Yes, but then again, I'll posit that having Blue Eyes is correlated with income. But I'd like to see someone to try to defend that position scientifically.

In reality, all I've done is created an artificial group which is heavily skewed towards richer countries. The color of the eyes had nothing to do with IQ, and yet it's correlated.

So what, if anything, is the IQ test measuring? How do you know you haven't simply written a test which measures how much time the person has to think about brain teasers? Researchers should ask these questions to determine if the correlation is actually caused by anything real, or if it's better explained by some other underlying factor.

>How do you know you haven't simply written a test which measures how much time the person has to think about brain teasers?

Come on man, do you really think a century's worth of psychologists never considered such trivial questions?

This kind of response is, in my opinion, anti-academic.

A better response would be too try to find some literature on the subject.

One aspect of IQ is your ability to solve certain kinds of abstract problems. OP asked what if the IQ tests just test your ability to solve certain kinds of abstract problems.

OP's post didn't seem like a genuine academic inquiry but instead a weak emotional attempt to dismiss something they don't like.

Fallacy: Appeal to authority. Besides, obviously they have, which is the reason I said it.

And even further: researchers say that you can study for IQ tests to get a higher score. Presumably general intelligence is not something you can cram for. This is one of the reasons psychologists argue the IQ test is not an accurate system, and may or may not be just testing secondary effects of intelligence (like brain teaser ability).

Of course IQ tests test for secondary effects of intelligence. In what way does that invalidate it? It's important to remember we're talking about population level distributions here. A person could theoretically test well for some form of IQ but actually be a moron. That would mean nothing with regard to the efficacy of the test or validity of IQ in general.

I've had psychology professors tell me their industry is pretty much 'full of shit' ... how much damage has Freud et al done to our understanding of ourselves?

Much as certain people are very keen on the idea of G, I imagine "attitude towards being tested" and "willingness to guess the unknown answers" - both of which I'd expect to correlate with income within populations - are underrated factors in scores on timed group IQ tests.

If you control for race and income the effect of blue eyes will probably go away. The effect of IQ does not.

Regarding brainteasers, there is no evidence that practicing a certain brainteaser will improve your performance on entirely different ones. IQ measures the ability to perform well on novel tasks.

For that line of reasoning to work, you'd have to prove that the IQ test only presents novel challenges unrelated to practice tests. I think that's a much higher bar than you are thinking, and I'd be interested to know how they would prove it.

Obviously in the limit every test shares something with some other test. But it's not like it's hard to find cases where practice on one task fails to generalize to another task: in fact it's the norm, and it's exactly this empirically observed lack of generalization that motivated the concept of IQ and g in the first place. For example, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27474138

Funny you should bring that up, I pondered the term "quotient" yesterday, and guessed it must be from latin "quot" (what? yes, "what?"). The mantra goes "dividend / divisor = quotient". Sure you need to take the nominator into account, but where do you draw the line? On the one hand, the environmental factors are averaged because it would be hard to draw a line for each individual. On the other hand, the real kicker is to take two tests, and divide the two quotients, eliminating constant factors and only looking at the rate of improvement. Of course the assumption of constant environmental "divisors" is illusionary, only symbolic.

"Quotient" is very fitting also because testing is trying to divide subjects into groups. "Divide" is also very fitting: "vide" ("see") is heavily linked to knowledge, ob-vi-ously (more strikingly in German: "offensichtlich").

In fact, language started out as sign language, and simply looking into a direction is used as a sign even by apes. I believe "to tell" also derives from that. So there is a strong connection between visual thinking and language ... and math: It's symbolic reasoning, even to tell derives from counting (as in "to recount a story", e.g.) -- "tell" and "talk", etc, ultimitely derive from * del (de-?), "speak" is similar to "spy" and "spect", this is really fundamental; Which brings me back to divide, "di-" is akin to "two". Learning is inherently about telling two things appart.

For complex problems, talking up in terms of two is far too inefficient, though. E.g. we see three dimensions and so on and so forth. So, I guess IQ testing concerns the ability to coordinate X associations at once. It is not about head-nuts. Only, for higher X it will generally involve reading comprehension. And I can report that there is a sharp cut-off at some X for me. The time limit then is only set to a limit at which solving at all is increasingly unlikely. But, I guess the tests are biased to which coordination tasks are usually performed, ie. which capabilities can be expected. This will be tested in the beginning of a test as control.

So, those tests are engineered to test intelligence in combination with specific domain skills, which are expected prerequisit in specific domains. That is circular rsasoning, yes, circjlar reasoning is fundamental, because ... counting is based on the two modulo ring (that satisfies the me, at least, although of course there's much more to it).

> Researchers should ask these questions to determine if the correlation is actually caused by anything real, or if it's better explained by some other underlying factor.

Yes, absolutely! But this only works if people apply the same skepticism towards the theories they find more politically palatable. See: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands...

Since people are notoriously bad at being self-skeptical, the best way to learn what is actually true is by encouraging viewpoint diversity: https://heterodoxacademy.org/

> Since people are notoriously bad at being self-skeptical, the best way to learn what is actually true is by encouraging viewpoint diversity:

The problem with that concept is that if the available evidence actually does strongly support a position, seeking viewpoint diversity means actively selecting people who either cannot analyze the evidence or who wilfully ignore it's content.

Doing so within the research community may help the competent, and honest subset of the community avoid getting stuck in ruts formed by the subtle accumulation of confirmation bias from past results (if the other group doesn't end up getting filtered out by then over time, despite being present in the community, which is improbable), but it also means that you have to actively promote crackpots and their pet theories to do it; in terms of learning what is actually true, I don't think that's a net win.

> The problem with that concept is that if the available evidence actually does strongly support a position, seeking viewpoint diversity means actively selecting people who either cannot analyze the evidence or who wilfully ignore it's content.

We're not talking about diversity of opinion on whether gravity is real. We're talking about viewpoint diversity on questions that involve far more ambiguity, complexity, and interpretation, like how to measure human intelligence. Questions where the evidence can point in multiple directions depending on what data is collected and how it is interpreted.

I think the site addresses this well:

> For simple problems or fully resolved technical matters there is little need for viewpoint diversity. Sometimes there is just one answer, or just one way to approach a problem. But for “wicked problems” — those that can be framed in multiple ways and that may trigger passions or partisan motivations–viewpoint diversity is essential. --https://heterodoxacademy.org/the-problem/

> Since people are notoriously bad at being self-skeptical, the best way to learn what is actually true is by encouraging viewpoint diversity: https://heterodoxacademy.org/

I don't know if this is because of my European point-of-view but that site seems to be exactly the opposite. It seems to identify changes in opinion on universities as an inherent problem and that the former ratio should be promoted. Furthermore it clumps together far-left & liberal in some absurd common pool "proving" the lack of diversity of opinion. I mean a lot of European "diversity of opinion" is in precisely that single pool.

I don't think the site is arguing for historical ratios or that changes of opinion are bad. It is arguing against orthodoxy: situations where certain ideas become so sacred that questioning them is no longer tolerated. If demographics were skewed towards the left, but the left-leaning majority was willing to critically engage dissenting ideas, there would be no problem. Instead the dominance of the left (at least in the US/UK) seems to function largely through socially-enforced orthodoxy, where dissent is punished and stigmatized.

I have heard that this is not as much of a problem outside of the Anglosphere, so if you are from continental Europe you might experience this differently.

> I don't think the site is arguing for historical ratios or that changes of opinion are bad. It is arguing against orthodoxy: situations where certain ideas become so sacred that questioning them is no longer tolerated.

Paradoxically it seems to be doing both at the same time. Here's a quote from the site:

> "For example, as the graph shows, in the 15 years between 1995 and 2010, the American academy went from leaning left to being almost entirely on the left. Similar trends and problems are occurring in the UK and Canada, and to a lesser extent in Australia."

How should I interpret this as something other than "We've seen a progressive shift during this certain period and we don't like it"? This says nothing about how diverse the opinions are - especially when you clump together a very wide spectrum of thought into "the left". For example, what goes for moderate/conservative ideas in the US translates normally to very hard right in many western-european countries (although admittedly less so recently), making it traditionally quite a fringe part of the political scene. But at the same time the European diversity of opinion is, in my opinion at least, far better than the essential two-party (both being firmly right-wing as well) scene of US politics.

> Instead the dominance of the left (at least in the US/UK) seems to function largely through socially-enforced orthodoxy, where dissent is punished and stigmatized.

This idea seems to be popular at the moment, but I can't find any proper backing for this claim - that one is disproportionately worse than its counter-parts - other than repetition.

> This idea seems to be popular at the moment, but I can't find any proper backing for this claim - that one is disproportionately worse than its counter-parts - other than repetition.

I don't know if the left is any more guilty of orthodoxy, but as the left currently dominates academia, we can see more examples of the left enforcing orthodoxy in academic settings. For example, FIRE tracks campus disinvitations from both the right and the left, but the vast majority come from the left: https://www.thefire.org/resources/disinvitation-database/

What's the value of this point-in-time, and inherently case-by-case, data?

That's not even a true statement.

In fact, you actually don't need to apply skepticism towards your pet political topics, in order to apply skepticism to the IQ test. Funny thing, the physics of this world seem to allow you to treat unrelated things differently. Even more so, your ability to predict the movement of the stars doesn't depend on reading articles from Flat Earthers either. Weird!

I was talking about theories specifically related to the IQ test. "Every demographic has a priori equal IQ" is a politically palatable theory that many people want to believe. People need to be as skeptical towards this as they are towards "advantaged groups measure higher IQ because they are inherently smarter."

This is largely anecdotal, so make of it what you will: I've observed high IQ scores to correlate more often with troubled lives than exceptional performance in job and status. It seems to me that these people tend to extremes and environmental aspects play a strong role in how these tendencies develop. Outright dismissing IQ would be detrimental, but its predictive value seems vague beyond some basic observations.

It's predictive to an extant. Many people who have taken up the mantel of IQ have taken it too far. And their (largely political) detractors have dismissed them merely because they have taken it too far. But much of it is still true from a more measured perspective.

Which has some very inconvenient / awkward implications for many people who are seeking to dismiss it outright, rather than dismiss particular proponents of it...

But taking any idea to the extremes, bulldozing over context and constraints of the data, and making grand generalizations from very simple base ideas is the bread and butter of politics, economics, and any bestselling non-fiction.

Popular discourse may be a tribal battle between extremes, but real life isn't...

If you look at job performance: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2003-11198-010

Is IQ an excellent "predictor of income, social status, and academic & job performance" or merely associated with those?

IQ can be measured in middle school (before the student has a job or income), and the resulting score can be used to predict future income and job performance. In that sense, it is a predictor rather than a mere association.

Ok, but there are still myriad confounding factors, even at that age. Do students from higher income schools in aggregate have higher IQs than those from lower income schools?

All of these things are controlled for.

These are professors whose job it is to make sure you don't have such confounding variables.

You even have twin studies where one twin was adopted by rich and one by poor parents and it still holds.

What about Stoolmiller in Psychol. Bull. 125:392-409 who found families deciding to adopt forming a pointedly restricted range. Being for example exceedingly intelligent with IQ over 120 on average, which is obviously different than general average.

Source?

I’m not interested in an individuals IQ predictions

I’m interested in theories that accurately model objectively as possible reality

If IQ is a good measure for some applications, fine

If it’s not when it comes to describing the reality of reality itself, not just contemporary social life, it should be pushed aside for a method that does better

There's a lot of different forms of intelligence that IQ does not measure.

The practice tests I've seen tended to ask a lot of abstract questions that, in some cases, seemed to rely on having a specific set of cultural experiences. I remember encountering a question that asked me to clarify the meaning of a 'common' expression, and thinking, "how lucky am I to have been exposed to and know just what this question refers to? Would I have a lower IQ just because I was an immigrant or something?" (It was the US version of the MENSA practice exam on their website circa several years ago)

I'm of the opinion that intelligence is unmeasurable, if even comprehendable by us mortals, and that the best proxy we have is one's propensity to learn and be curious.

Seems that measuring intelligence is yet another example of the folly of human artifice

IQ test questions are abstract because they designed measure abstract thinking capabilities.

Abstract thinking is the definition of intelligence because of its general applicability to learning. All learning, be it math, language, engineering, music, etc, amounts to recognizing patterns, generalizing them, and applying the generalization to a different problem.

I'd like to point out that basically every academic admission test (SAT, ACT, GRE, MCAT, etc) is an IQ test mixed in with some domain-specific knowledge testing.

No offense, but having the opinion that intelligence is not measurable is roughly as ignorant as believing the the solar system is geocentric. It requires throwing aside or ignoring a massive amount of scientific evidence and consensus.

Why not? What makes you think currently-established science measures true "intelligence" and not just whatever phenomenon the test is measuring? To use heliocentrism as an example, how can you possibly know whether our current understanding is accurate or just the next heliocentrism (that we haven't disproven yet)?

Some of the smartest people I know wouldn't do well on an IQ test. Many of the questions are abstract but not all of them -- at least in my case several of those questions seemed more cultural than anything else. (And in some cases these supposedly 'abstract' questions seem to have a possibility-space of answers that even the test-writers did not anticipate.) If you define intelligence as the quantification of one's experiences, then sure, I'll roll with your argument, but experience (and abstract thinking) are just small parts of the overall equation, to which I think we still cannot grasp.

> Why not? What makes you think currently-established science measures true "intelligence" and not just whatever phenomenon the test is measuring? To use heliocentrism as an example, how can you possibly know whether our current understanding is accurate or just the next heliocentrism (that we haven't disproven yet)?

Essentially: predictive power. The reason heliocentricism became the standard model was because it predicted the movements of planets better than the geocentric model.

It's the same with IQ tests. They predict the success of individuals in many different fields. It's a predictor of income, academic achievement, and social status.

What I'm not saying is that IQ tests are perfect, they are not. As you say, there are language issues. But even with those issues, IQ can explain something like 25% of the variance in grades and 16% of the variance in income. It's also telling that more rigorous fields of study (math, physics, medicine) also correlated with higher IQs.

I'll close with the fact that IQ is not everything. It's only a measure of how quickly you'll pick up on something. It also has no impact on a person's mental health or general interests. A lazy person with a high IQ will probably not get very far in the world, neither will one that suffers from crippling depression or anxiety.

> A lazy person with a high IQ will probably not get very far in the world, neither will one that suffers from crippling depression or anxiety.

These factors seriously decrease the quality of IQ's predictive power, IMO. If you need to attach asterisks to an IQ assessment for a weakly-performing individual ("high IQ but lazy") then I wonder if IQ is the right measurement for that kind of criteria. Yes there is correlation between high IQ and hardcore nerdy professions but that does not mean the two are conclusively, 1.0-correlation linked.