[ExI] A Gedanken Rational Eugenics Experiment (AGREE)

[Anders Sandberg]

On 2013-10-25 09:22, Omar Rahman wrote:
>
> Their whole notion of 'national IQ' is so deeply flawed it is 
> laughable. Just looking at and attempting to account for the bias in 
> IQ tests is difficult enough, but rubbing that together with a notion 
> of GDP which is connected to a fiat currency produces a rich creamy 
> mousse of pure bullshit.

Hmm, you have a population of people. You measure something (IQ, weight, 
liking of icecream). Of course there is a group mean, no matter how big 
the group is. And that group mean might very well be a decent predictor 
of things when comparing to other groups even if the test is lousy.

While Lynn and Vahanen's original study was pretty crappy, their data 
does work surprisingly well as a predictor of a lot of things (and some 
temporal changes seem to be good predictors of changes in other 
important variables). That is in itself curious, even if one does not 
think they are measuring real intelligence differences. Newer and better 
data seem to follow the same pattern, whatever it means.


> If you see 'data' indicating that the AVERAGE CITIZEN OF EQUATORIAL 
> GUINEA IS SEVERELY MENTALLY RETARDED, the AVERAGE CITIZEN mind you, 
> and you make any other conclusion than your data being horribly 
> horribly wrong then well...
Actually, measures of state IQs in the US also show that some states are 
retarded. Is that a reason to say that those differences do not tell us 
*anything*, or to conclude that maybe state IQ is not really the same 
thing as an individual person's IQ?

-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University

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