearly a subset of what we call INTELLIGENCE but GENERAL INTELLIGENCE is just as clearly not all of what we call INTELLIGENCE.

    I think IQ is over-rated and fairly slanted towards a 19th century European male model of success- lawyers and doctors and engineers.  What of empathy?  What of self-awareness? What of leadership and problem-solving?  What of wit and humor- clearly signs of intelligence  that no IQ test can capture.  What of instinct- which is often the smartest part of us though we don't understand how or why?   IQ might correlate with job performance because it favors those  intellects which dot their i's and cross their t's, but tidy thinkers are seldom inspired and the truly creative seldom score high in IQ.
    General intelligence ('g', of which I.Q. is a proxy for) has built-in a calculation of these facets.   In other words, general intelligence does not reject the notion that things like "empathy" and "humor" (to some degree) are part of general intelligence.   So, in essence, I agree with you that I.Q. should factor these attributes into it, and it already does to some degree.  The reason why it only factors these attributes "to some degree" is because a lot of those traits you listed can be learned. Clearly, "leadership" can be taught to people to some degree, and whilst you could argue that some people have a natural affinity for leadership (I agree), the environment will play a large part in a person's ability to acquire leadership skills (and thus make them better at leadership).

    Integrating multiple cognitive abilities in the service of solving a novel problem is also learned. Understimulated children often demonstrate cognitive deficits.

    It makes no sense when assessing I.Q., which attempts to assess genetic general intelligence, to have factors which are purely environment factors.
    I don't think most would agree with your assertion that IQ tests are only or even mostly interested in the heritability of general intelligence.  Yes, that is the primary interest of the eugenicists you cite, which makes sense because their mission is to justify their assertions of political supremacy with some kind of objective measure of genetic superiority.  However, the general figure for the heritability of IQ, according to the APA is 0.45 for children, and rises to around 0.75 for late adolescents and adults.  Heritability measures in infancy are as low as 0.2, around 0.4 in middle childhood, and as high as 0.9 in adulthood.   That is, stripped of influences of environment, genetics only show a weak correlation to IQ.  I think its fair to say that most psychometrists, absent those tainted by political agenda,  are trying to assess the whole picture, not genetic general intelligence alone but also the influence of environment and the relationship between the two.

    In other words, testing "leadership skills" isn't going to provide us a strong correlate for raw general intelligence because it is muddied too much by environmental factors, defeating the purpose of measuring general intelligence.
    I think you have circled around to agreeing with me.  IQ can't capture all of what we call INTELLIGENCE including things like leaderships skills.
    Instead, it is better to test for general intelligence and let the genetic components of "humor", "leadership", "empathy" etc. be naturally integrated into the general intelligence assessment.
    I can see that some important qualities might be reflected by IQ.  I have never seen an IQ test variant that quantified humor or empathy.  I don't agree that such qualities must necessarily or naturally flow from general intelligence.
    We can recognize that dogs are smarter  than sheep but an IQ test can't tell us why.  Or why some dogs are smarter than others.  Clearly adults are smarter than children in most ways so intelligence changes and adapts as we grow and age.   Obviously, there's more to intelligence than can be expressed in letters and numbers and in fact those abstractions came along only recently, long after humans had distinguished themselves as more intelligent than any other species.
    You're moving the goalposts when you demand of I.Q. to explain "why". I.Q. is designed to be a proxy for general intelligence. That's it. Is it a valid metric in that regard? I've argued yes.
    I'm not demanding an explanation, I'm illustrating the limitations of objective intelligence assessment. We are able to perceive differences in intelligence that we have no hope of quantifying within the limited scope of verbal measurement.

    We see general intelligence proxy tests (I.Q. tests) and see that some people perform better than others. Does that mean we shouldn't use I.Q. tests?
    Who said that?  I'll remind you that  I opened with "I do not disagree that IQ is a valid metric"
    Overall, I'm IQ skeptical and my experience tells me (hey, what about experience?)  that applying numbers to people's capacity is often self-defeating or at least self-limiting.  Tell people that a 4 minute mile is the limit of human capability and for some reason everybody believes it until one day that record is broken and suddenly thousands more find that ability within themselves.
    Applying numbers (based on I.Q. results) to people's capacity produces moderate correlations to desirable life outcomes.
    agreed.

    It's also often the best metric for predicting performance.  Clearly, I.Q. is having some impact on performance.
    You'd have to define performance more specifically.  The bell curvers were defining performance as holding a job for men and bearing children within wedlock for the ladies.  Kirkegaard's survey was looking at education level, occupation level (*), and income level as measures of performance.  I think IQ probably is a better or best predictor for educational, occupational, and financial attainment but again, all those measures fall within a certain Western paradigm.  We want to be careful not to mistake such metrics as a measure of human worth or an indicator of superior ability.

    *I do wonder how "occupational levels" were measured and what biases revealed therein.

    I agree that if you inspire people in various ways, you'll have them performing better. But you'll never have 55 I.Q. Pygmies becoming competent neuro-scientists at Yale, and you'll frustrate everyone involved if you force it.
    So, there's is a racial component to your assertions.  I don't know how you could possibly make such an assertion while failing to control for Western values.  Your definition of general intelligence may correlate with educational, occupational, and financial attainment but I assume that Bushmen are just as able to demonstrate their fluid ability to integrate multiple cognitive abilities in the service of solving problems within the context of the Kalahari as we are in the context of some Western metropolis.  I likewise assume that if the Mbuti were running the tests for cognitive abilities, big city white boys might take a significant hit in the scoring.  

     I may not be able to find a specific example of a Mbuti  neuroscientist, but the stated avg IQ score across all of sub-Saharan Africa is only 71 and nevertheless we see some prestigious neuroscientists excelling in Western cultures.  I do assume that some excellent individual Mbuti are entirely capable of such achievement given the right environment but if I'm reading you right, you don't. 







    Mesmer
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    @oromagi
    But then when I ask for a definition of INTELLIGENCE you give me the definition for GENERAL INTELLIGENCE.  I say that IQ doesn't cover all of what we recognize as  intelligence.

    • You disagree with me by saying that perception correlates well  with test outcomes but in a later post agree that Dennison found that the correlation was weak for starters and only improved over time.  Dennison only claims correlation to objective intelligence, which more or less agrees with my contention.
    • You agree with me by limiting your definition of INTELLIGENCE to the smaller subset, GENERAL INTELLIGENCE.  
    My contention was only that GENERAL INTELLIGENCE or objective intelligence is not the same thing as intelligence generally.  Huffcutt & Arthur would seem to agree with my point as does Dennison, as do you at some points in spite of your objection here.
    I generally agree with what you're saying here.

    People's notion of "intelligence" isn't as stringent (or frankly correct) as the scientific general intelligence. That's part of the reason that intelligence only correlates with general intelligence. Whilst it's important that people's heuristic understanding of intelligence correlates with general intelligence (because it helps showing general intelligence is grounded in reality), nobody would expect a heuristic understanding to be identical to a scientific term.

    As for "IQ doesn't cover all of what we recognize as  intelligence", "I.Q." not covering what is heuristically understood as intelligence does not mean we should make it match the heuristic understanding. As you've expressed multiple times, you think that "leadership skills" and "humor" should be included in a definition for intelligence, both of which don't cleanly test for I.Q. because of their learned components, hence why the more scientific general *shouldn't* perfectly correlate with the layman's definition of intelligence (i.e. what you see as "intelligence" isn't actually intelligence -- your colloquial understanding of intelligence isn't completely correct). Again, whatever intelligence factor there is in "leadership skills" and "humor" is *already* built into the definition of general intelligence. I believe this addresses the argument you made in the Bobby Fischer section, too (i.e. "raging" and "deluded" are heavily influenced by learned information).

    Integrating multiple cognitive abilities in the service of solving a novel problem is also learned. Understimulated children often demonstrate cognitive deficits.
    Studies will attempt to control for this by limiting the learned skills (or impact thereof) required to complete the I.Q. test. But the gravity of the skills is going to be far less than the learned, lived experience that would warp the intelligence measurement of things like "leadership skills" and "humor". If someone attends training, seminars and 1-on-1 coaching for leadership skills, and is compared against someone who has never had those experiences, how is that a valid test for intelligence when "leadership skills" here are heavily influenced by learned material? That would clearly a 'what do you know?' test, as opposed to general intelligence test.

    It would be like giving an English test to an African tribe, one of which has never seen English before, and concluding that they have zero I.Q. because they couldn't answer anything. Clearly, you need to control for learned knowledge. Likewise, "leadership skills", "humor" etc. suffer, to some degree, from this problem, too.

    I don't think most would agree with your assertion that IQ tests are only or even mostly interested in the heritability of general intelligence.  Yes, that is the primary interest of the eugenicists you cite, which makes sense because their mission is to justify their assertions of political supremacy with some kind of objective measure of genetic superiority.  However, the general figure for the heritability of IQ, according to the APA is 0.45 for children, and rises to around 0.75 for late adolescents and adults.  Heritability measures in infancy are as low as 0.2, around 0.4 in middle childhood, and as high as 0.9 in adulthood.   That is, stripped of influences of environment, genetics only show a weak correlation to IQ.  I think its fair to say that most psychometrists, absent those tainted by political agenda,  are trying to assess the whole picture, not genetic general intelligence alone but also the influence of environment and the relationship between the two.
    Firstly, stop Ad homming people. Nobody of a logical mind cares who or what they are. What matters is whether they are correct or not.

    Secondly, I.Q. tests by function do assess the genetic component of I.Q. That might not be the primary interest or even an interest of administering the test, but if you're controlling for learned knowledge, that's what they'll end up testing (to a high degree).

    Thirdly, I actually pretty much agree with your quoted estimations of I.Q. heritability. Just to be clear: the environment does influence I.Q., especially in younger people wherein it is the dominant determinant of I.Q. So, to address your main concern with what I wrote, we don't want to be measuring purely the environment for I.Q. We don't want to test purely for learned knowledge that was acquired outside of the I.Q. test -- that's the environmental effect we absolutely don't want in an I.Q. test. Instead, we want to be measuring for I.Q. whilst limiting the impact these purely environmental impacts will have on the test.

    I think you have circled around to agreeing with me.  IQ can't capture all of what we call INTELLIGENCE including things like leaderships skills.
    I don't agree "leadership skills" is an accurate measurement of I.Q. Some parts of leadership skills are probably aspect of general intelligence, but that isn't a reason to test for "leadership skills" specifically. So whilst I agree that I.Q. doesn't specifically measure for "leadership skills", measurement of I.Q. would be *worse* if it did.

    I can see that some important qualities might be reflected by IQ.  I have never seen an IQ test variant that quantified humor or empathy.  I don't agree that such qualities must necessarily or naturally flow from general intelligence.
    I don't know how many ways I can make this point, but we'll see:

    If I attended multiple seminars for humor analysis, if I watched sitcoms daily, if I spent time in a bar testing my stand-up routine on people, would not those experiences influence my ability to produce humor? Would I not have an advantage in learned knowledge if we tested for humor, especially against someone who didn't do these things? 

    Do you see the difference between "learned knowledge" and general intelligence?

    I'm not demanding an explanation, I'm illustrating the limitations of objective intelligence assessment. We are able to perceive differences in intelligence that we have no hope of quantifying within the limited scope of verbal measurement.
    We don't need to answer this "why" in order for I.Q. to be a valid metric. The limitation you illustrated isn't relevant to the thread.

    You'd have to define performance more specifically.  The bell curvers were defining performance as holding a job for men and bearing children within wedlock for the ladies.  Kirkegaard's survey was looking at education level, occupation level (*), and income level as measures of performance.  I think IQ probably is a better or best predictor for educational, occupational, and financial attainment but again, all those measures fall within a certain Western paradigm.  We want to be careful not to mistake such metrics as a measure of human worth or an indicator of superior ability.

    *I do wonder how "occupational levels" were measured and what biases revealed therein.
    By performance, I mean ability to perform at work, ability to make income and ability to become educated.

    I also think that bearing children within wedlock is a desirable life outcome for ladies (and society). However, this is absolutely debatable (and probably requires its own thread).

    So, one of the in-built premises of my argument is that civilizations are desirable. When you keep mentioning "Western paradigm", I'm already positing that civilizations are preferable to things like nomadic tribes (so this "Western paradigm" would apply to non-Western areas, like Saudi Arabia and China). In order to keep these civilizations functional, people need to become educated, work jobs and acquire income. I prefer, as do most people, to live in a house with running water, electricity, medicine, disposable income etc. as opposed to anything else. Yes, I do think that is superior and more valuable to the alternatives.

    "Occupational level was typically measured by such occupational scales as Duncan Socioeconomic Index, International Socioeconomic Index of Occupational Status, NORC prestige scale, etc" -- Page 406 under the heading: '5.1.1. Socioeconomic success'

    So, there's is a racial component to your assertions.  I don't know how you could possibly make such an assertion while failing to control for Western values.  Your definition of general intelligence may correlate with educational, occupational, and financial attainment but I assume that Bushmen are just as able to demonstrate their fluid ability to integrate multiple cognitive abilities in the service of solving problems within the context of the Kalahari as we are in the context of some Western metropolis.  I likewise assume that if the Mbuti were running the tests for cognitive abilities, big city white boys might take a significant hit in the scoring.  

     I may not be able to find a specific example of a Mbuti  neuroscientist, but the stated avg IQ score across all of sub-Saharan Africa is only 71 and nevertheless we see some prestigious neuroscientists excelling in Western cultures.  I do assume that some excellent individual Mbuti are entirely capable of such achievement given the right environment but if I'm reading you right, you don't. 
    I have used a racial example but that is not part of my "assertions". You can agree that I.Q. is a valid metric without believing that human races exist.

    I don't particularly know about Pygmies, but I have done a small amount of research on Aboriginal Australians. They actually have a superior level of spatial awareness. If we were to use the same distribution as I.Q. test data presents, Aboriginal Australians have 119 points, which puts them above an entire standard deviation of the global average (can't find my source on this though). If you were to set-up a test that measured spatial awareness, Aboriginal Australians would almost certainly do the best. However, that doesn't mean they are intelligent or that it makes sense to measure intelligence through spatial awareness levels.

    Clearly, if you find the Mbuti people who are five standard deviations (1 / 1744278) above their race's I.Q (you couldn't even find them lol), they are intelligent enough to become competent neuroscientists. This is not surprising. This doesn't meant that all Mbuti people are capable of becoming competent neuroscientists. This is why we don't use anecdotes.

    FYI you referenced above that I.Q. is mostly genetic in adults. I don't know why you've decided to argue now that the environment could make for this gigantic gap in I.Q, when you don't even agree with that yourself based on the research you quoted.
    oromagi
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    @Mesmer

    • Let's note that the Southern Poverty Law Center defines Gottfredson as a promoter of eugenicism, scientific racism, and white nationalism.
    • Gottfredson has taken more than a quarter million dollars in grants from the White Supremacist Pioneer Fund to advance eugenics research.
    These notes are both Ad Hominem attacks and are thus logically invalid.
    WIKI: Valid ad hominem arguments occur in informal logic, where the person making the argument relies on arguments from authority such as testimony, expertise, or on a selective presentation of information supporting the position they are advocating. In this case, counter-arguments may be made that the target is dishonest, lacks the claimed expertise, or has a conflict of interest.

    You asked if I "see any issue with the data" you provided.  I consider Gottfredson's acceptance of funding from White Supremacist eugenicists a legitimate conflict of interest when evaluating the heritability and worth of human traits.  That is, people with an interest in a particular outcome favoring  certain political conclusions  (i.e. supremacy) are more likely to introduce bias.  Now look at your top three negative life outcomes and tell me there isn't a certain old-fashioned white man elitism to your data:

    Out of labor for 1 month is one bad life out indicator.  The original data is so old-fashioned that they only counted men, expecting women to drop out of the labor force regular for birthing and raising children.  I'd argue that if our priorities were straight, all parents would drop of the labor force for at least month as part of bonding with infants and other childcare responsibilities.

    Had an illegitimate child: is another bad life indicator.  I understand why white supremacists are very interested in controlling breeding for the purpose of enforcing racial purity but 40% of all US mothers now have children deemed "illegitimate" by the old-fashioned standards of the early '80's.  Are we really still calling this a bad outcome.  Naturally, this bad outcome is only counting women as responsible for children born out wedlock.  Fathering illegitimate children is not considered a  similarly negative outcome, apparently.  

    Lives in poverty: There's the classic indicator of classist bias, measuring positive life outcomes according to money made. Many people choose low-paying jobs out of a sense of civic duty- teachers, nurses, military, clergy, social workers, etc or because their priorities supersede financial considerations- artists, athletes, farmers, etc.  Many highly intelligent people choose poverty, experience contentment, yet end up the bad outcomes list.

    • The table also appears in "The Bell Curve"
    Your point?
    I think my point was clear: super old fashioned, kind of racist, and not even really using IQ.

    • I'm not yet sure why it's important that "only white non-Hispanic respondents were included". Are you arguing that the results would have been significantly different if the other racial groups were included?
    On outcomes like "lives in poverty?" "was ever incarcerated?"   Are you kidding me?

    For your second dot-point, we should note that I.Q. only correlates with itself at 0.87. Still, the researcher's  estimates have this 0.06 gap because ASVA is 0.06 less correlate than I.Q. is for I.Q, so you're right in arguing that this is a limitation of the study. However, an unaccounted 0.06 correlation effect is quite small and we should regard the impact it could have as such.
    • The question is what biases are introduced by subbing in an Armed Services aptitude test for a General Intelligence test.  If anything an Armed Service test strikes me as even less likely to capture empathy, humorousness, experience, creativity, original thinking.  I think the Bell Curve and Gottfredson's eugenicists like this old-fashioned data because the biases skew towards a desired political conclusion.
    • I.Q. doesn't take into account the intelligence components within "musical aptitude" or "sense of humor".... In other words, general intelligence does not reject the notion that things like "empathy" and "humor" (to some degree) are part of general intelligence. So, in essence, I agree with you that I.Q. should factor these attributes into it,
    Yes, this is the essential point of my original contention.
    • and it already does to some degree.
    Disagree.  In what sense does the Armed Services Aptitude test measure humor or empathy?

    The reason why it only factors these attributes "to some degree" is because a lot of those traits you listed can be learned. ..... let the genetic components of "humor", "leadership", "empathy" etc. be naturally integrated into the general intelligence assessment.
    My point is those are clearly intelligence indicators that IQ does not measure.  You many be comfortable inferring that all such abilities flow from the traits quantified by IQ but I think you are in a small minority by such opinion.

    For you second dot point, the data remains valid because the cultural snapshot applied to *all* participants at the time. Effectively, controls for environment. I'd also argue that, "high school diploma, never been incarcerated, remain married to first wife and never give birth to a child out of wedlock" are all positive life outcomes, hence the data remains valid. 40% of modern women, I would argue, are likely to have lower I.Q. for making a bad decision (child out of wedlock). Albeit, this point probably requires its own thread (I might make one). Hence, this data remains valid, in regards to I.Q.
    Again, better than 40% of US  women are having babies without a marriage license these days.  Are you really lumping all those women into a bad life outcome.

    Your final dot point is mostly Ad Hominem against the data. "Not using IQ" is addressed above.
    Again, Pointing out that the advocate is not neutral, but has a conflict of interest, is a valid form of ad hominem argument.

    • You claim that  "Schmidt and Hunter (1990) examined the correlation between job performance and IQ" but that is false.
      • But Hunter and Schmidt explain, "The hypothesis was tested that the standard deviation of employee output as a percentage of mean output  increases as a function of the complexity level of the job."  The paper broadly found that as a job grew more complex, a wider variety of output was delivered by employees.  Nothing about intelligence or IQ at all.  In fact, a quick search for terms "IQ" "Intel" and "Quotient" all came up zero.
      • The table you snapshot and the data you describe are not in the paper you linked to.
    So Hunter and Schmidt use the term "mental ability" and "cognitive ability" instead of "IQ". It's fair enough to say that I should have noted this in the OP.

    Yes, "mental ability" seems to claim a much wider range than "general intelligence"

    The table I snapshotted was not directly from the study, but rather a compilation of data from the study. For example, Hunter and Schmidt refer to mental ability specifically here:

    "On the basis of Hunter's (1980) findings, the true-score correlations for general mental ability and supervisory ratings are .65 for high-complexity jobs, .57 for medium-complexity jobs, and .44 for low complexity jobs (when complexity is as defined in the text and in Footnote I)." 

    The average of: 0.65+0.57+0.44 = 0.5533 (to 4 d.p.), but the data they used had a higher percentage of medium complexity and low complexity jobs, and so the average of the data they used makes "mental ability" correlate at roughly 0.51 in their study (as depicted in the table).
    OK.  I don't think we're surprised that " the fluid ability to integrate multiple cognitive abilities in the service of solving a novel problem" correlates to job complexity.

    • You claim that Huffcutt & Arthur found that IQ was the best predictor of job performance but that is false.
      • Huffcutt & Arthur found that Hunter & Hunter (1984) had totally under-represented the value of the job interview and went on to conclude, "highly structured interviews provide essentially the same validity as ability tests"
      • The paper concluded the opposite of what you claimed it concluded.
      • Huffcutt & Arthur did not specify Intelligence as the ability tested, nor IQ as the test of Intelligence.
    Claiming that "highly structured interviews provide essentially the same validity as ability tests" doesn't detract from the validity of I.Q as a metric.
    Valid but not "best."  You claimed Huffcutt & Arthur supported "best predictor" but Huffcutt & Arthur said that Hunter (1980) badly underestimated the value of the job interview as the predictor of job performance and that when the job interview was highly structured surpassed IQ as a predictor.

    It's worth noting that intelligence/I.Q. is denoted as "Ability Composite" in this paper (which is admittedly a strange way to say intelligence).
    You seem to be assuming that Huffcutt's "ability composite "represents IQ but I don't see where Huffcutt made that connection.

    • You claim "with education, occupation and income levels, IQ consistently produced the best correlation." 
      • We should note that more than a hundred different types of intelligence tests were used- which raises plenty of questions regarding the correlations between one kind of intelligence test and the next.
      • This data claims that neither intelligence nor socio-economic index correlates very strongly to income.
        •  I would think socio-economic status would correlate with income far more than claimed here.
    We don't need to know how well I.Q. tests correlate with each other. All we need to know is how well the I.Q. test correlates with general intelligence, and then we can take an average of all the I.Q. tests in question.
    You're asking me to take for granted that all these hundreds of different kinds of intelligence tests all reflect your definition of  general intelligence sufficiently to eliminate any opportunity for bias.  I don't make that assumption.

    You can think your final dot-point if you like, but you don't have any data to back you up. I do.
    Socioeconomic status is the is often measured as a combination of education, income and occupation.  I'd always expect to see a strong correlation between any status and the qualities that define status.  For example, people with the status dead correlate strongly with lack of movement as an attribute.


    • So, for clarity: people guessing other people's I.Q. has weak correlation, BUT, when given enough time with the person, the correlation with an I.Q. test becomes quite strong. Without that caveat (time), I agree with you.
    So it takes time to accumulate subjective and objective data points in order to more accurately assess intelligence.  IQ gives us some valid metric of what you call general intelligence, but just like superficial personal assessments, not necessarily what we call intelligence generally.



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    But then when I ask for a definition of INTELLIGENCE you give me the definition for GENERAL INTELLIGENCE.  I say that IQ doesn't cover all of what we recognize as  intelligence.

    • You disagree with me by saying that perception correlates well  with test outcomes but in a later post agree that Dennison found that the correlation was weak for starters and only improved over time.  Dennison only claims correlation to objective intelligence, which more or less agrees with my contention.
    • You agree with me by limiting your definition of INTELLIGENCE to the smaller subset, GENERAL INTELLIGENCE.  
    My contention was only that GENERAL INTELLIGENCE or objective intelligence is not the same thing as intelligence generally.  Huffcutt & Arthur would seem to agree with my point as does Dennison, as do you at some points in spite of your objection here.
    I generally agree with what you're saying here.
    Fine.

    As for "IQ doesn't cover all of what we recognize as  intelligence", "I.Q." not covering what is heuristically understood as intelligence does not mean we should make it match the heuristic understanding.
    Yes, I'm afraid it does.  The  people are not going to change their shared understanding of the word INTELLIGENCE.  The fact that Intelligence quotients only quantify a subset of  those elements we understand as INTELLIGENCE means that the inaccurate usage is Psychometry's  to correct.  'g' quotient or "cognitive integration test" would be a lot less misleading and probably eliminate most objections to IQ test altogether.

    It would be like giving an English test to an African tribe, one of which has never seen English before, and concluding that they have zero I.Q. because they couldn't answer anything. Clearly, you need to control for learned knowledge. Likewise, "leadership skills", "humor" etc. suffer, to some degree, from this problem, too.
    I assume (admittedly without looking into it much) that the  Pygmys' avg 55 IQ score as well Sub-Saharan Africa's avg 71 are similar artifacts of poor controls for learned knowledge and don't quantify actual cognitive integration particularly well.
    I don't think most would agree with your assertion that IQ tests are only or even mostly interested in the heritability of general intelligence.  Yes, that is the primary interest of the eugenicists you cite, which makes sense because their mission is to justify their assertions of political supremacy with some kind of objective measure of genetic superiority.  However, the general figure for the heritability of IQ, according to the APA is 0.45 for children, and rises to around 0.75 for late adolescents and adults.  Heritability measures in infancy are as low as 0.2, around 0.4 in middle childhood, and as high as 0.9 in adulthood.   That is, stripped of influences of environment, genetics only show a weak correlation to IQ.  I think its fair to say that most psychometrists, absent those tainted by political agenda,  are trying to assess the whole picture, not genetic general intelligence alone but also the influence of environment and the relationship between the two.
    Firstly, stop Ad homming people.  
    What people?  Eugenicists?  Is it an ad hom to call a Eugenicist a Eugenicist?   Are you denying that taking money from parties with a political interest in a particular outcome exposes the data to skepticism when that particular outcome is published?  If a study stating that smoking is good for you comes out and I complain that the study was sponsored by RJ Reynolds, is that mere insult or is that a legitimate cause for skepticism? 

    Secondly, I.Q. tests by function do assess the genetic component of I.Q. That might not be the primary interest or even an interest of administering the test,
    So you concede my point .  Most people just want a number that let's them say they are smarter than others and aren't building a case that some groups of people are naturally smarter than others.

    Thirdly, I actually pretty much agree with your quoted estimations of I.Q. heritability. 
    I do think our differences are more a question of  the degree and extent to which this data is reliable than any question of validity.  

    I think you have circled around to agreeing with me.  IQ can't capture all of what we call INTELLIGENCE including things like leaderships skills.
     I agree that I.Q. doesn't specifically measure for "leadership skills", measurement of I.Q. would be *worse* if it did.  
    Nor could leadership be quantified if we tried.  Agreed.
    I can see that some important qualities might be reflected by IQ.  I have never seen an IQ test variant that quantified humor or empathy.  I don't agree that such qualities must necessarily or naturally flow from general intelligence.
    I don't know how many ways I can make this point, but we'll see:

    If I attended multiple seminars for humor analysis, if I watched sitcoms daily, if I spent time in a bar testing my stand-up routine on people, would not those experiences influence my ability to produce humor? Would I not have an advantage in learned knowledge if we tested for humor, especially against someone who didn't do these things? 

    Do you see the difference between "learned knowledge" and general intelligence?
    But, as you claim, IQ is controlling for learned knowledge.  You seem to agree that humor and empathy are aspects of intelligence not quantified by IQ tests.
    I'm not demanding an explanation, I'm illustrating the limitations of objective intelligence assessment. We are able to perceive differences in intelligence that we have no hope of quantifying within the limited scope of verbal measurement.
    We don't need to answer this "why" in order for I.Q. to be a valid metric. The limitation you illustrated isn't relevant to the thread.
    Again, I am not asking for an explanation (why) I am showing you that IQ does not measure those subjective perceptions that make an important part of what we call INTELLIGENCE.
    You'd have to define performance more specifically.  The bell curvers were defining performance as holding a job for men and bearing children within wedlock for the ladies.  Kirkegaard's survey was looking at education level, occupation level (*), and income level as measures of performance.  I think IQ probably is a better or best predictor for educational, occupational, and financial attainment but again, all those measures fall within a certain Western paradigm.  We want to be careful not to mistake such metrics as a measure of human worth or an indicator of superior ability.

    *I do wonder how "occupational levels" were measured and what biases revealed therein.
    By performance, I mean ability to perform at work, ability to make income and ability to become educated.
    Fine but then that reveals your bias, right?  Many intelligent people place no value on institutionalized labor, money, or institutionalized education.  I think that's why Pygmys score so low, not because they lack integrated cognition.

    I also think that bearing children within wedlock is a desirable life outcome for ladies (and society). However, this is absolutely debatable (and probably requires its own thread).
    Agreed.

    So, one of the in-built premises of my argument is that civilizations are desirable.
    But obviously, humans were INTELLIGENT long before they were civilized.  This demonstrates more of your bias.  Are you really measuring 'intelligence' or controlling for 'civilized?'

    "Occupational level was typically measured by such occupational scales as Duncan Socioeconomic Index, International Socioeconomic Index of Occupational Status, NORC prestige scale, etc" -- Page 406 under the heading: '5.1.1. Socioeconomic success'

    I have used a racial example but that is not part of my "assertions". You can agree that I.Q. is a valid metric without believing that human races exist.

    I don't particularly know about Pygmies, but I have done a small amount of research on Aboriginal Australians. They actually have a superior level of spatial awareness. If we were to use the same distribution as I.Q. test data presents, Aboriginal Australians have 119 points, which puts them above an entire standard deviation of the global average (can't find my source on this though). If you were to set-up a test that measured spatial awareness, Aboriginal Australians would almost certainly do the best. However, that doesn't mean they are intelligent or that it makes sense to measure intelligence through spatial awareness levels.
    Obviously, Aboriginal Australians are INTELLIGENT.  That is why we should change the name of the IQ test to the integrated cognition test because INTELLIGENCE means a whole lot more than just integrated cognition and if you go around saying that Aboriginal Australians are not intelligent you are picking an unnecessary fight because Psychometry is stubbornly using the word INTELLIGENCE to mean integrated cognition.  This is a good illustration of my contention.

    Clearly, if you find the Mbuti people who are five standard deviations (1 / 1744278) above their race's I.Q (you couldn't even find them lol), they are intelligent enough to become competent neuroscientists. This is not surprising. This doesn't meant that all Mbuti people are capable of becoming competent neuroscientists.
    I've already argued this.  I suspect that the biases you've already admitted- civilization, money, jobs, education, etc. clearly distort any evaluation of a nomadic people who value none of those things.  I've only studied Mbuti and San peoples briefly in anthropology but sufficiently to say with confidence that these people are INTELLIGENT by any ordinary understanding of that word and the scores reflect the failures of psychometry to match up IQ with actual INTELLIGENCE.

    don't know why you've decided to argue now that the environment could make for this gigantic gap in I.Q,
    I'm not.  I only argued that most Psychometry is trying understand the relative influence and interplay of heritability.  You have already agreed that most Psychometrics are not interested in heritability alone.

    FLRW
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    I saw Joe Rogan’s test score on his Instagram and decided to see how I stack up
    So I took the online IQ test at test-iq.org. 
    It said:
    Impressive! You completed the test in: 16 m 36 sThat's faster than 97% of people tested.Your strongest category is Pattern Recognition where you scored higher than 99% of people tested.

    I didn't want to pay the $19.99, so I didn't get the actual score.
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    @FLRW

    I saw Joe Rogan’s test score on his Instagram and decided to see how I stack up
    So I took the online IQ test at test-iq.org. 
    It said:
    Impressive! You completed the test in: 16 m 36 sThat's faster than 97% of people tested.Your strongest category is Pattern Recognition where you scored higher than 99% of people tested.

    I didn't want to pay the $19.99, so I didn't get the actual score.
    Did test-iq.org tell you they wanted $20 for that score before or after they asked you twenty questions?
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    After they asked the 20 questions.
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    Added07.31.21 12:05PM
    -->@oromagi
    After they asked the 20 questions.
    So crooks, then.  Or at least not to be trusted.  How much did they pay Rogan to take that test, I wonder?
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    I don't know. Joe Rogan has an IQ of 127 based off his test results from the BMI Certified IQ Test he took. Maybe they are just capitalists?
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    I don't know. Joe Rogan has an IQ of 127 based off his test results from the BMI Certified IQ Test he took. Maybe they are just capitalists?
    Capitalism does absolve deception.  You're still a liar even if you are only lying for money.

    The BMI Certified IQ test is also only twenty questions.  I'm sure that Mesmer would agree that just twenty questions is never sufficient to accurately assess cognitive integration.  Whatever certifications BMI claims are easily dismissed just based on the claim of a 20 question IQ test.  Furthermore, any test that doesn't conclude that Rogan's cognitive capacity  is severely limited is likely to be inadequate.
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    @oromagi
    The test claims to be the most accurate online IQ test in the United States. Although there is a free Demo IQ test on the site, there is a more in-depth Certified IQ Test that comes with a $20 fee.
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    Added07.31.21 01:10PM
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    The test claims to be the most accurate online IQ test in the United States. Although there is a free Demo IQ test on the site, there is a more in-depth Certified IQ Test that comes with a $20 fee.
    I think its fairly obvious how and why any online IQ test is unreliable.  There's a reason why scientists won't trust an online IQ test.  There's a reason why Mensa won't accept the results of an online IQ test for membership.
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    @oromagi
    WIKI: Valid ad hominem arguments occur in informal logic, where the person making the argument relies on arguments from authority such as testimony, expertise, or on a selective presentation of information supporting the position they are advocating. In this case, counter-arguments may be made that the target is dishonest, lacks the claimed expertise, or has a conflict of interest.
    ...
    What people?  Eugenicists?  Is it an ad hom to call a Eugenicist a Eugenicist?   Are you denying that taking money from parties with a political interest in a particular outcome exposes the data to skepticism when that particular outcome is published?  If a study stating that smoking is good for you comes out and I complain that the study was sponsored by RJ Reynolds, is that mere insult or is that a legitimate cause for skepticism? 
    I can't entirely blame you for using this faulty definition (as you've applied it correctly), but it is faulty nonetheless. Once again, Wikipedia has failed to provide a cogent definition. I'll explain why:

    It's true that if someone has a conflict of interest, they're more likely to be bias towards things they wouldn't be biased towards. If you had stated that because these researchers received money from people who have a political agenda, and you proved that they did have a political agenda (yet to be done imo), then I could agree that they're more likely to be biased.

    However, this is not the same as being logically fallacious, as is the function implied in an 'Ad Hominem' claim. By using Wikipedia's definition, you're essentially arguing that because their conflict of interest *might* have caused the research to be biased, it *has* to be biased. This leap in logic is why Wikipedia's interpretation of logic is wrong.

    Moreover, if the bias were to effect the results of the study, that should be evident in the results, and that's where your criticisms should be directed. In other words, the validity of the study exists *independent* of the author's character. More likely to be biased =/= biased.

    Therefore, it is logically fallacious to attack the character of the people making the arguments, rather than the arguments.

    Out of labor for 1 month is one bad life out indicator.  The original data is so old-fashioned that they only counted men, expecting women to drop out of the labor force regular for birthing and raising children.  I'd argue that if our priorities were straight, all parents would drop of the labor force for at least month as part of bonding with infants and other childcare responsibilities.

    Had an illegitimate child: is another bad life indicator.  I understand why white supremacists are very interested in controlling breeding for the purpose of enforcing racial purity but 40% of all US mothers now have children deemed "illegitimate" by the old-fashioned standards of the early '80's.  Are we really still calling this a bad outcome.  Naturally, this bad outcome is only counting women as responsible for children born out wedlock.  Fathering illegitimate children is not considered a  similarly negative outcome, apparently.  [...] Again, better than 40% of US  women are having babies without a marriage license these days.  Are you really lumping all those women into a bad life outcome.

    Lives in poverty: There's the classic indicator of classist bias, measuring positive life outcomes according to money made. Many people choose low-paying jobs out of a sense of civic duty- teachers, nurses, military, clergy, social workers, etc or because their priorities supersede financial considerations- artists, athletes, farmers, etc.  Many highly intelligent people choose poverty, experience contentment, yet end up the bad outcomes list.
    At the time (and even today), these were the values that were related to success. Hence, it is valid to see who best met the valid metrics at the time.

    Being out of labor for 1 month, when you have a single-income household (i.e. male breadwinner), is alarming. I can agree that preferably, men would get to spend more time with their children, but if you were to stop working as a man back in those times, your household would likely have no income (women were way less likely to work). Hence, this should be regarded as a metric of success at the time. I agree with you that this should not be considered a metric of success today, because most households require two incomes. Nonetheless, this metric was valid and functioned as a measure of success.

    I haven't argued "racial purity" nor am I a "white supremacist" at all. This is purely slanderous. Anyway, to your actual point, children born out of wedlock have (on average) worse life outcomes (more likely to: have teen parents, have non-biological parents (and suffer from the Cinderella Effect: Cinderella effect - Wikipedia ), to live in poverty, to suffer from depression, report substance abuse, require welfare and spend time in jail)  Non-marital childbearing has increased dramatically since the 1970s (princeton.edu), especially if they end up with a single mother (same effects are worsened) Single Mother Statistics (UPDATED 2021) (singlemotherguide.com) . And yes, women should be blamed more because they have access to a wider, more effective variety of contraception: "The invention of the birth control pill was a significant milestone in the women’s rights movement. Since then, other long-acting, reversible contraceptives (LARCs) have been developed for women, and women now have a total of 11 methods to choose from, including barrier methods, hormonal methods, and LARCs. In contrast, men only have 2 options—male condom and vasectomy—and neither are hormonal methods or LARCs" (source is a bit old but we still don't have a male pill: Contraceptive Justice: Why We Need a Male Pill | Journal of Ethics | American Medical Association (ama-assn.org) ).

    You're conflating "low-income" with poverty because these jobs are not poverty-stricken: "teachers, nurses, military, clergy, social worker". I can understand your argument to some extent if you'd argued "low-income" is in rare cases desirable (some of the jobs you listed are low-income in various parts of the world), but poverty is absolutely not desirable. Do you realize you're conflating the to terms, and that you would legitimately argue that people should be indifferent (or even want to live) poverty-stricken lives?

    [Intelligence doesn't account for factors like empathy, humor, creativity, musical aptitude etc.]
    I've summarized a lot of what you said into this one sentence, because a lot of what you said is a variation of saying this. If I've missed anything important, please let me know.

    I'll summarize how I've responded to this point on multiple occasions, because I think I've already addressed it half-a-dozen times, and it seems that your new responses aren't changing:

    (1) I.Q. DOES measure for the intelligent components of these factors. Any intelligence associated with these traits is shown in an I.Q. test
    (2) These factors you've listed aren't ENTIRELY measuring intelligence (due to some parts potentially being learned *before* an I.Q. test). That's why they shouldn't be tested for directly as a proxy for general intelligence (I.Q.)
    (3) When I agree that the environment affects I.Q, I mean that your diet can affect how well your brain functions. This is different from learning something prior to an I.Q. test. Again, it makes no sense to test African tribes for I.Q. if the whole test is in English and they don't know it (I.Q. is obfuscated by knowledge). However, the environment (diet, disease etc.) WILL affect their I.Q. -- that's how the environment plays a role

    [Schmidt and Hunter point] Yes, "mental ability" seems to claim a much wider range than "general intelligence"
    How so?

    Valid but not "best."  You claimed Huffcutt & Arthur supported "best predictor" but Huffcutt & Arthur said that Hunter (1980) badly underestimated the value of the job interview as the predictor of job performance and that when the job interview was highly structured surpassed IQ as a predictor.
    Yes, a "highly structured" interview did perform better than I.Q, according to Huffcutt & Arthur -- we agree on this.

    You seem to be assuming that Huffcutt's "ability composite "represents IQ but I don't see where Huffcutt made that connection.
    I can't find where they define it directly (been awhile since I used this source and control+f doesn't work), but "ability" clearly means something along the lines of innate talent that is not learned. "Composite" kinda makes it 'combined innate talent', which feels similar to general intelligence. I don't know what it could mean if it's not general intelligence.

    When I find some spare time, I'll read the whole thing again and tell you what exactly they define it as.
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    @oromagi
    You're asking me to take for granted that all these hundreds of different kinds of intelligence tests all reflect your definition of  general intelligence sufficiently to eliminate any opportunity for bias.  I don't make that assumption.
    If they're testing for I.Q, they'll correlate with it to some degree. If there's "bias", it will reflect in the correlation with I.Q. You're moving the goalposts when asking for 'how much do the tests correlate with themselves' -- we don't need to know to agree with what I'm arguing.

    Socioeconomic status is the is often measured as a combination of education, income and occupation.  I'd always expect to see a strong correlation between any status and the qualities that define status.  For example, people with the status dead correlate strongly with lack of movement as an attribute.
    You originally claimed "socioeconomic status" is far more correlated with income than claimed here (here being Kirkegaard's study). If you think this, then you need to demonstrate it, rather than merely stating "I'd always expect to see a strong correlation between any status and the qualities that define status." Otherwise, you're just guessing against research.

    So it takes time to accumulate subjective and objective data points in order to more accurately assess intelligence.  IQ gives us some valid metric of what you call general intelligence, but just like superficial personal assessments, not necessarily what we call intelligence generally.
    Yes, that's why this superficial assessment has weaker correlations with I.Q. than an I.Q. test. General intelligence is a far more robust, replicable definition than what people colloquially think of as 'intelligence'.

    If you don't think so, show me the research where it's concluded otherwise.

    Yes, I'm afraid it does.  The  people are not going to change their shared understanding of the word INTELLIGENCE.  The fact that Intelligence quotients only quantify a subset of  those elements we understand as INTELLIGENCE means that the inaccurate usage is Psychometry's  to correct.  'g' quotient or "cognitive integration test" would be a lot less misleading and probably eliminate most objections to IQ test altogether.
    I hear people colloquially call fast runners geniuses. I hear people who can bowl a cricket ball that spins a lot geniuses. Should we test for intelligence based on how fast you can run? Should we test for intelligence based on how much you spin a cricket ball? People's colloquial understanding of intelligence is good but isn't perfect, and the concept of general intelligence is superior. That's why we shouldn't use 'intelligence' instead of 'general intelligence' when the latter is available.

    I assume (admittedly without looking into it much) that the  Pygmys' avg 55 IQ score as well Sub-Saharan Africa's avg 71 are similar artifacts of poor controls for learned knowledge and don't quantify actual cognitive integration particularly well.
    Okay, 'cultural bias' is an acceptable objection to make. If you can show these papers don't control for cultural bias, I'm all ears.

    Secondly, I.Q. tests by function do assess the genetic component of I.Q. That might not be the primary interest or even an interest of administering the test,
    So you concede my point .  Most people just want a number that let's them say they are smarter than others and aren't building a case that some groups of people are naturally smarter than others.
    This wasn't my point at all, but maybe what I wrote was too vague.

    My point is that a test (of any kind) could test for the genetic component of I.Q. without knowing it.

    For example, if you tested people to see what art they could make with a pack of straws, art that represents the spiritual woes of the modern era, that indirectly tests for genetic I.Q.

    Thirdly, I actually pretty much agree with your quoted estimations of I.Q. heritability. 
    I do think our differences are more a question of  the degree and extent to which this data is reliable than any question of validity.  
    Yeah we agree that environment and genetics affect I.Q.

    It's a matter of agreeing on definitions and weights.

    Fine but then that reveals your bias, right?  Many intelligent people place no value on institutionalized labor, money, or institutionalized education.  I think that's why Pygmys score so low, not because they lack integrated cognition.
    [...]
    But obviously, humans were INTELLIGENT long before they were civilized.  This demonstrates more of your bias.  Are you really measuring 'intelligence' or controlling for 'civilized?'
    [...]
    I've already argued this.  I suspect that the biases you've already admitted- civilization, money, jobs, education, etc. clearly distort any evaluation of a nomadic people who value none of those things.  I've only studied Mbuti and San peoples briefly in anthropology but sufficiently to say with confidence that these people are INTELLIGENT by any ordinary understanding of that word and the scores reflect the failures of psychometry to match up IQ with actual INTELLIGENCE.
    'Civilized' doesn't need to be controlled for because it's inherently desirable. All people don't want to die of heatstroke in a desert, hypothermia from sleeping in the rain, starving, dehydration etc. Having civilizations helps people stay away from undesirable outcomes, and thus is more desirable than alternatives. Civilization is objectively preferable. 

    Obviously, Aboriginal Australians are INTELLIGENT.  That is why we should change the name of the IQ test to the integrated cognition test because INTELLIGENCE means a whole lot more than just integrated cognition and if you go around saying that Aboriginal Australians are not intelligent you are picking an unnecessary fight because Psychometry is stubbornly using the word INTELLIGENCE to mean integrated cognition.  This is a good illustration of my contention.
    The way I used intelligent in this instance was in the sense that Australian Aboriginals are less intelligent than other human races. Clearly, yes, they are "intelligent" to some extent.

    We can't measure for "integrated cognition" directly because science isn't able to directly find all the intelligence genes yet. Instead, the next best thing is an I.Q. test that acts as a proxy for "integrated cognition". No one of merit is saying that I.Q. is perfectly accurate in measuring "integrated cognition", but it's extremely accurate and the best tool we currently have.