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submitted 6 months ago by ugjka@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] BurningnnTree@lemmy.one 7 points 6 months ago

What's with the bit about IQ tests? I haven't heard of that as a right wing talking point.

[-] Wanderer@lemm.ee -5 points 6 months ago

The general narrative is that all people are equal, no exceptions.

So the reason some races are more successful or educated or whatever is 100% environmental. As such all countries and people can be brought to the same level of whatever ideal you want e.g. low crime, higher gdp.

But if you look at people, some countries are taller, or heavier, or the best runners come from certain areas etc. So everyone agrees their is genetic differences in physicality. To potentially expand that thought to the brain isn't without some comparison. But the narrative is no, all human races have the same level of intelligence no exception.

If you wanted to test the last point you could do something like an IQ test. Which has been done and shows dufferent races have different IQ.

So the question is, is are IQ tests an accurate showing of intelligence or are they entirely worthless test?

[-] Signtist@lemm.ee 6 points 6 months ago

It's important to define was "equal" is in this context. Some people hear "equal" and think they must measure exactly the same in every test, but that's not how the word is being used in this context. It's more that people are so varied from one person to another that no test can truly judge them well enough to differentiate them when it comes to inherent worth.

One person might measure above another in one test, but there are surely many others where the results would be flipped. There are so many different things you could test a person on that in the end none of them really matter; any one measurement is like trying to figure out what an extinct animal looked like from a single tiny piece of a fossil.

That's what the IQ test is doing - it's taking one tiny piece of human intelligence, which itself is one tiny piece of what might be said to make up a person's value, and trying to use that to extrapolate information about them that simply can't be taken from such a 1-dimensional test. It's not worthless, but it needs to be paired with a bunch of other tests before it can really say anything, and even then it wouldn't say much.

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this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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