Didn Stephen Jay Gould say, “The chimerical nature of g is the rotten core” of the theory of IQ?
A. That he did. But Gould didn’t understand (or chose not to understand) that the usefulness of IQ doesn’t depend upon whether or not there is a general factor. Say you work in college admissions on a different planet where applicant’s SAT Math and Verbal scores are totally uncorrelated. In this world where there is no g factor, somebody who gets an 800 on the SAT Math test would be just as likely to get a 200 as an 800 on the Verbal test. How different would you behave than your colleagues on earth? Not much. You’d still want the applicants who scored the highest on the combined score (Math plus Verbal), because they’d do best in the widest range of college classes. Of course, back on Earth, there’s a rather high degree of correlation between Math and Verbal scores. The only time you see an 800 on the Math test combined with a 200 on the Verbal test is from somebody who just got off the plane from Seoul.
