Posted on 08/09/2013 3:06:33 PM PDT by reaganaut1
“IQ is a metric of such dubiousness that almost no serious educational researcher uses it anymore,” the Guardian’s Ana Marie Cox wrote back in May. It was a breathtakingly ignorant statement. Psychologist Jelte Wicherts noted in response that a search for “IQ test” in Google’s academic database yielded more than 10,000 hits — just for the year 2013.
But Cox’s assertion is all too common. There is a large discrepancy between what educated laypeople believe about cognitive science and what experts actually know. Journalists are steeped in the lay wisdom, so they are repeatedly surprised when someone forthrightly discusses the real science of mental ability.
If that science happens to deal with group differences in average IQ, the journalists’ surprise turns into shock and disdain. Experts who speak publicly about IQ differences end up portrayed as weird contrarians at best, and peddlers of racist pseudoscience at worst.
I’m speaking from experience. My Harvard Ph.D. dissertation contains some scientifically unremarkable statements about ethnic differences in average IQ, including the IQ difference between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. For four years, the dissertation did what almost every other dissertation does — collected dust in the university library. But when it was unearthed in the midst of the immigration debate, I experienced the vilification firsthand.
For people who have studied mental ability, what’s truly frustrating is the déjà vu they feel each time a media firestorm like this one erupts. Attempts by experts in the field to defend the embattled messenger inevitably fall on deaf ears. When the firestorm is over, the media’s mindset always resets to a state of comfortable ignorance, ready to be shocked all over again when the next messenger comes along.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
I don’t think MENSA is considered HIQ.
In some African nations startlingly so
Africa is afflicted with a huge infectious disease burden, as well as massive malnutrition. The brain simply does not develop when the body is fighting to survive. No child of any race would do well intellectually under those conditions.
I saw a movie (documentary) set in the DRC (Congo) during an Ebola outbreak. What impressed me was that, despite the horrendous poverty and high illiteracy rate in the affected town, the people in that town asked extremely sophisticated questions about the outbreak. Their questions were far more intellectual than I would see from, for example, a bunch of white liberals. Those Congoese were not stupid. They were just unlucky enough to be born in a place lacking opportunity.
No, I don't.
A Dem would accept that low IQ is a racial characteristic of black people, and then embrace affirmative action while moaning about how unfair it is to keep these stupid people out of top colleges and universities.
I have expressed no such opinion anywhere. I believe that all college applicants should compete equally. If there are group differences in their competitiveness, it is because of cultural issues that need to be addressed. I do *not* accept, as liberals do, that lower intellectual performance in some ethnic groups is a hardwired genetic characteristic of those groups. My view is a conservative view: help people to help themselves.
Sadly, becoming a democrat politician is the only option for many sub-par people.
MENSA always struck me as an arrogant elitist society of people bragging to each other about how smart they are. There's a cruder term to describe what I think about MENSA, but it is not appropriate to use here on FR.
I'm pretty sure that my IQ far exceeds that needed to join MENSA. However, I'm not an arrogant elitist who needs to brag in order to feel good about myself.
Is there a Chitlin’ version?
Once one admits of stable group differences, the effort to close them seems somewhat less sensible.
Currently, when the results of academic achievement tests are made public, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth when it shows that various minority groups underperform other groups. Witness the headlines concerning standardized test results this week in New York.
So, then the search is on as to why specific groups underperform. And on the left, it's usually about racism, lack of resources, discrimination, poor schools foisted on minorities and poor folks, etc., etc.
But if one comes from an initial understanding that there are intergroup differences, and that these differences appear to be stable over time, and that honest research needs to ask questions about the total array of factors that might account for these differences, not just racism and poor environment, the approach to all these questions might change in a positive way.
Of course, the race hustling industry would be crippled, and guilty white liberals would lose their raison d’être, so it seems an unlikely path down which our society might travel.
sitetest
I think your post answers the question posed in the thread title. As we FR folk gather because of many common interests so might people with other shared traits such as a high IQ.
Mentioning membership in such a group on your job resume is not advised.
I figgered THAT out when I received a mass mailing ad a few years ago.
Like the old “Do you still beat your wife?” thing; I realized that if I sent them money and passed the ‘test’; I’d have bragging rights to say I wuz smart.
I also knew that if I did NOT sent them money; I’d be even SMARTER!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU2TA4lSuYI#t=2m44s
There is real belief that the overqualified person will not fit well with his co workers but mostly that he will leave as soon as something better turns up.
Increasingly the work requires dealing with computers and data
I visit docks and warehouses often. The younger types coming in have some college and might be in school. They must have writing skills and ability to use the handheld computers and input devices . A degree is not required however.
At one step up however a degree will be required because of communications abilities and the need to communicate upward and outward. (outside, with me for instance) There are older types who have managed to learn on the job. Those who didn’t are gone
Of course, a degree does not mean the holder knows squat.
No more. I graduated from HS in 1963, at the end of the era when it was pretty much assumed that those who took even Algebra 2 had IQs over 120. Every course imaginable has been dumbed down because success no longer demands analytic skills.
It is NOT "comfortable ignorance". They know. It's just that data which impedes the Leftist agenda is to be suppressed at all costs.
A friend of mine is in Mensa and holds meetings in his house. I'm not a member, but I'm sometimes there hanging out.
Mensa appears to have a number of members who are not as successful in life as their IQs would indicate they should be, due to personality issues.
Think about it. Most really smart people are in professions where they interact all day with lots of equally-smart people. They don't need to join Mensa.
I think they still use a cutoff of "top 2%" on any one of several aptitude tests as the cutoff for admission. That equates to about 132, which by most standards is just about the beginning of the "gifted" range. The problem is that not everyone scores the same on all tests, so anyone who wants to get in badly enough and is usually in the top 5% on tests can probably find one where they'll just make the 2% cutoff.
The reason the SATs and GREs were not used after a certain point is that they shifted from being aptitude (IQ) tests to proficiency (acquired knowledge) tests.
You got it. There are huge amounts of money being spent to "close the gap". There are large numbers of Democrats making lots of money in this activity. Lots of careers are dependent upon the continuation of funding.
What would happen to the cash flow if the majority of American voters were allowed to come to the conclusion that no amount of funding would close the gap?
The original concept of Mensa was that smart people would get together and think of solutions to the big problems. The concept made some sense at first, before the age of technology. It gave people from various backgrounds an opportunity to get together and share ideas, philosophies, and thoughts. It quickly devolved into party central for nerds.
Then technology changed the dynamic. A physical group became less necessary and interest in abstract discussion declined.
There are still some dinners where Mensans get together for discussion and a thought-provoking speaker. I wouldn't paint all of Mensa with one brush. For people who dwell in the world of ideas, it's a really nice social outlet.
You're right to say that it is still a scientifically-open question whether intergroup IQ differences are genetically-based or not. However, there is research that suggests it is, including research that shows that there are still differences between middle class blacks from “enriched” environments and similarly-situated middle class whites.
Are these differences really fully attributable to cultural differences? Maybe. Maybe not. Personally, based on my own experiences, I'm ambivalent. I went to, and my sons go to/graduated from a private college prep high school where pretty much everyone goes to college. Including a few folks who go to the Ivies and similar schools each year. The school is majority black.
All the black kids go to college, too.
But there appear to be clear achievement differences between racial groups. The AP calc and physics classes are over 80% white. The basic Spanish classes are overwhelmingly minority.
To be sure, there are very high-achieving and scoring blacks in the school. But the school is majority black and the overwhelming number of National Merit Finalists, and National Merit Commended students are white.
Because it's a private school, two things are true of nearly every student: his household has a higher-than-median income (median family income for the school is about $125K per year); and he was born into an intact family (and most students live in intact family environments while at the school).
These are in no way disadvantaged students.
So, what accounts for the perceived differences?
Some days, I ponder the question, and I think, yep, there's at least some genetic component.
But then I look at my own sons (my older son finished valedictorian, and my younger son won't be far behind as he completes his senior year, this year), and I think, what separates my sons from a lot of these other kids is their work ethic. Most days, they just outwork their peers, plain and simple. And I guess that's because my wife and I purposefully set out to create that kind of "family culture" (we homeschooled through 8th grade, and thus were able to really fashion our own "culture").
On days when I think of those differences that seem more about culture, I think, no, it's not genetic, it's cultural.
But then I wonder from where culture comes. Do better adapted cultures emerge from populations with higher average intelligence?
On those days, I'm just really confused.
It would be nice if folks did the science to answer these sorts of questions. But as the author of the article points out, even wondering aloud about the topic can ruin one’s career.
sitetest
“That includes the “right” to be a completely ignorant moron.”
Yes, it actually does.
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