• S&T Forum Guidelines
  • S&T Moderators: VerbalTruist | Skorpio | alasdairm

Psychology IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

Opi_Kid_Rock said:
Why is it that someone would deny the existence of other types of intelligences like musical, language, emotional, kinetic, social? I don’t remember specifically the types.
Click to expand...

Howard Gardner listed 9 types in his book but that's a 40 year old concept that's become known in the popular media.
  • Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
  • Linguistic Intelligence
  • Interpersonal Intelligence
  • Intrapersonal Intelligence
  • Musical Intelligence
  • Visual-Spatial Intelligence
  • Bodily-Kinaesthetic Intelligence
  • Naturalist Intelligence
  • Existential Intelligence
I'm not convinced it's an accurate range. MAYBE someone could map those onto Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

I think being able to contemplate questions to which their might NOT be an answer isn't useful for survival thus I suppose it could be placed in the Self-Actualization region )as an example).
 
AlsoTapered said:
Howard Gardner listed 9 types in his book but that's a 40 year old concept that's become known in the popular media.
  • Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
  • Linguistic Intelligence
  • Interpersonal Intelligence
  • Intrapersonal Intelligence
  • Musical Intelligence
  • Visual-Spatial Intelligence
  • Bodily-Kinaesthetic Intelligence
  • Naturalist Intelligence
  • Existential Intelligence
I'm not convinced it's an accurate range. MAYBE someone could map those onto Maslow's hierarchy of needs?

I think being able to contemplate questions to which their might NOT be an answer isn't useful for survival thus I suppose it could be placed in the Self-Actualization region )as an example).
Click to expand...

I see this quite a bit in my work - most of the folks I work with are homeless and live in significant poverty. They are simply not focusing on higher-level needs because self-actualization does little for day to day survival, but they are often more adept at some foundational needs than high-resource individuals. My best guess is that some of these intellectual factors are refined during the first 20-30 years of life, as our personalities shape and are further defined by the connections between old brain and the frontal cortex.

Maslows needs: Biological survival (and species survival), role needs, social needs, esteem needs, spiritual needs. I don't know that there's a direct correlation between Gardner's map since they are looking at human attributes vs. Maslow's map of how humans negotiate the experience of living, living within a society, and dealing with the external and internal interplay that occurs.
 
I meant more that those supposed classes of intelligence might be aids to raising an individuals place in MHoN.

I do appreciate that capitalism being what it is, poverty and homelessness are traps, The homeless don't vote so few people care about solving the political problem.

It was interesting that during COVID lockdown, local councils were legally required to place every homeless person into temporary accommodation without exception and it happened. We were able to arrange for those with medical problems to see a doctor and those struggling with drug and alcohol problems to see an appropriate drug agency.

My wife does outreach work for the homeless and I organize temporary accommodation. We still lose a lot of people.

Just because we can't always win doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try.

We noted certain common themes. People who had been brought up in children's homes, ex-servicemen, the disabled and people who were suffering from significant mental health issues and and as a result, dual diagnosis i.e. a mental health issue combined with drug and/or alcohol dependence; self-medication.
 
GEo1r5kWoAA0LW2


GEo3EWyWEAAX1P6


The results showed that undergraduates’ IQs have steadily fallen from roughly 119 to a mean of 102 today — just slightly above the population average of 100. In short, undergraduates are now no more intelligent on average than members of the general population
Click to expand...


www.frontiersin.org

Meta-analysis: On average, undergraduate students' intelligence is merely average

Background. According to a widespread belief, the average IQ of university students is 115 to 130 IQ points, that is, substantially higher than the average IQ of the general population (M = 100, SD =15). We traced the origin of this belief to obsolete intelligence data collected in 1940s and...
www.frontiersin.org www.frontiersin.org
 
Intellligence comes from stability, lack of constant stress, good homelife, good upbringing, good education, being with the right crowd, being financially successful (or at least getting there). That's intelligence. IQ means nothing unless it can be of some benefit to you.

Elsewise, it's only something that you can use for academic purposes, which works fine for some people, but for most of us, we want to get somewhere in life, and you not going to have a high IQ for too long if you are subjected to chronic stress, unemployment, poverty, abuse, and health problems that cause anxiety (see stress).

So yes, it is a pseudoscience. Whether it's a swindle is another thing. It's true, because it's based on intelligence and offers a good idea of the solving ability of the person, but I don't care bright I am, if I can't get anywhere in society then I'm fucking useless. That's the point, yeah?
 
brain2_x600.jpg


IQ inheritance: By comparing the brain scans of twins, scientists discovered that the quality of the fatty tissue that insulates neural wires is largely inherited. The parietal lobe, which is involved in logic and mathematics, is 85 percent genetically determined, whereas the visual cortex is about 76 percent, and the temporal lobe, which is involved in learning and memory, is only 45 percent genetically determined
Click to expand...

Brain Images Reveal the Secret to Higher IQ

The integrity of neural wiring is a big factor in determining intelligence. It’s also inheritable.
www.technologyreview.com www.technologyreview.com
 
Thing is: you have to measure mental capabilities in some way.

If someone knows a better way, they should do that, instead of writing a long-ass article about how terrible the current system is. It's in no way perfect, and I find it leaves out emotional and social intelligence, but it's a point to start. Could someone with a 2 digit IQ build a nuclear powerplant even with instructions? Probably not, and we can say that with a lot of certainty.

So it does something right.

It sure as fuck cannot measure how wise we are, or how emotionally intelligent. That's why usually, the people scoring very high on these tests often feel and behave like the stupidest person alive in social situations, as a lot of them if not most are on the spectrum.

But it definitely says something about our ability to combine, improvise, think logically, and so on.

All science is pseudo-science until it works. Look at gravity, Newton discovered it. Did he know what it was? No. Did he know what caused it? Fuck no. Did he calculate with it? All day long! Hell we STILL don't know WHY massive objects cause gravity, we just know they do. We can even say how big the gravity and time-dilation is on any planet we find. We just have no clue why it happens, or why gravity and time have such a strong relation to each other.

Neither do we fully understand the brain. And as long as we don't fully understand human intelligence and all its facets, we will never have perfect measurement tests for our mental capabilities. At least we can say someone with a high IQ will function well in a logic-based job, and someone with a low IQ won't.
 
December Flower said:
Thing is: you have to measure mental capabilities in some way.
Click to expand...
Do you really though?

We have all sorts of cognitive tests which are more than enough to show an individual's capability in various mental tasks.

Why are we boiling it down to a single number? Seems pretty arbitrary. Like a videogame score. I don't think any decent psychologist would administer an IQ test these days.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top