Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Issac Asimov: What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

talentdevelop.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 62 posts

Re: Issac Asimov: What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

#41

Post by lusr »

monkeypizza wrote: post #12

The problem with this is that we now have totally abstract IQ tests, the invention of which did not break the concept of intelligence as a measurable thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravens_Progressive_Matrices

Interesting definition of "now" ;)

"J. C. Raven first published his Progressive Matrices in the United Kingdom in 1938."

"all entrants to the British armed forces from 1942 onwards took a 20 minute version of the SPM"

edit Just found a copy of and tried the standard test. Very easy once you see what they're testing in each group. Basic pattern matching and boolean shape operations for the most part. Last question was visual arithmetic. According to Wikipedia this only measures the "reasoning" component of Spearman's g. I can honestly admit that my reasoning is pretty questionable, having found myself in numerous questionable situations in my life ;)

Re: Issac Asimov: What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

#42

Post by ominous_prime »

grandalf wrote: post #24

I think this essay makes a good point but largely misses the mark. Much of what the vast majority of people do with their brains is a biproduct of training, and little of it can be attributed to intelligence. In most fields there is some combination of motivation and intelligence necessary for success. It is my view that an IQ of 110-120 is more than sufficient for abundant success in nearly any field. 40% of the pop…

An error that may change your outlook a bit-- only about 16% of the population fall into the 110-120 range (roughly 74th to 90th percentiles)

Re: Issac Asimov: What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

#43

Post by kahawe »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #14
corin_ wrote: post #9

This is the most important lesson my mother ever taught me. I (like her) have that same type of intelligence, the type that makes IQ tests and school exams far easier than they should be, and yet often isn't really that useful in life. I still find myself placing far too much importance in it when judging people, can only imagine how big headed I would be about it if she hadn't constantly reminded me how little IQ re…

I don't understand these meme of degrading IQ as having little real world value. That mentality seems to fly in the face of just about every observation one can make. It seems obvious that in general, smarter people tend to get ahead. Of course there are many counter examples, but overall the trend seems obvious. Why is it everyone must apologize, make excuses for, or somehow downplay their own intelligence? Maybe it…

> I don't understand these meme of degrading IQ as having little real world value

The way I understand it: many people equal IQ test scores directly to real-world success and I would say such a direct causality does not exist. Case in point: Mensa members are CEOs all the way down to broke janitors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International#Demographic...

Re: Issac Asimov: What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

#44

Post by kahawe »

ThomPete wrote: post #7

A friend of mine used to be a welder. I always found his political views simplistic to say the least. He couldn't control his liqueur and one day he felt down from high up and his arm got trashed. I always thought that he was going to end up as a looser, although I love him as a good friend. Years went by and he never really got anywhere, of course supporting my theory and increasing my concern. Then a friend suggest…

Another moral here is: you were seeing him as less clever and less successful because he was "just" a welder.

A skilled craftsman who understands what he is doing, understands a bit of the market and the chances available to him can run circles around any struggling internet startup, if only because the equipment and training needed are typically not as easy to come by as a Rails or AJAX or web handbook.

Re: Issac Asimov: What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

#45

Post by rootbear »

palish wrote: post #39
unwind wrote: post #38

Someone, please fix the spelling in the title, incredibly grating. It's "Isaac".

Who cares, and why? (Honest question.) He certainly doesn't; he's dead. And everyone knows who we're referring to, so there's no ambiguity. Everything seems to indicate "it doesn't matter", and yet apparently it does to some. So why? A nice example of how people are inherently illogical...

Dr. Asimov never liked it when his name was misspelled. My name is common and rarely misspelled, but I think I would feel the same. It's just a matter of respect.

Re: Issac Asimov: What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

#47

Post by ThomPete »

kahawe wrote: post #44
ThomPete wrote: post #7

A friend of mine used to be a welder. I always found his political views simplistic to say the least. He couldn't control his liqueur and one day he felt down from high up and his arm got trashed. I always thought that he was going to end up as a looser, although I love him as a good friend. Years went by and he never really got anywhere, of course supporting my theory and increasing my concern. Then a friend suggest…

Another moral here is: you were seeing him as less clever and less successful because he was "just" a welder. A skilled craftsman who understands what he is doing, understands a bit of the market and the chances available to him can run circles around any struggling internet startup, if only because the equipment and training needed are typically not as easy to come by as a Rails or AJAX or web handbook.

Well my father is a plumber my mother a cleaning lady. So I don't really have those kind of prejudice just because of peoples trades.

It was more some of the other experiences I had with him.

Re: Issac Asimov: What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

#48

Post by Inufu »

kahawe wrote: post #43
hackinthebochs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand these meme of degrading IQ as having little real world value. That mentality seems to fly in the face of just about every observation one can make. It seems obvious that in general, smarter people tend to get ahead. Of course there are many counter examples, but overall the trend seems obvious. Why is it everyone must apologize, make excuses for, or somehow downplay their own intelligence? Maybe it…

> I don't understand these meme of degrading IQ as having little real world value The way I understand it: many people equal IQ test scores directly to real-world success and I would say such a direct causality does not exist. Case in point: Mensa members are CEOs all the way down to broke janitors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensa_International#Demographic...

Wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Social_ou...

Re: Issac Asimov: What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

#49

Post by onemoreact »

corin_ wrote: post #16
hackinthebochs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand these meme of degrading IQ as having little real world value. That mentality seems to fly in the face of just about every observation one can make. It seems obvious that in general, smarter people tend to get ahead. Of course there are many counter examples, but overall the trend seems obvious. Why is it everyone must apologize, make excuses for, or somehow downplay their own intelligence? Maybe it…

It's definitely not a case of avoiding boasting in my case - and not because I'm a modest person, but because I'm the exact opposite, and I would have absolutely no problem shouting from the rooftops about how awesome I am based on IQ tests if I felt that to be something worth boasting about. The thing with IQ tests is that it measures a very specific type of skill, and to use that to define intelligence is insulting…

People talk about High IQ like it's a large bank account. I can afford not to study and still get good grades etc. What they forget is the compound interest that sustained effort provides. You can coast though school gain as little from it as the average person or you can dig in and actually gain something, but there are reasonably smart people who dig in so eventually coasting along is not enough. It’s like investing 1million @1%APR vs 100k @ 20%. For the first few years it might seem like you are ahead of the game, but after 16 years of schooling you can end up behind the curve.

PS: IQ tests are only really meaningful for the young. At 40 I can look at what you have accomplished at 10 that's far less meaningful.

Re: Issac Asimov: What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

#50

Post by tokenadult »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #14
corin_ wrote: post #9

This is the most important lesson my mother ever taught me. I (like her) have that same type of intelligence, the type that makes IQ tests and school exams far easier than they should be, and yet often isn't really that useful in life. I still find myself placing far too much importance in it when judging people, can only imagine how big headed I would be about it if she hadn't constantly reminded me how little IQ re…

I don't understand these meme of degrading IQ as having little real world value. That mentality seems to fly in the face of just about every observation one can make. It seems obvious that in general, smarter people tend to get ahead. Of course there are many counter examples, but overall the trend seems obvious. Why is it everyone must apologize, make excuses for, or somehow downplay their own intelligence? Maybe it…

I don't understand these meme of degrading IQ as having little real world value.

Haven't you read Lewis Terman, author of the Stanford-Binet IQ test, on the subject?

"There are, however, certain characteristics of age scores with which the reader should be familiar. For one thing, it is necessary to bear in mind that the true mental age as we have used it refers to the mental age on a particular intelligence test. A subject's mental age in this sense may not coincide with the age score he would make in tests of musical ability, mechanical ability, social adjustment, etc. A subject has, strictly speaking, a number of mental ages; we are here concerned only with that which depends on the abilities tested by the new Stanford-Binet scales." (Terman & Merrill 1937, p. 25)

Or perhaps you would prefer the point of view of David Feldman, a psychologist specializing in the scholarly study of precocious and highest-IQ individuals?

"Put into the context of the psychometric movement as a whole, it is clear that positive extreme of the IQ distribution is not as different from other IQ levels as might have been expected. . . . While 180 IQ suggests the ability to do academic work with relative ease, it does not signify a qualitatively different organization of mind. It also does not suggest the presence of ‘genius’ in its common-sense meaning, i.e. transcendent achievement in some field. For these kinds of phenomena, IQ seems at best a crude predictor. For anything more, we will have to look to traditions other than the psychometric and to variables other than IQ." (Feldman 1984)

The one independent science writer who has had access to Terman's longitudinal study files at Stanford points out that IQ tests are a great way to miss future Nobel Prize winners. Amazingly, Terman’s study catchment area in California included two future Nobel Prize winners, but both were rejected from inclusion in the study because their childhood IQ scores were too low (Shurkin 1992, pp. 35, 395).

REFERENCES

Feldman, David (1984). A Follow-up of Subjects Scoring above 180 IQ in Terman's Genetic Studies of Genius. Exceptional Children, 50, 6, 518-523.

Shurkin, Joel N. (1992). Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up. Boston: Little, Brown.

Terman, Lewis & Merrill, Maude (1937). Measuring Intelligence: A Guide to the Administration of the New Revised Stanford-Binet Tests of Intelligence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

After edit: I see several replies elsewhere in this thread are citing Wikipedia articles as the last word on their subjects. It's important to point out that most Wikipedia articles don't reflect the best research literature known even to Wikipedia editors,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige...

largely because the Wikipedia articles on human intelligence as a broad subject have been the subject of much edit-warring for years

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/...

and some editors continue to push their point of view, relying on unreliable sources, into multiple Wikipedia articles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/...

Post reply on HN