IME most people only think individual IQ differences are ok because they believe other qualities compensate the difference. If they say that some person has a higher IQ, they usually (at least implicitly) question their social skills, financial success, physical prowess, etc.. Also they always talk about much smarter people, not about the 50% under the average, conveying the idea that difference is due to the genius’ unusually high IQ not because most people are stupid in comparison. OTOH group comparisons usually imply that one group is smarter and the other is dumber, by comparing the average values for each group. While race is a sensitive issue, if we exchange race by gender, economical status, birthplace, weight, etc., the controversy is pretty much equivalent.
About the IQ vs. GDP “controversy” both Lynn and Vanhanen should be ashamed. They’re not even decent scientists, their methodology is flawed and they manipulated the data to fit their results! You can’t say “I don’t have the real data so I’ll just put a number here and argue that it’s true because I say so.” and expect it to be taken at face value. It’s not an experiment if it isn’t reproducible (which rules out almost everything except biology, physics and chemistry ;) and you can’t reproduce it if you force the data to fit your pattern.
Now, speaking about IQ itself, does make sense talking about it? Is there (at least) a significant correlation between IQ and any useful metric? Can we say that IQ improves our utility, for example? Are we (as a scientific community) sure that IQ measurement isn’t just self fulfilling (i.e. it measures what high IQ people have, but not much more)? I know of the (methodologically valid) studies that show people with higher IQ earning more but those studies don’t show if these cases are a direct result of IQ (i.e. they’re more effective) or a indirect result due to employers favoring people with high IQs (or SATs). Also other (methodologically valid) studies show that IQ doesn’t correlate to financial growth (i.e. becoming richer) because people’s investment and saving habits don’t correlate with IQ.
IMO IQ is a poor metric, it can’t give reliable predictions about things that really matter (e.g. GDP, personal finance, scientific achievements, etc.). I fail to see how it’s better than trying to measure how fast can people divide long numbers, surely it may be impressive and have a couple of use cases, but mostly it doesn’t matter. IMNSHO it’s telling that those people trying to correlate IQ with other values always use bad methodology and end up trying to convince the reader that correlation (i.e. their results) equals causation (i.e. their hypothesis).
IME most people only think individual IQ differences are ok because they believe other qualities compensate the difference. If they say that some person has a higher IQ, they usually (at least implicitly) question their social skills, financial success, physical prowess, etc.. Also they always talk about much smarter people, not about the 50% under the average, conveying the idea that difference is due to the genius’ unusually high IQ not because most people are stupid in comparison. OTOH group comparisons usually imply that one group is smarter and the other is dumber, by comparing the average values for each group. While race is a sensitive issue, if we exchange race by gender, economical status, birthplace, weight, etc., the controversy is pretty much equivalent.
About the IQ vs. GDP “controversy” both Lynn and Vanhanen should be ashamed. They’re not even decent scientists, their methodology is flawed and they manipulated the data to fit their results! You can’t say “I don’t have the real data so I’ll just put a number here and argue that it’s true because I say so.” and expect it to be taken at face value. It’s not an experiment if it isn’t reproducible (which rules out almost everything except biology, physics and chemistry ;) and you can’t reproduce it if you force the data to fit your pattern.
Now, speaking about IQ itself, does make sense talking about it? Is there (at least) a significant correlation between IQ and any useful metric? Can we say that IQ improves our utility, for example? Are we (as a scientific community) sure that IQ measurement isn’t just self fulfilling (i.e. it measures what high IQ people have, but not much more)? I know of the (methodologically valid) studies that show people with higher IQ earning more but those studies don’t show if these cases are a direct result of IQ (i.e. they’re more effective) or a indirect result due to employers favoring people with high IQs (or SATs). Also other (methodologically valid) studies show that IQ doesn’t correlate to financial growth (i.e. becoming richer) because people’s investment and saving habits don’t correlate with IQ.
IMO IQ is a poor metric, it can’t give reliable predictions about things that really matter (e.g. GDP, personal finance, scientific achievements, etc.). I fail to see how it’s better than trying to measure how fast can people divide long numbers, surely it may be impressive and have a couple of use cases, but mostly it doesn’t matter. IMNSHO it’s telling that those people trying to correlate IQ with other values always use bad methodology and end up trying to convince the reader that correlation (i.e. their results) equals causation (i.e. their hypothesis).