According to his biographer, James Gleick, the physicist Richard Feynman was found in high school to have an IQ of only 124, which is certainly a quite respectable figure, but hardly "genius" level as that would be defined by the psychometricians. Obviously that test provided a poor measure of the guy's actual cognitive abilities.
Jim F.
-- "Wojtek Sokolowski" <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote: Doug:
Yeah. Just when I was experiencing a glimmer of political optimism, this shit surfaced. Now I'm back in the slough of despond again.
[WS:] Why? This whole argument rests on the assumption that IQ is a measurement of some generalized human "aptitude" as opposed to a narrowly defined skill, and thus the most important, if not sole predictor of success in real world. But if we refute that assumption, and show that other than IQ factors are equally important - the claimed between-race differences in IQ scores become inconsequential, similar to claims that some kids are better at video games while others - at playing football.
I really do not understand why you are so attached to the concept of IQ? It is a hoax not because the correlations that it involves are junk science (they are not, the IQ-testing folks got smarter since the 1920s), but because how it is used - as a sole indicator of human 'aptitude' which it is not.
Stated differently, questioning the science behind the claimed differences in IQ results will only bog you down in a wild goose chase. The way to argue this crap is to say, "ok if there are observable differences in IQ scores, as you claim, so what? What does that mean? How is that different from any other observable differences in human abilities?" That will force them to make a statement that they currently only implicitly assume, namely that IQ is a more important factor in human 'aptitude' and life success than other abilities. And that is where they are most vulnerable and can be easily refuted. Otherwise, they take the high ground by claiming that "we" deny the obvious fact that there are observable differences among human groups.
Wojtek
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