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Old 10-21-2007, 04:11 PM
tame_deuces tame_deuces is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2005
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Default Re: What Would David Say About This Remark?

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Well, do poor uneducated people generally scores lower than moderately wealthy (and upwards) educated people?

If so, what are we really meauring?


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First, reputable studies generally control for demographic differences as much as possible.

If your point is that income level affects IQ, so IQ can't be a good measure of something genetic, you may be confusing correllation with causation and what a correllation shows. If anything, I suspect the causal arrow would go the other direction in this case. It makes intuitive sense that smart people figure out how to make more money than less smart people. They then pass their smarter genes on to what end up being smarter kids who come from wealthier families.

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No, I'm not confusing causation with correlation and I'm very well aware that they regress the data for demographic variables, I've done enough survey research in psychology myself to know how it is done. I am however in personal opinion from my own knowledge believing the standard IQ tests are measuring culturally significant symbols, logic and tasks and not a valid general measure of intelligence. Or to simplify: I believe they are measuring cultural traits and using the data to support a notion that ethnicity is the explaining factor.

As I did earlier you can exemplify this in the extreme by figuring out how you would measure the intelligence of the first person to use the wheel, or you could attempt to measure the intelligence of someone you do not know the language of.

There have been studies on social construction that show that street children who know how to read and write are largely scoring very badly on math puzzles solved on paper but are very capable of doing in if you set it in context of trade. clicky
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