The app for independent voices

When you are using a psychological test to determine which people will succeed and which fail, the fact that it was originally developed as part of a seriously unethical program and began from seriously unsafe assumptions should give you pause, surely? Particularly when the racial asymetry in the results mirrors so closely the intentions of its original designers?

When I was at uni, there were students from Masai and Yoruba backgrounds on my course. They found it astonishing that most European students found some topics (including subjects like the effects of infinity, and that there were some spaces that were not measurable) so difficult. Their cultural background (which you described elsewhere as more focused on "storytelling than logic") enabled them to understand, while we were floundering. What you see as "logic" and "obviously the right answer" depends very much on your previous experience. Our disagreement over IQ tests is an example of this playing out. You may wish to pretend that I am being stupid, but I obtained very high scores on, for example, the IBM aptitude test, which I took at their request while working for a company that they supported. I chose not to work for them though, despite getting a very good offer: I had no wish to be surrounded by people who thought that that test was a good way to select a staff team. By your standards, probably a stupid decision - but equally, by your standards, I'm proved to be very intelligent...

Sep 19, 2022
at
1:09 PM

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