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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28734 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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I wouldn't be surprised if switching to 1-mile time as the sole criteria of admissions would select more strongly for IQ than the current system.

You think a system based on mile time would select more strongly for IQ than a system based on test scores and GPA?

Could you make that argument, because that seems prima facie crazy to me.

Not the op but i would say the goal is not to select for IQ but for intellect/future potential. But like the OP i actually would expect a competative track meet to measure those qualities just as well if not better than our currently accepted methods.

I can absolutely believe it - remember that the system also has features like penalising you for being involved in predominantly rural or agricultural pursuits, and gives you bonuses for being an illegal immigrant. While the test scores and GPA obviously have some relevance, there are enough confounding factors to substantially reduce the actual selective effect in question. Sure, grip strength isn't as strongly tied to IQ as SAT results, but I think that all of the other "holistic" selection criteria would bog down the IQ component enough to lower it down past that 58% number.

It could arguably select for conscientiousness more strongly than test scores and GPA; mile time seems to simply be [hard work + genetics]. It might be that Tanner Johnson's genetic potential for the mile, given the willpower of a Navy SEAL, the best training, etc. at age 17 is 4:46 and no matter how hard he trains during his adult life he will not crack 4:22. His fraternal twin brother might not be quite as fortunate and has a cap at 5:32 because very mild congenital knee problems keep him from training like an animal.

I'm not that sure about IQ as such; you can't be dumb but you also don't need to be John von Neumann to be an Olympic miler.

There are obviously systems that would select more strongly for IQ than mile time, like test scores and GPA. But that's not our current system: people are first binned into categories based on their race, and only then do test scores and GPA come into play. What I'm saying is that I wouldn't be surprised if the mile time metric would manage to better select for IQ, even without the more direct signals from GPA and test scores, because it would drop the binning step. An auxiliary hypothesis needed for this to work is the mile time would still be correlated with IQ, with the delta between it and better measures being smaller than what's introduced by the binning.

There are diligence, ability to cheat, and family income effects that would be captured by mile times, which are themselves positively correlated with IQ.

The correlation between grip strength and reasoning is 0.23.

If you pick two random people their grip strength will correctly order them by IQ 58% of the time. If you only look at people with z>1 grip strength then this drops to 53%

So for any moderately selective college you’re basically operating 3% above random.

If you order by SAT you get 70% and 60% respectively.

You’ve got a long way to argue that affirmative action is so unmeritocratic that it makes such a crappy signal like mile time comparable to a decent signal like test scores.

Then we can talk about why you think “mile time with no AA” is either better or more politically feasible than “test scores with no AA”

If you start testing for something, people will start training it.

Yes and apparently adding a ton of non-IQ signal will magically make this test a better proxy for IQ.

The existing admissions process already has a ton of non-IQ signal. I'm not sure if this would be better or worse.

If you pick the top 1% of grippers their average IQ will be 102. I think Harvard manages to do better than that.

Then we can talk about why you think “mile time with no AA” is either better or more politically feasible than “test scores with no AA”

I said neither that it was better nor more politically feasible than anything, just that it could be more strongly selective of IQ than our current system, which is test scores with (de facto) AA and a bunch of other stuff.

If you pick two random people their grip strength will correctly order them by IQ 58% of the time. If you only look at with z>1 grip strength then this drops to 53%.

Sure. But that's before you've made a system that rewards grip strength with social outcomes. As soon as you do that, the correlation with IQ would become greater, as people with higher IQs interested in better social outcomes would then try to optimize for grip strength and be more effective at optimizing for it. Similarly, although there's no correlation between volunteering inclinations and IQ, you would see a strong one if you look at high schoolers, as they try to pad their resumes with volunteer work for the purposes of admission. You'd see a similar response from students with a grip strength system: you'd have parents sending their kids to after school gripping programs, specialized gripping coaching, etc. Motivated high schoolers would flock to web forums devoted to developing good grip. Some ambitious students would turn to grip-enhancing drugs. A black market would develop for professional grippers who would be hired as a stand-in for students to take the Scholastic Griptitude Test.

This applies to pretty much anything. If a DEI ETS decided to make a test that focused solely on obscure figures in African American history, you'd see the groups that outperform today outperform nearly as much on the new test.

Now, that would never become as strong a signal as SAT scores, which are fairly g-loaded. But, as with my original phrasing, it wouldn't surprise me if it ended up selecting for intelligence more strongly than the actual existing system we have.

Sure. But that's before you've made a system that rewards grip strength with social outcomes. As soon as you do that, the correlation with IQ would become greater, as people with higher IQs interested in better social outcomes would then try to optimize for grip strength and be more effective at optimizing for it.

You're conjecturing that grip strength and conscientiousness are positively correlated (citation?) and that conscientiousness and IQ are positively correlated (seems contentious at best after some Googling). Take every concern I had with using terribly-correlated variables and square it because you're not even talking about a direct connection anymore.

I don't think you really comprehend how weakly these traits are connected, and how relying on interactions between those traits makes that even worse. Yes, many good traits are correlated (a.k.a. the halo effect), and yes, people who deny this are worth refuting. But to go the opposite direction and just see these traits as interchangeable proxies for each other is crazy.

Suppose you published the entire SAT answer key a week before the test. Conscientious students would memorize it and completely destroy the other students, but nobody would dare to claim that this improves the correlation of the test with IQ! This is because the SAT is already a good proxy!

For any decent metric adding in confounding factors make it worse and the only reason you can conjecture the opposite is because grip strength is such a terrible metric to begin with.

The average SAT score is 520 on each test. The average Harvard admit has an average in the low 700s (white admits average 745 and African Americans average 704). The standard deviation on each test is around 100. This puts African American Harvard admits around 1.8 standard deviations above average.

And you think social incentives will transform your 3%-above-random-chance signal into something competitive?

You're conjecturing that grip strength and conscientiousness are positively correlated (citation?)

I'm conjecturing that outcomes on any arbitrary measure that will result in better social outcomes and can be influenced by planning and hard work is positively correlated with conscientiousness and intelligence. Give a random student in China a test on US History and tell them it doesn't matter, and there'll only be a small correlation between intelligence and score. Let them know four years beforehand that if they get a perfect score on the test they'll get a million USD and a visa to the USA, and there'll be a strong correlation.

just see these traits as interchangeable proxies for each other is crazy... This is because the SAT is already a good proxy!

To quote myself in the comment you're responding to: "that would never become as strong a signal as SAT scores, which are fairly g-loaded."

But, you get at something real: I do think to some extent every objective metric is interchangeable. Choose an arbitrary objective metric to excel at and tell students that their future well-being depends on it, and conscientious students will outperform on it as much as possible, which will often be a lot for intelligent students. The questions are how much grip strength is trainable and how much intelligence helps training. If the trait is more like height, then measurements of it will fail as a proxy; if it's more like ability to play the piano, it will work well.

that conscientiousness and IQ are positively correlated (seems contentious at best after some Googling)

I acknowledge the studies on this do contradict my point, and I remain skeptical. My suspicion is that what they're measuring as conscientiousness doesn't capture what we think of as conscientiousness, but I've not had the chance to look into the studies in detail.

Suppose you published the entire SAT answer key a week before the test. Conscientious students would memorize it and completely destroy the other students, but nobody would dare to claim that this improves the correlation of the test with IQ! This is because the SAT is already a good proxy!

I'm going to bite the bullet here and say that, given a choice between our current system (which is not purely test or test-and-GPA based) and a purely memorize-the-publicized-answers test, I think the memorize-the-answers test would select more for IQ.

I'm conjecturing that outcomes on any arbitrary measure that will result in better social outcomes and can be influenced by planning and hard work is positively correlated with conscientiousness and intelligence

Your original claim was

I wouldn't be surprised if switching to 1-mile time as the sole criterion of admission would select more strongly for IQ than the current system.

Nowhere did you mention conscientiousness.

You doubled down in your next comment

What I'm saying is that I wouldn't be surprised if the mile time metric would manage to better select for IQ, even without the more direct signals from GPA and test scores, because it would drop the binning step

You believe Harvard's non-SAT-related admissions criteria make this plausible, despite the fact that the average Black admit to Harvard has a 96th percentile SATs.

If you filter for the top 1% of grip strength the average IQ will be 56th percentile (I don't recall the math offhand, but a simple programmatic proof:

import numpy as np
X = np.random.normal(0, 1, (1000000, 2))
cov = np.array([1.0, .23*.23, .23*.23, 1.0]).reshape(2,2)
Z = X @ np.linalg.cholesky(cov)  # Create two variables with correlation 0.23
grip = Z[:,0]
iq = Z[:,1]
print(grip.std()) # 1.00
print(iq.std())  # 1.00
print((grip * iq).mean())  # 0.053 (i.e. 0.23^2)
I = np.argsort(grip)
print(iq[I[-10000:]].mean())  # 0.144 or the 55.7th percentile

).

Let me reiterate that it seems clear that Harvard filters strongly on SAT. Certainly there are plenty of factors that dilute this, but given that the average Black admit to Harvard has a SAT-z-score of 1.8 while a grip-based admissions program would struggle to get an average admit with an IQ-z-score of 0.1 makes this seem like a pretty open-and-shut case to me.

just see these traits as interchangeable proxies for each other is crazy... This is because the SAT is already a good proxy!

To quote myself in the comment you're responding to: "that would never become as strong a signal as SAT scores, which are fairly g-loaded."

You accept the SAT as good. You just don't acknowledge how vast of a gap there is between an r^2 value of 0.7 and 0.05. The "interchangeable" part is that you're chaining these correlations (grip strength -> conscientiousness -> iq) and claiming that what comes out the other side is somehow relevant to the conversation. This is only sensible if you think these correlations are high.

I'm going to bite the bullet here and say that, given a choice between our current system (which is not purely test or test-and-GPA based) and a purely memorize-the-publicized-answers test, I think the memorize-the-answers test would select more for IQ.

I don't like affirmative action, but correlations of 0.8 (SAT and IQ) don't emerge by chance, and trying to cobble together terrible proxies into a decent one won't get you remotely close.

If you want to argue that affirmative action destroys the selection then argue it. Here is the obvious report to cite from. In my opinion this will be rather difficult since a school filtering for the top 1% of grippers would have an average IQ of 102, while Harvard very clearly is well beyond that.

Yes but we aren't asking gunners to order themselves by grip strength yet.

Part of the hypo is that we ask graduating seniors to test their mile time to get into elite schools. If you did that, high IQ high conscientiousness kids will understand the assignment and train the 1600m. This would improve the correlation for 18yo college applicants.

You think a system based on mile time would select more strongly for IQ than a system based on test scores and GPA?

The current system is dropping or de-emphasizing test scores, GPA is very gamed, and the system includes subjective factors like your personality as determined by the admissions officer's assessment of your race.

like your personality as determined by the admissions officer's assessment of your race

I would also point out that, in the recent Harvard case, interviewers who met the candidates still gave higher personality scores to Asians than to Blacks. It's only when admissions officers were evaluating the packets that Asian personalities suddenly became inferior.

To be fair GPA itself was never a great measurement. If you take easier classes you'll get a better GPA, so in some ways it's anticorrelated with IQ.

Universities can and do account for this during admissions, with the easiest classes being penalized. Internally they use a corrected GPA, which takes into account both classes taken and the rigor of the school that the applicant took the class. What makes test scores so special is that they allow universities to extract a signal from applicants who excelled in GPA at a shitty school (since there's a clipping effect in the measuring instrument).

Though even the SAT has a clipping effect, to the point where a 1550-1600 score is table stakes for admission to top universities.

Yeah, the SAT has ceiling effects. I don't really think it's being used as a talent search by the top universities to uncover the next Ramanujans. Otherwise, perfect scores on the SAT would be FAR rarer than they are now...more like one every couple years than a thousand a year or so.

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