Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by JohnFen 1148 days ago
That there are no better options than IQ doesn't mean that IQ is a reasonable measure.

It is a reasonable measure of intelligent-adjacent things, such as how good you are at taking tests. An IQ score does correlate pretty well with how well you'll do in college. But to say that it's measuring "intelligence" in any sort of strong way is misleading.
1 comments
lostmsu 1148 days ago
My parent comment already addresses your point. It is amazing you can't see that.

There are two questions:

Is it a measure? Undoubtedly.

Is it reasonable? Well, how'd you define reasonable? Would you say that if A is reasonable for something, and B is better than A for the same thing, then from "A is reasonable" follows "B is reasonable"? I would. So if you can claim a person to be a fool and another person to be smart based on some interaction and consider both statements to be reasonable, and if you concede that IQ would better (on average) predict that kind of stuff than you, therefore you should consider IQ a reasonable metric of intelligence. (But you don't, so I suspect you're not good at logical reasoning)

link
JohnFen 1148 days ago
> (But you don't, so I suspect you're not good at logical reasoning)

Perhaps I'm not, but at least I'm good enough at it to be able to have a discussion without resorting to insulting the person I'm talking with.

link
lostmsu 1148 days ago
Do you take any criticism with this attitude?

Everyone is stupid at times, question is if we are willing to learn from mistakes.

Like denying many years of research with good predictive qualities, which you could probably also see personally, should have made you suspect about your point of view.

link
JohnFen 1147 days ago
I am very good at having my arguments criticized (and even altering my stance when the facts convince me), but what you did was not that. Once you're attacking the person rather than the argument, the discussion ceases to be an interesting or useful one.

For the record, this is a topic I'm pretty well-versed in, and I am aware of the research. I'm also aware (as you should be) that there's a great deal of debate about what IQ tests measure and don't measure.

Your argument (ignoring the personal attacks) is not unreasonable. Neither is mine. This is not a settled matter, and is one where reasonable people can and do disagree. Including the experts in the field.

link
reaperman 1147 days ago
The vast, vast majority of people you interact with will take a comment like that as an ad-hominem attack. At best, they'll forgive you for the logical fallacy. More often, they'll feel you have inappropriate conversation patterns and that further interaction with you is risky ... as in, you might be some type of dangerous-crazy, because a lot of "appropriate" vs. "inappropriate" social mores are tools (litmus tests) to determine how anti-social[0] someone is in general.

Generally, the "overly emotional" push-back from the other party after one violates social norms is a cue to accomplish two things:

1) Alert others nearby that this was in fact a violation of social norms, and prepare them to potentially side against the violator.

2) Check to see if the offending party is generally in control of their social behavior, and this was just a transient "slip-up", or if the offending party is stuck in their anti-social modes and unable to recover negative social interactions. This acts to provide a stronger signal both to the offended party as well as to others nearby.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour

link