wedrifid comments on Why Are Individual IQ Differences OK? - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 October 2007 09:50PM

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Comment author: wedrifid 13 August 2012 06:09:00PM 0 points [-]

IQ tests are culturally biased. If the test asks "How do you use a teacup?" a British person will be likely to know the answer - a lot of them use teacups daily. Do Africans use teacups every day? Maybe they'll bomb on the teacup question because they drink their tea from bowls as with Japanese matcha tea, or from gourds as with yerba mate tea. If you ask them "Is a rattlesnake dangerous?" that question is irrelevant to them. They have boa constrictors, but not rattlesnakes.

Regardless of whether or not it is true it is not supported by the rest of the paragraph. That explains a way in which some arbitrary test which clearly is different in nature to an IQ test could in principle be culturally biased.

(The final paragraph does constitute support of the claim, in as much as the existence of a culture fair test implies an authority sees a need for it.)

Comment author: Epiphany 15 August 2012 02:08:00AM *  0 points [-]

That's a valid criticism, so I explained a lot better here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/kk/why_are_individual_iq_differences_ok/776g