Interesting Links for 03-11-2014

[andrewducker]

• This is the best Vine loop I've ever seen. https://t.co/RewnZciCmZ
  (tags: video time )
• Is "general intelligence" a Myth?
  (tags: intelligence iq )
• Manchester gets their next tram line open - a year ahead of schedule
  (tags: trams manchester UK transport )
• Why Japanese housing is so...odd
  (tags: architecture housing Japan )
• Have an _actual_ post

Comments

[steer]

Is Psychometric g a Myth?

TL;DR appears to be "no, it isn't"... which is sort of the opposite of what you'd expect from the title. Interesting article.

[andrewducker]

Betteridge applies!

[steer]

*heh* I do like the Betteridge...

But at the risk of seeming like I have sense of humour failure, I was expecting a Betteridgeable article but, in fact, the writer was rather convincingly arguing that the answer definitely was no from the start of the article. It gave me that "huh?" feeling -- because I believe there probably is some g, and it turns out so does the author of that page, just as I was ready to look for holes in the argument I found I was furiously agreeing. Disconcerting.

[andrewducker]

I've just met _so many people_ particularly on the internet who are all "IQ is made up - there's no such thing as intelligence" that bumping into a well-researched demolishing of that argument was something I couldn't pass up.

[steer]

Indeed. IQ tests for sure have issues, they are culturally specific, you can train and improve at them, they correlate with some "intelligence" tasks much better than others... but to take this to mean there's no kind of "general intelligence" factor... a bridge too far.

From the article "The g factor accounts for 59 percent of the common factor variance" -- that's the kind of result that in most human measurement fields have you leaping around yelling "eureka".

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, it's very impressive.

But if it's true, then it means that some people are smarter than others. Which means that we're not all equal! Which is clearly wrong. Apparently.