If you don’t get that, then the world is terrifying. Someone’s said that IQ “correlates with” life outcomes? What the heck is “correlate with”? Did they say that only high-IQ people can be successful? That you’re doomed if you don’t get the right score on a test?
This is definitely not the only worry had by people who are skeptical of IQ usefulness.
Suppose an institution or firm decides to impose IQ tests to applicants and automatically reject anyone below a certain threshold.
Alternatively, suppose IQ tests are given more widely in schools and used to irreversibly track students into different career paths from a very early age. Sorry, smart kid, it doesn’t matter if you want to be a musician, you have to study advanced math.
These scenarios don’t relate to the epistemic deterministic worry you mention because they’re more focused on a different issue: given study of IQ, how will the information be used?
That’s not to say we shouldn’t study IQ! We definitely should! And I believe you about IQ being really predictive on a macro level! But it does mean that even though we currently live in a world where IQ does not absolutely determine an individual’s life outcomes, we could live in such a world, if the right policies were enacted. The lab protestors are wrong about their focus—they should be working to pass laws against discriminating based on IQ—but their worry is very, very different from the one described in the quoted section.
This is definitely not the only worry had by people who are skeptical of IQ usefulness.
Suppose an institution or firm decides to impose IQ tests to applicants and automatically reject anyone below a certain threshold.
Alternatively, suppose IQ tests are given more widely in schools and used to irreversibly track students into different career paths from a very early age. Sorry, smart kid, it doesn’t matter if you want to be a musician, you have to study advanced math.
These scenarios don’t relate to the epistemic deterministic worry you mention because they’re more focused on a different issue: given study of IQ, how will the information be used?
That’s not to say we shouldn’t study IQ! We definitely should! And I believe you about IQ being really predictive on a macro level! But it does mean that even though we currently live in a world where IQ does not absolutely determine an individual’s life outcomes, we could live in such a world, if the right policies were enacted. The lab protestors are wrong about their focus—they should be working to pass laws against discriminating based on IQ—but their worry is very, very different from the one described in the quoted section.