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Mo' Mentum at Bath St with Haszari
I'm playing at Bath St this friday, short notice, but very exciting all the same. It's all me so it's gonna be self indulgent but you like what I like so should be a massive night.
Mo' Mentum @ Bath St Friday 19th Oct
IQ tests are bad
There was an article in The Listener about IQ tests recently. This got me all fired up as all mention of IQ does, ya know, everyone knows that any concept of IQ has to be totally flawed and probably very culture specific.
Anyway I didn't end up with a coherent enough opinion to post about it (tho I really wanted to!), but the point of this 1/3rd post is who to blame regarding IQ silliness:
- the media, for occasionally misreporting IQ related findings and theories
- IQ researchers, for even bothering to try and develop the concept of IQ as reliable and relevant
Posts
8 comments:
IQ tests are bullshit man, bullshit.
The most logical argument I've ever seen against them is that they are, by their very existence, not solely a measure of pure "intelligence", but of education, upbringing, socioeconomic background, etc. etc.
Someone who is illiterate (or blind, for fuck's sake) will get a very low score on an IQ test every time, but could quite conceivably still be very intelligent (in some non-IQ-test way).
Matter of fact, I'd fail one written in any language other than English, and I'm intelligent something fierce.
Anyone with sufficient ego to join MENSA thoroughly deserves the company of other like-minded individuals. Here's a link that isn't Wikipedia for once (and who knew encarta still existed?)
With you 100% there brother. IQ tests' fundamental flaw is that they can only attempt to measure things that might be correlated with intelligence. These things are necessarily culture, education, environment specific.
So the concept of IQ is intangible, impossible to pin down, BULLSHIT.
The learning styles people might not even let IQ outta the starting blocks because it's only measuring test-based/exam-style intelligence!
And we all know creativity-intelligence or mild insanity is more useful in real life and more important than exam-passing skills.
I'll end by mentioning the often-listener-quoted fact that a lot of very rich people left school or dropped outta uni so it's all about the dumbness.
I'll continue a wee bit by slamming encarta for claiming that list of people is a diverse bunch.. they all seem pretty nerdy and accomplished to me! I gave up reading Joyce Carol Oates' book, it was crap (I hardly ever abandon books).
Want a comment? Hey, man, I've bitched about IQ tests some time back. All are in accord methinks.
http://keaen.blogspot.com/2007/04/iq.html
You guys are just angry at IQ tests because you're not good at them. I reckon they're ok, I got a 10 (out of 10 presumably).
also, what's this hypemachine thing all about?
Pretty much all forms of psychometric tests are flawed, in that they are either heavily biased towards a certain demographic or, by their nature, very easy to cheat. Personality inventories are the worst - I still don't understand why employers want to use these things when any idiot who's studied psychometrics for 5 minutes (i.e. me) can ace them every time. Thankfully, I haven't come across any in the 5 job interviews I've had.
Out comes B with his book-learning!!
I'm more interested in your hypemachine thing, though. Tell me how it works, and how it benefits you, please?
I heart hype machine.
A Bath night all to yourself? Yeyaa!!
Righto, just to be an asshole.
So IQ testing definitely has some problems. Granted. Not a simple test to design.
However, the brain functions which the tests seek a measure of, are of course directly related to intelligence. We all know girls (as a group) tend to score higher in the language sections, boys better in the spatial stuff, no matter their education, socioeconomic status or environment. It's a function of DNA.
Obviously no one but a complete idiot would give a written IQ test to a blind person, or an oral test in a language foreign to the listener. The people who write the tests might have their heads up their own asses but they're not idiots.
Some questions to ponder
What was IQ testing originally designed for? Educational Streaming it turns out. Not the greatest thing, but works on the whole.
Why does that bell curve always come out about the same?
Why are the people at the high end of the curve always more intelligent the those at the low end? Ummm?
I think it's a rather rough tool best used for collecting large sets of data and producing a basic (but handy) result. Like all statistics things it's not going to "pin down" all the intricacies of every unique individual. Anyone who thinks that it's really attempting to do that is an idiot.
As for many dropouts being very rich, interestingly MENSA NZ actually asked Bob Jones to come and explain to them why they weren't all richer since they're so smart. He told them to 'get f#cked', so really it's all about the attitude.
When the online Mensa test suggested I take their real test, I was quietly chuffed. But I wouldn't want to join THAT club.
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