Analysis: IQ defenders feel vindicated

United Press International ^ | 6/24/2002 | Steve Sailer

[Map Kernow]

After all the rancor and invective over IQ testing these past few decades, we now know the constitutional "bottom line" thanks to last week's Supreme Court decision: We don't need to worry about any alleged racial or cultural bias of IQ tests, as long as they can be used to save convicted murderers from execution.

[RANGERAIRBORNE]

IOt's like everything else with the Left (from Stalin to Gore)- if it advances your agenda, it is good, true, and beautiful. If not, it must be stamped out ruthlessly.

I am sorry that the premier "IQ-test" denier, Stephen Jay Gould, is dead. I would have loved to start a correspondence with him regarding this Supreme Court decision!

[concerned about politics]

"Just about the only time I see journalists and liberals take IQ seriously is when it meets their ideological predilections.

Yep, because they know IQ tests make them look like total morons. They don't get past the first question.

[B4Ranch]

One intelligence expert worried that we will end up executing only those killers "too stupid to realize that they ought to flunk their IQ test."

[Paleo Conservative]

Court left it up to the states to determine what should be the cutoff score for mental retardation. The 18 states that had already banned executions of the retarded tend to use an IQ of 70 (or occasionally 65 or 75) as the dividing line, often combined with other evidence of functional impairment.

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[Billthedrill]

To prevent killers from trying to cheat death by intentionally scoring poorly on his IQ test, most of these states require evidence that they were already retarded by the age of 18 or 22.

Wouldn't a Democratic Party membership card be acceptable as prima facia evidence?

[RonF]

I'm a staunch capital punishment opponent (the fact that someone has taken the place of God and taken someone's life doesn't justify the state doing the same), but I'm uncomfortable with the Supremes' method of reaching this decision.

[Map Kernow]

One intelligence expert worried that we will end up executing only those killers "too stupid to realize that they ought to flunk their IQ test."

Put another way, the Supreme Court is saying in its Adkins v. Virginia decision that any convicted capital murderer that can't hit clean out of the park the softball pitch they just threw, doesn't deserve to live.

[Travis McGee]

So a serial killer who enjoys raping, torturing and killing children, and does so many times, when captured deserves to spend many years watching TV, reading, writing letters etc in a comfy cell?

Is that just?

What does it say about the value of the lives he took, that he is rewarded with many years of TV and relaxation?

Were the human beings he killed just so many cockroaches to you, that he deserves many years of life after committing many heinous murders and taking away many lives?

[Travis McGee]

So a serial killer who enjoys raping, torturing and killing children, and does so many times, when captured deserves to spend many years watching TV, reading, writing letters etc in a comfy cell?

Is that just?

What does it say about the value of the lives he took, that he is rewarded with many years of TV and relaxation?

Were the human beings he killed just so many cockroaches to you, that he deserves many years of life after committing many heinous murders and taking away many lives?

[B4Ranch]

Not if I was KING.

[Lexington Green]

Intelligence... a vapid concept... social science voodoo... They can't even define it, let alone measure it.

[Map Kernow]

Intelligence... a vapid concept... social science voodoo... They can't even define it, let alone measure it.

Fine. Then you agree with me that neither "intelligence" nor IQ tests should be used to save a single solitary murderer sentenced to execution in this country on constitutional grounds, don't you?

[monday]

"Intelligence... a vapid concept... social science voodoo... They can't even define it, let alone measure it. "?

LOL, Ooops... sorry to hear about your low score. Don't be bitter;-)

[DUMBGRUNT]

"Familial low IQ has been quite common in the past, in other countries today, and in segments of American society".

Oh, but not us!

Why would the distribution of the of the high I.Q. not be the same as the low? Anyone can get food stamps,A.D.C. ...

[Map Kernow]

Well, you can be confident of one thing: Nobody who writes that intelligence is a "vapid concept," that it's "social science voodoo," that it "can't even be defined, much less measured" has ever read any scholarly literature or treatise in the field. I've come to expect posters to pop up on threads like this proclaiming that "there's no such thing as intelligence," and I always take them at their word, insofar as they're making reference to themselves. :)

[aculeus]

Intelligence... a vapid concept... social science voodoo... They can't even define it, let alone measure it.

In WWII the US Army grew -- in a couple of years -- from a hundred thousand to many millions and intelligence tests (the AGCT) played a major role in organizing those millions.

If you think IQ tests mean nothing then form a company in an industry requiring "intelligence" (e.g., writing software) and hire only people who score in the 60th percentile or lower on a standard test. Then report back to FR -- once you're finished at Bankruptcy Court.

[Map Kernow]

If you think IQ tests mean nothing then form a company in an industry requiring "intelligence" (e.g., writing software) and hire only people who score in the 60th percentile or lower on a standard test. Then report back to FR -- once you're finished at Bankruptcy Court.

Very intelligently put. :)

Seriously, though, pretending that "intelligence" is a meaningless or undefinable concept blasts gigantic holes in the science of human psychology. Indeed, it perversely denies one of the qualities we use to define ourselves as part of the human species---if there is "no such thing as intelligence," how come we're not clambering around in trees and scavenging for fruit and insects to eat, like a troop of apes? Is there no quality definable and measurable as "intelligence" that separates us from chimps? And as you pointed out by your example, is there no standard of intelligence within our species to distinguish high intelligence from low? People sure as hell act like there is, even those who airily proclaim that there is no such thing!

[RonF]

"Were the human beings he killed just so many cockroaches to you, that he deserves many years of life after committing many heinous murders and taking away many lives?"

What a serial child molester/killer deserves is beyond my ability to subject him or her to. Killing is too good for them. Better they should suffer for the rest of their natural lives. If the jails don't do an adequate job of this, then fix the jails.

[Lexington Green]

Apparently you can define "intelligence".... well, go ahead...the philosophers will love to hear you've nailed down that mega-idea.