University of Cambridge Cognitive Ability Test

>resources trying to stack rank humans on arbitrarily defined concepts like cognitive ability or intelligence.

"arbitrarily defined concepts like cognitive ability or intelligence" correlate very well with objective metrics like educational attainment and income.

>the amount of harm that has already been caused?

Like what?

It’s just more of that unbelievably annoying modern attitude that doing no harm is more important than doing good.

So is the goal to predict someone’s future income? Or to inform someone of how much money they supposedly should be making based on their test results and the supposed correlation between test results and income? Surely the test results aren’t being used anywhere to actually determine people’s income.

I don't see what harm these tests are doing, but I don't see the good either. Could you elaborate?

The goal is to predict if, for example, someone is better suited to sweeping the floors vs working with complex systems. Both are useful and respectable jobs but you both want an individual who can actually do it, not someone who just thinks they can, and someone whose capabilities won't be wasted on too simple tasks. These tests are great tools to help you figure out future performances of said individuals, as well as their satisfaction on the job/task. A mismatch will cause impact both for the individual and the company/military unit/etc.

The US Army requires a minimum AFQT percentile of 31 for enlistment which, based on standard IQ norms (mean = 100, SD = 15), maps to roughly an IQ of 85 (one standard deviation below mean).

I.e. if you have an IQ below 85 you can't even sweep up the floor for the army

And it’s because they found that using people below that threshold for _any purpose, including canon fodder_ has disastrously bad outcomes.

> The goal is to predict if, for example, someone is better suited to sweeping the floors vs working with complex systems.

That is a perversion of the purpose and origin of these tests, and a core reason why ICAR tries to replace IQ tests with a wider set of different logic puzzles without any established "aggregate score" metric for people to abuse.

It stratifies people, so anyone in a strata that isn’t the best is azhkchually being harmed by not being rated equally to everyone else.

Around 50 million Americans fall below this threshold and are positively counterproductive for ANY military purpose, no matter how menial, no matter the shortage of recruits.

I mean, a quick look at the flynn effect would indicate that's complete fucking nonsense.

we won ww2 with an army a solid SD below today's 100.

We won it against a regime led by a certifiable nutcase who forced many of his smartest citizens to flee the country. Many of them ended up here.

Are you Russian?

Well the flynn effect is global so either the russians won ww2 with people an SD below today's mean IQ or the US military thinks that the russian army (that won ww2) circa '40 wasn't even fit for cannon fodder.

> counterproductive for ANY military purpose

Putin uses such people as cannon fodder, meat wave attacks

So you're arguing it ws low IQ vs low IQ? Okay... Do you have a point? I understand that you're upset for some reasno.

Do you have a counter-point? You think the army is stupid and you know better? What is your point?

Would you prefer your child have an IQ of 120 or 80? If you have a preference, then you're morally inconsistent and don't even realize it? That must be a frustrating condition to go through life with? At least try to have a nice day in spite of your limitations. It's not your fault, we're all equal in God's eyes.

Flynn effect operates on the assumption that intelligence is a valid and measurable metric, while you previously argued it was not. You selectively do believe in when it affirms your bias? Nice one. You think you know more about this than experts who study it. I see. That's enough of you lol.

No, the Flynn Effect is an observation that raw scores on "IQ tests" have increased over (a far too short period to be attributable to evolution) time and/but IQ is defined as having a median value of 100 . It is not an assumption that intelligence is a measurable metric (redundant) it is an observation that the metric is a shit metric -- particularly over time. It is explicitly a point against "IQ" as a valid and measurable metric.

Good job being incapable of synthesizing both of your perversions into a single post.

I am "arguing" (not arguing, simply stating basic facts) that neither Russia nor the USA were giving "IQ tests" to soldiers. Also neither Russia nor the USA are currently giving "IQ tests" to soldiers.

To Wit: I do not think the Army not accepting people who score too low on their entrance exam has anything to do with "IQ".

Also neither I nor my hypothetical child will be taking an "IQ test" (again not actually a defined thing) so having a preference is not a sensible idea.

If you had to pick 120 or 80, what would it be? You have no preference whether they can read or write? Notice you're cornered logically? Wouldn't you prefer to have a strong opinion based in reason?

You did not answer my question, which was in good faith; instead you seam to keep using a sarcastic way of discussing that we try to avoid here.

Yes I did. “Why is this bad”

“Because it stratifies people, which has the effect of saying some people are better than others in some way”.

I’m not being sarcastic towards you, I’m being sarcastic towards people who think this is truly harmful. I apologize - I should’ve made that more clear.

So now you're pivoting to saying Flynn Effect is just an observation of noise and human error with no meaning. You brought up the Flynn Effect, but you don't think it's meaningful to measure IQ? But you do think time series analysis on IQ is meaningful? You made no attempt at even a reasoned claim that Flynn Effect debunks validity of IQ. It's all patchwork emo stuff going on with u, and u agree grammur policing is a last resort of a broken mind. Not much respond to when you have to twist yourself in a pretzel and then trip over your own arguments on the pivot.

Apologizes gladly accepted. But maybe my question was not clearly phrased - it was not "Why are tests bad". You contrasted "doing no harm" with "doing good" and I wanted to ask what good have IQ tests done. Because to me the harm is kind of obvious (overinflating the importance of one criteria and ideological agenda) but the good not so much (obviously, I'm not questioning the good of any cognitive ability per see, I'm questioning the good of assigning a numerical value to it and making it a characteristic of some individual).

Oh, I see. A good IQ test would be a good way to help our most promising children get the largest head start. It could help point out adults in your own company that have some type of potential. It could be used for scholarship purposes. Stuff like that.

> A good IQ test would be a good way to help our most promising children get the largest head start.

If that were true, then why are they not administered to every child? IQ tests appear to only to the potentially disabled and potential precocious. If a child is already showing signs of precociousness, then what would an IQ test present that was not already observed?

> It could help point out adults in your own company that have some type of potential.

I highly doubt adults at a company have hidden potential that is unknown. Underused? Sure. It's not like the companies have some sort of hidden genius that no one knows about. If one were a genius, it would have likely been apparent far earlier in their life.

> It could be used for scholarship purposes.

Do you really believe we should be awarding scholarships for meritless human attributes? Why not offer scholarships to other human attributes like height, weight, and beauty while we are at it?

That's thing about IQ, according to the research, it's like eye color, skin color, etc.. There isn't a damn thing one can do to change it (positively). So, I am not certain I am comfortable offering scholarships on raw IQ alone. In fact, isn't the entire purpose behind grades, standardized testing, etc.?

(Yes, I am aware the early SAT was a psuedo-IQ test, but that ended in the 80s or 90s, I believe. ACT was never truly comparable to my understanding.)

>If that were true, then why are they not administered to every child?

We've never had a good understanding of what intelligence is, let alone a good test for it. We didn't even realize that until recently.

>I highly doubt adults at a company have hidden potential that is unknown

I think you'd be surprised how economic status can take a brilliant mind and squash it, or a rigid society can take a uniquely thoughtful mind and squash it

>Do you really believe we should be awarding scholarships for meritless human attributes?

You should see how easy it is to get a basketball scholarship if you're over 7 feet tall. And for good reason.

>it's like eye color, skin color, etc.. There isn't a damn thing one can do to change it (positively)

Can't make tall people grow more either. 7' people still have a much easier time with the sport than anyone else.

I guess I don't understand why you think we shouldn't be able to discriminate based on the brain? Should we just waste this wonderful natural gift in the name of fairness? Sounds like more of that "it's more important to do no harm than to do good" garbage.

I'm a bit sceptical that we could discover unsuspected geniuses with IQ tests, but I will concede that it could be useful the other way around: to prove to someone, most liekely ourselve, that one is not often as clever as one believe. :-)