Sunday, January 13, 2019

American obsession with IQ v2

Book-ends:  Perhaps it is karma that a nation obsessed with IQ finally got a President that it deserves - self-proclaimed, not simply smart, "but genius....and a very stable genius at that!"
When our intelligence scales have become more accurate and the laws governing IQ changes have been more definitively established it will then be possible to say that there is nothing about an individual as important as his IQ, except possibly his morals; that the greatest educational problem is to determine the kind of education best suited to each IQ level; that the first concern of a nation should be the average IQ of its citizens, and the eugenic and dysgenic influences which are capable of raising or lowering that level; that the great test problem of democracy is how to adjust itself to the large IQ differences which can be demonstrated to exist among the members of any race or nationality group.  — Lewis M. Terman (1922)
"Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure,it's not your fault" (Donald J. Trump, May 8, 2013)

Take that, you libtard!
I hate the impudence of a claim that in fifty minutes you can judge and classify a human being’s predestined fitness in life. I hate the pretentiousness of that claim. I hate the abuse of scientific method which it involves. I hate the sense of superiority which it creates, and the sense of inferiority which it imposes. Walter Lippmann (1923)