“Heels Up Harris” 💀

        • AllNewTypeFace
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          3 months ago

          IIRC, originally it meant ordinary person (as opposed to one especially educated). Which suggests that it fell onto the euphemism treadmill, and people using it colloquially to mean someone particularly stupid crowded out the formal meaning.

    • yesman@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Yes, IQ was developed in the US so that it could determine who the state needed to sterilize. Don’t worry, we haven’t done that since the 70s. What’s scary is that in American courts, IQ can still determine if you live or die.

      • taiyang@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Slight correction, but IQ was adopted, not developed, by eugenics folks. It’s original purpose in Europe was strictly academic, to determine who might have trouble and need help in schools.

        It’s a metric I don’t really want to defend, but it’s not useless; it does work in predicting traditional academic success. But that’s why we have alternative teaching methods for people with alternate ways of thinking.