Who Makes Up The Majority of Non Voters? POLL

[Fionalein]

I'm not saying that I agree with it, but either smarter voters aren't voting, or they are getting kept from voting - or else they are not all that smart, or they wouldn't vote for things like Brexit or Twitler.

Oh being smart but plain evil sounds like a good enough justification to vote against the interests of the masses to me.

 

[Kalel]

smart people are not going to waste thier time educating themselves when they can be doing something more interesting or useful.

these don't exercise their right to vote cause believe it doesn't matter..its going to get manipulated, twisted until the desired candidate wins... time is precious ...they don't belive they have control over it and just suck it up and roll with the punches. Got to invent the next trend...

 

[Jolene Benoir]

I don't know about the smart correlation. Plenty of smart people vote in an incredibly stupid manner. Appeals to emotional topics such as abortion, innate racism, American exceptionalism and yes, cult worship all can play a part in which whatever brains they have go right down the toilet.

Educational level isn't even necessarily an indicator. Look at Trump, college educated and dumb as a box of rocks. It's largely because he believes himself to be the most intelligent person in the world, and therefore his mind is closed to learning, but it still stands that he attended university and apparently got absolutely nothing out of it, having probably had others do all of the work as indicated by having someone take his SAT to even get in.

Both smart and college educated people are voting for him despite, if they have any knowledge of history, seeing the telltale signs of a very sick mind with dictatorial aspirations.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

If we roll this discussion back to the original question of this thread, people who are apolitical are also likely to have lower education levels and income levels than people who are politically active, so there is more evidence than JUST IQ that they are less intelligent on average.

I think the idea that taking a test could prove you're not as smart as you think terrifies people. This results in an incredibly strong bias against IQ tests and causes people to want to believe that the science behind it is a lot less mature than it is. There are vast bodies of research digging into the questions you raised. I encourage you to dig through the literature on your own even if you want to disregard what this random person on the internet says. A lot of peer reviewed literature on psychology (not just pop psychology articles) either builds on or references IQ. It's widely used in the scientific community. 77



Pattern recognition. Old fashioned IQ tests looked for a lot of weird things, but modern "culture neutral" tests focus on pattern recognition logic problems. I don't really think of IQ tests as the end all, be all intelligence tests, I just think of them as pattern recognition tests. Pattern recognition isn't the only meaningful cognitive skill you can have, but it's certainly not nothing. So much of how humans learn is thought to be based in our ability to recognize patterns. There is very little evidence that a super high IQ makes you special, but there is very good evidence that being really bad at pattern recognition seems to inhibit learning and indicate disability.

For example, the US military won't let people in below 85. On two occasions they tried to test of people down to 80 could make good soldiers but found they seemed to struggle a lot with basic tasks. Similar civilian research found that people below 87 seem to have a lot of trouble holding down a job.

I don't claim to be an expert on cognitive psychology, it's not what my degrees are in. I have friends that could explain this better than I can, but I think it's very anti intellectual and bias to dismiss IQ as a "statistical construct".

I'm going by my distant recollection of Stephen Jay Gould's critique of IQ in The Mismeasure of Man, which I must re-read, though I certainly remember finding it highly persuasive at the time.

As to the original statement, though, to which I took some exception,

If we roll this discussion back to the original question of this thread, people who are apolitical are also likely to have lower education levels and income levels than people who are politically active, so there is more evidence than JUST IQ that they are less intelligent on average.

What do you say is the connection between, on the one hand, lower education levels and income levels and, on the other, a lack of intelligence, as opposed to, for example, the social and economic status of people's parents, or their race, or their gender?

ETA: This is in some ways germane

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

I'm not saying that I agree with it, but either smarter voters aren't voting, or they are getting kept from voting - or else they are not all that smart, or they wouldn't vote for things like Brexit or Twitler.

Politics are -relative-. The best choice for me may be the worst choice for someone else. It comes down to platform issues and ballot iniatives and how they impact taxes, commerce, living conditions, opportunities, education and more.

Unfortunately, politics are also more tribal than rational, so whatever percentage of sane, diligent, informed voters there is, I suspect they end up being marginalized by the "Politics is just another sport, and I'll support the team that most of my friends like" sheep.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Sometimes the worst choice for you is the worst choice for everyone. Like Brexit.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

I'm going by my distant recollection of Stephen Jay Gould's critique of IQ in The Mismeasure of Man, which I must re-read, though I certainly remember finding it highly persuasive at the time.

I take issue with the shear age of that book. What I read about it seems to suggest it spends a lot of time refuting ancient history. A criticism of the book in the page you linked was that 71% of the references in the book preceded 1950. I'm not sure it really addresses modern scientific understanding of cognitive ability at all, but let me know if you think this is untrue.

A lot of the criticisms I've encountered of IQ also seem to dwell on very obsolete incarnations of it.

As to the original statement, though, to which I took some exception,


What do you say is the connection between, on the one hand, lower education levels and income levels and, on the other, a lack of intelligence, as opposed to, for example, the social and economic status of people's parents, or their race, or their gender?

I'm not sure we are having the same discussion here. I simply said that apolitical people were less intelligent on average. Bringing up that there are other factors, exceptions etc doesn't really refute my statement. I was very careful not to phrase it as an absolute.

Your question is very open ended and a full answer would take some time. We do know that poor access to education and hardships early in life can speed up the cognitive decline we all will go through. I also certainly don't believe intelligence is the only factor that shapes people politically.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I take issue with the shear age of that book. What I read about it seems to suggest it spends a lot of time refuting ancient history. A criticism of the book in the page you linked was that 71% of the references in the book preceded 1950. I'm not sure it really addresses modern scientific understanding of cognitive ability at all, but let me know if you think this is untrue.

A lot of the criticisms I've encountered of IQ also seem to dwell on very obsolete incarnations of it.



I'm not sure we are having the same discussion here. I simply said that apolitical people were less intelligent on average. Bringing up that there are other factors, exceptions etc doesn't really refute my statement. I was very careful not to phrase it as an absolute.

Your question is very open ended and a full answer would take some time. We do know that poor access to education and hardships early in life can speed up the cognitive decline we all will go through. I also certainly don't believe intelligence is the only factor that shapes people politically.

The basis of Gould's argument is an attack on the concept of the g factor, which was developed by the English psychologist Charles Spearman over 100 years ago, which perhaps explains why so many of the studies with which he takes issue are so old. Regardless of whether or not Gould's attack on the concept is valid or not, what do you say that IQ tests purport to measure if not the g factor, and what would you call the g factor other than a statistical construct?

And I certainly don't believe that intelligence is the only, or even a particularly significant, factor in determining people's income or employment status, which is why I take issue with this proposition:

people who are apolitical are also likely to have lower education levels and income levels than people who are politically active, so there is more evidence than JUST IQ that they are less intelligent on average.

We know that, whatever effect IQ may have on people's education levels and income levels, other factors certainly play a part, too -- we know that, along with other factors, which part of the country they live in, their age, state of health, their gender, and their race all play a role in determining people's levels of education and their income levels.

So why do you take the likelihood that people's lower education levels and income as evidence of their intelligence, or lack of it, as opposed to any other factors?

Have you considered, for example, the possibility that someone struggling to make ends meet through a series of dead-end jobs probably doesn't see much point in bothering about politics too much, since she probably has much more immediate concerns to worry about?

 

[Anya Ristow]

Don't know if this has been mentioned...

An examination of the 2016 electorate, based on validated voters | Pew Research Center

One of the biggest challenges facing those who seek to understand U.S. elections is establishing an accurate portrait of the American electorate and the choices made by different kinds of…

www.pewresearch.org

Non-voters are younger, less white, less educated, less wealthy than voters.

 

[GoblinCampFollower]

The basis of Gould's argument is an attack on the concept of the g factor, which was developed by the English psychologist Charles Spearman over 100 years ago, which perhaps explains why so many of the studies with which he takes issue are so old. Regardless of whether or not Gould's attack on the concept is valid or not, what do you say that IQ tests purport to measure if not the g factor, and what would you call the g factor other than a statistical construct?

Essentially all of empirical science could be dismissed as "statistical constructs" so this is a very anti intellectual angle to take.

And I've already answered this question. I frankly think you're a smart person who just doesn't want to understand IQ for philosophical/aesthetic reasons. As I stated above, the idea that taking a test could lend powerful evidence that someone's not as smart as they thought terrifies people, so this creates a very powerful bias against IQ, though it is taken very seriously within the scientific community. The modern scientific consensus around intelligence testing continued to develop enormously after Gould's book and even more so after his outdated sources.

Have you considered, for example, the possibility that someone struggling to make ends meet through a series of dead-end jobs probably doesn't see much point in bothering about politics too much, since she probably has much more immediate concerns to worry about?

I've already addressed this. I've already said there are lots of reasons a smart person might be apolitical. I was only talking about broad averages. Exceptions do not refute an average. At this point, I feel like I'm talking to a wall. I think you don't want to understand intelligence testing, so I can't make you understand it.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Essentially all of empirical science could be dismissed as "statistical constructs" so this is a very anti intellectual angle to take.

And I've already answered this question. I frankly think you're a smart person who just doesn't want to understand IQ for philosophical/aesthetic reasons. As I stated above, the idea that taking a test could lend powerful evidence that someone's not as smart as they thought terrifies people, so this creates a very powerful bias against IQ, though it is taken very seriously within the scientific community. The modern scientific consensus around intelligence testing continued to develop enormously after Gould's book and even more so after his outdated sources.



I've already addressed this. I've already said there are lots of reasons a smart person might be apolitical. I was only talking about broad averages. Exceptions do not refute an average. At this point, I feel like I'm talking to a wall. I think you don't want to understand intelligence testing, so I can't make you understand it.

We're at cross purposes, I think. I said that IQ is a statistical construct because the g factor is said to demonstrate a correlation between what, at first sight, appear to be different skills -- pattern recognition, logical reasoning, mathematical ability and so on. It's not something that can be measured directly.

If a correlation isn't a statistical construct, what on earth is it?

And the reason I question your statement

people who are apolitical are also likely to have lower education levels and income levels than people who are politically active, so there is more evidence than JUST IQ that they are less intelligent on average.

isn't to do with my views on IQ particularly, but to do with my understanding of causality and simple logic.

We know there are several different reasons some people might have lower educational and income levels than have others -- there are multiple possible causes, either individually or in combination, are there not? Intelligence might be one of them, but certainly the quality of the schools someone attends will have an effect on their eventual educational attainment, as will their family background and material circumstances, social expectations and structural racism.

So I don't see how the fact members of one group enjoy "lower educational levels and income levels" than do another can be safely taken as indicating anything about the intelligence of members of this group, be they non-voters, people living in one part of the country rather than another, or members of particular ethnic groups.

Why identify lack of intelligence as a reason for something when clearly there are potentially several, possibly interrelated, causes for the same phenomenon? That seems to me a profoundly flawed way of analysing anything at all complex.