Liberal Creationism, or: Yippee, It’s Bell-Curve Time Again!

[zhao]

Can you imagine that the U.K. is growing them over there, too? It's all so startling and sad.

and to think that just a week ago i was casually chatting about jazz with him in the music forum...

EWWWWWWW!!!

it's like finding out that the smelly guy who sits next to you at work is actually a child rapist.

 

[ripley]

If standardized testing were completely pointless, then no-one would use it.

you are half right. Standardized testing does have a point.

In a world where resources are rationed, standardized testing provides a justification for rationing them in a particular way.

But whether that rationing is defensible by any other moral or practical standard is totally questionable.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

In a world where resources are rationed, standardized testing provides a justification for rationing them in a particular way.

Do you mean a) there isn't enough time to test properly, so standardized testing is a useful shortcut or b) the results of standardized testing (that ppl are capable of doing particular things to different degrees) prompt differentiation of resources, in quantity and type?

But whether that rationing is defensible by any other moral or practical standard is totally questionable.

This depends on the particular situation, surely. It also depends on what you mean by rationing.

 

[ripley]

Do you mean a) there isn't enough time to test properly, so standardized testing is a useful shortcut or b) the results of standardized testing (that ppl are capable of doing particular things to different degrees) prompt differentiation of resources, in quantity and type?

I'm quite not sure what you mean. But consider that there are human rights arguments that all should have equal access to things like educational resources. Or that people who face systematic disadvantages (or medical ones) should have increased access to those things. THose would be alternate methods of rationing than one dictated by the results of a test

BUT i must emphasize that standardized testing does NOT show what people are capable of. It really, really doesnt!

performance on standardized testing shows how well people perfom, on a standardized test, at that time. I'm not not being flip, this is actually all you can tell.
If if a person had better education, better nutrition, better study skills, read more books, etc (i.e. had more resources and support), basically all people could do better on tests. So it can't really be about 'capability.' It's about performance.

THe correlations between test performance and later performance (on OTHER things), is correlation without causation.

This depends on the particular situation, surely. It also depends on what you mean by rationing.

Do you mean that there are situations in which the method of rationing and ranking is unquestionable? I suppose I can think of a few (height requirements at Disneyland?), but very few for anything meaningful.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

But consider that there are human rights arguments that all should have equal access to things like educational resources.

Of course, but not everyone is the same, and so the administration of resources has to be differentiated. This makes judging whether everyone has been treated 'equally' difficult.

BUT i must emphasize that standardized testing does NOT show what people are capable of. It really, really doesnt!

In my experience, it does!

If if a person had better education, better nutrition, better study skills, read more books, etc (i.e. had more resources and support), basically all people could do better on tests. So it can't really be about 'capability.' It's about performance.

Given equal opportunities (equal time, resources, attention etc) some people will improve more quickly than others and thus perform better. Everyone can improve, granted, but improvement will not be at a uniform rate.

I don't see how 'capability' can be expunged - it's like imagining a Formula 1 car hitting a fast lap time without there being an engine powering it along. Human degrees of intellectual capability lie between complete incapability and complete capability (instantaneous uptake and understanding).

THe correlations between test performance and later performance (on OTHER things), is correlation without causation.

Well, yes, but you could undercut any argument to the contrary by asserting incommensurability.

Do you mean that there are situations in which the method of rationing and ranking is unquestionable? I suppose I can think of a few (height requirements at Disneyland?), but very few for anything meaningful.

The thing is that rationing is inevitable and ranking is done as fairly as one can, with due consideration for both the rankee and for society as a whole.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

BUT i must emphasize that standardized testing does NOT show what people are capable of. It really, really doesnt!

performance on standardized testing shows how well people perfom, on a standardized test, at that time.

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A chimpanzee named Ayumu performs a memory test.

Otherwise, wouldn't this little guy go on to have a bright, successful future, gaining a PhD in Pattern Recognition, given his memory acquisition skills? Another humiliating 'embarrassment' for the IQ narcissists.

5-year-old chimp beats college kids in computer game

The chimps were faster than humans in some tests.

The chimps and humans both had an 80 percent success rate on one test.

One chimp kept this score while humans dropped to 40 percent in a new test.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Think you're smarter than a fifth-grader? How about a 5-year-old chimp? Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists, that "humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions," said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

"No one can imagine that chimpanzees -- young chimpanzees at the age of 5 -- have a better performance in a memory task than humans," he said in a statement.

Matsuzawa, a pioneer in studying the mental abilities of chimps, said even he was surprised. He and colleague Sana Inoue report the results in Tuesday's issue of the journal Current Biology.

One memory test included three 5-year-old chimps who'd been taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, and a dozen human volunteers.

They saw nine numbers displayed on a computer screen. When they touched the first number, the other eight turned into white squares. The test was to touch all these squares in the order of the numbers that used to be there.

Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster.

One chimp, Ayumu, did the best. Researchers included him and nine college students in a second test.

This time, five numbers flashed on the screen only briefly before they were replaced by white squares. The challenge, again, was to touch these squares in the proper sequence.

When the numbers were displayed for about seven-tenths of a second, Ayumu and the college students were both able to do this correctly about 80 percent of the time.

But when the numbers were displayed for just four-tenths or two-tenths of a second, the chimp was the champ. The briefer of those times is too short to allow a look around the screen, and in those tests Ayumu still scored about 80 percent, while humans plunged to 40 percent.

That indicates Ayumu was better at taking in the whole pattern of numbers at a glance, the researchers wrote.

"It's amazing what this chimpanzee is able to do," said Elizabeth Lonsdorf, director of the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. The center studies the mental abilities of apes, but Lonsdorf didn't participate in the new study.

She admired Ayumu's performance when the numbers flashed only briefly on the screen.

"I just watched the video of that and I can tell you right now, there's no way I can do it," she said. "It's unbelievable. I can't even get the first two (squares)."

What's going on here? Even with six months of training, three students failed to catch up to the three young chimps, Matsuzawa said in an e-mail.

He thinks two factors gave his chimps the edge. For one thing, he believes human ancestors gave up much of this skill over evolutionary time to make room in the brain for gaining language abilities.


The other factor is the youth of Ayumu and his peers. The memory for images that's needed for the tests resembles a skill found in children, but which dissipates with age. In fact, the young chimps performed better than older chimps in the new study. (Ayumu's mom did even worse than the college students).

So the next logical step, Lonsdorf said, is to fix up Ayumu with some real competition on these tests: little kids.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Otherwise, wouldn't this little guy go on to have a bright, successful future, gaining a PhD in Pattern Recognition, given his memory acquisition skills?

And I bet you've got a PhD in facetiousness, hmlt - nice one, rofl!!1!

 

[Guybrush]

A bit belatedly, but here you go:

Part 4: Regrets

A respone to ‘Liberal Creationism’ – by Stephen Metcalf

In a semi-retraction, labeled "Regrets," Saletan writes, "The thing that has upset me most concerns a co-author of one of the articles I cited," and goes on to describe how that author is pretty clearly a white supremacist. This Clintonian admission is technically true—Saletan did cite the work of J. Philippe Rushton, and and some may consider Rushton, based on his comments and connections, to be a dyed-in-the-wool, old-fashioned racist. Rushton is not the author of "one of the articles" Saletan cited. Rushton is the author of the article from which Saletan draws almost all of his ammunition. Rushton's paper, co-authored with Arthur Jensen, "Thirty Years of Research Into Race Differences on Cognitive Abilities," is a meta-analysis, a purportedly even-handed review of all the relevant research on race and intelligence. The majority of Saletan's facts come to a reader, therefore, not secondhand, but third-hand, and via the prism of two highly biased researchers.​

 

[nomadologist]

A bit belatedly, but here you go:

Part 4: Regrets

A respone to ‘Liberal Creationism’ – by Stephen Metcalf

In a semi-retraction, labeled "Regrets," Saletan writes, "The thing that has upset me most concerns a co-author of one of the articles I cited," and goes on to describe how that author is pretty clearly a white supremacist. This Clintonian admission is technically true—Saletan did cite the work of J. Philippe Rushton, and and some may consider Rushton, based on his comments and connections, to be a dyed-in-the-wool, old-fashioned racist. Rushton is not the author of "one of the articles" Saletan cited. Rushton is the author of the article from which Saletan draws almost all of his ammunition. Rushton's paper, co-authored with Arthur Jensen, "Thirty Years of Research Into Race Differences on Cognitive Abilities," is a meta-analysis, a purportedly even-handed review of all the relevant research on race and intelligence. The majority of Saletan's facts come to a reader, therefore, not secondhand, but third-hand, and via the prism of two highly biased researchers.​

I knew this would happen eventually! Of course, anyone who knew better would have IMMEDIATELY looked into the credentials of someone who conducted research in which the "findings" propped up already soundly debunked notions of "racial" stratification along the lines of abstract qualities such as "intelligence" and unearthed Rushton's background ,thereby avoiding this entire mess.

William Saletan definitely should have known better!!

 

[turtles]

This New Yorker article about race and IQ tests (at least partially in reponse to the Saletan articles) pretty much puts to bed a lot of the things discussed here--from asians having higher IQs to what it is that IQ really measures--by being very thorough about analyzing the statistics behind IQ tests. Mostly it discusses the work of social scientist/statistician James Flynn and the so-called "Flynn Effect" which is that IQ scores have risen, consitently accross the board, since the 50s. If IQ was really testing some raw, innate quantity called intelligence, then it makes no sense that scores would have risen over time, unless we accept the hytpothesis that people in the early 1900's would on average be classified as mentally retarded today.

To say that Dutch I.Q. scores rose substantially between 1952 and 1982 was another way of saying that the Netherlands in 1982 was, in at least certain respects, much more cognitively demanding than the Netherlands in 1952. An I.Q., in other words, measures not so much how smart we are as how modern we are.

When an I.Q. test is created, he reminds us, it is calibrated or “normed” so that the test-takers in the fiftieth percentile—those exactly at the median—are assigned a score of 100. But since I.Q.s are always rising, the only way to keep that hundred-point benchmark is periodically to make the tests more difficult—to “renorm” them. The original WISC was normed in the late nineteen-forties. It was then renormed in the early nineteen-seventies, as the WISC-R; renormed a third time in the late eighties, as the WISC III; and renormed again a few years ago, as the WISC IV—with each version just a little harder than its predecessor. The notion that anyone “has” an I.Q. of a certain number, then, is meaningless unless you know which WISC he took, and when he took it, since there’s a substantial difference between getting a 130 on the WISC IV and getting a 130 on the much easier WISC.

Anyway, it's definitely worth a read. Seems like exactly what this discussion needed: a nice clear overview of what IQ tests actually are and how they have been applied.

 

[ripley]

thanks for posting that recent article.

The thing is, IQ tests have been debunked for years and years. Their foundation is in racism and eugenics, as people have tried to 'clean them up' they are only revealed in all their shaky glory as excuses for ranking people against each other, and little to do with discovering capabilities or understanding anything about then nature of human intelligence. As one of the people here who was objecting to them, I can tell you it wasn't because I have some vague feeling about them not being very nice... it's because they are bunk. There is scads of research that shows this. I'm glad to know people are still debunking them, I'm sure there will be another article in a few months or so. But it's not like there are equal amounts of evidence on both sides. There just isn't.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

thanks for posting that recent article.

The thing is, IQ tests have been debunked for years and years. Their foundation is in racism and eugenics, as people have tried to 'clean them up' they are only revealed in all their shaky glory as excuses for ranking people against each other, and little to do with discovering capabilities or understanding anything about then nature of human intelligence. As one of the people here who was objecting to them, I can tell you it wasn't because I have some vague feeling about them not being very nice... it's because they are bunk. There is scads of research that shows this. I'm glad to know people are still debunking them, I'm sure there will be another article in a few months or so. But it's not like there are equal amounts of evidence on both sides. There just isn't.

'They're bunk because I say lots of people say that they're bunk' = not really an argument. Even if nearly everyone said that they were bunk (which is patently not the case), it still wouldn't be an argument.

And, as I said before, even if there were a thorough debunking, people would still use the tests, as they *find them useful*.

Turtles: as far as I remember, the Flynn effect is a result of rising scores in certain areas only eg. matrices. Other aspects have stayed static.

IQ is not completely determined by heredity btw

 

[Mr. Tea]

IQ is not completely determined by heredity btw

Quite: it's influenced by all sorts of things like diet and the amount of mental stimulation people receive as children, which can vary (as an average or general trend, of course) from society to society and change over time in a single society.

 

[swears]

I know someone who got a 1st degree in english from a redbrick uni, but he always scores under 90 on IQ tests because his maths is shit.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

I know someone who got a 1st degree in english from a redbrick uni, but he always scores under 90 on IQ tests because his maths is shit.

Well, you could probably get a 1st at most places with a verbal IQ of 115+, as long as you put the work in. (Obv I just pulled that figure out of mid-air, but it's probably roughly correct )

His maths scores might be <80, thus pulling the average down.

hmm rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb

 

[swears]

Well, he told me his IQ test scores were that low. He keeps going on about how intelligence is "applied" rather than "essential".
He's smarter than me, anyway.

 

[nomadologist]

Well, he told me his IQ test scores were that low. He keeps going on about how intelligence is "applied" rather than "essential".
He's smarter than me, anyway.

Your friend is exactly right. That's a good way to put it.

 

[ripley]

'They're bunk because I say lots of people say that they're bunk' = not really an argument. Even if nearly everyone said that they were bunk (which is patently not the case), it still wouldn't be an argument.

no, my argument is that they are bunk because the overwhelming weight of scientific and social science research says they are bunk.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Well, he told me his IQ test scores were that low. He keeps going on about how intelligence is "applied" rather than "essential".
He's smarter than me, anyway.

Well, a hammer is applied but it still has essential properties. Without the essential properties (be they inherent or assumed), there would be nothing to apply in the first place.

Perhaps it's a reference to the distinction between crystallised intelligence (basically 'wisdom') and fluid intelligence (speed, flexibility).

Ripley - that is not the case. A quick google of 'IQ' with reference to academic papers shows hundreds of recent examples of use. Furthermore, the psychologist reports I've seen in teaching always refer to IQ.

 

[turtles]

Biscuits, yeah the IQ rise is mainly in one part of the IQ test:

The WISC is composed of ten subtests, each of which measures a different aspect of I.Q. Flynn points out that scores in some of the categories—those measuring general knowledge, say, or vocabulary or the ability to do basic arithmetic—have risen only modestly over time. The big gains on the WISC are largely in the category known as “similarities,” where you get questions such as “In what way are ‘dogs’ and ‘rabbits’ alike?” Today, we tend to give what, for the purposes of I.Q. tests, is the right answer: dogs and rabbits are both mammals. A nineteenth-century American would have said that “you use dogs to hunt rabbits.”

But this doesn't really change the argument. Basically he argues that what is being tested in the "similarities" category is a type of abstraction favoured by people who do science (hence the "modern" quote in my original post). And thus the rise in IQ's corresponds to the acceptance of different ethnic groups of a style of thinking favoured by those who wrote the IQ test (them being scientific-types). Seriously, read the article, he does a very good job of describing quite clearly how the effect is basically the result of social accommodation and assimilation, rather than people actually getting "smarter."