IQ Tests relevant?

In AO's IRC channel we were discussing whether IQ tests were a good way of gauging someones intelligence.

I for one don't believe they are. They are, in my opinion, very biased to a certain group. I mean, if we were to give a simple IQ test to some tribe in the rainforest, would they score high? Highly doubtful, they probably wouldn't know what to do with the pencil or pen they were given. Yet many of these tribes have very intelligent people. I remember on the Discovery channel once, there was a tribe building a bridge over a deep canyon river. The bridge was about 50 feet across, they had no tools, and had to make their own rope to tie it all together. In the end the bridge was fantastic and supported up to 10 grown men in the middle of it. Remember, they had no tools at all to do this. So they must have intelligence to accomplish an engineering feat such as this. I myself know many people that would have no clue what to do in this situation. So there is my question. Are IQ tests really a viable test to gauge the worlds intelligence?
x

I think not, for the same reasons as you do. In most IQ test it is about how fast you do things, but if you're just can't think under preasure you're less intelligent

No. They're not. They're totally pointless. They test too much of one kind of thing, usually they're just like maths tests. Intelligence is being able to apply what you know to new situations, not being able to work out the answer to a linear sequence of numbers in a set time.

It has become fashionable for losers to whine that tests are unfair.
It is as useful for ugly women to complain about beauty contests.
:cool:

Tests are stupid. Even the tests they do in schools or colleges. They're useless. They're not a challenge, not of any worth... its just unnecessary paperwork for everyone involved.

Life is the ultimate test

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Originally posted here by rcgreen
It has become fashionable for losers to whine that tests are unfair.
It is as useful for ugly women to complain about beauty contests.
:cool:

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I disagree. Xmaddness scores in the 150-160 range which for most tests is genius/near genius levels.

I also score fairly well on these tests and I believe they are fairly bogus as well. Tho they do measure some ASPECTS they are by no means comprehensive or accurate. And if you really want bogus tests then you have most of the ones on the internet. Bleh

hey! what do u mean ugly women dont like beaty contests! *scratches fat rolls* i love them i like to think that i win at being ugly =) !

I don't think we understand intelligence well enough to test it accurately. I've always thought ot it as an ability to make connections others might not see. How would you test that?

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Originally posted here by RuffRyder
hey! what do u mean ugly women dont like beaty contests! *scratches fat rolls* i love them i like to think that i win at being ugly =) !

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I was hesitant to use the words "ugly" and "women" in the same
sentence, for fear that someone would misunderstand. We all know
that there are no ugly women, only men with an unrealistic
definition of beauty eh?
:cool:

The problem with IQ test is that you’re trying to sum up a person in to a three digit number (two if you didn’t do so well). IQ test are over rated all they do is prove that you’re good at answering questions on IQ tests. People think that just because you have a high IQ that your suppose to accomplish great things. When in fact having a good attitude, common sense and working hard will take you a lot further that some three digit number.

great topic!

most iq tests i've worked with test more than mathmatical logic; there is some degree of abstract logic, grouping, associations, etc. - but i definately agree with the point of evaluations against those of non-modern locale and upbringing...socially the tests are not in a presentable manner to adequately represent the questions intended to those target groups.

tests that have a strong emphasis on time, usually have results that are more 'bell-curvish'. only those that can read, comprehend, analyze, and respond in a short period of time do exceptionally well - which are all qualities related to intellegence but do not reflect well for someone who say is excellent at comprehending and analyzing, but 'slower' in the io portions (which some might even consider a physical property instead of a mental one).

last time i took one of them, i got like ~ a 30.

MENSA is boring, if you want to take the test, sure, but my impression has been that most events consist of "let's get all us smart folk together so we can feel good" and little else :p

IQ tests are a test to see how fast you can solve problems. They should be called speed problem solving tests. To be a true IQ test it would have to measure the capacity to learn and social capacity as well. These things are equaly important as appose to quickly solving anagrams and logic problems that are worded funny.

lol i was joking im not fat or ugly im alright

Most if not al IQ test are designed for what should be general knowledge and what is considered abstract thinking for the time that you are in. I suggest that say a test from 1920 USA taken today would be aced by most people because at the standards of that day general knowledge today would be an exception. Culture, language, customs all play a part at best it is a snap shot of people today. An abstract thought cannot be measure by any means because of the very nature of Abstract. All the smarts in he world do one little goos unless they can be applyed to humanity and to make life better. Smarts are giving back to your community and now days there is this space sort of that abstract 3-d space where hings are real, but they are not. :)

I don't think IQ tests are relevant either. I score around 160, and am only 14. I just don't think it means that much, because I'm not a straight A student, but then again I don't try that hard. Still, no genius here.

Hmmm, So if an IQ isnt a revelant way of gauging someones inteliigence it makes you think 2 things....

1. Then what is? IQ tests have been used for years to test intelligence

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This test was developed by the Institute For Self Improvement
Quoted from here

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And second if IQ tests are pretty much bullshit then what about the so-called smartest people in the world, Stephen Hawking, Einstein, etc. Can you say that because their smartness is based on their IQ that they may not be smart?

(it was 1 AM when I wrote this, so excuse the spelling mistakes)

And how many so-called intelligent people would be able to take care of themselves and keep themselves fed if they had to survive in the woods by themselves for two weeks? Can you really call someone intelligent who doesn't even know how to feed themselves outside a McDonald's? What about musical, artistic, or athletic talent? What about social skills? Our IQ tests have some relevence, but they are far from all-encompassing.

i think there're kind of useless, just a tool to seperate the wheat from the chaff! just because someone lives in the rainforest, desert, or any other part of the world doesn't make them less intelligent then the citizens of the industrialize worlds... how many engineers would it take to contruct a bridge across a canyon without using tools... We are all kind of arrogent in this manner... it doesn't matter when or where we were raised when the spaniards came to mexico in the 1520's and laid eyes on mexico for the first time, or british and german scientist exploring egyptian civilizations...

I give mad respect to the ancient cultures of the world, thier tech is and was far superior to ours, our arrogants won't allow us to see that!

Well, in response to ac1d....

Indeed those people are intelligent and may or may not have scored high on iq tests. But what we are debating is whether the tests given are actually a valid measuring device. I myself think no because they usually do not cover enough area that we associate with intelligence.

Though people like Einstein and Hawking (and Xmadd) may score high, many other people get high scores that they may or may not deserve. One experience that I had at my current company is someone found some iq tests online and quite a few people started taking them and posting their scores.

It seems that I work with quite a few genius level people....far more than there probably should have been (about 50% were genius or above, the other 50% were pretty darn close). Now I know that I do work with some VERY smart people but with the scores we were getting you'd think I was working in an engineering division of NASA.

D'oh....and sort of related but not. To the guys who were having the physics convo in irc, here are the books I was talking about:

Chaos theory - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...966469-9860701

Mars Colonization and Materials Engineering - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...966469-9860701

And one other that is just good - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...966469-9860701

Man, taking an IQ test would insinuate that I know how to read effectively...

After all: hucked 0n f0n1x wUrk3d 4 me

There are many different ways to be intelligent, some people are brilliant mathematicians but have no social skills at all and have no relationships. Some people are great with relationships but never get past algebra in math. Then of course there are the jungle tribes that were mentioned before that probably would die of a heart attack if they saw a modern city but could survive alone on an island until they died of old age. Then of course there are the ones that are more balanced and have

And I agree, tests are stupid and just a waste of time and excuse to give students more paperwork. The only people that get anywhere in life are the ones that give a damn about their future and the future of those who surround them.

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Originally posted here by Rewandythal
No. They're not. They're totally pointless. They test too much of one kind of thing, usually they're just like maths tests. Intelligence is being able to apply what you know to new situations, not being able to work out the answer to a linear sequence of numbers in a set time.

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Shows how many IQ test you've done. ;)

They're often not all about math and similar problems. Intelligence isn't one thing, it's a combination of things. The ability to apply what you know to new situations is one such thing, but so is the ability to reapply new information to existing situations properly, being able to deal with situations well beyond normal, etc., etc..

Provided by errata (I knew she'd have something for this topic)

http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec99/ss4.html

Controversy follows psychological testing

Quantifying intellectual ability has emerged as one of the field's most hotly contested areas.

The concept of intelligence has existed for centuries, but it wasn't until this century that scientists began testing it--and debating the merits of doing so.

Intelligence testing was born of the study of individual differences, developed in the late 19th century. William Stern was perhaps most influential in founding a psychology of individual differences.

In 1897, France's Alfred Binet began work on tests of individual differences, which led him to study "subnormal" children in Paris schools. Several years later, Binet and Paris physician Theodore Simon recommended that an accurate diagnosis of intelligence be established for schoolchildren. The result was the Simon-Binet test of intelligence, which first appeared in 1905 and was revised in 1908.

Binet viewed the test as a tool for selecting students who needed special remedial teaching, not as a measure of absolute innate ability. The test was translated into English for the American audience in 1908 by Henry H. Goddard and gained great popularity.

Several revisions followed, but it was the 1916 revision by Lewis M. Terman in the form we still know as the Stanford-Binet test that would standardize the test. It was William Stern who believed that the test measured innate ability or limitation. These two views lie at the basis of much of the controversy over intelligence tests across this century.

In another significant development in tests, in 1911 William Stern contributed a formulation relating mental age to chronological age with his formulation of Intelligence Quotient. This simple formulation of IQ= MA/CA X 100 gave a number to stand for the performance of the child. This allowed the IQ to be manipulated within statistical tests and to be used for prediction of later performance.

During World War I, testing of military recruits provided the first massive use of psychological tests of intelligence. Robert M. Yerkes became the head of the Psychological Testing Corps during World War I. He and Terman helped develop the Army Alpha and Beta tests, which were used to screen soldiers during the war. Hundreds of psychologists and graduate students in psychology were recruited to administer the tests to recruits. The psychological test would be heavily engrained in American psychology thereafter.

After the war, the first major wave of criticism arose concerning psychological tests. One criticism had to do with the results of the Army test pertaining to race and nationality: The results indicated that southern and eastern Europeans were inferior to northern Europeans and that blacks were inferior to whites.

Carl Brigham's 1923 book "A Study of American Intelligence" supported those negative findings and increased the criticism of all forms of intelligence testing. Some modern critics have charged that the test results prompted restrictive emigration policies in America in 1924 and fanned the flames of racial prejudice against blacks and other minorities.

J. McKeen Cattell of Columbia was a promoter of psychological tests. In 1921, he founded the Psychological Corporation as a nonprofit publisher of psychological tests. It remains a major publisher, though now in the private sector.

David Wechsler developed his tests in response to many of the criticisms of the Binet tests. In 1939, he introduced his Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), the first of a stable of tests still much in use. Since that time there have been many intelligence tests produced, some specifically aimed at reducing cultural and background effects on pencil-and-paper tests.

In 1969, the debate about the inherent versus the environmental bases of intelligence exploded with an article by Arthur Jensen in which he argued for the inheritance of racial differences in intelligence. The last decade of this century has also been caught up in a wave of contention in response to Herrnstein's and Murray's "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life."

In recent years, influential books by R.J. Sternberg and Howard Gardner have supported multiple intelligences over a single global factor in intelligence. That debate is bound to continue.

Further reading:


Fancher, R.E. (1985). The intelligence men: makers of the IQ controversy. New York: Norton.

Minton, H.L. (1988). Lewis M. Terman: Pioneer in psychological testing. New York: New York University Press.

Sokal, M.M. (Ed.). (1987). Psychological testing and American society: 1890-1930. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Wolfe, T.H. (1973). Alfred Binet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

http://encarta.msn.com/column/iqmain.asp

An interesting article on the subject.

Yeah, I agree with cwk9. If you understand the thinking behind IQ test questions, you're bound to do better on them than someone that is potentially smarter, but might not have experience in answering IQ test questions. Same goes for people in Mensa. Sure, some of them might be intelligent, but I know a couple of members who are book smart, but completely clueless in the ways of this world (call them street smarts, common sense, whatever).

I maxed the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) test. No one has ever look at my score except for the Army, and that was more of an aptitude test to see whether I could learn and practice a skill. As they never let me change my job, Infantry, to something in the Information Technology arena the test was a waste of time.

A truer test of my intelligence is my work, and my ability to master the necessary skills most times from scratch. My current job is a combination of Windows NT and 2000 Systems Administrator, Access database administrator, and ColdFusion developer. I was selected because my boss felt I was intelligent enough to teach myself the required skills.

I think if you get a good score on an IQ test it means that you are good at IQ tests. I don't think it's a fair way of testing someones intelligence, in fact I don't beleive there is a way to accuratly guage intelligence.

To me a sign of intelligence would be to actually try and avoid an IQ test. Why would you want to be pigeon holed?

As best I can explain IQ tests are a 2D questions for a 3D world. The test is on paper 2D correct answers designed by whom? Computers are 2D with complex ways to answer one thing Yes or No or On or Off not much magic it On/Off or Yes/No only the data that is asked those questions. World is 3D you move in it has space and volume you solve and issue you must to preserve your life and act within the laws of your culture. Me I am as happy on horse back in the middle of no where as I am in the streets of Manila. How smart am I lets a IQ test writer tag along with me a year or so. 2D questions on paper cannot show how smart someone is in a 3D world at best they IQ tests are an attempt to judge a 3D world in 2D.