Because the supreme court ruled that it's racist to do so

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.

No they didn't. There's ~basically nothing to this claim. IQ tests are openly used by several of the largest firms in the US. The companies that provide the tests and testing infrastructure brag about it with logo crawls just like every other company.

Why is this myth so pernicious? It comes up a lot here!

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d1sxeyes 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

No, the Supreme Court ruled that you have to have a concrete business reason for implementing a test that is disproportionately likely to favour one ethnic group over another:

> The touchstone is business necessity. If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited.

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Jensson 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Isn't that the same thing? Basically a business that believes hiring is better using IQ is not able to do so since the supreme court ruled that is racist.

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d1sxeyes 3 days ago | parent [-]

No. A business that believes hiring is better using IQ is able to do so if they can show that it has a relation to job performance.

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peterfirefly 2 days ago | parent [-]

The problem is that that is very easy to prove... but really hard to convince a modern judge of.

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tptacek 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

You're all trying to axiomatically derive a result that clearly conflicts with empirical evidence. IQ tests do get used in American hiring; not not that often, because they don't work well for that purpose.

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d1sxeyes 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Can you prove it?

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bofadeez 2 days ago | parent [-]

[dead]

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d1sxeyes 2 days ago | parent [-]

You already posted this. It’s not proof. It’s a meta analysis that suggests that in general cognitive ability might have some role in differences in job performance (maybe up to 25%).

It doesn’t even touch the question of whether IQ tests are good measures of cognitive ability, nor does it only include IQ tests as measures of cognitive ability.

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bofadeez 2 days ago | parent [-]

So you just affirmed "a business that believes hiring is better using IQ is not able to do so since the supreme court ruled that is racist" without realizing it. Not being consistent but it's okay. Great job lol

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hirvi74 2 days ago | parent [-]

Does your IQ score bring you some sense of purpose or identity? Does someone disagreeing with you or asking question cut at the very core of your sense of being?

In this thread, you have been nothing but rude, condescending, and snarky to your fellow YC users. So, what gives?

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bofadeez 2 days ago | parent [-]

I've never taken an IQ test. I just care about intellectual honesty and was responding to someone who called for IQ testing as a prerequisite to posting on this forum. What's the next pivot in the argument?

	▲	d1sxeyes 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That’s fair, I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry.
	▲	hirvi74 a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> What's the next pivot in the argument? That's up to you, homie. Where do you want to take this?

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bofadeez 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

So the NBA is discriminating by using physical tests that require height?

Any kind of skill-based testing is obviously racist. Thanks for teaching me.

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olddustytrail 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The NBA doesn't discriminate by height. They have chosen players that are 5'3" over players who are 6'6".

You're welcome for me educating you.

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bofadeez 3 days ago | parent [-]

Oh you're right, it is very diverse in the NBA in terms of height and race. Not at all dominated by tall guys.

The Duke Power Company had as many black people in management as the NBA has short players.

Your argument is not even internally consistent.

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olddustytrail 2 days ago | parent [-]

That is discriminating by ability not height. It happens to be easier for taller people to have that ability but that's secondary.

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bofadeez 2 days ago | parent [-]

Duke Power Company was discriminating by IQ not race. It just happened to have been easier for white people to pass the IQ test at the time, but that's secondary. You're using the same logic used by Duke power Company's defense team.

	▲	d1sxeyes 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes cannot be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is prohibited. This heavily implies the opposite: > If an employment practice which operates to exclude Negroes CAN be shown to be related to job performance, the practice is NOT prohibited. The problem is you’ve got an indicator that appears to favour white people, and a lack of evidence that the indicator shows anything of relevance to the actual position or job content. Hypothetically, let’s say you were a racist, a nice easy way to do racist things like “disproportionately hire white people” would be to find some metric which disproportionately favours white people, and then evaluate everyone against that. If you can prove it’s important for the job, you can discriminate still. For example, a Chinese restaurant can require knowledge of Mandarin, a metric which very likely favours people of Chinese descent. They just have to be able to explain why (e.g.: internal communication is in Mandarin, most of our customers speak Mandarin, etc).

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d1sxeyes 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

No? The quote specifically says “If [it] cannot be shown to be related to job performance”.

Maybe we should implement IQ testing before people are allowed to post on HN.