Daryl wrote:Reply without a wall of text to The E.
I had resolved to not respond to your reply to my comment that mentioned IQ, as it is somewhat of a red herring, not directly addressing this topic. Then I decided, that I did need a right of reply, as my casual single sentence had attracted a page of critical attack.
I do agree that IQ isn't a definitive measure of intelligence (much as I'd like to, being way over on the right of the Belbin graph) and that it tends to be culture specific. We have a TV show here called The Einstein Factor, which is a general knowledge quiz, and as such funny as Albert would have been flat out telling you what time of day it was.
That said, I was involved in an assessment of our senior public service chiefs, testing them for IQ, EQ, and a myriad of other such tests.
There was a general correlation between successful departments, and scores from their heads. Far from exact, but enough to suggest that there was some utility in using these tests as part of the selection process.
As to my casual assertion that conservatives tend to be dumber, I'll double down anecdotally by mentioning that among my circle of friends, the conservatives don't have any understanding on topics like climate change or Covid vaccines, they just know that they are against it.
It all comes down to the fact that the factual or real IQ of someone can't be reduced to single value. We can make people take tests to get an indication how "smart" they are, but IQ tests are extremely colored by our environment and cultural preconceptions of what a person should now or how they should reason to get a high score.
For example, there are tribes in Africa that has a measurable better memory than most westerns - but it's entirely dependent on what types of information they are supposed to remember. A study showed that they had big problems remembering images of everyday objects found in western homes, but if the images where of rocks, trees or other natural objects they nailed the test almost every time.
When it comes to finding out if someone is a good fit for a particular job one of the few tools we have are tests and later on evaluation, unless we know the person in question.
The anecdotal evidence that conservatives are dumber is not surprising, people who are conservative (as a mindset and not necessarily in political leanings although they are connected) quickly become set in their ways and anything that threatens that should either be ignored or fought against. How many times haven't I heard someone say "We have always done it this way, why do we need to change it?" in my line of work when new technology necessitated a change in how we do things. I've seen people literally being out of their depth because we changed browsers and the icon on the desktop changed. It's also the same type of people who don't get that science is a progress and everchanging. These people complain that "why don't the scientist make their damn mind up!" as if the world is a static place, and that also explains why they distrust science.
Addendum: Seems we have strayed a bit from the topic
