this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2022
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[–] DPUGT2@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

I have to wonder about the methodology of such a study. Unintelligent people tend to gravitate towards "lifestyles" that might mean they're in no position to be taking surveys. How many death row inmates were in this survey? How many just in prison? The link talks about phone and online surveys... how many morons have neither? There is reason to suspect that they just happened to talk to more people who were slightly above average than those who were slightly below.

For that matter, I happen to remember a grade card of some sort from an IOWA test back in the 1980s, where I was in the 99th percentile (I specifically remember that word, though at the time I wouldn't have understood its significance). If I were to have taken this survey, how would it be accurate to construe my answers as a "belief"?

Really, for the headline to mean anything at all, you'd somehow have to filter out everyone who didn't know for a fact that they were above average (and if you fail to do so, you're deliberately trying to create clickbait).