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Comment by dgsii | Hacker News Reader

I don’t mean to suggest that an IQ test doesn’t have any value, only that they don’t account for many subtleties across (sub)cultural boundaries and are too heavily considered in determining one’s intellect, and often worth, by society.

You’re using Motte-and-Bailey tactics to conflate IQ test results with vaccines denialism, on the basis that they are both “for the greater good”, which conveniently paints my point in a certain political light. How exactly does selectivity on the basis of IQ test results “enhance health outcomes for groups as a whole”? Maybe you could back up this argument with some historical context.

> “Similarly, people don’t like the idea that some individuals are just born smarter than other individuals.”

What data do you have to support this claim? And how much of this inherent intellect factors into IQ test results?

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> You’re using Motte-and-Bailey tactics to conflate IQ test results with vaccines denialism

No, I’m pointing out that in both cases people attack the science because the implications of the science are in tension with their ideological priors. The fact that top-down coercion is an effective response to pandemics is inconvenient for libertarian-conservatives. Likewise, the fact that people differ in their intellectual capabilities from birth is inconvenient for liberal egalitarians.

> Likewise, the fact that people differ in their intellectual capabilities from birth

Yes, of course people differ in intellectual capabilities at birth. That is not the argument. The argument is how much that actually impacts IQ test score results.

Your point suggests that “science” supports the idea of IQ being predetermined at birth.

> Likewise, the fact that people differ in their intellectual capabilities from birth is inconvenient for liberal egalitarians.

It is? Egalitarianism is usually considered to be the position that all humans have equal moral worth, not the position that all humans have equivalent physical and mental capacities. Not even actually existing Communists believed the latter, as far as I’m aware.

But just to double check:

> Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or moral status. As such, all people should be accorded equal rights and treatment under the law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism

Nor does the existence of special laws or practices concerning low (or high, for that matter) IQ people pose any great obstacle to egalitarianism, assuming the laws or practices in question do not infringe upon moral personhood.

Rawls is a typical egalitarian philosopher and he takes care to account for these natural variations in the human condition during both the classic _A Theory of Justice_ and the modern “restatement” in _Justice as Fairness_.

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