Political Memes

I agree, there's a number of problems with conflating IQ as measuring "intelligence". Whether you are looking at the testing or the scores, it's all human construct influenced by cultural, environmental, and educational factors and it's not just the testing that is flawed or incomplete.

It really doesn't take much to admit that we barely understand many of the fields which people assume authority over and hype up. Humanity is in its infancy societally, and IQ takes way too much focus in an educational context and likely results in a huge amount of discrimination and loss of potential of children who test low from a young age (for whatever reason).

The person you are responding is trying to suggest that there meaningful brain differences worthy of study (underdeveloped prefrontal lobe/amygdala differences) in conservatives/MAGA (which is definitely not determined in any meaningful way by existing research), is defining "smart" and "stupid" as what people do (which is just stereotyping behavior from an outside perspective), in a recent exchange with me claims to have a psychology degree and said here that they believe that "people can [...] be bullied into doing the right thing by calling them stupid" (which is definitely not something encouraged in the field and is dehumanizing/reinforces a negative self-image), and so forth.

Suggesting brain differences in the context of people's political leanings (in my mind) is very discriminatory behavior and I don't think many picked up on the gravity of how dangerous and harmful such a suggestion is. What benefit is there to that study? The only reason I can imagine is to support casual claims that promote the idea that if somebody disagrees with you, is less informed, etc. has an "underdeveloped brain" and "amygdala differences". I've really scratched my head here and I can't think of anything desirable resulting from that study or those implications being drawn about MAGA/conservatives. And what comes next? Looking at leftists and finding fault with their brains?

It only focuses on the culture and environment the test is geared towards.

Correct.

IQ is a bad way to measure intelligence

Not correct...

I'm hoping you meant "IQ tests" and not the fundamental concept of IQ tho...

You don't see how fast a fish can climb a tree, but you can time it swimming upstream.

Some stuff like crystalized intelligence (trivial pursuit) need switched out almost constantly. But things like pattern recognition (make this shape from smaller shapes) are so generic that primates and even corvids can take the same test as us. Working memory too, a chimp absolutely demolishes us at that one btw.

The main problem with IQ tests is people pick one specific test, and want to have everyone take it and only care about the overall score. Which is a gross oversimplification of any actual IQ exam.