| It always makes me wonder why it is that many people seem to be extremely sensitive to the idea that cognitive capability is variable among people. There is always backlash whenever anyone does anything that seeks to measure cognitive capacity or to categorize people along those lines. I firmly believe that cognitive ability is a -physical- trait that can be estimated with useful and actionable results. I base this on the simple observation that age or disease related cognitive decline is a real and measurable thing. If cognitive decline can be measured, then cognition can be measured. If cognition can be measured, and cognitive decline is impactful, then the variability in cognition between people is meaningful. These measurements of cognition variability correlate strongly with real-world tasking, strongly implying that cognition is a useful metric of capability. I don’t see how any of this is in the least bit controversial. I don’t see how cognitive capacity is somehow bad to measure, talk about, or select for in how and why we provide education to deliver maximum utility to the student. How is this different from athletic capability? Some people can never be pro-level basketball players no matter how much they train. The limiting traits in that respect are products of their genes and early development. I propose that cognitive capacity is not distinct in this regard. As in any n=10^9 sample there will be outliers, but outliers are not evidence that a strongly predictive relationship does not exist. There is no apparent reason that cognitive capacity, which is presumably based on some kind of physical neural apparatus, is somehow intrinsically malleable and non- deterministic in kind that other physical traits are not. To claim otherwise seems an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence, of which I am at a loss to discover. I suspect, without any substantial evidence, that this peculiar bias against the idea of determinism in cognitive ability has to do with the perception that cognitive ability is largely indeterminable externally, and many people do things to seem highly capable when they are not. This preening behaviour is inherently threatened by the idea that it could easily be discovered, and people are defensive of this subterfuge on their own behalf and/or the behalf of others. But, that is just a suspicion, which I would gladly be disabused of if anyone else has a better insight as to the motive behind what seems to me to be a highly illogical bias. |