What are your best arguments against the reality/validity/usefulness of IQ?
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appeals that would limit testing or research even if IQ’s validity is established are not [welcome].
Emphasis mine.
We all know the standard “that’s racist” argument already, newerspeak is clearly asking for a factual reason why measures of general intelligence are not real / invalid / not useful. Not to mention that the post did not make any claims about, or even mention, heredity of intelligence or race / gender differences in intelligence.
Let’s make distinction between “I have a prejudice against” and “I know something about you”
Assuming I know that IQ is valid and true objective measure, I can use it to judge your cognitive skills, and your opinion about the result does not matter to anyone, just as much as your own opinion about BMI.
Assuming that I am not sure if IQ is valid, then I would rather refrain from reaching any conclusions or acting as if it actually mattered (because I am afraid of consequences), thus making it useless for me in my practical day to day life.
So if we assume a measure is invalid, it is useless to us (as an accurate measure anyway; you already pointed out a possible rhetorical use)?
If you’ll forgive my saying it, that seems like more of a tautology about measurements in general than an argument about this specific case. If you have evidence that general intelligence as-measured-by-IQ is invalid, or even evidence that people unfamiliar with the field like Dr Atran or Gould take issue with ‘reifying’ it, that would be closer to what the original question was looking for.
I realize this comes off as a bit rude, but this particular non sequitur keeps coming up and is becoming a bit of a sore spot.
From the OP:
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Emphasis mine.
We all know the standard “that’s racist” argument already, newerspeak is clearly asking for a factual reason why measures of general intelligence are not real / invalid / not useful. Not to mention that the post did not make any claims about, or even mention, heredity of intelligence or race / gender differences in intelligence.
Let’s make distinction between “I have a prejudice against” and “I know something about you”
Assuming I know that IQ is valid and true objective measure, I can use it to judge your cognitive skills, and your opinion about the result does not matter to anyone, just as much as your own opinion about BMI.
Assuming that I am not sure if IQ is valid, then I would rather refrain from reaching any conclusions or acting as if it actually mattered (because I am afraid of consequences), thus making it useless for me in my practical day to day life.
So if we assume a measure is invalid, it is useless to us (as an accurate measure anyway; you already pointed out a possible rhetorical use)?
If you’ll forgive my saying it, that seems like more of a tautology about measurements in general than an argument about this specific case. If you have evidence that general intelligence as-measured-by-IQ is invalid, or even evidence that people unfamiliar with the field like Dr Atran or Gould take issue with ‘reifying’ it, that would be closer to what the original question was looking for.
I realize this comes off as a bit rude, but this particular non sequitur keeps coming up and is becoming a bit of a sore spot.