University of Cambridge Cognitive Ability Test

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

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.

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.

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. :-)