IQ can be used to give scientific justification to our internalized biases.
I don’t want to limit your rights, because you are X. I want to limit your rights because I belong to Y, and as Y does better than X on IQ tests, it is only prudent that we know better what is good for you. I am also not interested in listening to counter-arguments coming from people whose IQ is below 99.
Also, in extreme cases, it can be used to push further policies such as eugenics (the bad kind that everyone has in mind when they hear the word “eugenics”):
Ah… I forgot to say that X shouldn’t have the right to have children. No offense meant, but we want to avoid dims out breeding brights. Also, keep your stupid daughter away from my son, as I really don’t want my own children to pollute genetic purity of our kind.
What are your best arguments against the reality/validity/usefulness of IQ?
-
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.
IQ can be used to give scientific justification to our internalized biases.
Also, in extreme cases, it can be used to push further policies such as eugenics (the bad kind that everyone has in mind when they hear the word “eugenics”):
From the OP:
-
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.