Monday 17 February 2020

Intelligence Quotient?

There is no such thing as IQ. I have never taken an IQ test in my life. I question whether anyone who sets any store by them is sufficiently intelligent to be allowed out alone, if at all.

The whole thing depends on “mental age”, whatever that may be. The IQ of children in numerous countries has “improved” dramatically over the years when IQ tests have been set, and therefore taught to, in schools. Indeed, that never fails to happen.

The publications of Mensa are a particularly rich seam of amusement. “More people than you might think are above average”? I’m guessing about half of them. “One person in 20 is in the top five per cent”? You don’t say! And so on.

But never try and tell the “I have a high IQ” lot any of this. Yet you would not have to, and indeed you never could, do anything to get a high IQ, even if such a thing really existed. Having it would be no cause for congratulation, still less for self-congratulation or for the creation of an international society for mutual congratulation.

I tried to tell you about the rise of eugenics, but you would not listen. Eugenics was also fundamental to New Labour. I remember Blairy Boys of my own generation coming out with everything that Andrew Sabisky is coming out with now, back in the day. If you understand that, then you understand a very great deal about Blairism.

To the best of my knowledge, Blairism was and is the only political movement ever to have been rooted in liberal Catholicism. Meanwhile, Sabisky is one of those extreme Anglo-Catholic traditionalists. Attempts at Catholicism-without-the-Pope always end up somewhere thoroughly unpleasant. It just depends where, in each particular case.

Follow Peter.

2 comments:

  1. IQ is merely a way of measuring something that exists independently-general intelligence. Saying it doesn't exist is like saying miles and km 'don't exist'; just as they measure distance, IQ is one way of measuring general intelligence.

    So-called 'twin studies' (comparing babies raised in the same environment) have established beyond doubt the heritability of intelligence.

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