Hello, STEEMIT: Let's Talk About IQ
Hi there, my perspicacious followers!
It's @shayne coming at you with another controversial topic.
Let's talk about IQ
An intelligence quotient (IQ) is a total score derived from several standardized tests designed to assess human intelligence.
What an IQ test is designed to identify is what's called the g factor, which is "a variable that summarizes positive correlations among different cognitive tasks, reflecting the fact that an individual's performance on one type of cognitive task tends to be comparable to that person's performance on other kinds of cognitive tasks." [ * ]
An IQ test is designed to asses the variables of cognitive performance which have positive correlations. What this means is that there are certain cognitive tasks which have been found to be predicatively comparable, meaning that if you know the level of performance of one trait you have a good idea of the potential performance of many other traits, and in testing for a general summery of the degree of these correlations, you can come to a general metric of cognitive ability, which is called an IQ score.
I suppose, if this is not super easy to understand, it's possible to analogize g factor with physical athletic ability. If someone can't do a lot of squats, for instance, you could generally assume a positive correlation that they can't do a lot of sit-ups either. and vice versa, if someone can do a lot of squats, you could generally assume they can do more sit-ups than a person who can't do a lot of squats. And assessing ones ability to perform a collection of positively correlated physical tasks will give you a general idea about their physical athletic ability.
IQ has interested me for as long as I've known about it
This shouldn't be very surprising.
I'm a fan of metrics and statistics. And I supposed I've looked at IQ as just another stat to apply to people in the larger RPG of life. And it seems to be a pretty important factor, as we can learn from this discussion between Stephen Hsu and Stefan Molyneux:
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The controversy
Many people take issue with IQ scores because there are some results that are inconvenient to identity politics and the notion of collective social justice.
For instance, the difference of IQ scores between ethnic groups: Ashkenazi Jews score higher than East Asians, who score higher than Europeans, who score higher than Mestizos, etc. Or that women generally score lower than men on IQ scores, but have a longer bell curve, meaning there tend to be more women with an average IQ, whereas men tend to more often be geniuses or imbeciles.
These results don't conflate with the precepts of collectivism or social justice, so it's a touchy issue for a lot of people.
I've never taken an IQ test
Well, that's not entirely true.
I took an online IQ test years ago which I do not trust. It gave me a score of 110, but I think its business model was to flatter the participants into signing up for a membership or something to learn more. Which I didn't do.
So if you know of any good IQ tests online, let me know! If it looks credible I'll make a video of me taking it and post it here for your amusement :D
For the time being I will assume that I have an average score of 100.
What do you think?
This is can be a delicate issue.
Researchers are discovering more and more that IQ is genetically derived, meaning it's less malleable than we thought. While it's true that things like nutrition, environment, and stress during childhood can work to depress a naturally high IQ, there isn't any evidence that these things can boost a naturally low IQ.
The analogy of height is a pretty good one. You can starve someone through development and they won't grow to their max potential height. But you can't just feed someone and expect them to grow taller than their genetics will allow. They'll grow sideways, not up.
Anyway, leave your thoughts in the comments below. And BE NICE!
Mensa has a standardized IQ test you can take. I scored 157. Keep in mind that none of the things on that test help me in life. We also should keep in mind that everyone has their own genius meaning, everyone has something that they do exceptionally well that others would not be able to match.
IQ tests are one small measuring stick. I remember taking IQ tests before I went to college. I scored 148 and 151, taken the first of my senior year and the end of my senior year. I don't know what it means, but there it is. It doesn't measure drive, determination, compassion, empathy nor other things that you need for a full and meaningful life. You realize the value of those attributes later mostly.
I agree, everyone can be genius at something. IQ only measures general intelligence. The ability to perform across a wide range of games. But you can be highly intelligent and accomplish nothing, or of average intelligence and accomplish a ton.
agreed
100% true!
Alright. Not reading any further. Conclusion accepted!
Holy shit! That's like 3 standard deviations above normal!
I might have to check out the Mensa test for that video I was talking about.
While a appreciate the sentiment, I'll have to disagree lol
That is intentionally. They do not want you to have "trained" that test in daily life.
Still sucks because you can train everything. As I described in my answer here: https://steemit.com/science/@lennstar/why-iq-tests-suck-at-testing
Stefan has interviewed many other people on this subject. This is one of the better interviews. As far as being genetic in origin, there is a genetic component, but there is also the 'regression to the mean'. A person who is a super genius is very likely to have children who are not as intelligent as they are, the same with super idiots, they will have children who are not as idiotic.
Also involved are diet, of several previous generations, environmental factors, such as chemical toxic exposure, biological exposure, and physical and mental stress.
With our current surveillance levels, I do not take IQ tests online, though many are available for download. I have found several by torrent search.
After interacting with you and reading your posts, I would say that the test you took was not accurate and I would encourage you to retest if you want a better idea of your capabilities. There is usually a range to be had over several tests, unless you can find one that is expertly administered. I don't like the idea of the control freaks knowing the extent of my capabilities, so I cannot recommend taking public tests.
Between the Dunning-Kruger effect and people's wishful thinking, there have been many attempts at trying to say everyone can get an equal IQ prize if they just try hard. This, sadly, is not the case. It is true that some people are much better at drooling on themselves than others, and that there are some people who can get humans to the moon with a slide rule and a few pieces of paper. If everyone has equal intelligence then how are we to simultaneously explain Leonardo DaVinci, and the current state of the population of any public transit you care to name? Stephen Hsu does a great job of elucidating this.
I've always had a question about the "regression to the mean" thing, because, in part at least, it seems to go against the rules of evolution.
Heritable mutations which are advantageous are supposed to propagate. And ethnic groups formed somehow. So if everything is regressing to the mean then other things don't make a lot of sense. Perhaps I'm applying this regression to too large a grouping, but I've never heard anyone address this in a satisfying way.
Also, there is such a thing as familial traits. Certain families are known for certain abilities. Mozart, for example, didn't just come out of nowhere: he was a genius from a family of skilled craftsmen, artists, and composers. There are many examples of this. It's where the whole idea of nobility comes from.
Hsu actually talks about that in this interview when he describes "strata" within populations. Very interesting and something which I'd like to learn more.
Yes, I would say I'm closer to 100 than 110 lol. I'm thinking that the Mensa test might be the one for me.
My wife had to ask me what I was laughing about when I read that!! HAhaah!
The positive heritable mutations create proliferation of types, while the regression is an inhibitory function. Both are happening at once. Outliers do not always do well. The exceptionally stupid do stupid things and don't survive. The exceptionally brilliant have been, often, driven out of social populations, or burned as witches.
Without trying to blow smoke, I would start guessing at 110 and go up. Go hang out with some Mensa members and you'll see. I think Mensa entry is set at 132 for the Stanford–Binet , and 148 for the Cattell test. some of the lower end are not that apparently bright. If I were forced to bet, I'd say the Dunning-Kruger effect has fooled you into doubting yourself. You may want to test more to find out.
It is likely school gave me one. Yet I have not really taken them either. I have had some concerns with the IQ score most of my life. There was also a British documentary that found that it misses some truly gifted people. I believe in that documentary and experiment they actually ended up coming up with multiple types of IQ. I believe what they came up would be more accurate.
My concern with IQ is that so many of the things it does test you on are things you can be good or bad at with practice. My wife loves to do logic problems. She doesn't test and has no interest in joining Mensa or anything like that, but she loves doing their little brain teaser programs.
She does things like that so often that she internally recognizes the mechanisms and can rip through those quickly. You could call it experiential knowledge.
I've seen many IQ tests and there are a lot of questions that are experiential in my opinion. Meaning how much experience you have dealing with those types of problems will influence how effective you can be at them.
To take your RPG mention and extend it. It is more like IQ is closer to a Class with levels than it is an actual stat/attribute. We all have some levels in that class naturally, but due to the presence of experiential questions people can actually be higher level in it without it being due to some physical/mental stat or attribute.
As with classes in an RPG they are really good at what they do, but they intentionally always have things they cannot do. I find this describes IQ fairly well.
I was in a state competition (Knowledge Bowl) in 1989 (Senior year of H.S.) where they said the average IQ in the room was 120, but I am fairly certain they just made that up.
The things about Knowledge Bowl is it was primarily jeopardy like rote memorization, and quick math skills. On my team I was the one that tended to know the weird not normal things and I'd answer those quickly. There were other team members that way faster in almost every other regard.
Yet I also got to see and work closely with people that'd be considered super high IQ. It was interesting the things they couldn't see. Yet, this was supposedly true of people like Einstein too. Brilliant at some things most people are not as gifted at, and dumb as a rock in other areas.
I think IQ may be giving some fringe ideas, yet I think it has a lot of holes and that some truly gifted people are overlooked when people rely on IQ.
Hi @dwinblood!
My answer is very similar to yours, seen from a different angle! Read here: https://steemit.com/science/@lennstar/why-iq-tests-suck-at-testing
This relates to the point I was making about height. You can train your brain to be as good as it can be, yes, but there's no evidence that shows that you can be trained beyond your natural threshold. Basketball players are tall, for example, but if you're short, putting you on the basketball team isn't going to make you any taller.
Your wife likely just has a high IQ, and those types of problems are interesting to her because they exercise parts of her mind that aren't normally stimulated in everyday life.
This is true. For instance, I mentioned that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest ethnic IQ, and while this is true, it is because they score amazingly well in linguistic and memory, but only average in geo-spacial, so the mean comes out at around 115. Whereas East Asians score much, much higher in geo-spacial than Ashkenazi, but their mean IQ comes out around 105-110. I don't believe that this is evidence against the relevance of IQ scores, however.
Hmm... Have you ever spent a lot of time around low IQ people? It seems like your experience is with incredibly bright folks like yourself, and so you might possibly be operating from a biased position here. I'm not using this as a pejorative, btw.
Thanks for this extensive comment!!
Hard to say. I go out of my way to try to uplift people too, and thus be uplifted myself. Environment, culture, and opportunity can determine such things as well.
If I can recall what that documentary was I was talking about I'll let you know as it was very interesting, and I tend to agree with their findings. They didn't say IQ didn't work. They basically came to the conclusion that there are actually several types of IQ and the tests we use miss some of the others.
The documentary took people that were considered exceptionally gifted in various DIFFERENT fields and applied the IQ test to them and then ran some reality TV style tests against them.
Ahh I believe the documentary was called "Battle of the Brains"
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/battle-brains/
Oh cool! I'll check that out when I have the time. Thanks :D
There are people who have no "left" or "right" word, instead they only have North, South etc.
Means they have to ALWAYS know where which direction is. (Yes, they say "The door is in the northern wall and the sink at the eastern side of the southern room)
Would be interesting how they differ on those subtests.
Which cultures and languages are those?
I'm curious also.
Sorry, I cannot remember. Both were desert tribes. The dice example I have seen in a TV docu about IQ tests several years ago (but it stuck ^^) and the language example in a text a year ago, so I can't remember it.
I have always been of the opinion that people who are good at tests get a great IQ score. This score does not necessarily translate well into real life situations and 'street smarts'. For example there was another boy in my year at high school who was at the top of every class he attended, consistently high exam and test results. He was, they said, destined for great things. I saw him again 5 years after we had left school pushing a broom around a shopping center. His qualifications and test results didn't stand him in good stead.
As to your point about intelligence being genetic, I agree totally. All my children are as smart as their father 😜
I had a friend that took our Knowledge Bowl team in High School to State all four years he was on the team. He is one of those that could likely win jeopardy pretty easily with the sheer amount of rote knowledge he had. Yet he was a science, and math whiz too. He excelled at all his classes. He was a guy that walked into our Trigonometry class forgetting we had a test and aced it and the extra credit. He was usually done with any assignments in that class by the end of the class if we knew about the assignments early enough.
Yet, I was the one coming up with all the weird ideas and things to try. He would do them with me and could think of things that likely would take me awhile to solve if they were tied to normal knowledge. Yet, he wasn't as inspired to do such things. I'd get Cs and Ds in Physics mainly because I was always writing about other ideas in a notebook, whether it was cryptography, robots, programming, etc. My notebook was full of that stuff. Later in life I kind of gave my classes the attention necessary to get through them while I was busy teaching myself other things. Hindsight as far as grades and GPA go, had I focused my life likely would have gone some other path. It wasn't that I couldn't do it. Most of the time I thought it was easy. I just had discovered computers at an early age and I devoted a ton of my mental time to them, even while sitting in say an English class. :p
Anyway, this friend did receive a full ride scholarship to Caltech. We live in Colorado.
He called me once from there talking about Acid (LSD) and such as though I'd be interested. I had friends that did LSD in H.S. I may have been a long haired metal head, but I didn't do drugs, I didn't drink alcohol, etc. I still don't. I figured he knew me well enough to know this, so I was surprised he called me talking about these things. I was actually surprised he called me, as we didn't really hang out outside of School and this was several years after I had last seen him. At least I knew I meant something to him. Though I do remember being concerned.
When I last saw him I wouldn't have been surprised to see some think tank flying him around in a helicopter.
A couple of years after that LSD incident I encountered him at a local grocery store bagging my food. I'd see him in various departments in that store over the years. Life did not go how I thought it would for him. In his case, he is one of those that he likely got into experimenting at drugs at the wrong time. He got into it during a time he probably needed to be most focused.
He went from being someone I thought would be one of the main assets in some think tank, to bagging groceries.
The only positive I saw is he was still smiling and seemed cheerful every time I saw him. So he may have been content. If that is the case then I can at least be happy for him in that way.
I also don't know exactly what he did outside of work. I was a father and had a family by then.
totally agree with you. one's life completely depends on his actions not IQ. Great Post.
From what I've seen, there's a "golden" IQ point that makes you intellectually capable of doing or understanding most things but not so lofty that things like interpersonal relationships are inconsequential. I think they say that it's around 130 IQ, which is, I guess, the range of most people in high leadership positions in the private sector.
Regarding the anecdote of your high-school friend: Yes, I'll bet most of us known people like this. However it doesn't seem to affect the statistical results. In studies with large groups of people over long periods of time, there is a correlation between IQ and economic position.
Lol, I sure hope it isn't! I'd feel bad for my son XD
Now now my good Sir, don't go putting yourself down
😜
Parents of smart children believe in heredity.
That's actually a good joke!
IQ score is another mental masturbation in my opinion.
Or perhaps, let's face it, I am insecure to know the depth of my foolishness.
No to IQ. Now. And in the future.
You go for it @Shayne! :P
I am sure you will do well. If you don't, just in case, then disqualify the entire concept! #asianlogic
Well, if you are indeed Asian I should probably concede to you.
Hi! @shayne
My answer grew so big I had to put it into a whole post. Please read it here:
https://steemit.com/science/@lennstar/why-iq-tests-suck-at-testing
Got'cha
Great post. I agree I believe you are born intelligent" As far as being smart anyone can get smart just by reading a book. I see a big difference in intelligence and smarts.
What's the difference?
I wrote it above! I l Believe your born with intelligence that's the difference. Anyone can get smart, just pick up a few books and start reading you have to put in the effort to get smart.
Thanks for this interesting post. There are so many factors that figure into the intelligence equation that aren't able to be included on the IQ test. I've known some people that graduate from college with the highest marks and they have a hard time navigating life. On the other hand there's the guy or girl that was a student with average marks and they are very successful. To me there's IQ, being smart and the ultimate is the wisdom to employ the first two.
People seem to have a lot of anecdotal examples of IQ not correlating to success. This has been the case with me, also. But then again, I haven't known a lot of objectively successful people (millionaires), but the few I do know do have high IQs.
It's not that IQ makes you successful, but it makes it a lot easier, and people who are successful tend to have high IQs.
Yes. There's a reason behind the etymology of "philosophy"
"Philo" + "Sophia" = the love of wisdom.
I think it's important to consider what traits were valued when the first IQ test was developed. And if you pump someone full of enough Human Growth Hormone at the right ages, they'll gain some height.
Historical context is very important. The test has definitely changed and evolved over the 100 years it's existed. Thanks for pointing that out :D
Is that true???
Yes.
That's what I've heard but here's a study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10021470
Holy crap! It's affecting their height by three and a half inches?? I wonder what the long-term affects are of such a procedure.
What would you think if there was a similar procedure for IQ?
I'd be a little concerned about the long-term impact and how parents might abuse it. It's one thing to bump your kid into a neuro-typical range so they can live independently etc. It's another to take your average child and pump him or her full of brain drugs so you can be a genius's parent.
Ok, so there's a gray area. I wonder what you think about designer babies. What if they could manipulate the genes prenatally so babies have increased IQs?
Have you ever heard about the study that showed CEOs have higher incidences of traits of psychopathy than the general population? As long as we don't fully understand intelligence, the changes we make to enhance it may lead to unforseen consequences like a less empathetic species. I'm not a scientist so I'm willing to accept evidence to the contrary if it's good enough. For now, I think we should tread carefully but I doubt we will. Not if CRISPR/Cas-9 can cure basically everything .
Yes, I've heard that.
I agree with your view that there are unforeseen consequences in tampering with these things.
There would be no point in having a human race of 160 IQ CEOs if they were all psychopaths lol
You have impressed me, btw. Following you.
I once took an IQ test on Facebook and it gave me the results of 118, obviously I don't really feel like I should be rated that high, but then again if it was just comparing IQ's of Facebookers it might be pretty correct. :p
Well, there's also the Dunning–Kruger effect.
I remember that from your intro post. :)