this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
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iq still a thing?
Yes. Contrary to current pop-sci thought, it's not actually useless bunk. Epically when differences reach into 2 digits.
I didn't realise it wasn't a thing anymore.
I know it's never been a good indicator of success or even cognitive abilities but it's still a thing that people try to measure.
I suppose you might define “success” in an unusual way, but IQ is the single highest correlate with income of all factors. Higher than parental income, race, or residential location.
If you’re interesting in learning more I recommend this article. They cite a lot of data and research. I’m happy to walk you through the directionality topic as well if you’re interested.
I may need you to walk me past my inhibitions about accepting scientific information from a website called PumpkinPerson that center justifies its articles.
I just watched a Veritasium video that said that IQ is not very strongly correlated with higher income.
I’ll take a look at the article too.
there are companies that still use myers-briggs personality tests for "compatibility"
Myers-Briggs is modern snake oil.
Meyers-Briggs is astrology with more steps
Yeah, that is accurate. Astrology pretending to be science.
It still is a thing, always will be. People are vastly differently skilled. The problem isnt that there are different abilities but that our centralized meat mill pushes them into categories. It doesnt make you better to have more skill in one area, it just means people should consider listening to you.
IQ is a very good indicator of cognitive abilities. It’s a poor indicator of kindness, morality, or honesty.
Why wouldn’t it be? It is the single most research metric in all of sociology. We have more evidence for the existence of the g factor (and its causal and correlative effects) than any other phenomenon in that entire school of science.
Don’t confuse the criticism of measurement tools with the premise that g doesn’t exist.
Apparently not in the US!
It's not canceled. It's just not an accurate reflection of inherent overall intelligence but, instead, a measurement of very specific mental skills.
It's a test of pattern recognition. The difficulties come from trying to apply similar measurements between disparate populations, as the questions themselves tend to rely upon common understandings of the world. You can measure two people from two different cultures with two different tests, but then it's more difficult to claim that the resulting scores are comparable. As long as people understand that it's a rough approximation rather than something akin to video game stats, it's quite useful.
Even video game stats have the same problems though, your W/L ratio in free for all should be a lot lower than in team deathmatch, or if you are playing a support class it’s expected you get less kills per game so comparing a support player vs a fragger will get you errors but if you control for as many variables as possible then IQ can be a not complete shit variable
I learned about the issues with IQ long before "cancelling" was a thing.
Ok, but if you're gonna make a joke like that in a serious thread about actual IQ, you're probably gonna want to include a little bit more so people are able to pick up what you're putting down.
Really? I thought I was being pretty cordial... Oh well.
Americans are so weird about IQ. Yes, indeed, some brains work better than others — by avoiding lead poisoning or traumatic brain injuries, for instance, and by reading books, pursuing higher education, and enjoying a fulfilling social environment.
It's mostly a metric people use to prove their superiority over other people, when all of the other metrics for happiness and success suggest otherwise.
You can always tell which people took an "IQ test" (most of them probably even just did some bullshit online thing and not even a real one) and have nothing else going for them but a number that they think tells people they're smart.
Yeah, about online tests, I've taken it twice in the olden days, once I got a result (probably due to connection problems) fitting a rock, and once I got something egghead high (probably due to the same).
And I've never met people mentioning their IQ test results as an argument other than what you said.
You just did it. 🤷♂️
I thought I did the opposite.