More objective units of measure and the obvious causal relationship between visible muscle size and strength. Also, you bias IQ tests if you repeatedly take them, but you don’t do likewise with strength tests so it’s much easier to track changes in an individual’s strength over time and most anyone whose lifts weights can objectively verify that he has become stronger. Lifting weights makes you stronger, therefore strength measures something real—no analogous statement exists about IQ.
Also, you bias IQ tests if you repeatedly take them, but you don’t do likewise with strength tests so it’s much easier to track changes in an individual’s strength over time and most anyone whose lifts weights can objectively verify that he has become stronger.
Strength tests are absolutely biased by taking them repeatedly. Athletes call this “specificity”.
The practice effect for IQ tests is about two orders of magnitude stronger than for strength tests. You could call this “specificity,” but at that granularity, it’s a bad thing.
Interesting. Can I ask you to unpack this statement? I’m curious what exactly you’re comparing.
The difference between “has practiced a movement to mastery” and “has never performed a movement before” can be very large, like my powerlifter/snatch example in the other comment. But this is comparing zero practice to a very large amount of practice over a very long period of time. I would find it easy to believe that IQ tests see much greater returns from small amounts of practice.
the obvious causal relationship between visible muscle size and strength
Isn’t there an “obvious” causal relationship between brain mass and intelligence?
you bias IQ tests if you repeatedly take them, but you don’t do likewise with strength tests
.Above someone remarked that a female weightlifters might have a much more powerful snatch than male powerlifters, due to several strength tests involving specialised skills auxiliary to “general strength”. So it seems that you might indeed be able to “bias” (at least some) strength tests.
Lifting weights makes you stronger, therefore strength measures something real—no analogous statement exists about IQ
How about “solving puzzles makes you smarter, therefore IQ measures something real”?
How about “solving puzzles makes you smarter, therefore IQ measures something real”?
There no good research that suggests that solving puzzles makes you significantly smarter in the same way that lifting weights makes you significantly smarter.
Isn’t there an “obvious” causal relationship between brain mass and intelligence?
The fact that women generally have smaller brains than men doesn’t mean that they are generally less intelligent in the same way that the fact that women generally have less muscle means that they have less strength.
The standard definition of strength, which the post cleverly avoided ever stating, is “the ability to produce force against external resistance” or some variant thereof. Force is a well-defined physics term, and can be measured pretty directly in a variety of ways.
Isn’t there an “obvious” causal relationship between brain mass and intelligence?
The standard definition of strength, which the post cleverly avoided ever stating, is “the ability to produce force against external resistance” or some variant thereof.
Does this definition resolve the problem posed by the OP, that competence in one of various different specific activities requiring strength doesn’t imply competence in the others? That is, after all, the basis on which IQ tests are attacked—competence on Raven’s progressive matrices doesn’t imply competence at the Piano. If we would answer their objection by saying that intelligence is the general capacity to solve problems, have we shed any light on what ties these capacities together?
If by “obvious” you mean “the sort of thing you might guess from first principles”
That’s what I interpreted James Miller to mean, at least roughly.
the muscle-strength relationship is obvious in another sense: in actual data, it will leap out at you as a very large factor. For example, 97% of variance in strength between sexes is accounted for by muscle mass, and one of the strongest predictors of performance in powerlifters is muscle mass per unit height.
Seems to me to be merely a difference of degree. While not “leaping out”, brain-mass and intelligence do seem to correlate non-trivially (at least when cranial volume is measured via MRI):
Among humans, in 28 samples using brain imaging techniques, the mean brain size/GMA correlation is 0.40 (N = 1,389; p < 10−10); in 59 samples using external head size measures it is 0.20 (N = 63,405; p < 10−10). In 6 samples using the method of correlated vectors to distill g, the general factor of mental ability, the mean r is 0.63.
Does this definition resolve the problem posed by the OP, that competence in one of various different specific activities requiring strength doesn’t imply competence in the others? That is, after all, the basis on which IQ tests are attacked—competence on Raven’s progressive matrices doesn’t imply competence at the Piano.
“imply” is a word that suggests you think about whether it makes sense that there a causal relation between the two task. That’s not central for IQ.
g is a statistical construct that does things that aren’t obvious.
It’s a lot easier to evaluate strength than IQ.
How so?
More objective units of measure and the obvious causal relationship between visible muscle size and strength. Also, you bias IQ tests if you repeatedly take them, but you don’t do likewise with strength tests so it’s much easier to track changes in an individual’s strength over time and most anyone whose lifts weights can objectively verify that he has become stronger. Lifting weights makes you stronger, therefore strength measures something real—no analogous statement exists about IQ.
Strength tests are absolutely biased by taking them repeatedly. Athletes call this “specificity”.
The practice effect for IQ tests is about two orders of magnitude stronger than for strength tests. You could call this “specificity,” but at that granularity, it’s a bad thing.
Interesting. Can I ask you to unpack this statement? I’m curious what exactly you’re comparing.
The difference between “has practiced a movement to mastery” and “has never performed a movement before” can be very large, like my powerlifter/snatch example in the other comment. But this is comparing zero practice to a very large amount of practice over a very long period of time. I would find it easy to believe that IQ tests see much greater returns from small amounts of practice.
How do you define/determine this?
Isn’t there an “obvious” causal relationship between brain mass and intelligence?
.Above someone remarked that a female weightlifters might have a much more powerful snatch than male powerlifters, due to several strength tests involving specialised skills auxiliary to “general strength”. So it seems that you might indeed be able to “bias” (at least some) strength tests.
How about “solving puzzles makes you smarter, therefore IQ measures something real”?
There no good research that suggests that solving puzzles makes you significantly smarter in the same way that lifting weights makes you significantly smarter.
The fact that women generally have smaller brains than men doesn’t mean that they are generally less intelligent in the same way that the fact that women generally have less muscle means that they have less strength.
The standard definition of strength, which the post cleverly avoided ever stating, is “the ability to produce force against external resistance” or some variant thereof. Force is a well-defined physics term, and can be measured pretty directly in a variety of ways.
No. Whales aren’t smarter than humans.
If by “obvious” you mean “the sort of thing you might guess from first principles”, then both are obvious. But the muscle-strength relationship is obvious in another sense: in actual data, it will leap out at you as a very large factor. For example, 97% of variance in strength between sexes is accounted for by muscle mass, and one of the strongest predictors of performance in powerlifters is muscle mass per unit height.
Does this definition resolve the problem posed by the OP, that competence in one of various different specific activities requiring strength doesn’t imply competence in the others? That is, after all, the basis on which IQ tests are attacked—competence on Raven’s progressive matrices doesn’t imply competence at the Piano. If we would answer their objection by saying that intelligence is the general capacity to solve problems, have we shed any light on what ties these capacities together?
That’s what I interpreted James Miller to mean, at least roughly.
Seems to me to be merely a difference of degree. While not “leaping out”, brain-mass and intelligence do seem to correlate non-trivially (at least when cranial volume is measured via MRI):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668913/
“imply” is a word that suggests you think about whether it makes sense that there a causal relation between the two task. That’s not central for IQ. g is a statistical construct that does things that aren’t obvious.