I am not sure precisely it not very rational about that link. Did you have a specific point you were trying to make with it?
If you take a look at the biodiversity survey here https://reflectivealtruism.com/2024/12/27/human-biodiversity...
1/3 of the users at acx actually support flawed scientific theories that would explain iq on a scientific basis. The Lynn study on iq is also quite flawed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_and_the_Wealth_of_Nations
If you want to read about human biodiversity, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Biodiversity_Institute
As I said, it's not very rational of them to support such theories. And of course as you scratch the surface, it's the old 20th century racist theories, and of course those theories are supported by (mostly white men, if I had to guess) people claiming to be rational
Saying in 2025 that the study is still debated is not only racist, but dishonest as well. It's not debated, it's junk
This is a pathology that has not really been addressed in the large, anywhere, really. Very few in the applied sciences who understand statistical methodology, "leave their areas" -- and many areas that require it, would disappear if it entered.
A lot of people who like to think of themselves as skeptical could also be categorized as contrarian -- they are skeptical of institutions, and if someone is outside an institution, that automatically gives them a certain credibility.
There are three or four logical fallacies in the mix, and if you throw in confirmation bias because what the one side says appeals to your own prior beliefs, it is really, really easy to convince yourself that you're the steely-eyed rationalist perceiving the world correctly while everyone else is deluded by their biases.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-o...
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-Ancestry-PCA-plo...
We know ethnic groups vary in terms of height, hair color, eye color, melanin, bone density, sprinting ability, lactose tolerance, propensity to diseases like sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, stomach cancer, alcoholism risk, etc. Certain medications need to be dosed differently for different ethnic groups due to the frequency of certain gene variants, e.g. Carbamazepine, Warfarin, Allopurinol.
The fixation index (Fst) quantifies the level of genetic variation between groups, a value of 0 means no differentiation, and 1 is maximal. A 2012 study based on SNPs found that Finns and Swedes have a Fst value of 0.0050-0.0110, Chinese and Europeans at 0.110, and Japanese and Yoruba at 0.190.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2675054/
A 1994 study based on 120 alleles found the two most distant groups were Mbuti pygmies and Papua New Guineans at a Fst of 0.4573.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Full_Fst_Average.png
In genome wide association studies, polygenic score have been developed to find thousands of gene variants linked to phenotypes like spatial and verbal intelligence, memory, and processing speed. The distribution of these gene variants is not uniform across ethnic groups.
Given that we know there are genetic differences between groups, and observable variation, it stands to reason that there could be a genetic component for variation in intelligence between groups. It would be dogmatic to a priori claim there is absolutely no genetic component, and pretty obviously motivated out of the fear that inequality is much more intractable than commonly believed.
Rather than judging an individual on their actual intelligence, these kinds of statistical trends allow you to justify judging an individual based on their race, because you feel you can credibly claim that race is an acceptable proxy for their genome, is an acceptable proxy for their intelligence.
Or for their trustworthiness, or creativity, or sexuality, or dutifulness, or compassion, or aggressiveness, or alacrity, or humility, etc etc.
When you treat a person like a people, that’s still prejudice.
> Rather than judging an individual on their actual intelligence
Actual intelligence is hard to know! However, lots of factors allow you to make a rapid initial estimate of their actual intelligence, which you can then refine as required.
(When the factors include apparent genetic heritage, this is called "racism" and society doesn't like it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't work, just that you can get fired and banned for doing it.)
((This is of course why we must allow IQ tests for hiring; then there's no need to pay attention to skin color, so liberals should be all for it.))
Yes, actually. If an idea sounds like it can be used to commit crimes against humanity, you should pause. You should reassess said idea multiple times. You should be skeptical. You shouldn't ignore that feeling.
What a lot of people are missing is intent - the human element. Why were these studies conducted? Who conducted them?
If someone insane conducts a study then yes - that is absolutely grounds to be skeptical of said study. It's perfectly rationale. If extremely racist people produce studies which just so happen to be racist, we should take a step back and go "hmm".
Being right or being correct is one thing, but it's not absolutely valuable. The end-result and how "bad" it is also matters, and often times it matters more. And, elephant in the room, nobody actually knows if they're right. Making logical conclusions isn't so, because you are forced to make thousands of assumptions.
You might be right, you might not be. Let's all have some humility.
IQ tests are not actual measurements of anything; this is both because nobody has a rigorous working definition of intelligence and because nobody's figured out a universal method of measuring achievement of what insufficient definitions we have. Their proponents are more interested in pigeonholing people than actually measuring anything anyway.
And as a hiring manager, I'd hire an idiot who is good at the job over a genius who isn't.
IQ as a metric is correlated with almost every life outcome. It's one of the most reliable metrics in psychology.
As a hiring manager, if you think an idiot can be good at the job, you either hire for an undemanding job or I'm not sure if you're good at yours.
I'm not even saying you're wrong (I think you are, but I don't have to defend that argument). I'm just saying the level of epistemic certainty you kicked this subthread off with was unwarranted. You know, "most reliable metrics in psychology" and all that.
But also sure, I tend to assert my opinions pretty strongly in part to invite pushback.
My own view is "IQ is real and massively impactful", because of the people I've read on the topic, my understanding of biology, sociology and history, and my experience in general, but I haven't kept a list of citations to document my trajectory there.
Not all work is knowledge work. You might want to broaden your horizons.
Intelligence is not a single axis thing. IQ test results are significantly influenced by socioeconomic factors. "Actual intelligence is hard to know" because it doesn't exist.
I have never yet known scientific racism to produce true results. I have known a lot of people to say the sorts of things you're saying: evidence-free claims that racism is fine so long as you're doing the Good Racism that Actually Works™, I Promise, This Time It's Not Prejudice Because It's Justified®.
No candidate genetic correlate of the g factor has ever replicated. That should be a massive flashing warning sign that – rather than having identified an elusive fact about reality that just so happens to not appear in any rigorous study – maybe you're falling afoul of the same in-group/out-group bias as nearly every group of humans since records begin.
Since I have no reason to believe your heuristic is accurate, we can stop there. However, to further underline that you're not thinking rationally: even if blue people were (on average) 2× as capable at spacial rotation-based office jobs than green people, it still wouldn't be a good idea to start with the skin colour prior and update from there, because that would lead to the creation of caste systems, which hinder social mobility. Even if scientific racism worked (which it hasn't to date!), the rational approach would still be to judge people on their own merits.
If you find it hard to assess the competence of your subordinates, to the point where you're resorting to population-level stereotypes to make hiring decisions, you're an incompetent manager and should find another job.
That would be remarkable! Do you have a write-up/preprint on your protocol?
• Drill.
• Goto step 1.
Does this make the child "more intelligent"? Not in any meaningful way! But they get better at IQ tests.
It's a fairly common protocol. I can hardly be said to have invented it: I was put through it. (Sure, I came up with a few tricks for solving IQ-type problems that weren't in the instruction books, but those tricks too can be taught.)
I really don't understand why people think IQ test results are meaningful. They're among the most obvious cases of Goodhart's law that I know. Make up a sport that most kids won't have practised before, measure performance, and probably that's about as correlated with the (fictitious) "g factor" as IQ tests are.
The problem with "I've gone through this" is it's hard to analyze the counterfactual.
Your point about counterfactuals is good, but… subjectively, I ended up with a better understanding of IQ test genre conventions (which is also why I bang on so much about "culturally-specific": they really are). My speed at solving the problems doubled or tripled, and my accuracy went from 80%-ish to near 100%. This did not translate to any improvements to my real-life skill at anything (although, I suppose it might've generalised a bit to other multiple-choice exams). I've got a lot more evidence to analyse than just an n=1 scatter plot.
I'm not asking you to actually do this, but the participants (and experimenters!) don't necessarily have to know what you're testing. Maybe get one to drill IQ tests, one to drill Latin, one to drill chess and one to drill the piano.
Does your ability extend to IQ tests with other patterns? Also, does it extend to logic puzzles?
It doesn't extend to logic puzzles, which I've always been quite bad at. (I find the Professor Layton games hard enough to be actively unfun, despite their beauty.) I can solve problems if they're contextualised, but my approach for solving logic puzzles is "identify a general algorithm, then execute it", which is quite slow.
As I've been telling you: IQ is extremely artificial; and doesn't measure general intelligence, because there's no such thing as "general intelligence". The "g factor" is a statistical regularity, but any statistician can tell you that while all sustained statistical regularities have explanations, they don't necessarily correspond to real things.
I mean, there aren't that many questions on Raven, you could memorize them all, particularly if you've got the kind of intelligence that actors have -- being able to memorize your lines. (And that's something, I have a 1950-ish book about the television industry that makes a point that people expect performers to be a "quick study", you'd better know your lines really well and not have to be told twice that you are expected to do this or that. That's different from, say, being able to solve really complex math problems.)
I'd consider it well plausible that top movie stars are also very smart.
And if you're saying "well those are just repackaged IQ tests, so doesn't it count", then 1. it sure seems like IQ tests are illegal then, but 2. it also seems like they're so useful that companies are trying to smuggle them in anyway?
> Um, I asked Grok and
Where does Grok's training set come from?
Can you name one, please?
I saw your claim in this thread that the companies that make money by supplying these test to employers brag about how many large employers use the tests, but plenty of people brag falsely when bragging will tend to increase their revenue.