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fubarobfusco comments on 2012 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong
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I wonder if this critique can go further ...
Let's say that what IQ tests such as RPM measured in the early 20th century is "pattern-fu"; and that pattern-fu has historically correlated with all sorts of nice things — business success, academic excellence, artistic significance, happiness in relationships, and so on. Well, that's fine, but once you start making policy decisions — hiring, college placement, military job assignment, eugenics, etc. — on the basis of pattern-fu, Campbell's law kicks in and weakens the correlation. You get people specializing and training pattern-fu, treating improving pattern-fu as causing nice things, without that causation actually being demonstrated.
I'd be amazed if that sort of thing wasn't happening, but you see the same sort of effect on all sorts of things which correlate, like spelling and grammar and success in studying.
Presumably the hope with IQ tests would be that the amount of training you'd need to do to top out would be low compared to, say, learning English spelling. Allowing you to get a reliable, but not terribly costly, indicator of how good you'd become at all the other things with practice.