feelinranty:
necessary-sass:
curlybrownboy:
belindapendragon:
kobetyrant:
HOW IS THIS NOT EVERYWHERE?
Reblogging this good news…again.
y’all know EXACTLY why this isn’t everywhere. don’t pretend to be oblivious
Well let’s spread the word then guys. This kid deserves all the attention.
“Ramarni, what will you do when you grow up?”
“Literally everything.”
So excited when I hear stories like this because imagine what he will accomplish
I have to point out that when you say “y'all know EXACTLY why”, the first thought (and the main one, too) in my head was the following:
Intelligence is a very taboo subject in itself. You don’t see this everywhere because you don’t see ever any postings about intelligence because it can be perceived as elitist, and it is an extremely difficult case for journalism to actually write meaningfully about intelligence which is a highly advanced psychological topic.
It only makes headlines when the person getting a high score strikes a record or is a kid—it’s exciting, and when it comes to news about intelligence, that's very common, not rare at all. This is in no way a sensational piece of news about intelligence, let alone anything new when it comes to combining intelligence with ethnicity. It’s not something that I consider “deserves” a broad readership because it’s really nothing so special. It has a certain coolness factor to it, but it is a known fact that all ethnic groups harbor intelligent people: a kid having a high IQ score is just an easy target for news outlets, but in general, concerning intelligence, this is not news.
Representation matters, of course, and if there are people who don’t know or don’t believe that the characteristics of what we consider intelligence are not in contradiction with ethnics, they ought to be educated. And some people benefit from role models, yes. But in reality, this whole thing about having a high IQ definitely does not automatically translate to success. Most systems of education don’t support smart kids who would perhaps like to progress faster than their peers—or the curriculum. One can’t boast about intelligence or even use it as a leverage in CV because it’s considered rude and selfish meaning that you’ll have to hide that cognitive capacity you have. Intelligent people who naturally and easily identify various patterns and connections sadly often end up battling with psychiatric problems due to the society not being exactly helpful. Sure, he could land on a dream job or become a world-famous mathematician, physicist or a musician, but a single news article is not probably going to do that.
Intelligence is a difficult subject. When it is improperly reduced to “Wow! Look how high IQ this kid has! Let’s compare him to Einstein!”, it’s missing the point, and the readers don’t get any smarter. And, really, intelligence-wise it doesn’t matter that it’s a kid. Intelligence, as tested by Mensa others, is something they assume doesn’t change remarkably through education or aging, so this phenomenon itself, a kid getting a high IQ score, is not remarkable at all. Had he been tested 20 years later, the result would’ve probably been the same—it just wouldn’t have been newsworthy any more, it wouldn’t have been a “discovery”.
It’s very rare for kids being tested for the general intelligence traits anyways, so he just got lucky that he was “discovered”. Hopefully the news is humane and concentrates on something else than just a number—a number that tells us he is statistically 1 out of 18 750 random people (there’s a dire calculation mistake in the article title, which actually downplays greatly his statistical position). What that means is that if you take a city of 2 million inhabitants, there are likely around 107 people (2*10^6/18750) who’ve got the very same IQ value, regardless of things like age, gender and ethnicity. The irrelevance to those traits is built into the way the intelligence quotient is calculated: Most people have 100. 50 % have less and 50 % have more, by definition. The average normalised value of 100 is obtained by simply testing loads of randomly-selected people (meaning that different ages, genders and ethnicities are represented) and seeing how they perform. There it is not surprising at all to find a person with traits <young>+<black>+<male> with a high IQ. The combination of those characteristics simply does not matter.
I hope I don’t come out as too cynical (since I have cynicism), but if I was the executive editor in a big newspaper or media company, I’d be doing a really, really bad job if I made such a huge deal about a kid with a high IQ when I know it’s not really news at all—it’s a scoop, something blown out of context and proportions. If we simply tested a lot more people when they’re still young, we’d have a huge surplus of these young geniuses—of all ethnicities. If we specifically focused on testing young black males, that’s where we’d suddenly find a lot of geniuses simply because we put them to the test. Test any group, and you will find geniuses.
I don’t think we should be making news about things that aren’t news—that’s misleading. It’s not news that a young black boy has a high IQ—that is to be expected by default, so let’s not make him look like an exception. We should instead concentrate on educating people about the topics at hand to get rid of misconceptions. I wish “they”’d actually write an educational piece about intelligence itself, how it’s tested (and based on what assumptions), how the school system can’t handle enthusiastic kids and instead dumbs them down, how practice and training can be used to reach similar goals in specific disciplines, how people with grand aspirations are put down and even hospitalised by archaic work systems and sucky welfare, etc.I got 125 in a recent official IQ test by Mensa, btw. That translates to being in the top 5 %, which is not very remarkable in my opinion. Been battling depression for the last two years. Also, I reserve the right to be personally annoyed about a possible miscalculation in my text since there do exist several IQ testing schemes with slightly different parameters.
Rantity rant rant rant. Off to bed, I guess. #intelligence #IQ #psychology #journalism #normal #distribution
necessary-sass:
curlybrownboy:
belindapendragon:
kobetyrant:
HOW IS THIS NOT EVERYWHERE?
Reblogging this good news…again.
y’all know EXACTLY why this isn’t everywhere. don’t pretend to be oblivious
Well let’s spread the word then guys. This kid deserves all the attention.
“Ramarni, what will you do when you grow up?”
“Literally everything.”
So excited when I hear stories like this because imagine what he will accomplish
I have to point out that when you say “y'all know EXACTLY why”, the first thought (and the main one, too) in my head was the following:
Intelligence is a very taboo subject in itself. You don’t see this everywhere because you don’t see ever any postings about intelligence because it can be perceived as elitist, and it is an extremely difficult case for journalism to actually write meaningfully about intelligence which is a highly advanced psychological topic.
It only makes headlines when the person getting a high score strikes a record or is a kid—it’s exciting, and when it comes to news about intelligence, that's very common, not rare at all. This is in no way a sensational piece of news about intelligence, let alone anything new when it comes to combining intelligence with ethnicity. It’s not something that I consider “deserves” a broad readership because it’s really nothing so special. It has a certain coolness factor to it, but it is a known fact that all ethnic groups harbor intelligent people: a kid having a high IQ score is just an easy target for news outlets, but in general, concerning intelligence, this is not news.
Representation matters, of course, and if there are people who don’t know or don’t believe that the characteristics of what we consider intelligence are not in contradiction with ethnics, they ought to be educated. And some people benefit from role models, yes. But in reality, this whole thing about having a high IQ definitely does not automatically translate to success. Most systems of education don’t support smart kids who would perhaps like to progress faster than their peers—or the curriculum. One can’t boast about intelligence or even use it as a leverage in CV because it’s considered rude and selfish meaning that you’ll have to hide that cognitive capacity you have. Intelligent people who naturally and easily identify various patterns and connections sadly often end up battling with psychiatric problems due to the society not being exactly helpful. Sure, he could land on a dream job or become a world-famous mathematician, physicist or a musician, but a single news article is not probably going to do that.
Intelligence is a difficult subject. When it is improperly reduced to “Wow! Look how high IQ this kid has! Let’s compare him to Einstein!”, it’s missing the point, and the readers don’t get any smarter. And, really, intelligence-wise it doesn’t matter that it’s a kid. Intelligence, as tested by Mensa others, is something they assume doesn’t change remarkably through education or aging, so this phenomenon itself, a kid getting a high IQ score, is not remarkable at all. Had he been tested 20 years later, the result would’ve probably been the same—it just wouldn’t have been newsworthy any more, it wouldn’t have been a “discovery”.
It’s very rare for kids being tested for the general intelligence traits anyways, so he just got lucky that he was “discovered”. Hopefully the news is humane and concentrates on something else than just a number—a number that tells us he is statistically 1 out of 18 750 random people (there’s a dire calculation mistake in the article title, which actually downplays greatly his statistical position). What that means is that if you take a city of 2 million inhabitants, there are likely around 107 people (2*10^6/18750) who’ve got the very same IQ value, regardless of things like age, gender and ethnicity. The irrelevance to those traits is built into the way the intelligence quotient is calculated: Most people have 100. 50 % have less and 50 % have more, by definition. The average normalised value of 100 is obtained by simply testing loads of randomly-selected people (meaning that different ages, genders and ethnicities are represented) and seeing how they perform. There it is not surprising at all to find a person with traits <young>+<black>+<male> with a high IQ. The combination of those characteristics simply does not matter.
I hope I don’t come out as too cynical (since I have cynicism), but if I was the executive editor in a big newspaper or media company, I’d be doing a really, really bad job if I made such a huge deal about a kid with a high IQ when I know it’s not really news at all—it’s a scoop, something blown out of context and proportions. If we simply tested a lot more people when they’re still young, we’d have a huge surplus of these young geniuses—of all ethnicities. If we specifically focused on testing young black males, that’s where we’d suddenly find a lot of geniuses simply because we put them to the test. Test any group, and you will find geniuses.
I don’t think we should be making news about things that aren’t news—that’s misleading. It’s not news that a young black boy has a high IQ—that is to be expected by default, so let’s not make him look like an exception. We should instead concentrate on educating people about the topics at hand to get rid of misconceptions. I wish “they”’d actually write an educational piece about intelligence itself, how it’s tested (and based on what assumptions), how the school system can’t handle enthusiastic kids and instead dumbs them down, how practice and training can be used to reach similar goals in specific disciplines, how people with grand aspirations are put down and even hospitalised by archaic work systems and sucky welfare, etc.I got 125 in a recent official IQ test by Mensa, btw. That translates to being in the top 5 %, which is not very remarkable in my opinion. Been battling depression for the last two years. Also, I reserve the right to be personally annoyed about a possible miscalculation in my text since there do exist several IQ testing schemes with slightly different parameters.
Rantity rant rant rant. Off to bed, I guess. #intelligence #IQ #psychology #journalism #normal #distribution
