University of Cambridge Cognitive Ability Test

I still do not understand why we are wasting scientific resources trying to stack rank humans on arbitrarily defined concepts like cognitive ability or intelligence.

After over a century of psychometric research in cognitive abilities and intelligence, what do we have to show for it? Whose life has actually improved for the better? Have the benefits from such research, if any, outweighed the amount of harm that has already been caused?

>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.

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.