174. What’s the Point of I.Q. Testing? | No Stupid Questions

[@ekoo3714]

I took the SAT twice. It did get better. If I had known better about timing and money I would have taken it a third time. I couldn't afford to take it again after my second one. I only had enough money to apply for 2 colleges.

[@harrynamkoong3361]

People who poopoo IQ and SAT/ACT are usually the ones who had bad/poor - specially compared to what they think they "should have scored" - IQ/SAT/ACT scores. You never see people with 135/1600 say it's meaningless.

[@AlanSmith34817]

If Mike was talking about 'tight ends' of ballerina's or something similar, would it have been okay as Angela talking about it here? In terms of IQ/intelligence, the conversation seems to be how not to discriminate base on privilege (familial, nature, wealth, opportunity, luck, environmental). Any test seems to be imperfect because one is testing for a culmination of various factors, but yet - Are we asking for a way to measure intelligence solely base on nature/genetics? Also intelligence has very different sectors (spacial, abstract, mathematical, emotional, cultural, etc) is there any single test that measures one comprehension over these topics?

[@mikeyicxc5374]

This was disappointing, though its probably an issue that requires about 10X more discussion time. Pointing out Amy Tan is a great anecdote, but awful from the perspective of public policy. Normal distributions of intelligence (or standardized test scores) across large populations can provide decision-useful information (though not by itself persuasive information) for various organizations (colleges, for example). Of course any testing that does not control for factors such as socio-economics, etc. is questionable, but why are we still talking about that when those concerns were expressed 50 years ago? The problem is the lack of transparency as to what the tests are used for and how the results are then actually used. Of course such test results can be misused, but this piece seems to argue for the complete disregard of such test results (and that being based on anecdotal evidence).

[@thegreatbigintergalactic8499]

Mike does not look like he sounds.

[@JoelRogness]

What a disappointing and uninformed discussion of a fascinating topic.