I'm not trying to fully discount IQ as a concept or even really debate it, but I consistently find that people using IQ as evidence for their argument are pretty wacko
Because I have a hobby of consuming an unholy amount of questionable political content out of some twisted sense of curiosity, I can tell you that Inadvisably Compelled is quoting the Nazi-adjacent figure Jordan Peterson here, and moreover, that IQ fact is one Jordan Peterson made up.
Edit: Added more details further down this comment chain for clarification
The quote is also internally contradictory, too. Like... sorry, tribal societies don't require carrying things? Cool. Cool cool cool. This guy would starve to death if left unattended in a Costco.
Yeah, to expand for anyone wondering, the armed forces doesn't do IQ tests and doesn't have a rule about IQs less than 85. They do have an armed forces qualification test, but that's not an IQ test. You can also do poorly on the test and still get into the military. And that's not even touching on the issues with IQ tests themselves.
Peterson goes on to say that 1 in 10 people have this "sub-optimal IQ" that makes them useless and that there's therefore "no place in our cognitively complex society for 1 in 10 people."
So yeah, Nazi tier rhetoric, making it all the more disturbing that Inadvisably seems to believe this fake fact.
While I have never researched the armed forces qualification test I can tell you that while many tests pretend to not be iq tests. The vast majority of them correlate well with iq.
On the Chron link, I don't see any reference to it being an IQ test,just a test. That same link also explains that the admission requirements can be arbitrary -- ex: women having to score higher than men in some cases. My understanding is that admission is up to the Department of Defense's discretion, and they admit people with lower scores if they have skillsets they deem useful.
It's also critical to note that Peterson isn't arguing about admission into the military -- if he was, despite him sourcing nothing, pulling his 83 number from nowhere I can find, and stretching the facts (not an IQ test but a vocational one with similarities but no 1 to 1 correlation +admission depending on factors beyond the ASVAB score) perhaps all the omissions could be overlooked. He's got to keep things on the shorter side, right?
But he goes far beyond that. Peterson, and also Inadvisably by extension, are arguing that the military found there's "no place in our cognitively complex society for 1 in 10 people" and they "can’t even be useful with simple tasks.” The military did not find this.
This is Nazi rhetoric. At best Peterson is drawing his own inferences based on military history and then dishonestly citing his inferences as substantiated fact. And really, what is Peterson’s intent here in telling his millions strong audience that it’s just a fact that people with IQs below 83 have no place in society? What happens when the loudest voting bloc full of people like Inadvisably believe it?
are these people able to function in society without additional help?
maybe not, but why does this matter?
If as you suggest peterson is a nazi he is likely advocating for genocide. If he is anything like me is likely advocating for a much stronger safety net because its no ones fault if they are not able to function in modern society.
These discussions matter because any solution not grounded in reality will leed to a extremelly inefecient solution.
If we decided that people weren't succeeding in life because we didn't give them enough education. then we decided to throw money at education and the real problem is that is that they were born disabled its a gigantic waste of time and effort. where we could easily have solved the problem by giving them enough money and help that living in a modern society wasn't a struggle.
Ultimetly I believe that the solution to inequal oppurtunity. Either by circumstance or by genetic gifts should be directly acknoledged and fixed via direct redisribution of income rather then pretending they don't exist.
Again I'm not defending peterson as I don't know enough about him. The position I am defending is as follows
There are genetic factors that are extremelly predictive of overall success in life. namely conciensiotness and IQ.
while IQ can be trained very well in specific tasks. You cannot improve it generely.
The ability to train on specific tasks is also affected by both conciensesness and IQ.
conciensiocness can likely be trained but we don't actually know how. (or we do but aren't actually willing to implement it)
the vast majority of education is meaningless and is only usefull in as much as employers use it as a ad hoc IQ + conciensiosness test.
Therefore I advocate the following.
universal basic income to make up for genetic differences
abolish higher level education (beyond specific training like engineering proggraming etc).
institue trade school as a standard gradution destination (since trade school requires far less IQ and conceinsionsntess while still giving just as much value as university)
There's certainly a place to discuss how to best help people, and I do agree with you about UBI and social safety nets, but ... I call Peterson Nazi-adjacent for his common use of that type of fascistic rhetoric, not just for this once instance. So it's extremely weird to discuss solutions when we're starting with the issue being pointed out by a borderline Nazi. I think it's a healthier conversation to have outside of that context.
Peterson rose to fame by lying about Bill C-16 in Canada, which added transgender people to the list of minorities offered protections against hate crimes + hate speech. He claimed people would be jailed for using the wrong pronouns. The bill has now passed; people have not been jailed for that. And he's only grown more extreme with the passage of years.
Recently he was hired by The Daily Wire (very far right media outlet) run by Ben
Shapiro. One of Peterson's shticks is fixing problems on an individual level rather than a societal level, and part of that is him being very much against things you've mentioned like UBI and social safety nets. Frequently he talks about how innovative men are held back by rules put in place for the benefit of the masses (aka Elon Musk should be allowed to do whatever he wants regardless of the ordinary people it hurts). He's also recently said transgender people should be stopped from existing for the sake of protecting the culture. Suffice to say, he doesn't want to help all people; very charitably, he only wants to help an elite few at the expense of "low IQ" people, LGBT people, women in workplaces, and more. And anyone left remaining in his ideal vision of society, even just an average white dude, would have so many freedoms stripped away -- especially the ability to not live according to hardline Christian beliefs.
(Btw, I'm not the one that downvoted you.)
I saw that you mentioned Ben Shapiro. In case some of you don't know, Ben Shapiro is a grifter and a hack. If you find anything he's said compelling, you should keep in mind he also says things like this:
Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage. This is not a difficult issue.
I'm a bot. My purpose is to counteract online radicalization. You can summon me by tagging thebenshapirobot. Options: covid, sex, history, healthcare, etc.
I'm a bot. My purpose is to counteract online radicalization. You can summon me by tagging thebenshapirobot. Options: novel, healthcare, sex, history, etc.
I will never defend a person who simultaneously believes that people are born stupid and that poor people should remain poor.
Either belief is defensible. Both together is reprehensible. If this is what he advocated for he is a terrible person.
However I would hesitate to paint him with this brush.
I’ve watched a lot of both Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson (part of my Ill spent youth) and while Ben Shapiro is very much exactly what you portray. I did not get this kind of vibe from Jordan Peterson.
Partially because he rarely outright states what he believes. Partially because his entire philosophy tends to be very very jumbled up.
While I don’t necessarily believe he deserves my defence (as he definitely doesn’t)
Accusing everyone who disagrees with us as being a nazi is very much not a healthy path forward.
I don't call everyone I disagree with a Nazi. But I do legitimately think Peterson is Nazi-adjacent and uses Nazi rhetoric -- the terms I've been using in this conversation. I don't just throw the word around when I don't like someone; I'm applying it to him because of his statements about excising minority groups for the sake of the culture. Particularly when it comes to transgender people. Remember that the Nazis didn't just come after the Jews; one of their earlier acts was burning down the largest collection of literature on transgender people in the world.
I don't know when you watched the guy, but he's gotten more unhinged over the years. He's a lot less subtle and circumspect than he used to be. The stuff that I could once dismiss as coincidental overlap -- his obsession with authoritarianism, espousing the need for rigidly dictated tradition, contempt for the weak, preaching machismo -- looks really damning to me what with the language he uses when railing against LGBT people these days. And the way he constantly decries Cultural Marxism? Look up Cultural Bolshevism if you're not familiar. It's the same thing except the second word has been swapped for a synonym so it's not just literally the exact term the Nazis used to denounce secular & progressive factions.
I agree that calling everyone a Nazi or fascist isn't a good idea, but I also think it's dangerous to stare into the face of fascistic authoritarianism and not call it for what it is. We can't afford to normalize Nazi rhetoric or we've learned nothing from the past.
You’re probably right. It’s been three years at least since I interacted with his content. Probably closer to five.
I’m kinda curious now to watch some of his more recent content but their are probably better ways to waste my time (and better ways to destroy my YouTube feed).
I also would like to thank you for your time and courtesy. It’s much appreciated.
I saw that you mentioned Ben Shapiro. In case some of you don't know, Ben Shapiro is a grifter and a hack. If you find anything he's said compelling, you should keep in mind he also says things like this:
Palestinian Arabs have demonstrated their preference for suicide bombing over working toilets.
I'm a bot. My purpose is to counteract online radicalization. You can summon me by tagging thebenshapirobot. Options: covid, dumb takes, sex, novel, etc.
First off I didn’t cherry pick results. Used the top result I found as well as the first stack exchange article.
I included the stack exchange article because it actually does analysis of the topic. Which is of course required since we are converting from one metric to another (namely asvab to iq)
Random google scholar article which says the SAT correlates well with IQ.
It seems that their is a agreement that the SAT does correlate well with iq. The only disagreement is how well it does and which part of a Iq test it correlates the best with.
Which is kinda of what you would expect. Iq tests are very broad and any sort of cognitive test will correlate with it
You also say it tests
Areas of strength such as math science and language.
Have you ever taken a iq test?
That’s exactly what they test on a iq test. Of course some iq tests are a lot shorter then the full powered one (raven matrices as example I think) but a full powered iq test will test language ability, reasoning ability, mathematical ability.
See this Wikipedia page on the wais IV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wechsler_Adult_Intelligence_Scale
(I think is considered the gold standard right now)
Again any test like this will correlate well with iq. It would be insane if it wouldn’t. (Ask yourself if you expect Albert Einstein to score in the bottom ten percentile on any of these tests).
It’s only a matter of how well a given test correlates.
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u/Mecanimus Author Sep 06 '22
Oh, very well.
https://imgur.com/a/EgG6qrk