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?
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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).
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.
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.
This doesn't make very much sense. Students who spend all their time making songs and poetry aren't going to do well on math tests. Conversely, students who spend all their time doing arithmetic aren't going to make very good songs. And a correlation between these things isn't necessarily enough to demonstrate the presence of inherent ability - more contextualization is needed, otherwise you're just disseminating bad science. When you make sweeping conjectures you need to cite reputable studies and you need to explain yourself.
Psychometry is a pseudoscience. For a forum that supposedly intends to move past shady thinking this is a surprisingly shady thing to bring up. No respectable academic even remotely corroborates the things you've mentioned, and you've veered off from showing that IQ measures intelligence into discussing the existence of an elusive G factor. You've also refrained from correcting my profound misunderstanding of HBD or even further discussing HBD in its entirety, while also refraining from responding to any of the straightforward questions I had about IQ from prior responses.
You need to prove the things you're saying with studies and explanations. When you make these far fetched claims you can't simply tell the people you're trying to convince to do the thinking themselves, otherwise you ironically come off as someone incapable of thinking for themselves. People who really understand what they do are usually really good at explaining what it is they do to an uninformed audience. So far you've provided studies and explanations likely propagated by this forum and other similar echo chambers comprised of people who think similarly - nothing you've said yet tells me that you've arrived at these conclusions on your own volition or free thought.
Again, psychometry isn't taken seriously by academia and is regarded as a pseudoscience - I implore you to cite and explain the studies that led you to the conclusions you're making about heritability and the G factor. Also, you should provide additional context for the twin studies you bring up. Did the researchers assume that the twins continuously lived in the same environment? Did they ensure that the twins were genetically identical? These factors are among the things that make twin studies difficult to get right, and they're also why twin studies are no longer taken seriously as a means of analyzing heritability.
The ideas you discuss are not real things discussed in either the genomics or psychiatric community, but the manner in which you articulate them feigns professional authority and understanding to a sufficient enough extent that any uninformed person perusing through this discussion would believe what you're saying and become indoctrinated with the perspectives propagated by the echo chamber. What you said about this forum being a branch off of HBD conjecture on another adjacent forum makes sense in hindsight - the people here have already decided that they believe in what you're talking about, and they're just finding things to reaffirm what they think. The relative mediocrity of this discourse is ironic given it's taking place under a post that remarks on how intellectually stimulating this forum is compared to the rest of the internet and its communities of unenlightened denizens.
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.
You never did before I claimed this - you only started citing psychometry as a legitimate source in your prior response. Anything real you did provide didn't say IQ measured smartness, and you neither proved nor explained what you mean when you say HBD.
I don't know why you're being so angry with me, I really am interested in what you think. I don't know what I can do to show you I'm not trolling. Does asking questions warrant such a combative response?
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.
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