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army1987 comments on Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK? - Less Wrong
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Comments (526)
I'm pretty sure IQ tests don't ask questions like that. They're supposed to measure intelligence, not knowledge (at least in principle¹), and it's obvious that even a very smart person couldn't possibly figure out whether rattlesnakes are dangerous while taking the test, short of knowing that beforehand.
I took an IQ test that had a bunch of "what's wrong with this picture" items in one section. I don't remember any of the questions but the last one - the last one required me to know that there wasn't any air on the moon.
Well, a sufficiently intelligent person could guess that the moon is likely too small to have strong enough grav[realizes that Alicorn is looking at him in a weird way]... Just kidding. :-)
That was obviously a bad test.
There is a theory about how IQ tests should be designed. Most of the complaints in this discussion about why some IQ tests are not fair, are already known, and probably have been known for decades.
Of course it does not prevent people from ignoring those suggestions and making their own mistaken "IQ tests" anyway (especially if there is money and status to gain by doing so). Just like any amount of medical research cannot prevent people from making and selling homeopathics.
Okay, my examples sucked, but the general principle that one's abilities with reading and English will make a big difference on a written and/or English IQ test still holds. I made that point a lot better in a different comment. http://lesswrong.com/lw/kk/why_are_individual_iq_differences_ok/776g
Interesting. [searches Google for "crystallized intelligence"]
Cite please. This is a completely novel claim to me, one I routinely see problems with (eg. a few days ago reading a SMPY review mentioning a 13-fold gender imbalance in extremely high SAT math scores while tests of fluid intelligence show little or no such asymmetry). I find it very hard to believe that matrix tests predict mathematics success and little else.
If you are trying to express some reasonable position like "IQ tests (which include subtests covering a variety of crystallized materials as well as fluid intelligence measures) will have some incremental predictive validity for various activities or life outcomes over an IQ test (which is just a measure of fluid intelligence)", then perhaps one could agree. But your current absolutist statements seem to be endorsing some other position...
Are you challenging me to find a single study using a matrix test which predicts to any degree some metric other than math success, such as income or employment or highest attained degree, and that's it? Are you sure? Because your following restatement agrees that matrix scores can be predictive outside math.
I think we have different views on what is "valuable" (eg. is a matrix test faster and easier to administer than your combo of other factors? Then it could be valuable even if it's not quite as good a predictor), but your stronger position does not seem obviously wrong to me, so I won't object to it.