What is Something Scientific that you just don't believe in at all?

doctorcrimson@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 109 points –

EDIT: Let's cool it with the downvotes, dudes. We're not out to cut funding to your black hole detection chamber or revoke the degrees of chiropractors just because a couple of us don't believe in it, okay? Chill out, participate with the prompt and continue with having a nice day. I'm sure almost everybody has something to add.

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IQ testing is reification fallacy. If I told you I had an instrument that could objectively measure every human by how beautiful they are, you'd see the problem immediately.

IQ depends on their being one kind of intelligence. You only get one score and it's the supposed measure of general intelligence. If street smarts vs. book smarts is a thing, IQ cannot be.

IQ measures racial difference that cannot be biological. Race is cultural, so since the test measures consistent difference between racial lines, it's proof that it's not measuring something biologically determined. It'd be like if IQ showed blondes really were dimmer than their peers, but you found out the effect carried over to bottle blondes.

I recommend the book "Mismeasure of Man" by Gould. His thesis shows the historical folly and logical impossibility of not just IQ, but biological determinism. I've just posted the common sense arguments against IQ, Gould brings the receipts.

In adults its well correlated with ability to learn and perform. If don't care why and just want to hire the best candidate its a good test.

But it doesn't necessarily show if they have common sense. If you have many low complexity problems then maybe, but it can't predict the best performers