Biden Administration misc. activities

[3rdside]

I agree, for the most part. IQ tests don't test how smart you are. It tests how well you can take an IQ test. SATs have repeatedly shown bias in their development, to the point that many universities in the US are not requiring to determine admission anymore. All test are inherently flawed because they are developed with the biases of their creators.

Agreed - but all things being equal (background, access to education etc), an IQ test will determine relative intellectual capacity, so shouldn't be done away with.

All of this ties in with established science, management theory etc - in order to understand or improve something you have to test it and measure it.

[Indy]

I agree, for the most part. IQ tests don't test how smart you are. It tests how well you can take an IQ test. SATs have repeatedly shown bias in their development, to the point that many universities in the US are not requiring to determine admission anymore. All test are inherently flawed because they are developed with the biases of their creators.

Agreed - but all things being equal (background, access to education etc), an IQ test will determine relative intellectual capacity, so shouldn't be done away with.

All of this ties in with established science, management theory etc - in order to understand or improve something you have to test it and measure it.

Not according to the largest study ever conducted on this:

Here is the summary of the study.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/scie ... 25911.html

It might be behind a pay/account wall, so here is the article.

IQ tests are 'fundamentally flawed' and using them alone to measure intelligence is a 'fallacy', study finds
Results cast into doubt tests that have been used to link cognitive ability to race, gender and class

Steve Connor
Friday 21 December 2012 01:00

The idea that intelligence can be measured by IQ tests alone is a fallacy according to the largest single study into human cognition which found that it comprises of at least three distinct mental traits.

IQ tests have been used for decades to assess intelligence but they are fundamentally flawed because they do not take into account the complex nature of the human intellect and its different components, the study found.

The results question the validity of controversial studies of intelligence based on IQ tests which have drawn links between intellectual ability race, gender and social class and led to highly contentious claims that some groups of people are inherently less intelligent that other groups.

Instead of a general measure of intelligence epitomised by the intelligence quotient (IQ), intellectual ability consists of short-term memory, reasoning and verbal agility. Although these interact with one another they are handled by three distinct nerve “circuits” in the brain, the scientists found.

“The results disprove once and for all the idea that a single measure of intelligence, such as IQ, is enough to capture all of the differences in cognitive ability that we see between people,” said Roger Highfield, director of external affairs at the Science Museum in London.

“Instead, several different circuits contribute to intelligence, each with its own unique capacity. A person may well be good in one of these areas, but they are just as likely to be bad in the other two,” said Dr Highfield, a co-author of the study published in the journal Neuron.

The research involved an on-line survey of more than 100,000 people from around the world who were asked to complete 12 mental tests for measuring different aspects of cognitive ability, such as memory, reasoning, attention and planning.

The researchers took a representative sample of 46,000 people and analysed how they performed. They found there were three distinct components to cognitive ability: short-term memory, reasoning and a verbal component.

Professor Adrian Owen of the University of Western Ontario in Canada said that the uptake for the tests was astonishing. The scientists expected a few hundred volunteers to spend the half hour it took to complete the on-line tests, but in the end they got thousands from every corner of the world, Professor Owen said.

The scientists found that no single component, or IQ, could explain all the variations revealed by the tests. The researcher then analysed the brain circuitry of 16 participants with a hospital MRI scanner and found that the three separate components corresponded to three distinct patterns of neural activity in the brain.

“It has always seemed to be odd that we like to call the human brain the most complex known object in the Universe, yet many of us are still prepared to accept that we can measure brain function by doing a few so-called IQ tests,” Dr Highfield said.

“For a century or more many people have thought that we can distinguish between people, or indeed populations, based on the idea of general intelligence which is often talked about in terms of a single number: IQ. We have shown here that’s just wrong,” he said.

Studies over the past 50 years based on IQ tests have suggested that there could be inherent differences in intelligence between racial groups, social classes and between men and women, but these conclusions are undermined by the latest findings, Dr Highfield said.

“We already know that, from a scientific point of view, the notion of race is meaningless. Genetic differences do not map on to traditional measurements of skin colour, hair type, body proportions and skull measurements. Now we have shown that IQ is meaningless too,” Dr Highfield said.

[3rdside]

Testing is flawed, I accept that - but how else do you "test and measure"?

I don't see anything wrong using flawed tests as a proxy for actual intelligence, so long as the caveats are acknowledged.

[3rdside]

If Einstein was born on a deserted island with no books and just learned to survive would he invent the theory of relativity or would he just be some guy good at fishing?

If you took a random baby from a remote villiage in Africa that had no schools and sent him to the best private schools in America and gave him a college education at an Ivy league school he would no doubt have a much higher education level than of he stayed in his home villiage.

Your surroundings dictate how you turn out.

And I think right there is the point - if you accept that environmental factors can help improve your IQ (I know for a fact they did in my case - there was, for example, one diagrammatical reasoning test I had no clue how to solve until someone showed me just how simple it actually was), then trying to understand what it is about an environment that's possibly holding sections of society back .. then maybe that's the answer.

Then that had nothing to do with your IQ. IQ is supposed to be innate. If someone showed you how to solve a problem and that improved your score on any test, especially an 'IQ' test, it wasn't an IQ test. It was a test of knowledge. Those are completely different.

And maybe my diagrammatical reasoning example wasn't the best, as of course IQ is innate.

Just that once I knew how to do solve those diagrams my IQ went up.

Was I smarter because of someone showing me how to solve it? According to my test scores I was, even though no-one in their right mind would say I had a higher IQ that day than I did the day before.

[Indy]

Testing is flawed, I accept that - but how else do you "test and measure"?

I don't see anything wrong using flawed tests as a proxy for actual intelligence, so long as the caveats are acknowledged.

Honestly, "intelligence" is a manufactured term and is mostly irrelevant. There isn't much difference in the human race when it comes to innate ability of the brain to do something. There are functional MRI studies that have been done that show this, too. Yeah, maybe there are some extremely theoretical areas where it might help, but not many.

[Indy]

If Einstein was born on a deserted island with no books and just learned to survive would he invent the theory of relativity or would he just be some guy good at fishing?

If you took a random baby from a remote villiage in Africa that had no schools and sent him to the best private schools in America and gave him a college education at an Ivy league school he would no doubt have a much higher education level than of he stayed in his home villiage.

Your surroundings dictate how you turn out.

And I think right there is the point - if you accept that environmental factors can help improve your IQ (I know for a fact they did in my case - there was, for example, one diagrammatical reasoning test I had no clue how to solve until someone showed me just how simple it actually was), then trying to understand what it is about an environment that's possibly holding sections of society back .. then maybe that's the answer.

Then that had nothing to do with your IQ. IQ is supposed to be innate. If someone showed you how to solve a problem and that improved your score on any test, especially an 'IQ' test, it wasn't an IQ test. It was a test of knowledge. Those are completely different.

And maybe my diagrammatical reasoning example wasn't the best, as of course IQ is innate.

Just that once I knew how to do solve those diagrams my IQ went up.

Was I smarter because of someone showing me how to solve it? According to my test scores I was, even though no-one in their right mind would say I had a higher IQ that day than I did the day before.

If someone showed you how to solve a logic problem and as a result your 'IQ' went up, IQ is not what you say it is.

Yeah if you give someone a trig test--before they have studied about Egyptian math from 5000 years ago, they wouldn't be able to score well. Once you give them Pythagorean's theorem, they can get the answer you are looking for. But their innate ability hasn't improved. Their knowledge has.

[3rdside]

Peterson says it best, sounding off on the history of testing, how important it is as a predictive tool for success, what intelligence actually means, the problems with testing etc etc.

I'd add that he suggests, at least to me, how the analysis of someone's (or some ethnicity's) intelligence could be used for social policy construction - if you understand what someone (or some ethnicity) has a comparative advantage in e.g. mathematic vs linguistic ability differences being the obvious one, you could possibly use that to tailor education to make it more efficient and custom-fit.

[Mori Chu]

Fuck Jordan Peterson, absolutely not going to watch one of his batshit videos.

[3rdside]

Lol - you rest comfortable in your ignorance

[3rdside]

Why don’t you watch the video and discuss its content rather than writing it off without doing that?

You’ve done that a few times, it’s really not cool.

And I don’t mean cool for me, I mean cool for you - operating from a position of ignorance is stupid and I don’t know why anyone, let alone you, would consciously choose to do that.

[3rdside]

If you think I’m a crackpot referencing crackpot sites that’s another story, but there’s enough from me on this site - surely - to see that I choose my references pretty carefully.

They’re a reflection on me, and I therefore wouldn’t post something if it didn’t reflect on me well.

[Mori Chu]

Jordan Peterson makes a living being a right-wing troll. His whole work seems to be about attacking efforts to help people other than straight white males. He can have fun with that, but it isn't my obligation to listen to his garbage and sit here and refute his incorrect talking points.

And yes, the fact that you think Peterson is so brilliant *is* a reflection on you. Peterson is in that conservative pseudo intellectual space with people like Ben Shapiro. If you don't know what you're talking about, they seem educated and well-spoken. But really they're a sign of how little intellect there is left in modern Republicanism and conservatism.

[3rdside]

So much to unpack here, but I'm off to the UFC fight .. will write more later

[Indy]

Jordan Peterson makes a living being a right-wing troll. His whole work seems to be about attacking efforts to help people other than straight white males. He can have fun with that, but it isn't my obligation to listen to his garbage and sit here and refute his incorrect talking points.

And yes, the fact that you think Peterson is so brilliant *is* a reflection on you. Peterson is in that conservative pseudo intellectual space with people like Ben Shapiro. If you don't know what you're talking about, they seem educated and well-spoken. But really they're a sign of how little intellect there is left in modern Republicanism and conservatism.

all of this

[3rdside]

Jordan Peterson makes a living being a right-wing troll. His whole work seems to be about attacking efforts to help people other than straight white males. He can have fun with that, but it isn't my obligation to listen to his garbage and sit here and refute his incorrect talking points.

And yes, the fact that you think Peterson is so brilliant *is* a reflection on you. Peterson is in that conservative pseudo intellectual space with people like Ben Shapiro. If you don't know what you're talking about, they seem educated and well-spoken. But really they're a sign of how little intellect there is left in modern Republicanism and conservatism.

I'll start by saying - again - that I don't love Peterson as he can come across as a little neurotic, especially since his illness in 2018, and he does appear, at times, to be a slightly uncomfortable mouth piece for the right. There's nothing wrong with right leaning views but some of his I just don't like.

But just because I don't agree with someone on something, doesn't mean I can't appreciate their body of work, of which there is a lot - evidenced by his CV - and for which he has been recognised.

CV
- PhD, Clinical Psychology, Magill
- Associate Professor, Harvard
- Professor Emeritus, Toronto U
- Practicing clinical psychologist for over 25 years


Books
- 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
- Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life
- Both were translated into more than 50 languages and the latter sold more than five million copies


Awards / Recognition
- Guest speaker - Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge universities
- Wrote the foreword for the 50th anniversary edition of Solzhenitsyn's 'Gulag Archipelago', arguably the greatest book of the 20th century


So...

"Jordan Peterson makes a living being a right-wing troll"
- is factually incorrect


"His whole work seems to be about attacking efforts to help people other than straight white males"
- it's not about helping straight white males, it's defending society against idiotic wokeism. If you can't believe that wokeism is a thing then that's on you.


"Peterson is in that conservative pseudo intellectual space"
- Peterson was nothing but an academic and practicing psychologist for most of his career, and his books - based on extensive research and experience - are nothing but intellectual insight. So totally not pseudo at all and another factually incorrect statement.


As I said, there's things I don't like about the guy but his insights into life, especially when he explains the use of analytical data to derive those insights, is excellent and the IQ video I posted above was absolutely perfectly suited to the conversation .. that you ruled it out from a position of ignorance is poor.

[Indy]

"His whole work seems to be about attacking efforts to help people other than straight white males"

quack quack quack

Peterson has argued that there is an ongoing "crisis of masculinity" and "backlash against masculinity" in which the "masculine spirit is under assault."

He has argued that the left characterises the existing societal hierarchy as an "oppressive patriarchy" but "don't want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence."

He has said men without partners are likely to become violent, and has noted that male violence is reduced in societies in which monogamy is a social norm.

He has attributed the rise of Donald Trump and far-right European politicians to what he says is a negative reaction to a push to "feminize" men, saying "If men are pushed too hard to feminize they will become more and more interested in harsh, fascist political ideology."

He attracted considerable attention over a 2018 Channel 4 interview in which he clashed with interviewer Cathy Newman on the topic of the gender pay gap. He disputed the contention that the disparity was solely due to sexual discrimination.

Peterson believes that "order" is masculine and "chaos" is feminine, and that these are inherent to human existence.

To Peterson, "culture" is "symbolically, archetypally, mythically male," while "chaos—the unknown—is symbolically associated with the feminine." He has expressed that while it may be considered "unfortunate" that this is the case, any attempt to change or subvert these traits would result in a loss of humanity, saying, "You know you can say, 'Well isn't it unfortunate that chaos is represented by the feminine'—well, it might be unfortunate, but it doesn't matter because that is how it's represented. ... And there are reasons for it. You can't change it. It's not possible. This is underneath everything. If you change those basic categories, people wouldn't be human anymore. ... We wouldn't be able to talk to these new creatures."

[AmareIsGod]

I think it's tricky to discredit every topic someone speaks to because there is a chunk (large or small) of their other ideas that you don't align with. Especially when those topics can be so nuanced that there isn't a core foundational belief that spills over into every segment of thought. While I haven't given Peterson a listen or looked into him at all, if he makes good points about a specific topic of conversation that you're both having a vested debate around, it's only fair to give it a go and speak or debate around that.

Every person that's existed is flawed. Some of the people I enjoy reading or listening to have made mistakes or had thoughts that were counter those that I have. It didn't discredit how I felt about some of the things I'd read or listened to from a given medium. As someone that has worked in IT most of his adult life, I always had admiration and looked up to Bill Gates, not just for what he did at Microsoft but his efforts in philanthropy. Does that all go out the window because he wasn't a faithful and loyal husband with some very unsavory things that became known during his divorce? I'd hope not because that has nothing to do with philanthropic efforts and contributions to the technology I use today.

If Indy and Mori carry this much disdain for Peterson and the conversation continues to go towards "I haven't listened to this. I won't listen to this. And here are some very flawed ideas of Peterson: x, y, and z.", I think you're all wasting your time and should either find a different author or speaker to lean on and debate about or move on from the topic. It's no longer about the point and instead has moved towards the talking head.

[Mori Chu]

Jordan Peterson believes a lot of weird things about nature/nurture, DNA, genetics, etc. and their effect on people's outcomes. IMO his takes on all this add up to produce a racist set of views, where he believes certain races (*cough* white *cough*) are simply superior because they have better DNA and/or better cultures that produce smarter, better people. As on example, he has expressed support for phrenology, the widely debunked claim that people's head size/shape is responsible for their intelligence. (Phrenology has historically been used to try to prove that blacks and others are genetically predisposed to be intellectually inferior to whites.)

[AmareIsGod]

Jordan Peterson believes a lot of weird things about nature/nurture, DNA, genetics, etc. and their effect on people's outcomes. IMO his takes on all this add up to produce a racist set of views, where he believes certain races (*cough* white *cough*) are simply superior because they have better DNA and/or better cultures that produce smarter, better people. As on example, he has expressed support for phrenology, the widely debunked claim that people's head size/shape is responsible for their intelligence. (Phrenology has historically been used to try to prove that blacks and others are genetically predisposed to be intellectually inferior to whites.)

I've definitely known people with massive domes that fell near the bottom of the IQ scale. Not sure why he makes that connection. Yes, on the whole, head size correlates to brain size and the corresponding intelligence that comes with more brain matter. A small animal vs a human have far different cognitive abilities. I think head size and brain size in relation to humans doesn't correlate simply because the range isn't that radical from a "big" human head vs. a "normal" human head.

[3rdside]

There are things you could discredit Peterson with - maybe his views on being unable to model accurately the effects of climate change, or his solution to solving the gender pay gap (women need to become more disagreeable), but head size and intelligence does bear a correlation (about 0.3 - 0.4):

- https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... e-matter1/
- https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/sep ... rch.health