Posted on 08/26/2005 6:49:50 PM PDT by dennisw
I agree. That does not account for a lot of other factors that go into success (as Murray and Hernnstein argue), such as, in our example, that the grandmother may be smarter than the high school kid (at that point, or more experienced) and find a way to cheat so as to win the race; or bribe someone to give you the victory. These are extreme examples, but it makes Murray's point that there is a lot more to success in life than IQ. IQ is a prominent predictor, but not the only predictor.
Now, as an academic, I take solace (largely from my own experience as a not-too-brilliant professor, compared to my colleagues) that hard work, tenacity, a skill with people, good "luck," timing, and (personal opinion) God's blessings are worth FAR more than IQ. I went to grad school (with low GREs) with a woman who came in with near-perfect GREs. She washed out in a year! Obviously, despite her high IQ, she did not have other traits or characteristics that made for success--the ability to "jump through hoops," or get along with an advisor, or who knows what?
I don't think it is racist to say that 99% of the NBA is black, or that Asians have the highest average ("spectrum") of IQs in the world. All that IQ didn't help Japan beat us in WW II---indeed, we still built better weapons than they did.
I think these are good points - but one thing I do notice as well is that in many science graduate programs, most of the women in them are foreign-born. Culture may play a role as well.
later read-whole-article and pingout.
My problem with the whole concept of IQ is what is purporting to measure. As a measurement device it's unlike any accepted metrology. It has no accepted standard and it's unclear what the precision or accuracy of a particular test is. If I have a meterstick, I can compare it with a NIST reference for example. The people at NIST can compare their standard with the internationally accepted definition of the meter. I can also state what the precision of measurement and uncertainty of a measurement made with that meterstick is. I don't know of any method of doing that with an IQ test. As such, it seems to me to be more like the Scientologist's e-meter - it measures something but not necessarily what is purporting to measure.
mark
The American Psychological Association begs to disagree with you.
The link is to a reproduction of the APA 1996 report prepared in response to the controversy that arose over Murray's (and Herrnstein's) "The Bell Curve." Read the report before you make any more statements about a subject you obviously know nothing about (but are willing to make crass ideological statements about anyway...).
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PH, does this translate into: "Your position on the bell curve is less than the lowest quartile" ??? :)
I'm way down at the bottom. Which makes my accomplishments all the more remarkable.
[Saddened bump] You are asking for the poster to exercise critical thinking. This requires effort, my FRiend. Much easier to simply adopt an ideological stance without question.
Strangely enough, everyone that I know who has read the book thinks it's about race.
I hear ya, friend. Doesn't hurt to call him on it, tho'... :)
Really? I've got the book right here, Doc. It's 552 pages, exclusive of appendices and notes. Its title is "The Bell Curve." Its subtitle is "Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life." Its authors are the late Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray. It was published 1994, by Free Press. Same book you're referring to, right?
Tell us truthfully, how many of those 552 pages are about race?
Go ahead---cite to your source (which kinda hasta be the book itself, doncha agree?) for support for your allegation, and we'll "peer review" it. Very scientific, wouldn't you agree?
The correlation coefficient, r, can be computed whenever the scores in a sample are paired in some way. Typically this is because each individual is measured twice: he or she takes the same test on two occasions, or takes two different tests, or has both a test score and some criterion measure such as grade point average or job performance.
Nothing in the article mentions any issue with the precision of a given test (e.g. is a difference of a single point between two individuals a significant difference or not) nor any real accepted standard for intellegence. Instead the article defines many different types of "intellegence" that various tests measure. In other words, these tests only show that a person is good at whatever the test is measuring which no one quite seems to agree on. From your link -
Some researchers believe that psychometric intelligence, especially g, depends directly on the 'neural efficiency" of the brain (Vernon, 1987; Eysenck, 1986). They regard the observed correlations between test scores and measures of processing speed as evidence for their view. If choice reaction times, inspection times, and VEP latencies actually reflect the speed of basic neural processes, such correlations are only to be expected. In fact, however, the observed patterns of correlation are rarely as simple as this hypothesis would predict...Do high levels of neural efficiency" promote the development of intelligence, or do more intelligent people just find faster ways to carry out perceptual tasks? Or both? These questions are still open.
It may help to look up the scientific uses of words like "accuracy" and "precision" first. Accuracy is the how close a measure comes towards an accepted standard. Precision involves the repeatability of a measurement. IQ tests as of now don't really specify either quantity and can't really be judged as true measurements.
If I recall, Murray makes a pretty good argument of what specifically IQ measures, how it does so, etc.
If you haven't read his book, you really should.
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