diamondcutter

Did you read the stats in the original post?

"Surveys with high response rates also imply that sexual assault is a serious problem. The Michigan study found that 12 percent of undergraduate women had experienced non-consensual penetration within the past year; the Stanford survey found that 12 percent had experienced attempted or completed non-consensual penetration since arriving at Stanford; the Department of Justice found that 3 percent had experienced rape or attempted rape within the last 7 months."

Is your claim that those numbers are not high, or that those numbers are somehow unreliable even though the surveys have high response rates?

Yeah...and of COURSE that's because IQ tests measure something inherent like intelligence! It isn't because people who do well on IQ tests tend to be wealthy and well-educated, which produces better life outcomes.

Let me be very clear. When I was 15 I took the SAT and got every single question right. That was undoubtedly in part because a) I grew up in one of the wealthiest counties in the country b) my parents got me private math tutoring from the time I was 7 c) they read to me from an early age d) they sent me to private school e) I could go on, but you get the point. If you do well on these tests, good for you! But the idea that they are unaffected by confounding factors like income, education, and stereotype threat is absurd. These false beliefs that we can just give people a test to measure true talent worry me in light of Silicon Valley's incredible lack of diversity.

I doubt you really believe that. Eg, if I told you for sure that the kid with the good teacher was going to be less good than the kid with a bad teacher a year from now, surely you would choose the kid with the bad teacher. In the same way that you would choose the star athlete with an injured leg because he would be excellent once he had healed.

Standardized testing is hugely influenced by unfair factors. Like the fact that if I'm rich, I can pay for my kids to get better tutoring which boosts scores by hundreds of points. Or the fact that stereotype threat may keep minorities from doing well on tests. Or that tests can be culturally biased against people from certain backgrounds.

Hm. So would you be okay with admitting someone who had grown up with less money and scored less high on math tests because he hadn't had access to the best teachers?

Yeah, I don't think such a system would be at all ideal. For one thing, I think kids' essays actually are quite useful in getting a sense of what they care about (not clear what "psychological testing" could replace that), and some kids are going to mention their gender / race / socioeconomic background.