this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
87 points (94.8% liked)
Memes
49997 readers
733 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Is IQ a legit measure?
I would say it is a decent indicator for mental qualities that are considered desitable by the current performance-driven economy.
On the other hand, people can very well be considered intelligent and have small IQ.
I've heard it explained as practical intelligence vs. abstract intelligence. Understanding calculus won't help you frame a house, produce slate tiles for its roof, cast the iron for a potbelly stove that keeps it warm, etc., but it will help to calculate the trajectory of a space probe that your country is using to investigate an asteroid, or tap the stock market, do your own taxes without error, strategize saving/investment for your retirement, calculate the dimensions for a culvert that keeps a property from flooding, etc.
Regardless of IQ I have never met an uneducated person worth spending time on. It doesn't need to be traditional, but if a person stops learning they are uninteresting.
My personal take is that iq is effectively meaningless. Measuring intelligence is a problem that is extremely hard, maybe even impossible given that what constitutes "intelligence" can be subjective. Some people ascribe value to it iq because it's an extreme oversimplification of a problem they don't want to think to hard about, and as a bonus it creates another hierarchy in which they can baselessly feel superior to others.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Validity_as_a_measure_of_intelligence
has a pretty good summary of scholarly debate on that question.
TLDR: iq has an extremely narrow take on what "intelligence" means, and ignores the vast wealth of what people consider to be human intelligence. For that reason most scholars think it's nonsense.
Solid take, I hear more people saying this whenever it's discussed. Although it's a pretty decent measure for natural intellectual capacity, a lot of that potential isn't wholly practical even in modern society. Good for studies, math, science and Mensa, not so useful for nearly everything else.
I wouldn't even give it that. Imo "intellectual capacity" is entirely a confidence thing. If you have the confidence to give an answer that may be incorrect, you have intellectual capacity. If you give an answer and it's wrong, you're learning. If doing that and being wrong over and over again a million times doesn't discourage you, somebody is probably about to hand you a degree. "Intellectual capacity" is a fairy tale for the privileged to ensure they aren't discouraged from pursuing an education, and a source of learned helplessness for most others.
It's debatable, see @Gustephan@lemmy.world's comment below, they're pretty close to the common consensus.