What is Intelligence?
December 13, 2007
Just read a great review of a review of James Flynn’s What is Intelligence?. Over at Offsprung. Amanda Marcotte goes on to describe some of the best ways to use the long-used I.Q. test to refute racism rather than (supposedly) bolster it.
Basically, the Flynn effect of I.Q. scores (that each generation is testing better than the last), causes test makers to recalibrate the test every so often, throwing a wrench in the old racist stand-by. If the I.Q. test is constantly changing, then how can any of the racial-gap data be accurate?
Of course racists assume an I.Q. test is an unbiased tool to measure intelligence, so that any disparity from two or more arbitrarily chosen people (i.e., race categorized) must be the result of fundamental genetic racial difference on intelligence. There are so many holes in this argument, it’s amazing it keeps getting posited. And now, thanks to Flynn’s book, there’ a few more holes.
