Imagine a pushy mother really wants her average 9.5-year-old son to get into a gifted class. Because IQ tests are normed for age and her son looks young for his age, she decides to tell the psychologist he’s only 6.5, so that he will get a much higher score.
Now assuming the boy is average for a 9.5-year-old in all cognitive domains he should score an age-ratio IQ of 146 in all domains, if the psychologist believes he’s 6.5 (because 9.5 is 146% of 6.5), however modern IQ tests use the deviation scale, where scores are assigned not by how many years advanced a kid is, but by one’s rank, relative to other American kids in one’s own age group. Being in the top 99% gives one an IQ of 65, being in the top 90% gives one an IQ of 80, being in the top 50% gives one an IQ of 100, being in the top 10% gives one an IQ of 120, and being in the top 1% gives one an IQ of 135, and being in the top 0.1% gives one an IQ of 146 etc.
Now obviously the average 9.5-year-old pretending to be a 6.5-year-old will get a high IQ in every domain, but his margin of superiority varies dramatically depending on the test. If he taken the WISC-R for example (before the norms expired), here’s how he’d have scored (for the readers convenience, I converted subtest scores, normally scaled from 1 to 19 into IQ equivalents):
| Test: | IQ based on age ratio method: MA 9.5/CA 6.5(100) | Deviation IQ | Deviation IQ corrected for reliability |
| Information (general knowledge test) | 146 | 130 | 137 |
| Similarities (verbal abstract reasoning) | 146 | 120 | 122 |
| Arithmetic (mental math) | 146 | 140 | 145 |
| Vocabulary | 146 | 138 | 144 |
| Comprehension (Common sense & social judgement) | 146 | 130 | 136 |
| Digit Span (attention & rote memory) | 146 | 120 | 123 |
| Picture Completion (visual alertness) | 146 | 120 | 122 |
| Picture Arrangement (social interpretation) | 146 | 120 | 123 |
| Block Design (spatial organization) | 146 | 120 | 122 |
| Object Assembly (spatial integration) | 146 | 115 | 117 |
| Mazes (visual planning) | 146 | 120 | 122 |
| Verbal IQ | 146 | 141 | 143 |
| Performance IQ | 146 | 128 | 129 |
| Full-scale IQ | 146 | 139 | 140 |
Now after adjusting for test reliability, our gifted 6.5-year-old (who is secretly an average 9.5-year-old) had deviation IQs ranging from 117 (object assembly) to 145 (Arithmetic).
Why such a huge discrepancy? The most obvious answer is that 9.5-year-olds have two cognitive advantages over 6.5-year-olds. Not only are their brains bigger and more developed, but they’ve also have three extra years of life experience. On tests that require novel problem solving, their advantage will be modest because it only reflects their neurological superiority. It can not reflect their life experience advantage because by definition, novel problems are things we’ve had little experience with.
By contrast, on tests that required acquired knowledge they have two advantages. Not only does the 9.5-year-old have more neurological ability to reason arithmetically, learn and remember facts, and infer the meaning of words, but he’s also had three extra years to acquire number concepts, general knowledge, and vocabulary. Because “crystallized” tests require both neurolgical ability and experience, they show a much steeper age progression than fluid tests (and a much steeper decline in old age, though this is confounded with the Flynn effect), which require only neurological ability (beyond some basic experience threshold that virtually all Americans reach by age 5 or so). Indeed looking at the age progression is a good way to quantify crystalized vs fluid.
Notice also that the tests that show the biggest age effects also tend to be the ones that show the biggest family effects per James Flynn’s method. Because both reflect experience.
Now let’s imagine when the pseudo-gifted boy turned 16.83 and he wanted to get into Mensa, and they were unwilling to accept scores from the past. He is still exactly average in all domains for his true age, but still looking young he tells the psychologist he is only 10.5. She doesn’t buy it, but she’s not about to turn down $800 for a few hours work so she plays along.
Here are his results:
| Test: | IQ based on age ratio method: MA 16.83/CA 10.5(100) | Deviation IQ | Deviation IQ corrected for unreliability |
| Information (general knowledge test) | 160 | 133 | 136 |
| Similarites (verbal abstract reasoning) | 160 | 130 | 134 |
| Arithmetic (mental math) | 160 | 120 | 123 |
| Vocabulary | 160 | 138 | 141 |
| Comprehension (Common sense & social judgement) | 160 | 130 | 136 |
| Digit Span (attention & rote memory) | 160 | 110 | 112 |
| Picture Completion (visual alertness) | 160 | 120 | 124 |
| Picture Arrangement (social interpretation) | 160 | 115 | 118 |
| Block Design (spatial organization) | 160 | 125 | 127 |
| Object Assembly (spatial integration) | 160 | 125 | 131 |
| Mazes (visual planning) | 160 | 118 | 122 |
| Verbal IQ | 160 | 139 | 141 |
| Performance IQ | 160 | 130 | 132 |
| Full-scale IQ | 160 | 139 | 140 |
Once again, his years of extra life experience (relative to the age group he’s pretending to be) gave him a huge advantage on knowledge based tests like Vocabulary and Information. And once again, novel tasks like Block Design, Picture Arrangement, Mazes and Digit Span showed less advantage.
But what happened to Arithmetic? His advanced age gave him a huge advantage when he was a 9.5-year-old pretending to be 6.5, but now that he is 16.83 pretending to be 10.5, this subtest is even less age dependent than Block Design. The likely explanation is that once kids acquire basic number concepts in school (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) arithmetic depends less on experience and more on neurology.
This is why one can never say, categorically, that a given test measures fluid or crystallized ability. It depends on the population taking it. For example the Raven progressive matrices might be a fluid test within generations but a crystallized test between generations. Even something as seemingly crystallized as the math SAT might measure fluid ability in 17-year-olds with at least four years of advanced math. Among all 17-year-olds, it will still correlate with (but not so much be directly caused by) fluid ability because those with more fluid ability are likely to take advanced math in the first place.
Another interesting case is Similarities, which requires one to infer the link between common things (how are chess and scrabble alike?). This showed small age effects in early childhood, but large age effects in later childhood. At the lower end this test is just about the ability to see associations, but at the higher end, it becomes increasingly dependent on diction and sometimes esoteric concepts, making it more experience dependent.
One question is why, if crystallized tests are more culture dependent, do they often load more on psychometic g (the general factor of IQ tests believed to be a property of the physical brain). Perhaps as some have suggested, once you control for age, in countries where everyone has opportunity for schooling, knowledge tests measure both the ability to learn over an entire lifetime and the ability to store and retrieve a lifetime of learning. By contrast fluid tests only measure the ability to learn in the testing room, and not the ability to store and retrieve it years later. One theory is the more parts of the brain a test samples, the more g loaded it is, which would make sense if g is just overall cognition.
Pumpkin Person 
Wow Jimmys really angry at the progressives. I can understand it a bit. Bernie basically has no balls and wont slander or attack any one. In many ways Bernie is a terrible politician but a man of good integrity nonetheless. Kind of like the opposite to trump.
Hes right though about AOC. She got bought off by Nancy Pelosi when she got the ways and means assignment.
rr: how can you expect a negro raised in the detroit ghetto to make good sandwiches?
peepee: i know someone who was raised by wolves and he makes fantastic sandwiches.
mugabe: you’re both mornons, but some people may be better than others at making sandwiches in all envrironments. but maybe not much better.
Reducing performance IQ to sandwich making is liking reducing verbal IQ to baby talk.
I eat frosties for breakfast. Or ‘frosted flakes’ as they may call them in the US. It gives me a pep in my step and tastes great just like when I was a child.
Crunchy Nut is really good too. It’s too bad they don’t sell it in the U.S.
In my lifetime I think Japan has done something like 20 stimulus packages. If you actually look at the fine detail of these I bet at least 50% of the money with to large corporations with no conditions attached.
This is why Robert is an idiot. He just doesn’t get it with bailouts. Its not that they don’t know it won’t work after the 16th or 17th time. Its that they DO KNOW it will work for the audience its intended for – the donors. The ‘economy’ is irrelevant. Its an abstraction to these people.
The japanese people basically live in a 1 party state. Theres your answer for why all 20 stim packages ‘never achieved anything’.
If the ‘central planners’ at the Fed or ECB or whatever wanted full employment they could get it by handing out cash directly to people instead of handing it to [redacted by pp, April 7, 2020]or rich people to hire more butlers. They know its inefficient. These people aren’t the usual autists in economics academia – they are paid to put in place these redistribution schemes for the rich.
you just repeat what i say and then call me an idiot.
you have AIDS related dementia.
you can’t read, at least not english. this is sad.
But hes right about autists ruining the discipline of economics.
But the autists were just useful idiots. There was people like the Koch Brothers funding and seeding academia with idiots. The real people to blame are not the autists. They have the minds of 14 year old boys in most cases. They don’t even know how to handle their own lives in most cases.
LOL
Watch Trumps poll numbers start to tank about mid april. I bet the USA ends up with the most fatalities in the world and maybe half of these more down to the fucked up corrupt health system they have more than the actual virus per se.
Yeah I think they’ll drop a few points too. Once data about his admin’s inability to handle the virus comes in, the media will circle its wagons around it and repeat it ad-nausea for 2-3 weeks.
What’s weird is that even though most conservatives and independents say they don’t trust the media, the media has had a huge influence on their opinions over the last 60+ years. W/o wall-to-wall media coverage there’d be no gay marriage, no “hands up don’t shoot,” no feminism, and probably no women’s lib/sexual revolution.
Maybe social conservatives just succumb to guilt after awhile.
auitsm vs reality:
maybe a week ago or two i heard trump say, “that airlines are gonna be fine.”
if you’re an autist you might think, “what can trump do. this is a natural disaster. he can’t prevent earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.”
if you’re not an autist you might think, “trump is just talking. he has the power to follow through on what he said but he probably won’t.”
my conclusion was, “buy DAL and LUV and JETS.” not a lot, but at least a little.
marx’s prediction that capitalism would “choke on its own wealth” is confirmed by the coexistence of very low rates and very low inflation for decades in japan…and now in the US, and the rest of the developed world.
Im seeing a dead cat bounce in the s and p right now. This rally is going nowhere.
have you bought an mREITs yet?
as far as i can tell all pill or rr do is repeat what i’ve said but using way too many words.
if the s&p were rational:
1. it wouldn’t go down during recessions, because the business cycle is well known.
2. it would be at least 3750 now because stocks yield so much more than bonds in terms of divs + bbs.
dividends + buybacks…
gates and bezos are like horses, just not as sexy.
this is what bush 41 meant when he said, “we know what works. freedom works.”
that is, gates and bezos may not have had as much freedom to ‘sperg in n korea or the ussr.
have you heard bezos’s laugh?
something is “wrong” with the guy.
but maximizing freedom allows people like him to become the richest man in the world.
so what i mean is…
i genuinely do NOT envy gates or bezos because i can see they’re inferior in many ways…
they’re like horses…carrying the stagecoach over so many ruts to the promised land…
but unlike horses, they enjoy their role as horses.
gates and bezos have absolutely no idea how ridiculous they appear to non-autists.
Cause you’re the expert on non-autists. LOL!
Do you have any idea how ridiculous you appear you smug condescending piece of trash? As Afro stated, no one would want to be you. By contrast Gates is worshiped by MILLIONS and his money is worshiped by BILLIONS.
Money is the root of all evil.
That’s why they suck balls. The more money you have, the more evil you have to do to maintain it.
Is blacked pumpkin, robert under another moniker?
^^autism
People seem to be accusing me of being a sock puppet account recently. I was accused of being Pumpkin and LOADED on RR’s blog by dealwithit. Luckily, they fucked off once I explained my views.
Dealwithit is not dealwithit, it’s mug of pee impersonating her (which RR should not allow)
Pumpkin, is the information subtest also underestimated among bilinguals?
I’ll respond more later but you know that the most heritable IQ abilities are the most culture-dependent, right?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24104504/
Yes but that could be an artifact of them being more g loaded
Pump, your blog attracts some strange psychological types for some reason.
Where does the pre recentering SAT fall on the different 3 types of test you discussed last post? I would be interested to see which tests fall where in that grouping and ranked in terms of g loading.
I suspect the SAT would be type 1. In the Minnesota trans-racial adoption study, black kids reared in upper class white homes had much higher scores on scholastic aptitude tests than they had on the WAIS-R (though I don’t know if they took the SAT specifically)
Hmm, I would say this. The reason culture dependent tests appear to be the most g loaded is that we are innately creatures of culture. It’s what best defines us, the water in which we swim. Those traits which are exterior to culture are by definition not useful and alien to human life. Those tests measure freak skills.
My knowledge of the literature is scant, but recall termins termites or whatever? They were disappointing as a group, and in fact excluded two heavy weight physicists. But the study of mathematically gifted youth, which used the sat as a measure, supposedly turned out to be a highly illustrious group. My guess is that this occurred because the sat measures those talents which are useful for status success in our civilization. Not necessarily who’s smartest, mind you!
I think the quest for the magic “culture independent test” originates with the racial egalitarians who will only be satisfied when all races measure the same, ie never, or when we are in some all mutt mad max world and nobody cares about testing or reading or writing anyway. Was culture independence ever a concern much before the 60s? In fact, I think blacks do better on the verbal than the math sat, no? The more “culture dependent” part!
blacks do worst on novel spatial tests which are the most culture fair. This is why I believe the black-white IQ gap started evolving when non-africans left the tropics 70,000 years ago and needed spatial ability to make fire, sew, build shelter & hunt mammoth to survive the cold.
They showed that, the more culturally loaded the subtest was, the higher g loading. Culturally loaded tests also had a greater heritability than culturally-“reduced” tests.
correct. and i discussed that at the end of the article
The explanation forwarded is that they reflect societal, not cognitive demands. (Nevermind the numerous other critiques of g.)
Not to belabor, but give me an example of novel spacial reasoning tests or answers. I have a hard time with digit span, myself. Mine is only about three.
A rubik’s cube would have made a good high ceiling novel spatial test had it not been released as a commercial product, thus destroying the novelty
jesus christ race realist he also explicitly said g might be overall cognition, everything else being fair. there are times you should switch from argumentative mind to open mind.
Imagine thinking that factor analysis shows something about human abilities and not the structure of the test batteries.
Cultural loading correlates with both the size of the black-white gap and g loading.
Well if the culture loaded tests are also the most g loaded tests, then we’d expect the BW gap to correlate with culture loading, but that doesn’t prove culture loading is causing the BW gap, it could be that g loading is causing it. The biggest BW gap of all on the WAIS-IV is on perhaps the least culture loaded subtest.
Of course that doesn’t prove the BW gap is genomic. There are non-genomic biological effects that could be suppressing black IQ like prenatal conditions. The Minnesota Trans-racial adoption study didn’t show it, but that’s only one study.
RR should apply to black lives matter for a job.
black lives do matter you psychopathic racist freak
The explanation forwarded is that they reflect societal, not cognitive demands. (Nevermind the numerous other critiques of g.)
rr has yet to identify a test which reflects cognitive demands and not societal demands because city slicker fake cave man.
and he never will because they don’t exist. this is what both rr and peepee don’t get.
man is a social animal in the extreme. a man’s cognitive abilities aren’t very impressive when he’s raised by wolves.
not to mention that meeting societal and cultural demands requires cognition.
The question’s not whether you’d have the same IQ if raised by wolves, but whether you’d have the same IQ if raised by Neanderthals
Flynn showed (and my research confirms) that family effects on the most novel tests vanish by age 5
Of course that’s within modern western industrialized society & can’t be assumed for all “human” societies
Which sub test is that, which has the highest BW gap?
Blocks
the point is people MAY differ in their ability to acquire these cultural competencies, cognitive abilities which are born by/transmitted through human culture. a man without men will never learn to speak for example. his language will be no language.
so the real question is DO they, in fact, differ? how much? and differ how much in across environments? an extreme case might be ramanujan would have actually sucked at math if he’d been raised in staten island by a family of guidos.
rr’s critiques of IQ and g are the gayest critiques. the sort of critiques made by [redacted by pp, April 8, 2020]
[redacted by pp, April 8, 2020]she thinks humans raised by wolves would score average on the perfromance section of the jewish sandwich making test.
No raised by wolves humans would score retarded on all tests, but raised by Neanderthals, they might score average on a few of the performance tests
All lives matter.
What do you guys think of the news about blacks and COVID-19? It’s obvious, due to structural healtih inequalities that it would effect them more. The victim-blaming, though, from all ideologies (keto, carnivore, HBD, vegans etc) is idiotic.
Do you not see the stupidity in that statement?
“It’s a protest to my protest, what kind of shit is that.”
It’s pathetic. BLM does not mean only BLM so saying ALM in response is nonsensical and completely misses the point.
Right I get that. It was a response to Philo and his assumption about me.
PP, the point is that factor analysis tells us about the structure of the test’s batteries and not human abilities.
“man is a social animal in the extreme”
What do you think of Lev Vygotsky?
Factor analysis tells us which tests are more similar to each other but it can’t tell us if those similarities are caused by culture or biology.
I think you’re wrong.
Different subtests correlate with each other because they’re selected to do so —as is the case due the entire IQ enterprise.
Lewontin: “The claim that something real is then measured by these selected questions is a classic case of reification. It is rather like claiming, as a proof of the existence of God, that he is mentioned in all the books of the Bible.” (The Inferiority Complex, a review of Mismeasure.)
Does PP believe that God exists because he’s mentioned in all the books of the Bible? Somehow I think not. Therefore, PP should abandon his belief in factor analysis.
Even if the human was raised by wolves, cognition must still exist. For any cognitive task that a wolf does, I would expect the human to be better than the wolves barring some sort of serious nutrition shortage or head injury.
Tarzan became lord of the apes
Fraz
“I think the quest for the magic “culture independent test” originates with the racial egalitarians who will only be satisfied when all races measure the same, ie never, or when we are in some all mutt mad max world and nobody cares about testing or reading or writing anyway. Was culture independence ever a concern much before the 60s? In fact, I think blacks do better on the verbal than the math sat, no? The more “culture dependent” part!”
I’ve made this comment before, your response?
One of Helms’ (1992; “Why Is There No Study of Cultural Equivalence in Standardized Cognitive Ability Testing?” hypotheses was that “Acculturation and assimilation to White Euro-American culture should enhance [black] performance on … existing cognitive ability tests.” This was confirmed by Fagan and Holland (2002, “Equal opportunity and racial differences in IQ”) 2007, “Racial equality in intelligence: Predictions from a theory of intelligence as processing”), and the decrease in the IQ gap (Smith, 2018, “Has the black-white IQ gap in the United States narrowed? A literature review”).
Culture is full of patterns. It is what you gravitate to that often leads to skill development. Specialization happens as we get older, but so does generalization.
My sister’s IQ is 92 yet she can draw photorealism puppies. Her visual IQ is at least 125. Because of picture completion, my IQ must be 89.
What I have in (g) is 132 – that is?
“the brain a test samples, the more g loaded it is”
perfect, a brain should be tested / scanned for all parts.
We are walking in the dark at present.
parts of my brain are highly deficient. (others profoundly genius)
I hadn’t developed the capability to read until I was 7 and a half or 8. Either way, I have one of the most expansive vocabularies I know. At least in the English language.
I am reluctantly a master of the English language, particularly when connected to essays, puzzles, etc.
I scored a 104, 108, and 132 on the online Wonderlic, the most robust and one of the many important tests of all time.
English may be the most rhythmically based languages. That’s why it’s so easy to make a song over. I’m sure other languages fit in like such.
Robert Frost, the poet, didn’t learn to read until he was 14! I wonder if a greater oral knowledge of English is what developed his rhythmic ear.
Pumpkin, would u say ur risk averse or otherwise.
Risk averse
Haven’t received message through emaill pumpkin?
you just sent me a blank email
i mean just think how utterly BORING gates and bezos are. how could you do what they’ve done and not be BORING.
i can say this as a [redacted by pp, april 8, 2020]: soros would be a MUCH more interesting person to take to dinner.
MUCH!
That’s cause you’re not intelligent enough to have a conversation with Gates
Unless you wanted to talk about computer science or Africa. I doubt theres any other topic you could talk to Bill about before he would get bored.
Greedy psychopaths who do experiments on the people you defend should disgust you but you like him for some reason. I don’t see a bright future in neo-lefty HUmAn BiODiVEriSTy.
Pumpkin, do folks with higher educations tend to have higher verbal than nonverbal IQs?
yes
That explains why I can barely read.
Pumpkin, by how much does VIQ to PIQ discrepancy increase as your education levels get higher and higher?
the alcoholism is out of my control.
what can mugabe mean by this? can’t he just stop drinking?
yes. he could. but the pain…
it would be un-gentlemanly to voluntarily endure such.
because…
mugabe has no control over what happens in his head when he’s asleep.
for example…
i dreamt that pakistan won the cricket world cup.
after beating zimbabwe in the semi-final, it didn’t lose to australia as usual…
that made me wanna get very tight.
Is the block design subtest on WAIS-IV the easiest to increase with coaching?
My hunch is that perceptual reasoning tests on WAIS-IV could be gamed with the least effort: There is no content to learn, only a few tricks to recognize. For example, nearly all of the most difficult block designs [redacted by pp, April 8, 2020] which often should make solving even fairly complex designs easier than it might at first appear. I am disappointed that the WAIS-IV technical manual does not include test-retest reliability with coaching to clarify how large of an effect such training might have on testees.
It’s totally coachable but as long as it’s not used for admission to prestigious schools, no one bothers getting coached (though sadly a few idiotic private schools & many gifted classes do use it for admission)
But one fascinating fact I’ve noticed is that even folks who are coached to improve their score by 2 SD will regress precipitously to their true level when the designs are presented slightly differently. This shows how narrow the transfer effects of coaching can be
Is this evidence for the fabled “ability ceiling” a la Burt and Galton?
It would appear that Galton nor Burt have any evidence for their key claim [that ability ceilings exist]. The proposition that, for all of us, there are individually differing ceilings of ability seems to be an assumption behind their position, rather than a conclusion based on telling grounds.
I have discussed elsewhere (White, 1974; 2002a: ch. 5) what could count as evidence for this proposition, and concluded that it is neither verifiable nor falsifiable. The mere fact that a child appears not able to get beyond, say, elementary algebra is not evidence of a ceiling. The failure of this or that variation in teaching approach fares no better, since it is always possible for a tracher to try some different approach to help the learner get over the hurdle. (With some children, so neurologically damaged that they seem incapable of language, it may seem that the point where options run out for the teacher is easier to establish than it is for other children. But the proposition in question is supposed to applu to all of us: we are all said to have our own mental ceiling; and for non-brain-damaged people the existence of a ceiling sems impossible to demonstrate.) It is not falsifiable, since for even the cleverest person in the world, for whom no ceiling has been discovered, it is always possible that it exists somewhere. As an untestable — unverifiable and unfalsifiable — proposition, the claim that we each have a mental ceiling has, if we follow Karl Popper (1963: ch. 1), no role in science. It is like the proposition that God exists or that all historical events are predetermined, both of which are equally untestable. As such, it may play a foundational role, as these two propositions have played, in some ideological belief system of belief, but has no place in empirical science. (White, 2006: 16)
WTF this was a serious question for RR
Then word it using proper language
So the economist has a good article about Chinese central banking and how the system works. Basically China really does have central planner still planning the economy but not as obviously as the old days of Mao. They force the banks to lend to industries they want to support and pay a negative rate of interest to savers to make capital cheaper to ‘private’ sector actors. They also control the benchmark rates with 4 different benchmarks that are somewhat tied to each other.
China is a pretty good example that banking can be state owned and not cause too much inefficiency.
Because Robert is a communist, I know you would appreciate this.
O great Pumpkin…meet me as your equal and post the vid. Thousands, millions must know the greatness…of the Chosen One.
I only post videos if they’re part of a comment; otherwise looks like spam
If a firm fails because of a volcano eruption or terrorist attack or the founder got shipwrecked why does it deserve to be bailed out? Why would you bailout the firm before bailing out the employees directly? I just don’t get it. Explain Robert.
i already have.
bailouts are sometimes cheaper than bankruptcy.
pill: we want moshiach now. we don’t want to wait.
Im not an expert on stock picking and never did a CFA or course on finance per se but from the outside it looks like a stocks worth is what Keynes said – your perception of other peoples perception of what the stock is worth and sentiment. So it was amusing autist robert saying markets weren’t pricing the net present values of future cash flows from the stock rationally.
you’re too stupid to talk to. i’m thinking you must be an affirmative action negro at this point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owner_earnings
owner’s yield = dividends + buybacks + (sometimes debt retirement)
a stock is a variable perpetuity…
so its duration can be less than that of very long tenor bonds as there is no “lump” at the end.
in other words: if you buy a stock intending to hold it FOREVER stocks are ridiculously CHEAP even in the US. they’re even more ridiculously cheap outside the US. most hong kong shares trade below their book value even though the hong kong market has come closest to keeping pace with the US market since the last crisis.
a concrete example: GS had a 4% trailing dividend yield recently…how does that compare to bonds? is GS gonna go out of business?
but over the lomg term 90+% of stocks will together perform no better than treasury bills.
look it up.
takeaway is:
1. stocks are much more volatile in terms of intrinsic value vs price…buy low sell high.
2. identify winners (like GS), buy them when they’re cheap, and hold on to them until they start sucking…like IBM.
This coronavirus thing is a good thing for the economy in one way – it gets rid of the deadwood.
What part of that don’t you get? Please explain robert why we must keep deadwood.
Then Block Design is nearly psychometrically meaningless!
Have there been studies that show this coaching effect?
I have been searching through PsychInfo, though I have not
seen anything.
WAIS-IV is touted as the gold standard of Intelligence tests!
It does not surprise me in the least that measured fluid IQ
has increased by ~35 points in the last century: This gain
(on coachable tests such as Block design and matrices
would be entirely devoid of g gain).
I find it disappointing that more effort has not been put into
constructing cognitive ability tests that could not be gamed.
Tests that offer some to score highly by simply learning empty
tricks results in a world that is worse off, than if the test did not
exist at all.
Blockman, it doesn’t matter how coachable a test is if less than 1% of the population gets coached. That’s why there are no studies
You will find studies on practice effects though. The more a test measures novel problem solving, the more scores increase when that novelty is contaminated but that’s not the cause of the block design Flynn effect (the test has been guarded) which has only increased 20 points per century thanks to prenatal nutrition
Alright, thanks Pumpkin! I just wanna shout out everyone on this blog after I become famous off this hoe but most importantly I wanna shout out my nigga Pumpkin for bein a real one and setting my sights on the fame and glory I rightedly deserve!
https://imgur.com/gallery/cURofo2
Are you the guy with the glasses?
Think so. I think he’s eating a roach.
Yuhhhh.
I uploaded another version with sound on my imgur if you can’t hear it.
The sound encapsulates the experience so much better imo.
i wish people on here saw it with the sound on. oh damn memories.
The chinese reporting 0 new cases. Either they’re not measuring properly cos theyre not able or Xi Jinping is getting a lot of heat internally and wants good PR
I’m right to say that Covid-19 has inflicted the most pain on groups viewed with disdain in the HBD-o-sphere and the anti-proletariat crowd.
you can see from the SARS data that the PRC is full of shit.
in canada the CFR was 17%. in the PRC it was 6%. no!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome#Prognosis
but how are tests for such viruses developed so quickly? did china test a lot of asymptomatic people?
Wow! People can gain a 2 SD advantage on Block Design by coaching? That is extraordinary! It is somewhat more than I would have expected. My guess had been that general hints about the symmetries involved could be transferable to any likely combination (even the most difficult ones). Might you have a citable source or url for that statement? The potential for a 2 SD difference enhancement would remove any meaning of the test scores.
Other perceptual reasoning subtests on WAIS-IV might also be open to such manipulation.
The crystallized intelligence subtests (vocabulary, information etc.) would require some more effort, though not necessarily that much. There might only be roughly 5,000 words from a college level dictionary that typical native speakers might be
somewhat unsure about. Perhaps 5,000 items for the information subtest would also be sufficient.
It’s anecdotal not citeable
I have found test-retest studies for WAIS-IV, though the gains (as you noted) are typically described as practice effects. Spending an hour being tested with WAIS-IV normally results in retest FSIQ scores to increase by ~5 points with a ~1 month to ~8 month retest interval. Yet, this is not even a coaching effect. The WAIS-IV technical manual refers to these studies as being purely test-retest (i.e., no coaching).
When I queried my psychometrics tutor about the potential for coaching on WAIs-IV, I was told that any psychometrician who suspected that a testee had been coached would be expected to label such a testing session as invalid.
I am actually doing a course assignment on WAIS-IV now and would be interested in any comments those on thread might be able to offer me. One of the sections of the assignment asks for strengths and weaknesses of the psychometric instrument that we have chosen.
One of the weaknesses (aside from it being potentially so highly coachable) is that WAIS-IV does not appear to be adhering to the guiding definition of David Wechsler crafted for intelligence many decades ago, namely intelligence is
“the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with the environment.”
My perspective is that “the environment” that currently exists is greatly changed from that encountered by Wechsler. Wechsler created a cognitive test that was extremely social in nature. In fact, the testee is barely required to read or write a single sentence or perform any complex written calculation. The tester is constantly engaging with the testee in an aggressively social manner. WAIS-IV seems to have been designed for illiterates, children or those who are presumed to be extremely .
psychologically dependent.
However, this is not the environment of the modern world. We live in highly virtualized communities. Now people often work, school and socialize in virtual reality. The adaptive skills that are required for people to satisfy their psychological and other needs has greatly changed. Testing people with a psychometric instrument that does not reflect the actual lived environment of modern lifestyles does not seem valid.
Ironically leading psychometric literature still speaks of the WAIS-IV as being a clinical tool that effectively reflects the real world challenges faced by testees. There seems to be no recognition that the “real world” is becoming increasingly peripheral to computer interface. It should not be entirely unexpected that in this new technological era, a reversal of the clinical and normal populations might occur. Normies are well adapted to the highly socialized environments of the past that are quickly receding
into obscurity.
But intelligence is better defined at the cognitive ability to adapt in any environment, not the one you’re in only.
And this somehow translated to IQ tests.
So what’s the theory?
Well I think of the dozen or so subtests on the WAIS as a dozen different environments you have to adapt to. Thus the IQ test serves as a sample of one’s cognitive adaptability.
How’s that a theory?
How is it not one?
You’re just restating what needs to be explained.
pumpkin that is an interesting idea about the subtest being different environments. Another interpretation is that each of the WAIS-IV subtests are sampling features that are almost omnipresent in a naturalistic pre-modern environment. Collectively, WAIS-IV is a cohesive test of the skill set required to navigate the physical, social and other cognitive challenges of life circa 1980 and before.
My contention is that this conception of reality has questionable ecological validity in our 21st Century technological virtual environment. I find it highly ironic that the Wechsler Scales have exerted so much effort to remain faithful to the psychometric reality of the last century when the skills for successful living in our time are diverging so markedly from those needed in the past. At some point there might emerge negative correlations between scores on WAIS and adaptive functioning.
I would expect that people who were adaptive 100 years ago would also be adaptive today (on average). And it’s not like the Wechsler scales haven’t changed over the decades. Some of the older more social and manual subtests have been dropped (Picture Arrangement, Object Assembly) or relegated to the optional section (Comprehension) and new subtests have been introduced emphasizing the abstract (Matrix reasoning, Figure Weights) and clerical (Cancellation) abilities of the computer age.
An even better definition of intelligence would be the ability to adapt the environment to behave more optimally. Adapting to an existing environment is merely passively accepting what is and doing one’s best under the circumstances. Imagining and then creating a novel environment which is then widely adopted clearly would require a great deal more cognitive ability.
I agree with that. One definition I use is “the ability to adapt whatever body & environment you’re in to get whatever you want”
Pumpkin, how high would the practice effect be on a processing speed test if you did one test, and then took a second test 30 minutes later?
Pumpkin, what’s a better measure of VCI, Similarities plus Vocabulary or Similarities plus Vicabulary plus information?