Amusing Comment at Across Difficult Country

The following amusing comment was elicited at Across Difficult Country on an entry about “hatefacts”.

Nick wrote:

I love this comment from the link about women:

“I suspect the tests were formulated to play to men’s strengths. Perhaps the tests were even set by men. IQ tests have long been recognised as skewed towards white men of European origin, why do we continue to pay attention to them? IQ tests still don’t measure the different ways that intelligence can manifest itself, and until they do, they will continue to provide fodder to those who seek to re-establish man’s ’superiority’ over women.”
Roanne, Derby, UK

Well yeah, since men, especially Asian and white men, are smarter than other groups, a test that measures intelligence would indeed favor them. Damn those biased tests! Also, yes Roanne, men certainly created every or almost every intelligence test in existence. What this means I couldn’t say — it’s probably further proof of the hidden maleocracy.

She makes a good point though: Why should intelligence tests measure intelligence? I can’t think of a single reason why they should. We should apply this idea to other fields — instead of having people take a driver’s test to get a license, they should take a test on 17th century English lit. Some may say that a literature has nothing to do with driving, but I propose that driving ability sometimes “manifests” itself as an extensive knowledge of Paradise Lost. Since this is impossible to disprove absolutely, we should just assume that I’m right.

Sigh. This all reminds of the great tragedy of life: Stupid people are too stupid to know that they’re stupid. Even with this awareness they couldn’t say anything useful, but they might have the wisdom to keep their braindead ramblings to themselves.