Every time I see someone bring up "IQ scores" I feel the need to repeat: IQ scores were literally invented by eugenicists and they've always been biased towards privilege

Christine Lemmer-Webber

It's not agency for the individual, it's agency *for everyone*. The goal is to improve the agency of all. But the purpose is still about agency, so you *do* care about individuals, in that the entire point is that a person is able to be and define their best selves. So there's a push-pull effect.

It's imperfect, but it's how I think about things. It's just one lens of many, but it's the main one I think about things through, in terms of ethics.

aeva

@cwebber I read somewhere that this only holds if the rat is trapped in an unstimulating environment. If provided an adequately stimulating environment, the rat will ignore the drugs button.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@aeva Would love to see evidence of that, if you have a paper please provide it!

But I still think it's the case that even if the rat starts leaning on the drugs button, *it's not the rat's fault*, and that's my main point. My main point was that the rat was provided a system in which the rat couldn't win.

So even if that's true, that still holds to my point: we shouldn't blame the rat, we should blame the system.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

But the real point is that: we should be constructing the best world we can in which people can thrive.

Measurements and metrics can be useful, if taken in aggregate, but we know full well that any metric that is used as a primary goal ends up becoming its own tyrannical destruction of the rest. (And thus, it's not surprising that money as the primary goal ends up being hyperdestructive.)

I don't want to "know who's better". I want to help people be able to be better.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

This was an unexpected detour rant for the middle of the day. But it's something I care about. Perhaps I will collect it into a blogpost later.

I guess I will summarize, then leave the thread here...

Christine Lemmer-Webber

It's incredibly easy to be full of despair right now. I get it, I feel it too.

Don't let anyone tell you that the people who are doing the best are because they *deserve* it or are "geniuses".

And also don't let anyone tell you that a group of people who by and large who seem to be suffering and aren't doing as well relative to the metrics of the system is because they're not worthy or have failed themselves.

We have to try to build the best world for each other we can, the best we can.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

Okay, I will add one more thing. Multiple people (thx @stellarskylark, @aeva, @martinvermeer) have brought up "Rat Park", a counterstudy where rats, if given a sufficiently stimulating environment, won't lean on the lever until they die. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

This is actually great and in line with what I really wanted to point out, which is that the problem is that we shouldn't blame the individual, we should blame the environment. What environment do we give people?

So yes, yay, rat park!

clar fon

@cwebber I've done a decent bit of research on this for my AI piece, and I think that just taking a look at the original Binet-Simon test which has been cited to death by IQ researchers kind of speaks for itself to what the actual goals of this was

there's this famous image from the test where a child's intelligence was determined based upon if they could identify which women in the picture are "ugly"

and there's this absolutely fucked up line where they're testing the proprioception of 3-year-olds:

Sometimes a child shows his nose by thrusting it forward, without making any hand movement, or shows his mouth by opening it, as would an animal. This is, in fact, an animal stage, when the hand is still a paw, and not an organ used for significant or expressive movements.

literally IQ testing has not changed at all since these original tests in the early 1900's. sure, we've stopped overtly testing whether you're explicitly palatable to white eugenicists, but that's still been the ultimate goal

jandi

@cwebber @stellarskylark @aeva @martinvermeer In multilingual comic form: https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/#page-1

Sean Tilley

@[email protected] I can relate in a number of different ways, but when I met you in person, I was floored at your knowledge and the depths of the subjects you shared with me.

To me, genius isn't an IQ score, philosophers immortalized in marble statue, or some kind of Renaissance master. It is the joy, willingness, and curiosity to chase ideas and share findings with great enthusiasm and passion.

You will always be one of my favorite people.

:flan_reaper:

@randomgeek @wordshaper @cwebber my scores varied wildly based on whether the questions had numbers in them, because I had an irrational hatred for numbers.

Numbers are vile things, they belong behind variable names so we don’t have to look at those dirty, filthy things.

Shauna GM

@cwebber I love everything about this thread.

I see in the link to your Foss and Crafts episode that you reference Amartya Sen - and thus, presumably, the Capability Approach. (I don't remember if the stuff you're doing with Goblins is explicitly tied into this or if it's just a coincidence of naming!)

Anyway this thread made me think of a really good Rutger Claassen article that uses the Capability Approach to redefine agency:

An Agency-based Capability Theory of Justice

(dspace.library.uu.nl)

Dolls Against Gravity

@cwebber was it the staff being supportive there? Were you encouraged to look for things that you actually like learning about? It sounds so great.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@ilookloud They were very supportive!

Robert Sauer-Ernst

@cwebber Thank you. How about discussing building a bridge between #bsky an #mastodon ? For the sake of all of us?

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@RobertSE well, bridgy fed already exists and I don't really think that is my domain or responsibility

Robert W. Gehl

@RobertSE @cwebber

Umm... there is one already?

https://fed.brid.gy/

Plus people are setting up a foundation to govern it.

Why are you demanding this of Christine?

Indieterminacy

@cwebber Theres a study on babies, where they are shown a board featuring a smiley trying to go up the hill. There are 2 others, one preventing the ascend, the other assisting.

The babies are offered the others -- they all universally reach for the assister, demonstrating empathy being a hardwired instinct.

Months later they repeat the test.
Its only then that the deviation from the babies to reach for the antagonist emerges -- its an acquired perspective/behaviour in these young meatsacks.

ティージェーグレェ

It’s one of the annoying things about Doug Engelbart being trapped by the language of his time. He was attempting to explain concepts that were visionary, but stuck with the constraints of the English language of his own era.

Subsequently, his phrasing of “Collective IQ” [citation: https://dougengelbart.org/content/view/172/ ] isn’t really about IQ at all, but about collaboration. The adage of Engelbart and his contemporaries, “each perspective is worth 80 IQ points” (and the additive nature of such things e.g. collective IQ of a group of one is 80, two 160, three 240, etc.) was a way to try to explain that by collaboratively sharing ideas, a group of individuals is more than the sum of any one of its parts.

I’m not certain of the best way to update that phrasing to more contemporary less eugenic loaded terminology. However, having known Doug personally, he was definitely a “strength through diversity “ sort and I didn’t get the eugenics laden IQ angle from him at all.