• Philosophy and Spirituality
    Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Threads of Note Socialize
  • P&S Moderators: JackARoe | Cheshire_Kat

Are IQ tests a TRUE measure of "intelligence?"

dada said:
curbe ya impulse to act as tho youve got the nerve to speak on that wich you now nothing about.


So insightful 8(

just...dont talk if you gonna say some dumb shit like that.
 
these tests hold at least some merit.

I mean obviously a retarded person will score a lot less higher than someone who is very capable. I believe IQ tests are used now mainly to recognize genus at a young age and also to see how mentally impaired someone is.

I believe that an IQ of 70 and below classifies someone has mentally handicapped.
 
dada said:
You may not like it but its true

This has nothing to do with me not liking it but its true.

first of all, you posted something that barely even made sense.

Second of all, it aint related to the topic at all.

all i can get from what you were attempting to say, is that i am, somehow, by posting a well thought out topic inspired/sparked by a MSN article, that I am not "curbing my impulse to act as tho I got the nerve to speak on that wich I now nothing about."

So basically, cuz you misunderstood the topic and its relation to the MSN article, and i explained it, now I am talking about somethin i "now" nothing about. Riiiiiiight.

Wow. you quite the sharp-tongued, wiser-than-me philosopher there. thansk for your valued input.
I cant say you got much of a point, or contribution to the discussion, at all.
 
complexPHILOSOPHY said:
Psychology experiments have shown that IQ tests are simply a measure of how well you will do (or have done) in a North American school setting.
Do you have a source for that? I tend to believe highly intelligent people really don't fit in in regular schools.
 
^^but, thats assuming that IQ *IS* intelligence.

Highly intelligent people sometimes DONT fit in in normal schools because the structure, and some thrive off that, but it seems like some of the most intelligent ppl in history were also pretty fuckin eccentric, they tend to go hand in hand, and thats correct, someone who is that far "outside the box" might actually be seen as less intelligent than someone who is the model perfect student who follows the rules and etc. because its easier for people to identify with, its "good."

just as a example, aint saying anything about myself, but......i might have been the smartest kid in my school but if i didnt care about school, hated school, never did homework, and got shitty grades because i just didnt give a shit, people aint gonna see intelligence underneath that, they gonna see a slacker or a dumb kid. when a "intelligent" kid who all they ever really do is study and apply themself like a muthafucka to all that they do, completely devote themself to their schoolwork, and learn everything out of the books by just studying and putting their mind to it....well they might not have as much natural intelligence, but they will be viewed much higher than i would just because they fit in with peoples ideas of how intelligence is showed.

society in general tends to ignore extreme intelligence if it dont fit with their bigger ideas of how a person should act, they focus on the persons weirdness or inability to "just act like everyone else and be normal" as a downfall instead of thinking that hey maybe they act like that because theyre smart enough to not fuckin give a shit what everyone else thinks.
 
>>Do you have a source for that? I tend to believe highly intelligent people really don't fit in in regular schools.>>

The correlation may not hold for very high IQs.

dada: please stop the off-topic banter (or meta-conversation, rather).

ebola
 
Psychologists say there's a strong correlation between the stanford-binet(the common iq test) and performance in school. Particularly history and english.

There is some correlation between iq scores and occupation but it isn't simple enough to generalise.

Till this day psychologist's debate on the definition of intellegence and in reguards to the topic you will need to say what your definition of intellegence is to determine wether or not IQs indicate them.

P.s. i think your just winging coz u got a shit score
 
I recently read "The Bell Curve", a rather controversial book from the mid 90's. The make a number of interesting (and in my opinion, convincing) arguments, drawn from research:

1. Intelligence is very real; people do fundamentally differ in their intellectual capacity.

2. Intelligence strongly influences (but does not outright determine) where you end up in life, whether prison or a CEO's office. Intelligence really does matter.

3. Intelligence is a very broad-ranging advantage. Even for jobs that don't seem to require much mental capacity, smarter people (on average) do better at them. Smarter people don't just make better doctors and lawyers; they even make better dock workers and furniture movers.

4. Genes are the largest single (but not sole) determinant of intelligence: IQ isn't just an artifact of education or socio-economic status, although those factors do influence it.

They've compiled some rather shocking data on the correlations between IQ and income, criminality, welfare dependence, job performance, etc. Swing by the library and pick up a copy of it. It's rather dry academic reading, but if you can slog through it you'll find ideas and statistics that will shock you.


At any rate, a PROPERLY designed and administered IQ test does indeed reflect your intellectual ability, but IQ is not destiny: Low IQ people have achieved great things and very high IQ people have utterly wasted their lives and been a burden on society. So, IQ is real and does matter, but you shouldn't feel like it's an inescapable predictor of your personal future.

Where IQ really gains it's predictive teeth is in dealing with populations. If you take a thousand people with IQs of 85 vs a thousand people with IQs of 115, the average outcomes of both groups will be substantially different. The smarter group will on average marry later in life, have fewer children, get more education, make more money, get in less trouble with the law, etc.


BTW, if somebody tells you they have an IQ of 200, laugh in their face for me. :-) To legitimately earn such a score (ie. not just getting lucky or training yourself to do well on the tests or a flawed test) would require an astoundingly rare intellect. Only about one in a thousand people will legitimately score in the 145-160 (3-4 standard deviations) range; 200 (6-7 SDs) is pushing the absurd.
 
>>BTW, if somebody tells you they have an IQ of 200, laugh in their face for me. :-) To legitimately earn such a score (ie. not just getting lucky or training yourself to do well on the tests or a flawed test) would require an astoundingly rare intellect. Only about one in a thousand people will legitimately score in the 145-160 (3-4 standard deviations) range; 200 (6-7 SDs) is pushing the absurd.>>

Actually, it turns out that the empirical distribution of IQ does not follow a bell-curve. There are more outliers (positive and negative) than we'd expect.
Still, 200? Shit man. . . :)
...
Have you read "Inequality by Design"? It is a refutation of "The Bell Curve" written by a team of professors here at Berkeley. It actually turns out that:
1. The dataset used by Murray and Hernstein was a military aptitude exam, not a proper IQ test. This military exam is severely subject to effects of educational attainment and social class.
2. After accounting for covariance with IQ, parental class, race, and gender have a stronger effect on earnings than performance on an IQ test.

ebola
 
Have you read "Inequality by Design"? It is a refutation of "The Bell Curve" written by a team of professors here at Berkeley. It actually turns out that:
1. The dataset used by Murray and Hernstein was a military aptitude exam, not a proper IQ test. This military exam is severely subject to effects of educational attainment and social class.

The ASVAB derived data was a very small portion of their total working data. The literature references alone span fifty-odd pages; the footnotes another hundred.

Whatever shaped scores on the test, the test itself clearly had a high validity based on its strong positive correlation with training/job performance. Thus, while it would be inappropriate to draw conclusions about innate (genetic) differences from this data alone, it clearly does serve as a valid (if imperfect) measurement of ability.

2. After accounting for covariance with IQ, parental class, race, and gender have a stronger effect on earnings than performance on an IQ test.

Mmm. IQ isn't a valid predictor of income because it's not a major factor after you control for the things it varies with? Well...no. :-) If this is the measure of their logic, the authors are either incompetent or didn't understand The Bell Curve's thesis in the first place.

The authors of The Bell Curve make much the same point; that after controlling for IQ the remaining differences in outcomes correlate to race, socioeconomic background, etc. But what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? I don't see how that's a successful criticism of their larger thesis, which more or less boils down to 'low general intelligence is bad for you and bad for society', nor does it begin to undermine their claim that intelligence has a very strong genetic component.

It's a large work. I don't doubt for a minute it has flaws and shortcomings (and perhaps even outright errors.) But...being able to find some rust on a battleship doesn't mean you've sunk it. It takes rather fantastic intellectual contortions to believe that IQ doesn't really say anything about ability or that IQ is merely an artifact of socioeconomic differences.


For what it's worth, Murray does argue in another work that structural elements of our society have effectively trapped and suppressed an underclass. His work is far more considered and even-handed than the critics tend to give him credit for.
 
^^^
What ebola is asking is..."If a whole slew of sociological factors predict IQ scores, then who cares what IQ scores can predict?"

What if all the stuff in "Bell Curve" is valid, but "IQ" is just a label put on people that just represents something else (such as parental class)?
 
>>
The ASVAB derived data was a very small portion of their total working data. The literature references alone span fifty-odd pages; the footnotes another hundred.>>

Ah! Interesting. So from which measures was the majority of their data drawn?

>>Whatever shaped scores on the test, the test itself clearly had a high validity based on its strong positive correlation with training/job performance. Thus, while it would be inappropriate to draw conclusions about innate (genetic) differences from this data alone, it clearly does serve as a valid (if imperfect) measurement of ability.>>

This sounds sensible enough.

>>Mmm. IQ isn't a valid predictor of income because it's not a major factor after you control for the things it varies with? Well...no. :-) If this is the measure of their logic, the authors are either incompetent or didn't understand The Bell Curve's thesis in the first place.>>

Actually, it's been a year since I read IBD, so I think I got the nitty gritty of their statistical adjustments wrong. I'll have to take another look.

>>nor does it begin to undermine their claim that intelligence has a very strong genetic component.
>>

It does present an alternative explanation for the majority of variation we see in IQ and income (class, race, parental education, number of children, etc. rather than genetics) that is also congruent with the available data.

>>It takes rather fantastic intellectual contortions to believe that IQ doesn't really say anything about ability or that IQ is merely an artifact of socioeconomic differences.>>

IQ isn't a mere artificat of socioeconomic differences...but it does show the profound way in which these differences shape our abilities.

>>For what it's worth, Murray does argue in another work that structural elements of our society have effectively trapped and suppressed an underclass. His work is far more considered and even-handed than the critics tend to give him credit for.>>

Oh, most definitely. He also advocates public health care.

ebola
 
dada said:
P.s. i think your just winging coz u got a shit score

If thats directed at me.....

LMFAO

i never TOOK a damn IQ test. what is your friggin issue?
 
^ care to expand. what are these intelligences? which 3 of 7 does the iq test cover?>

alasdair

Gardner's Theory of multiple intelligences.

Verbal-linguistic - people who have this intelligence are very articulate in speech and writing, they learn well simply from listening.

Logical-mathematical - self-explanatory, people who have this intelligence are good at thinking logically and mathematically.

Visual-spatial - good eye-hand coordination, and can also interpret art well.

Body-kinesthetic - people who have this intelligence know how to manipulate their body movements well. Mostly athletes, dancers and gymnasts possess this intelligence.

Auditory-musical - people who have this intelligence enjoy music more and can usually play one instrument fairly well, they can also manipulate their pitch well if they sing. Musicians, singers, or anyone with a good sense of music.

Interpersonal communication - people who have this intelligence are good with people. Politicians and educators possess this type of intelligence.

Intrapersonal communication - to do with oneself. People who have this intelligence understand philosphy and religion well.

It seems to me that IQ tests only measure the first 2 intelligences.

There are seven types of intelligences, and IQ tests are lucky if they even cover three of them.

This is only a theory, there are other theories out there on intelligence.
 
Top