> IQ, hilariously, is a supposed "biological" attribute, and yet has been shown to be more about one's acculturation into the proctors' cultural memes.
Can you post a source for this? As far as I'm aware, IQ is one of the best understood and well studied metrics in human behavior, and it definitely has a large genetic component.
> IQ is one of the best understood and well studied metrics in human behavior
Not the OP and I don't have any studies at hand, but what I think he/she meant to say was that IQ tests only validate the worldview of said "proctors", which in our case happen to be proctors belonging to a technological society. We don't know if said IQ tests would hold any value in a hunter-gatherer society or in a society based on different things compared to the things that are seen as "smart" by our said technological society (my instinct is that they won't, and as such I agree with OP that IQ tests only serve to validate a certain state of things).
Later edit: Come to think of it the request itself of "show me the studies" represents a point of view specific to a certain "world" (that technological society I mentioned), your request would be null in a society "built" on different epistemic stuff (for example in Roman times one might have asked "show me if this is true based on how that crow flies" [1] etc)
This video about the problems with The Bell Curve (a book about IQ and other things) does a lot to explain a lot of the problems with IQ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBc7qBS1Ujo. The video is well-researched; I've been a long-time fan of the creator for putting out quality stuff.
>and it definitely has a large genetic component
There's a number of studies showing that IQ is "heritable", but this is different from saying it's genetic. The video above (around the 39:00 mark) and https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/ap-psychology/cla... both get into this point. Wearing earrings is highly "heritable" despite being an arbitrary social custom, and having 10 fingers is not "heritable". It's also important to avoid falling into the conclusion that many people take about IQ that it being heritable means that educational efforts to improve it are worthless:
>Think about the relative heights of men in a poor village in an underdeveloped country 100 years ago. The average height for these malnourished men might be 5 feet 2 inches. The heritability in observed heights within this particular society can be quite high; men of tall fathers are on the average considerably taller than men of short fathers. However, this does not mean that a program of improved sanitation and nutrition could not significantly raise the average height of this group in a few generations.
Can you post a source for this? As far as I'm aware, IQ is one of the best understood and well studied metrics in human behavior, and it definitely has a large genetic component.