I think in many ways this is simply a byproduct of how we test for intelligence. A brief history:https://twitter.com/TiredFairy/status/975972198434316288 …
One of the first 'intelligence' tests was the Binet-Simon test, which was modified by a psychologist at Stanford to become the Stanford-Binet testpic.twitter.com/dO4ch6vTZB
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Originally, this test was designed simply to identify children who were underperforming scholastically (i.e. maths, science, language ability)
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It was then broadened somewhat, with questions being modified and added, and marketed less as a test of ability and more as a test of what we might now call 'intelligence'pic.twitter.com/Ds8UlP8WRx
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Ironically, Binet (the psychologist who designed the intelligence test) was extremely angry with how his test was used, in part because he argued that 'intelligence' is not a fixed quantity and shouldn't be used to discriminate against peoplepic.twitter.com/EjlplemNuY
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So the basic story of how psychological IQ testing came about centres around school abilities: maths, science, language etc
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But there's a huge issue: we know that how well you perform on these tests is complex. Wealth, for example, is a huge predictor of IQ test abilitypic.twitter.com/lnXsOp4czU
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The point here being not that wealthier people are more intelligent, but that being wealthy makes you better at answering the types of questions IQ tests ask
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So basically, people think that IQ is directly related to maths/language etc because they've been told that their IQ score is reflective of 'intelligence'
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But unfortunately, IQ tests - even the good ones - aren't tests of 'intelligence', they're tests of how well you can do IQ tests
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Those two things - 'intelligence' and 'ability to do IQ tests' - are obviously related, but how much and in what way depends entirely on what you value
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We know, for example, that IQ tests are culturally determined. As an Australian, if I were to do a translated French IQ test I'd probably do terribly
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Which means that what people are valuing as 'intelligence' is almost always less about how clever someone is and more about an arbitrary test result
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End of conversation
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