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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Never studied for them, they seemed like mostly simple pattern recognition and general logic questions, which I’ve never really thought you could even study for.

    There are a few different tests that are supposed to clinically measure IQ. Most of them are more complex than pattern recognition and most all of them are administered by some sort of clinician, which can also influence outcomes.

    But general intellect, as far as I can tell (and maybe my understanding of it is wrong), is what influences your ability to shift to a new field and gain expertise in that. Years alone don’t cut it. In my own field, I’ve seen software engineers who can’t program for shit, let alone make any architectural decisions after a decade - and ones that are pretty competent after 2-3 years.

    I would say that the ability to gain expertise is generally hard to differentiate with the motivation to gain expertise. What we can empirically prove is that time spent practicing a skill is how we gain expertise in most any skill.

    In fact, it’s more like ranges of aptitudes. I have great aptitude for STEM, pretty decent aptitude for languages, and absolutely none for arts. No drawing, no singing, etc. No matter how much practice I get and how much practice I got in my childhood.

    It could be that you just perceive yourself being at being better at stem because you enjoy practicing the skills required for stem. People generally gain experience faster in skill sets they enjoy or skills they perceive thems to excel at.

    There’s just skills I won’t learn in 10 years of practice, and skills I pick up rapidly, and it’s been that way since childhood.

    Again, this could be self fulfilling process. If you don’t think you will excel at something you may not fully engage in the process, or even self sabotage the process.

    think IQ in particular unfairly prioritizes understanding of language and logic, over artful skills and, e.g emotional intelligence (which is measured by EQ I guess).

    I think for this to be true your claim would have to be that emotional intellect is devoid of logic or language…which seems fairly self evidently incorrect.

    My main point that I wanted to make was that some people are naturally more gifted, and just faster learners, than others.

    Or people are better at learning things they are self motivated to learn about, and that society influences what skills we find valuable or “intellectual”.

    In short, what we can empirically prove about intellect is usually environmental in nature, and what we can only theorize about heritability cannot be differentiated from other variabilities that may correlate with that theory.


  • I’m not generally interested in comparing IQ results between countries or even for people of differing first language though so these don’t especially concern me so long as I can be sure a study averts the issue.

    My point is the variability between test groups calls into question the reliability of IQ as a concept as a whole. If IQ is an innate measurement of intellect for humans in general, then the reliability of the test shouldn’t be culturally constrained.

    for instance, it correlates well with success (level of education (eventually) reached, or $ in a capitalist society) and I’d be surprised to find any major journal publishing a paper which disputes that.

    Yes, but I could make the same claim about a plethora of other correlations with more confidence like having wealthy parents.


  • Wait, do people actually study for IQ tests? Why?

    The same reason mensa is a thing. People like to toot their own horn.

    reckon general intellect does matter. In a world where your job might not exist in 5 years because lol AI, it’s best to be able to adapt fast. Specialize, yes, but one day your specialization will be useless. Best case scenario, it’s after you’ve retired.

    To a certain extent yes, but no one can be an expert at everything. There just isn’t enough time, and expertise is really what society rewards people for at the end of the day.

    And going back to heritability, there’s definitely some heritability there

    I would say that would be incredibly hard to empirically prove due to the problems you mentioned. At best we could speculate that heritability may be an influence, but that influence is vastly overshadowed by environmental factors.


  • This article does a pretty decent job pointing out some of the variabilities that make IQ test unreliable. Tbh I think the concept of IQ is fruit from the poisoned tree. There are so many people that stake their positions and identities on the efficacy of IQ that the whole data pool is kinda poisoned. For every study that makes a claim, there are other studies rebutting it.

    And can you link me to the language thing? When I look up language, I’m just seeing correlation between language proficiency and IQ, which shouldn’t be surprising – I would imagine that people who measure a higher IQ are better at learning languages.

    I would have to search for it, i originally read about it when I was in college over a decade ago. Basically the claim was that the vast majority of the tests originate or are interpreted from English or another western language. When certain aspects of the test are interpreted to a different language the sentence structure is modified in a way where it adds an additional barrier for the test taker.

    This may be somewhat solved by the different language speakers creating their own test, but that may not overcome the problem due to the need for global standardization, orit may be a barrier to language speakers who’s cultures haven’t invested the time or resources to the idea of IQ to begin with.


  • I mean, the validity of IQ tests in general should be questioned when the largest variability in scoring is if you’ve previously studied for an IQ test followed by what language you speak.

    Philosophically I don’t really think there’s a uniform agreement on what exactly defines general intellect, or if that general intellect even matters considering were a species that relies on specialization.

    As far as heritability, I imagine that would be a horribly difficult topic to actually get enough research to rule out variables like socioeconomics and cultural differences. I mean I doubt there’s that many twin studies to establish the efficacy any particular theory.










  • Is it the ceiling thats warping? And if it is the ceiling, does it feel firm, or does it have give?

    If it’s not the ceiling and is just the trim I’d just pop off the trim and reposition it. If it’s the ceiling and it has give id probably do the same thing. If it doesn’t have any give and is actually the ceiling settling oddly I’d say you probably should have someone come and take a look at you foundation, especially if you notice a lot of cracks near windows/doorways.

    If it’s the ceiling and you want to do the good ole landlord special, I’d just fill it with some joint compound, texture and then repaint it.