• @yesman
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    5017 hours ago

    I’m just going to point out the irony of using this meme format to make that point.

    • @[email protected]
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      13 hours ago

      The meme is about the journey to acquire wisdom, not intelligence. It fits IMO, despite representing the lack of wisdom as low intelligence.

    • @Klear
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      311 hours ago

      It just makes it that more delicious.

  • @[email protected]
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    21 hours ago

    Debating what intelligence is, is such a circle-jerk.

    The term is so broad, that it encompasses aspects like motivation, memory retention capacity, memory recall rates, differentiates between verbal, spacial and emotional intelligence, and occasionally veers into scientific racism.

    It’s a fucking shit show. The comment sections of posts about intelligence are generally toxic because people end up talking past each other.

    • @yesman
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      2517 hours ago

      If debating intelligence is waste of time, imagine what a “shit show” trying to measure it must be. This is the central point: measuring intelligence is just as foolish as measuring beauty or charm.

      The problem is that this isn’t just a debate on the internet. Your IQ score can still literally be the difference between life and death in the US legal system. So it’s pretty important to let people know it’s pseudoscience from eugenicists that, by the way, doesn’t work!

      • @[email protected]
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        1516 hours ago

        IQ tests are interesting, because they’re mainly a test of pattern recognition.

        However, knowing how the patterns are formed, can easily net you +10 points on an IQ test.

        It’s a shit way to determine “intelligence”.

        Some people might score highly, but are socially inept and unmotivated, meaning they have a lot of raw power, without having the mental capability to channel it productively, which is pretty fucking stupid.

        Then you get people like Musk and Trump, who are both highly motivated people, despite being dumb as rocks. Yet, our geniuses can’t figure out how to mitigate their stupidity.

        • @[email protected]
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          813 hours ago

          well no, modern intelligence tests specifically test different things, for example the one i took had a section about working memory where i had to recite numbers in various ways.

          which was useful because it turns out my working memory is absolute dogshit

          • @[email protected]
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            613 hours ago

            Mensa has long been the benchmark for high IQ societies.

            Go take their sample IQ test. It is only pattern recognition.

            Unfortunately this is the norm.

            • sigtro
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              411 hours ago

              Mensa is a private society where you pay for membership and take a test which cherry picks from actual standardized intelligence tests and are openly available so you can practice them. Proper ones used in neuropsychology measure more than just pattern recognition. I don’t know why Mensa has gotten such a prominent place, but it shouldn’t be regarded as the benchmark for anything.

              • @SandmanXC
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                411 hours ago

                Paying for a “you’re smart” placque is definitely a benchmark for stupidity.

            • @[email protected]
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              9 hours ago

              Mensa has long been the benchmark for high IQ societies.

              Mensa is a social club with an admittance test, which they’re free to organize however they want. It holds no weight in the field of psychology

            • @[email protected]
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              312 hours ago

              i literally did the test with a registered psychologist, not sure what more you want?

              it very much seems like you just want to hate intelligence tests and reality being different makes you frustrated

              • @[email protected]
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                212 hours ago

                There are different types of intelligence tests, sure. What I was talking about was IQ tests.

                But yes, I do hate intelligence tests, they have a long history of reinforcing systemic racism.

    • @[email protected]
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      211 hours ago

      I got a clinical assesment and it took 12 hours spread over 12 weeks. Indeed contained verbal and visual memory tests, verbal and visual ability to fantasize, pattern recognition, logic, social ability, etc

    • DreamButt
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      1018 hours ago

      “Occasionally” seems rather generous

    • @[email protected]
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      7 hours ago

      Broke: The results of IQ testing are dependent on a person’s intelligence. Intelligence is an objective reality that can be observed and measured with IQ testing.

      Woke: The results of IQ testing are independent of a person’s intelligence. Intelligence is an objective reality but complex and impossible to perfectly measure.

      Bespoke: A person’s ‘intelligence’ is dependent on the results of IQ testing. Intelligence is a social construct and IQ testing is a means to reinforce that construct.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      13 hours ago

      The left side is the position that definitions of intelligence are all arbitrary, and that psychologists just make up tests and call what it measures “intelligence.”

      The middle is the position that there is a real thing that can be called “intelligence,” which can be defined in different (meaningful) ways, and that intelligence tests are objective ways to measure it.

      The right side is the position that intelligence is probably still real and can probably still be defined in different (meaningful) ways, but that we can never directly measure intelligence and instead observe it indirectly through observable indicators like someone’s performance on an intelligence test. This means that any practical statement about intelligence, while probably real and definable, are contingent on the specific test used to measure it.

    • @rational_lib
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      17 hours ago

      The average person (and to be fair, most psychologists) thinks of intelligence as the innate, fundamental characteristic of a person to think across all cognitive areas. However, this concept is not easily falsifiable and therefore arguably exists outside the realm of science.

      For example, say I wanted to come up with a concept called “sportsness” which is the ability to be good at sports. I could test a bunch of people in a battery of sports-related tasks, and I’d probably get a nice bell curve where some people have high sportsness across all tasks and others have low sportsness across all tasks.

      But does that prove the existence of sportsness? Or did I just measure a spurious correlation caused by the fact that some people are just more likely to be playing many different sports than others, or that some body types may lead to being better at sports related tasks, or some people are just better at handling the pressure of athletic performance tests, or some combination thereof? Of course most would say the latter, but then maybe some would defend the concept of sportsness by saying sportsness is just an emergent property of those things or something like that. But then is sportsness useful as a concept at all? You get the idea.

      • @[email protected]
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        7 hours ago

        Yeah sure buddy, sportness is all made up by —let me guess— Big Sportness? Clearly you’re just mad that you’re not very sportnant.^/s

      • @[email protected]
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        210 hours ago

        That’s why scientists ( I assume they’re supposed to be the right hand side) claiming to measure “intelligence” should pick a more specific term for what they’re measuring.

        If they use the word “intelligence” I’d be extremely suspicious about why they’ve chosen that word. I would assume they have a decent understanding of how the word is likely be interpreted by the other 97.5%, if not they need to get out and do some fieldwork.

    • @[email protected]
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      1017 hours ago

      Left side is saying that intelligence is an objective thing that can be measured with the test.

      Right side is saying the test is the objective thing that defines what we think of as intelligence. “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree…”

      • @[email protected]
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        16 hours ago

        Tying intelligence to IQ seems like the left side to me. I’m still in the middle 🤔

        Edit: or maybe the left

    • @Valmond
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      612 hours ago

      I got the red one.

      • @Klear
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        311 hours ago

        Wow. That means you’re thinking really fast!

        • @yogurtwrong
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          22 hours ago

          plus if you have RGB strips on your head, it goes even faster!