I am more railing against the discussion of IQ as the definitive way to measure intelligence. Everyone down thread is arguing "Yes IQ! No IQ! Confounding factors!"
It is as if people argued about someone's GPA in college while not paying attention to the subject's major, study habits, or natural abilities.
There is no single, easy to post about online, number.
Intelligence is not single faceted. Posting and interpreting an entire psych tests worth of numbers is possible, but it is harder to have silly Internet arguments over subtly and nuance around a topic that requires research and education.
The level of discourse talking about "IQ" reaches is the same as discussing a new vehicle by saying it has 300 horse power, and not mentioning if it is front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, or how many wheels the vehicle even has.
Sure if the delta is large enough then it doesn't matter, but there is a serious trees/forest problem that happens with these topics of discussion.
Intelligence is not single-faceted. However the evidence is overwhelming that those facets are far from uncorrelated. If you know that person X is very good with mathematics, you can guess with reasonably high probability that any given other facet of intelligence you may care to name is also likely to be high.
People are diverse and brains are complicated and you can always find someone who is generally very intelligent but can't string three words together in writing, or someone who is generally incredibly stupid but has one particular measure very high ("idiot savant"). But in the general population all the intelligence measures are highly correlated, which means that something like an IQ number can exist and have significant, if not necessarily totally definitive, truth to it.
I feel like the only person confused is you. You're talking about trees (IQ isn't intelligence) when everyone else is talking about the forest (IQ and outcomes).
It is as if people argued about someone's GPA in college while not paying attention to the subject's major, study habits, or natural abilities.