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IQ is generally thrown out entirely. Im shocked to see it treated as a legitimate metric on hacker news


The military still uses it because it is highly predictive. They also have a hard cutoff at the bottom which wasn’t always the case (see McNamara’s Folly for the history of when the army accepted literally retarded people - it didn’t end well). We also see a very strong correlation between eg IQ and occupation.

It is a legitimate metric of *something*.


The U.S. marine corp promoted its first black 4 star general this year. I don’t think it’s the shining example of a race-blind institution, at least as far as leadership is concerned.


You are cherry picking data. The US military has historically been far more progressive than the country as a whole. It integrated in 1948 - long before the voting rights act or the end of Jim crow. We had a black chair of the joint chiefs long before we elected a black president. Rights and privileges were extended to gay members long before they existed elsewhere.


Only on HN would the prevailing thought be that leet-code interviews are stupid but IQ is a magical, unbiased metric of a person’s ability and potential.


What are you talking about? It has statistical predictive ability when used on groups of people. Of course it can be very inaccurate for an individual but the reality of being able to make testable predictions makes it pretty hard to throw out, except for ideologically motivated people who don't like what it reveals.


Really? HN in 1822 would be filled with educated people seriously defending phrenology. 1922 HN would be falling over itself to defend eugenics. Apparently 2022 HN hasn't come very far from 1922.

No one falls for pseudoscientific groupthink like communities of affluent, well-educated people.




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