IQ-ism: the Third Phase in the Development of Psychology as a Pathological Discipline

One of the things I have to tell you about IQ research is this: if you don't buy IQ research, you might as well throw away all the rest of psychology. And the reason for that is that the psychologists who developed "intelligence testing" were among the early psychologists that instantiated the statistical techniques that all psychologists use to verify and test all of their hypotheses. So you end up throwing the baby out with the bath water.

And the IQ people have defined intelligence in a more stringent and accurate way that we have been abnle to define almost any other psychological construct. So if you toss out the one that is most well defined, then you're kind of stuck with the problem [of] what are you going to do with all the other ones that you have left over.... whose predictive validity is much less.
Jordan B. Peterson

In a comment thread at the Unz Review, among the most thoughtful and well-informed participants remarked on  what they held to be the importance of IQ research. The claim prompted me to the following remarks dismissing the entire business of what may be called IQ-ism as, at best, a scholastic blunder of epic proportions, and at worst, a grotesque fraud:

Speaking of "reasons to support IQ research," I would say that there are none. IQ-ism is just a phase in the development of psychology as a pathological intellectual discipline. IQ-ism is the latest in a series of attempts to comprehend the vast complexity of the operation of the brain by alchemically simplistic means.

First, in the history of this crackpot discipline was psychoanalysis, aptly described by Peter Medowar as:

... like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth century thought.

Then there was Behaviorism, which sought to explain human behavior and personality in their entirety solely in terms of the acquisition of operant conditioned reflexes. That theory crashed and burned as cybernetics confirmed what Behaviorists had denied, namely, that humans are conscious beings and that what consciousness tells of our feelings and intentions is a valid source of information.

And now we have IQism, which claims to be able to quantify a person's intelligence on a unidimensional scale by means of a simple paper and pencil test involving a few logical puzzles plus, depending on the test of choice, miscellaneous other items.

How do the IQ-ists sell this idea? Primarily by the artful use of language. Their little test, they call an "intelligence test," thereby establishing in the minds of the masses the unquestioned assumption that intelligence is what the IQ-ist's test measures. In fact, however, as a Google search will confirm, intelligence is the ability to acquire and to use information, whereas an IQ test measures neither except in an incredibly limited domain and with a test the results of which are subject to massive circumstantial bias.

But the IQ-ist scam has worked so well for so long that psychology has yet to even broach the real scientific questions that must underlie the measurement of  intelligence: namely, how to measure the capacity for information acquisition; and how to measure skill, effectiveness, Darwinian fitness, or whatever, in the use of information.

When one considers the measurement of intelligence in those terms, one is immediately confronted with the complexity of reality, and in particular, the fact that information is acquired via multiple channels, auditory, olfactory, visual, proprioceptive, etc. with data from each channel processed by a specialized brain module, or probably in most if not all cases, by multiple specialized brain modules.

So now if we take account of the fact that there are hundreds if not thousands of structural genes that impact the development and characteristics of those sensory channels and processing modules, we see that the capacity for the acquisition of information is not dependent on a single characteristic of the brain but on a large collection of independent variables. This fact is well known to common sense. People vary hugely in powers of memory and, moreover, that variation is type specific. Mozart transcribed the entire Allegri miserere after a single hearing, Stephen Wiltshire sketched the whole of Red Square from memory after a brief visit. But, so far as we know, Mozart had no special gift of visual memory, and Stephen Wiltshire is no musical genius. Others do more or less brilliantly remembering faces, voices, poetry, the numbers of pi, conversational tittle tattle, etc., but as far as is known, no one able to remember the first ten thousand places of pi, has composed  a decent symphony or a popular opera.

So in only the matter of data acquisition, we see that intelligence is multiple not unitary. But much more complex to analyse than the capacity for information acquisition is the capacity for the use if information. In fact, perhaps, that is an impossibly difficult challenge. But it is a challenge that must be faced by anyone who claims to measure intelligence in a scientific and quantitative way.

As for the innateness of intelligence, something about which IQ-ists are most emphatic, it is axiomatic that the potentiality is entirely innate. Moreover, we know that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of genes that direct brain development, plus probably many thousands of hereditary controlling elements, most yet to be identified, that shape the development of the brain and hence intelligence.

But the function of the brain is to record both sensory inputs, i.e., experience, and the internal workings of the brain, i.e., the development of our ideas, both of which shape the way we use information. So it is beyond question that environmental factors, through their effect on the contents of mind, have a huge impact on the degree to which the innate intellectual potential is expressed. Thus focusing on the genetic basis of intelligence to the exclusion of environmental factors, such as education and culture, cannot result in a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon.

Jordan Peterson Has One Thing Right: Identity Politics Is Bullshit Harmful to Children

Idiots, lunatics and revolutionary sons-of-bitches in Justin Trudeau's morally perfect Canadian universe are now waging war on Western civilization while threatening the mental health of small children by telling them that they are neither boys nor girls.

Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto psychologist who we have ridiculed for his absurd IQ-ist claims, is thus to be applauded for his courageous public stand on the reality of human sexual differentiation between male and female, despite the enraged antagonism of University of Toronto crackpots and activists, backed by the Ontario Human Rights Commission and the Trudeau government.

Yes, some individuals do not fit neatly into either the male or female category, whether that be for physical or psychological reasons. Yes, those people deserve consideration. But Hell no, those people, or rather the malign SJW's who seek to exploit them, have no business indoctrinating children with the the totally false and indeed insane idea that there are no "real" boys or girls. Such perverse propaganda can do harm and its proponents should be shut up. Jordan Peterson is among the few people with the balls to tell them to shut up.

Writing in the National Post yesterday,  Peterson states:

National Post, June 21, 2019: The continually expanded plethora of “identities” recently constructed and provided with legal status ...  consist of empty terms which (1) do not provide those who claim them with any real social role or direction; (2) confuse all who must deal with the narcissism of the claimant, as the only rule that can exist in the absence of painstakingly, voluntarily and mutually negotiated social role is “it’s morally wrong to say or do anything that hurts my feelings”; (3) risks generating psychological chaos among the vast majority of individuals exposed to the doctrines that insist that identity is essentially fluid and self-generating (and here I’m primarily concerned about children and adolescents whose standard or normative identity has now merely become one personal choice among a near-infinite array of ideologically and legally defined modes of being), and (4) poses a further and unacceptably dangerous threat to the stability of the nuclear family, which consists, at minimum, of a dyad, male and female, coming together primarily for the purposes of raising children in what appears to be the minimal viable social unit (given the vast and incontrovertible body of evidence that fatherlessness, in particular, is associated with heightened risk for criminality, substance abuse, and poorly regulated sexual behaviour among children, adolescents and the adults that they eventually become).

Prompting this return to the subject that first brought Peterson to wide public attention, was a report by journalist, Barbara Kay,

 

National Post, June 21, 2019: about an application filed before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario by the parents of a six year girl, “N,” who was made subject to the new tenets of gender identity theory by her hypothetically well-meaning elementary school teacher at Devonshire Community Public School (Ottawa-Carleton District School Board). According to Kay’s account, the teacher insisted to the children that “there is no such thing as girls and boys,” and “girls are not real and boys are not real.” In consequence, “N” began to manifest substantial confusion about her identity. She asked her parents why her existence as a girl was not real. She asked to see a doctor for an opinion. She became unsettled about the reality of her biological existence. Her concern persisted over a three-month period — a long time in the life of a young person.

Peterson continues:

National Post, June 21, 2019: I can barely envision a pedagogical strategy less conducive to stable early childhood development, particularly for a thoughtful child, which is exactly what “N” seems to be — much to her detriment, in this situation. Trusting her teacher, as she apparently did, “N” listened to her lessons and tried to think through what the complicated and internally contradictory mess of information she was presented with might actually signify — and failing, as was inevitable, because there is nothing that it signifies that is reasonable, logical, practical, or true. No matter: “gender fluidity” is school board policy, even for six-year-olds, and the distress of a perfectly normal child at the lessons is a price well worth paying to ensure that ideological purity, no matter how counterproductive and absurd, is stringently maintained. Better the child suffers than the teacher thinks. Better the entire educational system reformulates itself around the new dogma (and to hell with the possibility that the experiment might go wrong) than the ideologues governing its structure question their absurd and fundamentally resentful presumptions.

And much more. An article contributing importantly to the preservation of Canadian national sanity. 

Related:
Student who told teacher there are only 'two genders' now facing harsh punishment from school

IQ-ism, a Fake Science Serving the Fascist New World Order

Psychologists generally assert that IQ tests provide the best predictive measure of individual life success, hence the need to give everyone an IQ label, the better for schools, employers and the world at large to judge their intellectual merit.

This notion is tremendously appealing to those intent on creating the Fascist New World Order, which is to say a bureaucratic global dictatorship, controlled by the Money Power, which requires a submissive populace brainwashed into a belief in its own mental inadequacy, and therefore, its own incapacity for democratic, national self-government.

What the promoters of IQ-ism assert by implication is that:

You have an IQ less than those set in authority over you, which means that your judgement is invariable inferior to that of those who dictate the conditions of your existence. Hence, cease your clamor, do as you are told, and be content with whatever rights and freedoms we, your rulers, in our wisdom, are prepared to grant you.

Here for instance is Jordan Peterson with expert-level hand-waving, brainwashing and bullying a University of Toronto undergraduate psychology class:

One of the things I have to tell you about IQ research is that if you don't buy IQ research, you might as well throw away all the rest of psychology, and the reason for that (blah, blah, blah (watch it here) Or in other words: Question what I have to say about IQ and you will be judged mentally unfit for education as a psychologist, and you might as well quit the course now.

In a discussion of the recent Boeing 737MAX crashes at the Unz Review, many commentators seemed content to attribute these disasters to the presumed low IQ of the Third World pilots flying the planes. Here, for example, is one that gets right to the point:

Boeing is great/ dumb Third World pilots.

In response to such views, I quoted a couple of paragraphs from an essay on IQ by the well known financial analyst, Nassim Taleb:

“IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning difficulties), as well as, to a lesser extent (with a lot of noise), a form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects — how good someone is at taking some type of exams designed by unsophisticated nerds. It is via negativa not via positiva. Designed for learning disabilities, and given that it is not too needed there (see argument further down), it ends up selecting for exam-takers, paper shufflers, obedient IYIs (intellectuals yet idiots), ill adapted for “real life”. The concept is poorly thought out mathematically by the field (commits a severe flaw in correlation under fat tails; fails to properly deal with dimensionality; treats the mind as an instrument not a complex system), and seems to be promoted by: — racists/eugenists, people bent on showing that some populations have inferior mental abilities based on IQ test=intelligence; those have been upset with me for suddenly robbing them of a “scientific” tool, as evidenced by the bitter reactions to the initial post on twitter/smear campaigns by such mountebanks as Charles Murray. (Something observed by the great Karl Popper, psychologists have a tendency to pathologize people who bust them by tagging them with some type of disorder, or personality flaw such as “childish” , “narcissist”, “egomaniac”, or something similar). — psychometrics peddlers looking for suckers (military, large corporations) buying the “this is the best measure in psychology” argument when it is not even technically a measure — it explains at best between 2 and 13% of the performance in some tasks (those tasks that are similar to the test itself)[see interpretation of .5 correlation further down], minus the data massaging and statistical cherrypicking by psychologists; it doesn’t satisfy the monotonicity and transitivity required to have a measure (at best it is a concave measure). No measure that fails 80–95% of the time should be part of “science” (nor should psychology — owing to its sinister track record — be part of science (rather scientism), but that’s another discussion). — It is at the bottom an immoral measure that, while not working, can put people (and, worse, groups) in boxes for the rest of their lives. — There is no significant correlation (or any robust statistical association) between IQ and hard measures such as wealth. Most “achievements” linked to IQ are measured in circular stuff s.a. bureaucratic or academic success, things for test takers and salary earners in structured jobs that resemble the tests. Wealth may not mean success but it is the only “hard” number, not some discrete score of achievements. You can buy food with a $30, not with other “successes” s.a. rank, social prominence, or having had a selfie with the Queen. Read more

This prompted a response to me from University of London IQ psychologist, James Thompson:

Have you have also read my replies to Taleb? http://www.unz.com/jthompson/swanning-about-fooled-by-algebra/ http://www.unz.com/jthompson/in-the-wake-of-the-swan/

Which provided the opportunity to express more fully than before why I believe that IQ-ism is fake science:

I've had a look. But as I'm sure you will agree, to review your response to Taleb adquately would demand a lengthy paper, which I will not attempt to compose here. I will, though, address the first point that you make in your January 3, article. Taleb criticizes the poor statistics used by intelligence researchers... I have assumed he means that more than half of intelligence research findings are wrong, and for malicious reasons. If this is his point, he is factually wrong. Your assumption is surely incorrect. Taleb neither said nor implied that more than half of intelligence research findings are wrong, for malicious reasons. Rather, he was presumably drawing an inference about the invalidity of most intelligence research findings from the well known "replication crisis in psychology" and other fields of research, and the well known fact that across the board, the majority of research papers are so poorly designed and analysed that most research claims must be false. So no, Taleb is not accusing you or those who labor in the IQ field of malicious fraud. You attempt to bury Taleb beneath a mountain of technical details and journal references that few here will ever read, but you do not confront Taleb's key point, which is that, yes, IQ tests measure something, and yes whatever they measures correlates in some degree with behavior, success, income, whatever, but so what? The key questions Taleb raises to which you offer no answer are: does IQ usefully quantify intelligence as that term is generally understood and as it is defined by the dictionary? and, more fundamentally, is it even theoretically possible to quantify intelligence, as that term is generally understood, by a single number? Taleb answers both questions in the negative. I agree. Furthermore, I believe that if you stopped calling whatever it is that you measure with you tests intelligence, then no one would question your work. Indeed, they might pay it no attention at all, which does raise a question of whether some psychologists, by mislabeling their product, are deliberately selling a bill of goods.

In the event that that draws a crushing rebuttal, I promise to post it here.

So far, all I've had is reference to a fact-free rebuttal by Stephen Pinker:

Irony: Replicability crisis in psych DOESN'T apply to IQ.S. Pinker

Great to be a famous author innit. No need to argue a point. Just assert an opinion and the world will defer — LOL

Except:

Most Reported Genetic Associations with General Intelligence Are Probably False Positives. Psychol Sci. 2012 Nov 1; 23(11): 1314–1323.

Or if you prefer a more mainstream source: The Telegraph's Science Correspondent reports:

IQ tests 'do not reflect intelligence' 

Or something even more downmarket: Daily Mail:

IQ tests are 'meaningless and too simplistic' claim researchers 

And I like this from the Psychologist:

What intelligence tests miss 

It is a profound historical irony of the behavioural sciences that the Nobel Prize was awarded for studies of cognitive characteristics (rational thinking skills) that are entirely missing from the most well-known mental assessment device in the behavioral sciences – the intelligence test. Intelligence tests measure important things, but not these – they do not assess the extent of rational thought. This might not be such an omission if it were the case that intelligence was an exceptionally strong predictor of rational thinking. However, research has found that it is a moderate predictor at best and that some rational thinking skills can be quite dissociated from intelligence.

Perhaps others will join in the amusing quest for quotes sending up S. Pinker.

Related:
CanSpeccy: Posts From the Past: About Intelligence (12)

Jordan Peterson Has One Thing Right: Academic Psychology's War on Masculinity Is Political Not Scientific

University of Toronto psychology professor, Jordan Peterson, talks too much. We have that from Peterson himself, quoting his father, who must know. But whatever he says, whether it be complete rubbish, as in the case we noted here, or a well-reasoned argument, Peterson demonstrates an oratorical force and a disdain for consequences rarely to be seen in the political, let alone the academic, arena.

To this combination of forceful outspokenness Peterson adds a thoroughgoing contempt for the ideology of political correctness, which he perceives to be a threat not only to the integrity of the academic enterprise but to the continued existence of Western civilization. It is in his critique of the present-day manifestation of feminism, anti-white racism, and indeed white self-abnegation, together with every other form of Marxist-inspired group identity politics that Peterson has achieved international recognition. His scathing critique of the American Psychological Association's denigration of masculinity, a critique published in today's National Post, will only enhance Peterson's standing as a champion of rationality opposed to the toxic leftist dogma that has permeated the Western academic world.

It’s ideology vs. science in psychology’s war on boys and men By Jordan Peterson National Post, February 1, 2019: The American Psychological Association (APA) recently released its Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men. It manages to be simultaneously predictable, reprehensible, infuriating and disheartening — no mean feat for a single document. Make no mistake about it: this document constitutes an all-out assault on masculinity — or, to put it even more bluntly, on men. The coup of the APA undertaken by the ideologues is now complete. The field has been compromised, perhaps fatally. And the damnable guidelines provide sufficient, but by no means exhaustive, evidence of that. Why should we care? For that, I defer to Robert W. Levenson, when he was president of the Association for Psychological Science, an organization formed in an attempt to retain integrity in the field: “We all will come into close contact with mental illness during our lives. The diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental illness must reflect the very best science possible. Good intentions are not enough. History is replete with well-intentioned practitioners offering treatments of no proven scientific value, that were enthusiastically embraced by patients and their families but ultimately did absolutely no good and kept people from seeking truly effective treatments.” We cannot allow ideology and political correctness to prevail over science. The Boys and Men document is propagandistic to a degree that is almost incomprehensible. Read more

Despite the plausibility of Peterson's argument, it is far from certain that the absence of a male parent is the reason that fatherless boys are prone to antisocial behavior. Equally plausible, it would seem, is that fatherless boys are more liable to engage in antisocial behavior because they have a greater than normal chance of inheriting paternal genes that predispose to irresponsibility. Peterson is correct, however, in condemning the American Psychological Association for asserting a mere hypothesis of low credibility as a scientific fact and as a basis, quite outrageously, to encourage mothers to dispense with a male partner in raising their sons.

Related:

Telegraph: Boys left to fail at school because attempts to help them earn wrath of feminists, says ex-Ucas chief
Voice of Europe: The Islamisation of Britain intensifies: Muslim school will not allow girls to eat lunch until after boys have finished

Jordan Peterson's hysterical rant about people of low IQ

Jordan Peterson is the University of Toronto psychology professor rightly applauded for his opposition to Canada's recently enacted law "to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code" (Bill C16) in such ways as to compel, among other things, the use of self-selected pronouns demanded by transgender and other minorities from the mundane Zie and Zim to such loony extremes as His Majesty and It's Serene Highness.

 Less well known are Peterson's ideas about intelligence. In the short video below, Peterson reveals his thinking on this topic as he describes what he calls a "horrifying thing", namely what he says is the finding of US Army psychologists who were "motivated to find an accurate predictor [of the competence of recruits], so they used IQ."

One of the most terrifying statistics I ever came across [related to] the rationale of the US armed forces for not inducting anyone with an IQ of less than 83. Lets just take that apart, because it's a horrifying thing. After 100 years, essentially, of careful statistical anaylsis, the armed forces concluded that if you had an IQ of 83 or less there wasn't anything you could be trained to do in the military at any level of the organization that wasn't positively counterproductive. OK, so what, 83, OK, yeah, one in ten, one in ten, that's one in ten people, and what that really means, as far as I can tell, if you imagine that the military is approximately as complex as the broader society, then there is no place in our cognitively complex society for one in ten people. So what are we going to do about that? The answer is, no one knows. It's a vicious problem. At that point, the interviewer interjects: It's hard to train people to become creative, adaptive, problem solvers. To which Peterson responds: It's impossible. You can't do it. It doesn't work. Sorry, it doesn't work.

So here is expressed a basic mistake underlying the IQ-ist creed: it is to assume what has to be demonstrated. Specifically, that IQ test scores are an accurate predictor of competence in the military or, as Peterson clearly implies, every other sphere of human activity.

But cursory examination reveals that everything Peterson is saying is obvious bunk. If, for example, ten percent of the US population is totally incompetent, then one should expect a floor to the unemployment rate of no less than 10%, whereas in fact, US unemployment is currently under four percent, while the unemployment rate for African Americans with an average IQ of 85, or barely above Peterson's threshold for total uselessness, is under 6%.

As for the claim that there is no place in "our cognitively complex society for one in ten people," what exactly is he suggesting? The thinking of those prewar Hitler admirers in the Anglo-American eugenics movement come to mind. That Peterson concludes that the existence of so many incompetent people is a "vicious problem," certainly suggests a willingness to consider extreme solutions.

But in any case, what did he mean by "our cognitively complex society"? Can a society even have cognitive features? Perhaps what he meant was our cognitively demanding society. But is it really? Is it harder to stay alive in a world of 24/7 shopping, homeless shelters, and food stamps than in prehistoric times? And even for those productively employed, how many have cognitively challenging jobs — store clerks? coffee-shop employees? gas station attendants? hospital orderlies? Or the lower ranks of academia, say 90% of college professors?

And what about the Africans? With a mean IQ 84, half the Nigerian population is close to, or below Peterson's competence threshold, yet Nigeria's population is booming. So who's gonna win the evolutionary race: IQ 98 Americans with their below replacement fertility, or Nigerians doubling their population every 30 years? Then there's the Mozambiquans, with a mean IQ of 64 despite a significant Euro-African population component and, like Nigerians, a fertility two and half times the replacement rate.

And, conclusively refuting Peterson's claim that men with an IQ of less than 83 are useless to the US military for anything whatever is the fact that a large proportion of the troops, 354,000 of them, that were sent by the US to fight in Vietnam had IQ's of around 70. To learn more search the Web for Project 100, and MacNamara's Morons.

Posts From the Past: About Intelligence

2020:

Why IQ Tests Don't Measure Intelligence

2019:

The IQ-ist Creed

What Is Intelligence?

IQ-ism, a Fake Science Serving the Fascist New World Order

2018:

Jordan Peterson's hysterical rant about people of low IQ

2017:

Dumb Intelligence Tests: Or Why IQ Testers Need to Improve Their Understanding of Intelligence

IQ-ism, Or Psychologists Pedaling Bunk 

Nation-Destroying Stupidity In the Age of Universal Higher Education

2016:

The stupidity of IQ Testing

2015:

Down With IQ-ism

2013:

IQism, Racism and the Decay of the Great American University