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There's definitely a lot of IQ fetishism in the HBD community, but the basics are true. IQ measures academic potential, nothing more or less. Doesn't make people motivated, moral or wise. Does correlate well with low crime and high achievement, because our society uses academia as a status-sorting mechanism. But all that's circular, IQ measuring the ability to satisfy the social sorting mechanism makes IQ predicting social success pretty obvious.
It's certainly not the be-all and end-all of society, nor should it be. Put a high-IQ anti-racist in front of an urban scammer and see who leaves with whose money.
As to "loudest advocates", I have a theory. Any group of any sort is going to have a bell curve of usefulness to the group. Roughly half the people contribute, the other half consume. This is true of sports teams, national societies, knitting circles. The people making big noises about group membership are either those competing for leadership of the group, or the most marginal members. Makes sense if you think about it.
To put it in military terms, the guys wearing the garish, threatening veteran T-shirts are rarely the dudes who saw action.
This is a mechanism i hadnt really considered but once stated explicitly seems intuitive and obvious. Academics assign worth based on academic aptitude because academics like academics.
Good point
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Do you think being smart or dumb is just a matter of academic potential with no other practical real-world effect? Or you, like Hlynka, think IQ doesn't really measure intelligence?
Not sure exactly what you're asking?
We can get into weird definitional debates about what exactly "intelligence" is. I would argue that it doesn't really matter, because intelligence is whatever the social sorting mechanism decides is intelligence, which is currently academic, and that's what IQ measures. We only fetishize IQ because it predicts one's potential to rise in society. That said, it's the best test we have of raw brainpower (however we define that), and I believe I am reading the science correctly to say that particularly the g-loaded parts of IQ tests seem to measure that pretty well. There are aspects of (arguably) intelligence, verbal, musical etc. that are correlated with IQ but not at all perfectly.
But as a great generality, for the layperson, I would say IQ = smart is probably close enough to be useful. Just so long as we don't presume that means IQ = not terribly flawed human beings with all the same problems as everyone else, just smarter. And obviously, intelligence in any valid measurement will have all sorts of real-world effects.
When you say "IQ measures academic potential, nothing more or less", you seem to be saying it doesn't have all sorts of real world effects that aren't mediated by academia. But it's clear to me that what the layman calls "smart" and "dumb" do have non-academic effects, as quips like "He's so dumb he couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel!" demonstrate. So my question was whether you were denying that, or denying whether IQ tests measured "smart" and "dumb". But it seems to be neither, so I'm not sure what you mean by "IQ measures academic potential, nothing more or less".
I also don't think (US or Western) society fetishizes IQ; in fact, it denies its importance, both theoretically and practically (e.g. in that the SAT is being de-emphasized and its ceiling has been lowered). It does fetishize academic achievement.
I didn't say it doesn't have real world effect, only that it is measuring something other than what is claimed.
I would also argue that the degree to which the Ivy league denies the importance of IQ and the SAT is directly proportional to the number of slots they see being as having been "stolen" from jews and wasps by chinks and niggers.
Asians, yes, that makes sense, but Black people benefit from dropping the SAT more than any other group.
White people conceivably benefit from the lowering of the ceiling of the SAT.
Relative to Asians, yes. That's what Hlynka was saying and I agreed. I am disputing the claim that it also benefits Whites relative to Blacks.
Though I'm not sure what you mean by "the lowering of the ceiling" specifically.
No, though eliminating the SAT requirement does that, not directly but by allowing the decision to more easily made on the basis of woke bias.
Over the past few decades the SAT has been redesigned in such a way that it is easier; as a result, the level of "aptitude" (or whatever you care to call what the test measured) above which it cannot distinguish test-takers has dropped.
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