Gingerbread Man on 6/10/2006 at 03:52
Quote Posted by Javert4186
personality has "the big 5" which tend to do a good job accounting for most of the variance on which personality can differ. I guess when people make their living and careers studying these things, I wonder how it is you get to proclaim them as "utterly untestable in any meaningful sense"?
Big Five is a descriptive taxonomy and does not pretend to have any usefulness whatsoever as a theoretical construct. It's a model -- and one of many models -- that people hope to derive or base testable theories on.
And when I say "utterly untestable" I mean exactly that. They are not amenable to objective and quantifiable research, and will not be until a cogent theory has been derived from whatever model decides to give one up first. I get to claim this because it's a well-known stumble in current research -- no one in the fields of personality or intelligence believe for a second that they even know how to approach the definitions, never mind the data. The work is all being done on the models and theories in the hope that someting somewhere WILL drop a testable construct.
General Intelligence is useless, even as a descriptive taxonomy. There are interesting precursors to a useful theoretical construct in intelligence research, but they're ultimately of no use to researchers in the state they're in at the moment. Partly because there is no consensus as to terminology, partly due to a massive problem developing research methods that don't rely on flat-out inferrence and subjective report, and partly because there's so much competition and politics involved in the field that no one even shares ideas, let alone data.
Basically, what you've got is very similar to a bunch of blind people who don't speak the same language all working together to try and derive mathematics, even though none of them has a number system. But they all know that this many *** is bigger than this many ** ... they just don't all agree on what "bigger" means. One of them is saying
"** is bigger than **** you assholes" and another is trying to decide between Base 4 and Base 22 as a system (which is tricky because he hasn't yet decided which is bigger, 4 or 22, or even how many things are 4 or 22, but it's okay, he's WORKING ON IT), while a third has decided to look at using relative weight as a measurement, even though numbers (as abstracts) don't actually weigh anything -- but he's sure that if they DID weigh something, some would be heavier than others. Except without a scale he's not exactly sure what heavier means.
Rug Burn Junky on 6/10/2006 at 04:00
Quote Posted by Javert4186
I guess when people make their living and careers studying these things, I wonder how it is you get to proclaim them as "utterly untestable in any meaningful sense"?
Oh that's funny.
He's got you there GBM, what the hell would you know about that when people make their living studying these things?
Turtle on 6/10/2006 at 06:08
Look out GBM, he's bringing science and logics!
theBlackman on 6/10/2006 at 07:25
Quote Posted by Javert4186
[...]I guess when people make their living and careers studying these things, I wonder how it is you get to proclaim them as "utterly untestable in any meaningful sense"?
"People" make thier livings and a career out of many things that don't have finite answers. And in many cases are just presenting one opinion, that has many opposing opinions, all of which are theoretical and unprovable.
Your comment is lacking in real world understanding, and is specious at best.
If you take the time to sort through the many treatise on IQ, its application and "testing" you will find more than one "scale" of measurement and differing views on what it is, how to measure it, and if in fact it can be measured.
Not to mention that the processes and methodology have changed over the years, and will probably continue to do so in our life times. In all that time no solid concensus has occured on the way to measure it, the "scale" to use, a possible structure of such "tests" that cover all societies, creeds, religions and races, and be meaningful in ALL applications.
Agent Monkeysee on 6/10/2006 at 15:48
Quote Posted by Javert4186
Don't start stamping your feet and pouting. How about citing just just one reputable piece of literature to support your claim. That will shut me up.
Unlike GBM I don't actually study this stuff professionally so if you're looking for research papers you won't get them from me. I can throw popular works at you but who knows how reputable you think they are.
But for starters Robert Wright's books on Evolutionary Psychology cite a number of examples and studies. No I'm not giving you chapter and verse. EP has its own set of problems regarding falsifiability and quantifying its claims but in terms of cognitive social functions they seem to be pretty spot on in my estimation. Also Antonio Damasio's books on consciousness touch on the importance of the mental models that are needed in order to navigate complex social hierarchies and the implications for those models in helping to form a sense of self, which is by most people's estimation the most obvious sign of high intelligence. There are a couple others who's names escape me and since I'm not at home and can't find them on Amazon that'll have to do for now.
Ko0K on 6/10/2006 at 16:48
Hey, I know that I'm pointing out the obvious here, but I think thread titles don't mean shit around here.
Mortal Monkey on 6/10/2006 at 16:58
From now on all thread titles should be "The Meaning Behind <s>Your</s> Life, The Universe and Everything" with an appended four-digit sequential number.
The Woodsie Lord on 6/10/2006 at 21:45
For my nickname: Play Thief :P
Javert4186 on 6/10/2006 at 23:55
Quote Posted by Mortal Monkey
From now on all thread titles should be "The Meaning Behind <s>Your</s> Life, The Universe and Everything" with an appended four-digit sequential number.
I've sort of shown you the meaning of my name. My name is from the character in Les Miserables. He is overly commited to an ideal that is (to him) important, much like I am to science and psychology.
Blackman, When people assert "everything is opinion" or "measurements change so they are therefore worthless", THAT is a specious argument. All assertions are not equally consistent with data, some are more supported than others. Gravity is inconsistent with quantum mechanics, they both turn out to be pretty useful nonetheless. Better yet, the theory of evolution has some inconsistencies, but that doesn't put it on equal footing with "intelligent design". With personality, intelligence and other mental measurements, GBM, even with flawed measures we can make psychometric tests that relate to real live outcome variables in consistent, repeatable ways.
By the way, Agent Monkeysee, I just looked up the Robert Wright book, thanks. It looks interesting, though I can't tell what their claims are regarding what we are talking about. I would say back to you to read Animals in Translation by Temple Gradin, that may give you a different take.
