Posted by special_k on March 22, 2006, at 20:03:57
In reply to Subject close to my heart » special_k, posted by Racer on March 22, 2006, at 19:37:29
> The whole Intelligence Quotient is a long standing discomfort of mine, which I won't go into here right now. Suffice it to say, it's something I've thought about.
:-)
Me too :-)
> Define "intelligence?"
> You can't, because there really isn't any one definition. Unless, of course, you're eight years old and can say, "It means 'smart'"
Yep. Another way to make the point 'what do all intelligent acts have in common' is just like 'what do all games have in common' which is to say it is a cluster concept and there is no essential property (that can be tested) running through all the instances...
w.
> And keep in mind the original purpose of the tests -- one which I think was and is appropriate and rather progressive: it was about making education available to more children.
sigh. was it? i don't remember the history.
> Before the IQ test came along, a lot of kids were catagorized as uneducable, due to mental retardation, when in fact it was cultural factors, or vision or hearing loss, or other factors totally unrelated to intelligence.
oh. i thought intelligence tests were designed to show that... well... initially it was a screen for brain damage / mental retardation - wasn't it?
then it got used for... well there was a finding that yellow people were smarter than white people were smarter than black people. the bell curve. and that was used as justification (even though that DIDN"T FOLLOW) for not even trying to educate black people. 'cause the thought was it would be a waste of resources because they were innately stupid.
I think a guy from Wellington NZ showed how bogus the bell curve conclusions were...
Yeah. Ones IQ score was supposed to generalise to what one was capable of learning...
Kind of like how the GRE is supposed to generalise to ones success in graduate school...
I feel really angry when I think of how these tests tend to be used and interpreted...
poster:special_k
thread:622738
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20060322/msgs/623473.html