partially so I can find it and reference it. My original account was @[email protected]

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Cake day: June 11th, 2025

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  • I’m also arguing for that being wrong. I also said that it’s more complex than temperature and didn’t say it was an exact measurement (temperature isn’t either, just closer). The example with the temperature goes like this.

    Pseudoscience says that 90 IQ is stupid and water at -20°C is frozen. Science says those numbers don’t make sense out of context. -20 is a gas when there’s less pressure and 90 is extraordinary when the person previously scored 50.

    To resay my final point from the previous comment. If we want to study cognitive ability, we need to measure it. IQ is a messy and imprecise measurement, but it’s better than nothing.


  • You’re still talking like IQ is this absolute immutable number that a person possesses, which is how it’s been used but not how it should be. It only makes sense as a comparison score. It’s like how we measure temperature. We define Celsius as water freezing at 0° and boiling at 100°, but that’s only true at 1 earth atmosphere of pressure. Using the same scale, the boiling point of water on Pluto is -75°

    Now measuring cognition is way more complex than measuring how wiggly atoms are (which is actually also very complex), but you need to have some kind of measurement to be able to compare things and be able to say anything of scientific consequence. Not saying it’s a great measurement, but we don’t have many to choose from and it does tell us something. Context can absolutely change scores and the goal should be to control for that as much as possible.





  • That’s true when talking about trials in general. This chart is more about the police accurately nabbing criminals. Hypothetically, if they were perfect at their job (find the person responsible, sufficient evidence, no corruption) wouldn’t we expect close to 100%?

    Though this discussion doesn’t matter that much to me anyway. I prefer the argument that the linked video lays out. TL;DW crime and policing don’t exist in a communist society, harm reduction and justice should have much more nuance than is currently given. (the latter part being similar to your point)