I took an IQ test to explain what's wrong with them

What people said

cdrini · 2024-02 · Strong recommendation

I recently shifted my opinion on IQ tests a bit after watching a recent Veritasium video. He goes into the background/history/controversy of the test as well as some of the concrete impacts of the test and places where it's used. For example did you know the US military has an IQ minimum cutoff? And furthermore they have a second 'soft' cutoff, where only 20% of the military can have an IQ under a certain value. In the past they tried removing this second restriction, but had to reinstate it after seeing increases in casualties/indicators of reduced efficiency! So are IQ tests everything? No. But do they have no merit? Also no. It's somewhere in between. Would highly recommend a watch [VIDEO]

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Balgair · 2025-06 · Recommendation

[VIDEO] Veritasium had a good primer on IQ scores and what they actually mean for your life TLDW: IQ score seems to really only correlates to being too dumb to be conscripted and effective in war. Going on Derek's work there, even if other countries do somehow manage to genetically engineer their children for higher IQ scores, and even if they manage to get all the environmental hazards (lead paint, nutrition, quality sleep, etc) out of the way for those children, and even if they don't then do some other draconian nonsense to those kids in the ~19 years until they become productive, then, even then, there seems to be absolutely no guarantee that those kids will go on to do any dominating of other countries in social, political, or military contexts. Outside of being too dumb to be trusted with a firearm, IQ seems to have no real bearing on measurable life outcomes. As the current science stands, from my understanding of it, it would be incredibly foolish to pursue genetic engineering/breeding as a method of international relations.

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swframe2 · 2024-02 · Recommendation

The Veritasium youtube channel has a few interesting videos related to this topic: This one is on IQ: [VIDEO] Pay attention to the stats on how IQ correlates to success (near the end). This one is about becoming an expert: [LINK] This one is about someone who just worked harder than everyone else: [LINK]

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