Bite-sized Philosophy
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2017–2025
13:11 · 2.2M views · Apr 25, 2017
A clip of psychologist Jordan Peterson lecturing on intelligence and IQ, covering how it is defined and its correlation with academic and work success.
HN commenters use it as supporting material in arguments about IQ and the g-factor view of intelligence.
4 comments from Hacker News
The link demonstrates that there is a well-reproduced phenomenon in real science whereby, e.g., test scores in various academic subjects correlate positively with each other, and that this can be explained by a common psychometric factor that is reasonable to refer to as "intelligence". The IQ or "intelligence quotient" is an attempt to quantify that which is known to exist, and it's actually one of the best understood ideas in the science of the brain. Additional viewing that largely covers my points below: this video You started off saying: > There a lot of pseudoscience around IQ too, probably starting with the very concept of IQ for measuring "intelligence" (for which we would need a strong definition anyway) The point is that we do, in fact, have all the necessary scientific research to argue that the concept of "intelligence" exists - i.e., that we can identify a single-factor quantity that can be fairly described with a single number - and that anything calling itself IQ is definitionally a measurement of that single quantity. In particular: problem-solving capability is a real thing, and some people very obviously have more of it than others. Also, we notably don't have data to support more than one factor anywhere near as strong as Spearman's g . (That is to say: we see correlations between academic performance in all subjects - rather than strong positive correlations within certain groups but weak or negative correlations between those groups). The fact that specific
> but "intelligence" less so I don't think there's any problem measuring intelligence, where we've traditionally run into issues is where we start to make policy or social decisions using this data without understanding it's subtleties. I think Jordan B Peterson has a good classroom video segment[1] on this problem. [1]: this video
>Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge Raven Progressive Matrices, I believe the most used IQ test today is not influenced by cultural knowledge. IQ has an amazingly high correlation with academic success and work success, see this video it is worthwhile
>I didn't say anything about the validity of IQ. I said that Richard Lynn's numbers, which this site cites, are fraudulent. "IIT 2024" appears to be results from a website survey. You said IQ by country doesn't exist. And i said, IQ is so pervasive it fucking does. You also referenced something completely off topic. Some random book claiming that because that random book is invalid the whole concept of IQ by country doesn't exist which is absolutely wrong. >Respectfully, I think it's you that needs to do a bit more reading. I might be wrong about any of this stuff; I'm not an expert. But I'm pretty sure the first Google search result you find for "IQ by country" isn't going to rebut me effectively. I'm well versed enough in IQ to know that even the first link on google is good enough to refute you. You don't have to believe me, but you can always do your own research to find out I'm right. this video this can help