4Chan post: Picture of a bell curve with right wing extremists one the right, portrayed as stupid, centrists in the middle portrayed as smart and left extremist on the left portrayed as stupid. Reply: "That's not how a bell curve works you fucking imbecile"
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 9 points 2 months ago (12 children)

Not really, it's highly misleading and is used to justify bigotry.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 12 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (7 children)

    I've seen enough court cases where people did not have the reasoning capability to understand the situations they were in. Not bigotry, I do believe IQ can be increased and has a lot to do with upbringing, access to info, and opportunity.

    But there are people who are unfortunately dumb. Not to mock them, but understand we need to come along the simple to assist them. Because it makes for a better society.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    People can have less or greater cognitive ability and understanding. Trying to quantify it as IQ does, however, results in extremely misleading outcomes.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Yup. But it is not a horrid starting point. There is always a better everything.

    Just because one finds fault does not mean that one can not also find use.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    The problem is with how it's used in general, which results in ableism and bigotry.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] -3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    By a few. Don't let a few bad apples ruin the bunch.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Problem is there are better ways, more specific ways.

    Frankly, in my life experience people with cognitive disabilities don't need a specific numerical grade, a broader categorization is good. So the IQ metric just doesn't tell us enough (no indication of specifically how the impairment would be, nor indication about potential other developmental issues that may require accommodation).

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] -2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Lots of things are used to justify bigotry. If you assume that subjectively negative attributes are a result of heritage rather than upbringing, you can use anything to justify bigotry.

    For native English speakers, IQ largely correlates with general intellectual ability. People with higher IQs are generally more capable of understanding more complicated topics. It's not a moral failing to have a low IQ, and there's no reason to assume it's genetically heritable or innate and immutable.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    The problem is that IQ is very poor at actually identifying "general intellectual ability," as "general intellectual ability" is not a linear spectrum but a highly complex and multi-faceted phenomena.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 child)

    Yeah, it is a single one dimensional number that attempts to represent a multidimensional system. But also you can pretty well predict whether someone is capable of, like, standing trial or something if that single number is particularly low. It does correlate with a real phenomenon, if not perfectly.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment