site banner
gog  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   7212 thread views

Where are the people smarter than us hanging out?

In Paul Fussell’s book on class (I think), he says that people are really worried about differentiating themselves from the class immediately below them, but largely ignorant of the customs and sometimes even existence of the classes above them. When I found SSC, and then The Motte, and stuff like TLP, I was astonished to find a tier of the internet I had had no idea even existed. The quality of discourse here is . . . usually . . . of the kind that “high brow” (by internet standards) websites THINK they are having, but when you see the best stuff here you realize that those clowns are just flattering themselves. My question is, who is rightly saying the same thing about us? Of what intellectual internet class am I ignorant now? Or does onlineness impose some kind of ceiling on things, and the real galaxy brains are at the equivalent of Davos somewhere?

41
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Why not respond to the whole thing

writing coherent responses is somewhat difficult and takes some amount of time. There are enough politics forums in existence I could spend 16 hours a day researching and writing posts on various topics. Even that understates it, I could spend 16 hours a day writing just about race and IQ across dozens of different internet forums and still not be able to respond to everyone interested. One might, ofc, want to do other things in life in addition to discussing race and Iq. If your last paragraph warrants 5 paragraphs in response, each other paragraph would ... and then you'd respond with 5 paragraphs each, and it blows up.

I very much want what you say about IQ and HBD to be true. I want to believe that I'm special because of a test

why do physics and math professors consistently score 140+ on iq tests?

If it is a popular sentiment, shouldn't it be easy for you to articulate the validity of IQ or HBD such that anyone could understand it, given you've talked about these things enough times already?

Sure. But I'm not really one to keep papers or sources on hand. I arrived at my conclusions over years of reading various books, articles and posts and updating my conclusion over and over again until they reached a settling point.

I suggest you read the Wikipedia page on IQ to get a rough understanding of what it is exactly.

Else this article by Scott is a good primer. Its an introduction to just how useful IQ is as a metric.

why you think IQ is important.

Because it's a metric that can predict a lot of things. Such as social mobility, education attainment, wealth, crime rate, etc. And it predicts those things for groups and individuals.

IQ score is a better predictor of Job performance than Education level, College grades, and Interview scores by a mile. It's not even close.

IQ is correlated with so many things consistently in the same direction that the summed correlation is extremely strong. This is the telltale sign of a signal in the noise.

I think that while your heart is in the right place, you're effectively making up a problem that doesn't exist.

Of course, it exists.

We don't know how to make people smarter. We really don't. Millions of dollars were spent on improving educational outcomes for certain groups to no avail. Refer to Arthur Jensens most infamous paper.

Everything you suggested helps one reach their natural limit, they do little to go past that limit.

Could you elaborate on this?

Sure.

IQ has a r of 0.82 with National GDP/capita. That information is immensely useful for me. I can spot nations that are doing better or worse than their expected outcome and analyze further better than anyone who isn't aware of this, because.. I know where to look!

Seriously, I challenge you to find me something that explains this much variance that isn't an economic metric or just another proxy for IQ.

I think that you're missing the bigger picture when you refrain from discussing the sentimental aspects of this or how it effects people on an individual basis rather than through what you consider an objective perspective.

I don't care at all. The Motte is a place for adults to discuss adult things. And I will speak the truth even if it really really hurts because that's just my value system. I value the truth more than not offending people with it.

Muggsy Bogues

Exceptions don't disprove the rule.

Even if the odds of me succeeding were near impossible I would still do what I do and die trying. .

That's on you, has nothing to do with the truth value of IQ as a metric. I reiterate, It's not a value judgment or a prescription, its a description.

I want to believe that I'm special because of a test, and I want to believe that I'm smarter than other people because of my race.

Profound misunderstanding of the central HBD claim.

Group differences give you little information on the individual. Imagine you have two normal distributions Na(100,15) and Nb(85,15). Na refers to the White IQ probability distribution, Nb refers to the black. There will be a lot of black people who score higher on an IQ test than a lot of white people and vice versa. BUT on average, white people score higher.

Also the fact that there is a race based IQ score gap is... not controvertial. The reason for that gap and what to do about it is. Just look it up.

I mean I am interested in how you think IQ measures smartness

The idea behind it is simple. When you track various different abilities such as mathematical test scores, language abilities, musical abilities, memory recall under stress, and many more. All those results tend to correlate. Meaning people who are good at one test are also likely to be good at another test. Keeping in mind care is taken to make sure people can't learn or study for these tests, they are trying to test of inherent ability.

This suggests the existence of there being some kind of latent variable/factor that is a feature of all the above functions. This latent factor is called the 'g factor'. Or the general intelligence factor. Which is the working definition of "intelligence" or more colloquially "smartness" according to most psychologists and especially psychometricians.

You will need to understand factor analysis for the "light bulb moment". IQ tests are the best metric we have as trying to proxy the g factor. Because of their strong 'statistical reliability' (Explanation on Wikipedia/IQ).

and I was considered illiterate until not long ago. But even after taking a glance at these links none of them really say anything about how IQ measures smartness, intelligence or whatever you'd like to call it. In fact, none of them refute what I said about IQ really only making sure that students think a particular way suited to the needs of an institution.

Those links assume that you know that IQ is tracking the g factor. So look at them in retrospect now.

Here are the mechanisms.

  • IQ tracks g.

  • g cannot be increased and is hereditary (probably genetic).

  • g correlates with many success metrics.

I can't do the thinking for you. But if you spend some time reflecting on those 3 facts. It will be evident why IQ is so useful as a metric.

but you're disregarding the nuanced cultural, economic, and historical differences between each race that would complicate these findings (see previous responses

Not at all. Psychometricians are well aware of those weak points and take great care to account for those. The strongest studies showing IQ's heredity (studies that track identical twins across their lifetimes) show that IQ is strongly hereditary.

These discrepancies also hold in different regions, different times, and different places. There really isn't any other explanation but to accept the signal that some groups of people score differently.

You are not going to waste my time by ignoring everything I said, then claim you were illiterate months ago and refuse to read anything I provide, then ask for "reputable studies" in the next breath. Why should I provide them to you if you self-professed won't read them? Then claim I don't have free thought?

And then you go on to bash the supposed good faith and intelligence of the very forum that isn't banning an obvious troll like you and is attempting to answer your questions in good faith even though you are not making that job easy for anyone?

I'm done here.

On a similar note though I found that people with a high IQ tend to be better at regulating their emotions.

If you think this is a high-IQ way to call someone stupid, it's not.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats