Stephen Black wrote:
IQ tests were developed for a specific purpose: to predict specific kinds of performance in a particular kind of environment, notably school achievement and, perhaps, later success in life as measured by socio-economic status, occupation, and other such indicators, in an urban, industrialized, Western and even white society. For a relatively brief test administered at an early age, it does remarkably well at such predictions. But it doesn't claim to predict other kinds of performance in other kinds of environment.
So IQ tests are undoubtedly biased but are still valuable for their narrowly-defined purpose. But use them to predict something else--
say, survival in the high arctic or on the streets of inner-city Detroit-- and knowing about sonatas and cheques is unlikely to have much predictive power.
Stephen
Perhaps then, we should come up with a new name for those tests. One could argue, from what Stephen has said, that intelligence is not at all what is being measured. Rather, the test (to quote Stephen "predict[s] specific kinds of performance in a particular kind of environment".
So why not give up on the notion that they are tests of "intelligence", and call them "Predictive tests of "school achievement and, perhaps, later success in life as measured by socio-economic status, occupation, and other such indicators, in an urban, industrialized, Western and even white society"".
Long name, I grant you that... But much less room for debate, or is there?
Jean-Marc
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