Geoffrey MillerVerified account

causality. The field is by-and-large using (often messy/confounded) correlational studies to argue for causality. Finding: IQ tests predict stuff. Ok. But Assumption: there is g; Assumption: IQ tests measure it; Assumption: diffs in IQ tests cause differences in observed outcomes

re: (1) predictive power of real-world outcomes is rarely great for anything! but comparatively speaking, cognitive ability measures are up there with just about anything else. also, why pick criminality? isn't the context of most of these discussions academic achievement?

I agree that cognitive abilities are causal, but disagree that IQ tests measure them ad straight forward as you seem to suggest. See e.g. here (I don't agree that IQ is bullshit, as the start of the thread said, the thread is still informative)https://twitter.com/spiantado/status/1275783976339169280?s=19 …

not sure what the relevant point here is; can you spell it out?

The narrow point I tried to make is that I don't think existing IQ tests are generally good measures of cognitive ability (which you seemed to imply), because cultural background knowledge has a clear influence on IQ test performance, as the linked thread shows.

Every single person in the IQ testing business would love to become rich and famous by inventing an IQ test that is just as predictively valid as the IQ tests we have today but in which blacks do as well as whites. But after 50+ years of trying, nobody has come close.

People who don’t see IQ difference among people, races, particular occupations, just don’t get out much. Call it what you need to call it. People are not equal in abilities. Some dumb. Many average smart. Few really smart. And it don’t change much after the womb exit.

What if IQ tests are crap at measuring real abilities? Why do you care so much about IQ anyway? Did you read something somewhere that fit with your worldview and now you feel emboldened by the science of it?