Sure, that’s why non-white people are all getting higher IQ scores than Americans and Western Europeans
It clearly means something. The debate - as with most psychometric tests - is what it means.
I don’t think intelligence necessarily correlates with, say, your decisions about opening your restaurant, or your driving style. Taiwan’s rapid progress - on various measures - suggests that the inhabitants actually are more intelligent than those in countries which flounder and are commonly accused of having a low collective IQ. In other words, while the idea of an IQ score might be slightly suspect, an ordinal ranking is probably sound.
It depends on the type of test. Some are more amenable to that than others. There are a couple of tests which use an abstract, dynamic task (such as pressing buttons in response to flashing lights) to make the assessment - surprisingly, those seem to be almost immune to practice effects. Nobody can accuse them of being racist, at least.
It’s because shapes and patterns are a social construct perpetrated by the white euro-centric patriarchy in order to keep non-whites in an underprivileged position.
Don’t ask me why jews and east asians perform on average a bit better than white people, though. That’s a mystery.
Though it may be a clever rouse setup by the white patriarchy to make the whole scheme less obvious.
I did mine five times and began as borderline retarded and ended up as borderline genius I guess that means I’m borderline. And no it wasn’t the exact same test lol
I can never tell whether you’re being serious or just pretending to be a caricature of a slightly dim SJW.
Somebody has to come bottom of any test. Hopefully we can at least agree on that.
There is no single “IQ test”. There are a whole bunch of them. As I said, some of them remove all possible sources of cultural bias, and experimenters are well aware of practice effects. Do you seriously think you know more about how these tests work than the people who designed them? They’re often painfully aware of the test limitations and try to address the problems. Even when they do this, Africans still manage to come out at the bottom.
Psychologists, in the main, are a bunch of left-wing SJWs. They’re often racist in the same sense that all SJWs are racist: they think People Of Colour are inherently inferior, and that the White Man’s Burden is to gloss over this fact.
African countries exhibit problems which can really only be produced by people who are venal and unintelligent. If you wish to argue that Africans are (on the average) at least as intelligent as Taiwanese people, you need to explain why they hold social and political beliefs that appear to have been created by very stupid people. The only alternative explanation (as per the popular maxim) is that they are clever, evil people.
A test doesn’t have to be “objective” to be valid. I’m not sure what “objective” even means in this context. The aim of the test is to measure a nebulous concept called Intelligence, which most psychologists agree is composed of a thing called g (general intelligence) plus a bunch of other skill-based faculties; the latter respond to training and practice, up to an individual limit imposed by g. ALL those factors impact on real-world outcomes like employment, life skills, and happiness. Now it may be that Africans are simply unpracticed in the non-g components; but so what? That’s an important result: it suggests that they are failing to provide the conditions that enhance those factors, and if they did so, they wouldn’t (a) come bottom of IQ tests and (b) build societies which are corrupt and unpleasant.
Holy water-buffalo bollocks, Robin. Again: so what? Every country had its own unique geographical and historical setbacks, and they overcame them. By applying some intelligence. A lot of African countries have incredible natural advantages that more-successful places don’t.
You’re also overlooking the fact that Africa (broadly speaking) was a pretty advanced continent a couple of millennia ago, while Europeans were still scrabbling around in the dirt.
So you are saying that most African countries aren’t prosperous because the African people lack intelligence? Or are you just saying their states failed because they didn’t apply their intelligence?
I find it weird that you used the Africa was more civilized than Europe a long time ago as an example, yet still judge people’s intelligence based on whether a place is successful or not at the moment.
Well, like I said, there are really only two possible explanations for Africa looking like it does:
Africans are not very smart
Africans are horrible people
Which do you prefer?
The argument that it’s all because of colonialism white people malaria etc etc etc just doesn’t hold water. You can find counterexamples (currently-successful countries that have been dealt a worse hand) all over the planet.
You might be interested in an obscure bit of empirical data from criminology. Criminals have a mean IQ somewhere in the mid-80s. You can make what you will of that - which way does the causality flow? - but one possibility is that having a lukewarm IQ makes you smart enough to contemplate the unfairness of life, but not smart enough to do anything about it except by exploiting others. This 80-90 range has been referred to as the “uncanny valley” of intelligence because it seems to offer nothing but disadvantages.
Why? 1st-Century Ethiopians were almost certainly smarter than 1st-Century Britons. But now they’re not. My point was that the average intelligence of any society is highly malleable. Whether this is down to genetics or training is of no practical importance: providing the right conditions causes an increase in intelligence, and it tends to persist. Providing the wrong conditions sends it down the tubes; that also tends to persist. I suspect that once you’re stuck in a low-IQ hole, it’s very hard indeed to climb out, because you lack the skills to achieve it.
Now I’m a bit in a pickle. The two options I have are:
a) Agree with your point (which i actually do)
b) Use this as a great occasion to score some fat, easy social justice points, claiming that you’ve gone too far even by my own standards
You see why I’m a difficult position now? How am I supposed to chose?
Does it need a because of? Or is it that it just is? I’ve seen quite a few interviews done with leaders in the continent and it seems that even western educated leaders who’ve come to power don’t do so on the strength of their policy but, at the end of a gun.
Quite. The modern habit is to conflate explanations with excuses. If Africa looks like it does because of “colonialism”, well, that explains everything, and therefore Africans are excused. The more pernicious implication is that because colonialism, therefore perpetual failure.
Reality is what it is. There are policy implications for Africa and for the countries that have to sit and watch the carnage from the sidelines.
