The Conventional Wisdom On IQ
04/17/2013
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF

The recent critique at Human Varieties of Cosma Shalizi's celebrated 2007 attack on the g factor theory of intelligence has led to some fascinating discussions in the comments at Metafilter and Noahpinion, economist Noah Smith's blog.

The discussions in the comments at those two sites are not fascinating in the sense that they advance our understanding of this complex and hard to grasp topic, which they do not. Instead, they represent state of the art conventional wisdom on the topic of IQ. It would be fun to do a factor analysis of the comments to see what are main factors in the standard prejudices of the educated. Candidates for major factors represented in the comments would likely include:

  • Hate
  • Projection of Hate
  • Who? Whom? thinking
  • Arrogance
  • Ignorance
  • Ad Hominem
  • Guilt by Assoication
  • Hypocrisy
  • Lack of Self-Awareness
Print Friendly and PDF