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Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#121

Post by MR4D »

oppositelock wrote: post #4

I've met plenty of incredibly intelligent people in my life, and very few mentioned Mensa. Those who did had a yearning for being recognized as smart or exceptional. Perhaps using Mensa membership to draw inferences about smart people in general isn't statistically applicable. It could be that people who want to be recognized as smart have those mental issues, which other smart people don't.

If I had a choice between having a reputation as being very smart or having a reputation as very hard working, I’d choose the latter.

25 years in the working world have utterly convinced me that being hard working is a much higher contribution to civilization than being super smart.

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#122

Post by DoreenMichele »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #119
DoreenMichele wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mensa does not actually base membership exclusively on IQ tests, so your assertion doesn't accurately reflect the content of the study. There are other ways to get into Mensa, such as submitting your SAT scores. I was coached in gifted classes on how to take the SAT. Is it any wonder I did better than average? Should we not expect kids with training in test taking to perform better than those without, generally speak…

The article begins by labeling standardized tests of intelligence as IQ tests, I was following that definition. The correlation is between people who do well on the tests and disorders. It could be that more preparation for the tests, the SAT classes for example, leads to both of these results. Auras have no repeatable way of being measured. IQ tests show something, even if labeling that intelligence is wrong.

Auras have no repeatable way of being measured. IQ tests show something, even if labeling that intelligence is wrong.

There are people who claim to see auras. How is this different from people trained in administering IQ tests? The average person is just taking the word of some test taker that it means thus and such.

At some point, you simply have to trust the person telling you something. Even when people use machines -- and IQ tests are not measurable by machines like MRIs -- the person has to read the output. How do we know they weren't high on LSD that day?

I mean, this is veering into territory of "Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly," * but I am being sincere here. I intend to step away from this particular thread because I don't think people think I am posting in good faith, or being sincere. So there is probably no good that can come from trying to further engage in discussion of a matter that I have thought a lot about and think is a serious issue.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi_(book)

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#123

Post by tigershark »

MR4D wrote: post #121
oppositelock wrote: post #4

I've met plenty of incredibly intelligent people in my life, and very few mentioned Mensa. Those who did had a yearning for being recognized as smart or exceptional. Perhaps using Mensa membership to draw inferences about smart people in general isn't statistically applicable. It could be that people who want to be recognized as smart have those mental issues, which other smart people don't.

If I had a choice between having a reputation as being very smart or having a reputation as very hard working, I’d choose the latter. 25 years in the working world have utterly convinced me that being hard working is a much higher contribution to civilization than being super smart.

I don't think so. A single super smart person has a far far bigger impact on society than billions of hard working people. Our society would still be surviving by hunting if it wasn't for the smart people. Seriously, I never thought that I would read something like this on HN...

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#124

Post by DoreenMichele »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #120
DoreenMichele wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that most IQ tests do not go all that high. It is quite challenging to get an accurate IQ score above a certain range. It requires not only the right assessment tools -- ie tests -- but a trained professional administering it. Gifted kids mess with test administrators all the time, sometimes intentionally so. (Plus, to get a super high score, you need to test the child by about age 7. After that age, w…

If the test administered to Feynman only went to 130, as some do, then a test score anywhere close to that, such as 125, can be assumed to have "ceilinged the test." It can be viewed as a floor for the person's IQ, a minimum score suggesting it is at least that high. Thus, Stephen Hsu's assertion that it must have just been a bad test with a low ceiling suggests to me that Mr. Hsu knows a great deal less about IQ tes…

TLDR: Stephen Hsu and I are coming from very different mental models. His mental model asserts that it is very, very important that we keep promoting this elitist intellectual stuff. Note how he has fancy degrees and is important enough to get interviewed, while I remain some big fat nobody, having walked away from my National Merit Scholarship and done the full time homemaker thing for a lot of years, in part because I could not stomach the toxic environment involved in being One Of The Smart Kids (that all the teachers trained everyone else to hate).

I elaborated some on my mental model in this paragraph:

Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge, good scores in kids strongly correlate to kids coming from upper middle class families with well educated parents, etc. So I think there is quite a lot of room for saying that if you take any child and feed them excellently well, dote on them, invest a lot of parental and societal time, effort and other resources in them, they will tend to perform better than average, both on IQ tests and in life generally.

Part of what I am arguing is that we make up a measurement that validates that our "best" people -- like well educated, well heeled white males -- are best because they have this innate quality called high IQ and then we channel the "smart kids" from "good homes" into classes that cause them to test well.

The mental model that some kids are inherently more deserving of investment at school because they are smarter and do better than other kids winds up being self-fulfilling prophesy. Sort of like redlining of Black neighborhoods was self-fulfilling prophesy, causing Blacks to remain poor and their neighborhoods to remain not worth investing in by banks.

So, hopefully that clarifies it for you because I already said I am stepping away from this discussion.

Adieu.

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#125

Post by [deleted] »

mikestew wrote: post #117
nzjrs wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a smart person you sure missed my point. You could have just conceded that you jumped too far from too few data, but whatever.

Perhaps your point was poorly made such that even a smart person couldn’t figure it out.

[deleted]

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#126

Post by WillPostForFood »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #124
WillPostForFood wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the test administered to Feynman only went to 130, as some do, then a test score anywhere close to that, such as 125, can be assumed to have "ceilinged the test." It can be viewed as a floor for the person's IQ, a minimum score suggesting it is at least that high. Thus, Stephen Hsu's assertion that it must have just been a bad test with a low ceiling suggests to me that Mr. Hsu knows a great deal less about IQ tes…

TLDR: Stephen Hsu and I are coming from very different mental models. His mental model asserts that it is very, very important that we keep promoting this elitist intellectual stuff. Note how he has fancy degrees and is important enough to get interviewed, while I remain some big fat nobody, having walked away from my National Merit Scholarship and done the full time homemaker thing for a lot of years, in part becaus…

Your greater disagreement with Hsu seems to be clouding your view on narrow point that you actually agree with him on.

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#127

Post by gleb »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #114
Recursing wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a source for that?

There's really no need; that's exactly what you would expect to see in a thresholded population ("elite players").

Please elaborate

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#128

Post by DoreenMichele »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #126
DoreenMichele wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TLDR: Stephen Hsu and I are coming from very different mental models. His mental model asserts that it is very, very important that we keep promoting this elitist intellectual stuff. Note how he has fancy degrees and is important enough to get interviewed, while I remain some big fat nobody, having walked away from my National Merit Scholarship and done the full time homemaker thing for a lot of years, in part becaus…

Your greater disagreement with Hsu seems to be clouding your view on narrow point that you actually agree with him on.

That feels to me a little like someone telling me "We both agree that this person is currently a slave, so let's not allow your heartfelt belief that slavery is immoral interfere with our use of this slave. Moving on."

And I imagine I will regret saying that, but I can't see letting that stand and saying nothing.

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#129

Post by bthornbury »

IQ != intelligence

again...

IQ != intelligence

Reading through the comments I feel this needs to be expounded on. IQ is a barely useful metric in predicting achievement or success.

IMO thought structures and habits of thinking can be much more applicable in reality than a high IQ, leading to higher "intelligence" despite low IQ. See: Richard Feynman, idiosyncratic thinking (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr8sVailoLw)

Re: Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests

#130

Post by Banthum »

fileeditview wrote: post #88
DoreenMichele wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Richard Feynman, one of the most respected geniuses of our era, tested as only having an IQ of 125. IQ tests are far from perfect, to say the least. This means our concept of IQ is likely inherently flawed. Feynman seemed to take glee in sharing his "low" IQ of only a 125. He was one of the smartest men on the planet in the last 100 years. Surely, we should defer to his opinion that the concept IQ is sort of a joke.…

It always struck me as crazy to represent all that is intelligence in one number. Also AFAIK many things such as "social intelligence" are not tested at all. I always smile at people putting that much weight into IQ numbers..

The crazy thing you think people are doing is not actually being done.

IQ is not intended to represent 'all that intelligence is'. It is simply one way to measure a cross section of particular capacities that are valuable in a modern society and are easy to test.

E.g It doesn't attempt to measure the ability to track an animal, or remember the face of a person you met once last year.

This test is of interest because it is strongly predictive of other things we do care about, like educational attainment, criminal behavior, economic outcomes, etc.

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