IQ is a crock of shit and you're right to not care about it at all. It's a manager's approach to categorizing people since their default reaction to real people is to get dizzy.
The deal with IQ is: it matters in the margins. Too low and you can't successfully follow step by step instructions; to get any work out of you, someone else has to have the job of telling you each step, one at a time, every single time. If it's not high enough, a handful of very difficult intellectual acrobatics are out of your reach.
For everyone else, the 95% somewhere in the middle, it shouldn't matter much in a functioning society. There will be something useful and dignified for you to do.
We don't have a functioning society. The downstream effect of our technocratic system is that the only jobs with decent pay and social status are those that require academic credentials. Those are perceived to require exceptional intellect.
They do not, because supply of credentials has expanded to meet the very high demand, because everyone wants dignified work with decent pay. Our academics straddle the center of the bell curve now instead of the top third, but incorrectly think they are smarter than everyone else.
Being smart is everything, so everyone pretends to be smart. People screech about their IQ whenever they want unearned respect, and wave their credentials around when they have nothing else to show for their supposed abilities.
Shitholes like Haiti have a different problem. Their local bell curve straddles the “can't follow basic instructions” line. They have more people who need to be told what to do than they have people to manage them. Everyone with any sense wants to leave rather than stay in the mess and figure out how to make it work. The easier this is for them the worse the problem gets.
And when they do escape, to places like ours, their now completely unremarkable ability to earn our credentials is taken as proof that they're above average and therefore useful to us.
IQ is a crock of shit and you're right to not care about it at all. It's a manager's approach to categorizing people since their default reaction to real people is to get dizzy.
The deal with IQ is: it matters in the margins. Too low and you can't successfully follow step by step instructions; to get any work out of you, someone else has to have the job of telling you each step, one at a time, every single time. If it's not high enough, a handful of very difficult intellectual acrobatics are out of your reach.
For everyone else, the 95% somewhere in the middle, it shouldn't matter much in a functioning society. There will be something useful and dignified for you to do.
We don't have a functioning society. The downstream effect of our technocratic system is that the only jobs with decent pay and social status are those that require academic credentials. Those are perceived to require exceptional intellect.
They do not, because supply of credentials has expanded to meet the very high demand, because everyone wants dignified work with decent pay. Our academics straddle the center of the bell curve now instead of the top third, but incorrectly think they are smarter than everyone else.
Being smart is everything, so everyone pretends to be smart. People screech about their IQ whenever they want unearned respect, and wave their credentials around when they have nothing else to show for their supposed abilities.
Shitholes like Haiti have a different problem. Their local bell curve straddles the “can't follow basic instructions” line. They have more people who need to be told what to do than they have people to manage them. Everyone with any sense wants to leave rather than stay in the mess and figure out how to make it work. The easier this is for them the worse the problem gets.
And when they do escape, to places like ours, their now completely unremarkable ability to earn our credentials is taken as proof that they're above average and therefore useful to us.