They're certainly not flawless, but if they're not measuring intelligence it's hard to imagine what they are measuring.
They measure intelligence and a ton of other things.
The other things dominate unless the person taking the test is one whom the test is biased toward.

No-one has designed a proper, validated IQ test that has a particular cultural perspective for 100 years. The people who make these tests aren't stupid, they know you don't ask a person from Poland questions about baseball.
Are you saying there's no cultural bias in IQ tests (in the last 100 years)?
I don't even know what to say to such a clearly absurd statement being delivered unironically.

I'm not sure we understand each other's use of words on this one.

What counts as intelligent behavior in the poorest communities is not equivalent as what counts as intelligent in the most affluent communities. The way intelligence expresses itself is a function of the values of the culture.
How do you fairly compare the streets' smartest thug and the city's smartest CEO?

Inability to do so is bias. That's what I'm calling cultural bias.

Not sure what you're talking about here. How is math (for example) different in NK than it is in Birmingham? How is a logical puzzle different? Or the ability to mentally rotate and compare objects? These are basic intelligence skills that don't depend on the culture where you grow up, unless the culture doesn't bother to educate people.
It's not that those ideas are different. It's the assumption that the knowledge of those ideas is indicative of intelligence that is wrong.
A person growing up in an impoverished community and/or abusive home values very different things than those you've stated. Their lack of skill in those tasks is not related to their intelligence, but reflecting that they don't have the luxury of security that the test takes for granted.

You can't PROVE it in the sense you can prove two people are the same height. But, you can provide a measure that has a reasonable degree of certainty.
That's just it, though. You can't provide that. You can only assert as much and hope you're right.
You can make a test that accurately measures the intelligence of thugs, and one that does similar for CEO's.
Comparing those results, though... It's basically mysticism.

The tests must be different to accommodate the bias that makes them fair.
That's a big deal.
It means the results of the tests are only roughly comparable, not directly comparable. They're measuring totally different things, all under the banner of "intelligence."

It's the inherent flaw in trying to boil something so vastly interesting and complex down to a single number, IMO.

Right, and the group one is compared to is the most relevant group. You wouldn't compare me or you to someone from 1880 with a 6th grade education.
Then how can we compare thugs and CEO's? How can we compare farmers and city-folk? How can we compare prisoners and ... um... non-prisoners? Missourians to Congolese?

How can you assert that IQ's are "generally increasing over time" or however you phrased it?

That's why you don't compare five year olds to college students. When they say a five year old has an IQ of 120, they mean he's smarter than the average five-year old, not that he's smarter than the average college student.
No. That's how you disenfranchise impoverished communities.

You give the same test to affluent communities as you give to the impoverished communities.
That's only fair, right?
Then you show that the artificially lowered scores of the impoverished communities and the artificially boosted scores of the affluent community are the reason those communities are what they are.

Of course [minority] live in slums... they're not as smart.
Of course [minority] doesn't deserve our sympathy. They're genetically predisposed. We can't change that. Not our fault.

Elitism.

The culture? An IQ test doesn't ask you who Taylor Swift is. It asks you questions that test your intellectual skills.
See above.
In order to do so, it must presuppose your environment and project a value system which delineates what is "worth knowing."

Only the scaling of the test changes because of overall increases in IQ, mostly associated with education, but probably also nutrition and whatnot.
"basically" - meaning it's not the same.
"[...] through practice alone" - I find that hard to believe.
What psychologist is testing the same patient with the same test multiple times?
I was tested a few times, but never with the same test twice.

The tests change to reflect advances in the relevant psychological fields of study. Among them is the acknowledgement that changes in the cultural background in which the testee has lived render certain questions useless.

Only the scaling of the test changes because of overall increases in IQ, mostly associated with education, but probably also nutrition and whatnot.
So you agree that access to education and nutrition are significantly relevant factors!?
I wish you'd lead with that.

Do you agree that those 2 things vary wildly across even the population of a single city, let alone a nation or the world?

Do you agree that variance in those 2 factors is more often indicative of cultural status of the community in which the testee was raised than anything related to the intelligence of either the testee or their parents?

Do you agree that those 2 are not the only confounding factors in these tests?

Actually no-one is using it that way. I am smarter than most people by anyone's definition of intelligence. I understand things lots of people can't grasp. Same with you, same with Ong. There's no reason to pretend we're not smarter than others.
Lol. I disagree about how it's used.
When someone bring up their own IQ, it's never intellectually honest.

I bet if I followed you around for a day, I could list more than a handful examples of your lack of intelligence.
You certainly would if you followed me.
I'm good at some things, OK at some things, and terrible at most things. Just like the rest of us.

Just because we test well, and have a skillset that makes us better than most at book-smarts, doesn't mean we're smart.
It's more that we're lucky the things we're good at are valued as "smart" by the cultures we've lived in.

That said, there are arguably lots of types of 'intelligence' that aren't covered in those tests, if you define the term broadly enough to include any kind of mental skill. Motor intelligence, creativity, perceptual skills, etc.
If you don't, you're not being intellectually honest, and are probably virtue signalling, IMO.


If you don't, it's hard to interpret any direct relevance or predictive power of the IQ score, anyway.
It's not indicative of a person's dedication, commitment, loyalty, leadership, etc.
It's not indicative of whether a person has capacity for good or bad.
It's not indicative of how observant, patient, empathetic, or compassionate a person is.