Jordan Peterson - Controversial Facts about IQ
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters use it as supporting material in arguments about IQ and the g-factor view of intelligence.
What it is
A clip of psychologist Jordan Peterson lecturing on intelligence and IQ, covering how it is defined and its correlation with academic and work success.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2017 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends lucio · 2017-12 · on “Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests”
>Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge Raven Progressive Matrices, I believe the most used IQ test today is not influenced by cultural knowledge. IQ has an amazingly high correlation with academic success and work success, see [this video] it is worthwhile
Recommends akira2501 · 2019-01 · on “IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle”
> but "intelligence" less so I don't think there's any problem measuring intelligence, where we've traditionally run into issues is where we start to make policy or social decisions using this data without understanding it's subtleties. I think Jordan B Peterson has a good classroom video segment[1] on this problem. [1]: [this video]
Recommends zahlman · 2024-09 · on “The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out”
The link demonstrates that there is a well-reproduced phenomenon in real science whereby, e.g., test scores in various academic subjects correlate positively with each other, and that this can be explained by a common psychometric factor that is reasonable to refer to as "intelligence". The IQ or "intelligence quotient" is an attempt to quantify that which is known to exist, and it's actually one of the best understood ideas in the science of the brain. Additional viewing that largely covers my points below: [this video] You started off saying: > There a lot of pseudoscience around IQ too, probably starting with the very concept of IQ for measuring "intelligence" (for which we would need a strong
Cites ninetyninenine · 2025-04 · on “America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back”
>I didn't say anything about the validity of IQ. I said that Richard Lynn's numbers, which this site cites, are fraudulent. "IIT 2024" appears to be results from a website survey. You said IQ by country doesn't exist. And i said, IQ is so pervasive it fucking does. You also referenced something completely off topic. Some random book claiming that because that random book is invalid the whole concept of IQ by country doesn't exist which is absolutely wrong. >Respectfully, I think it's you that needs to do a bit more reading. I might be wrong about any of this stuff; I'm not an expert. But I'm pretty sure the first Google search result you find for "IQ by country" isn't going to rebut me effec