What is Something Scientific that you just don't believe in at all? - eviltoast

EDIT: Let’s cool it with the downvotes, dudes. We’re not out to cut funding to your black hole detection chamber or revoke the degrees of chiropractors just because a couple of us don’t believe in it, okay? Chill out, participate with the prompt and continue with having a nice day. I’m sure almost everybody has something to add.

  • Commiunism@lemmy.wtf
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    11 months ago

    IQ score is a sham - the tests are quite fallible, and historically they were used as a justification to discriminate against people who are poorer or with worse access to education. Nowadays, I see it quite a lot in the context of eugenics, where some professors and philosophers attribute poor people being poor due to their low intelligence (low IQ score), and that they can’t be helped while rich people got where they are due to their intelligence (as in they have a high IQ score on average).

    • yesman@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      IQ testing is reification fallacy. If I told you I had an instrument that could objectively measure every human by how beautiful they are, you’d see the problem immediately.

      IQ depends on their being one kind of intelligence. You only get one score and it’s the supposed measure of general intelligence. If street smarts vs. book smarts is a thing, IQ cannot be.

      IQ measures racial difference that cannot be biological. Race is cultural, so since the test measures consistent difference between racial lines, it’s proof that it’s not measuring something biologically determined. It’d be like if IQ showed blondes really were dimmer than their peers, but you found out the effect carried over to bottle blondes.

      I recommend the book “Mismeasure of Man” by Gould. His thesis shows the historical folly and logical impossibility of not just IQ, but biological determinism. I’ve just posted the common sense arguments against IQ, Gould brings the receipts.

      • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        In adults its well correlated with ability to learn and perform. If don’t care why and just want to hire the best candidate its a good test.

        • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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          11 months ago

          But it doesn’t necessarily show if they have common sense. If you have many low complexity problems then maybe, but it can’t predict the best performers

    • irotsoma@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Not only that, but a lot of developmental disabilities are only recognized as needing accommodations if the person scores low enough on an IQ test. But many score high on these tests, but do poorly in school because they are stuck in a system that only values people who learn from lecture, repetition, and regurgitation. So they are considered lazy rather than needing help.

    • Xtallll@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      11 months ago

      My favorite argument agents IQ is that every thing it claims “inherent quality”, “can’t be studied for” ect were exactly what the SAT used to claim.