IQ is a dismal measure of intelligence (2019)

Am I smarter than the average person? undoubtedly.

But if my IQ is high then I fear I'll avoid doing useful things because they're beneath me. And if my IQ is not high, I fear I'll avoid doing things because they're above me.

There is nothing useful that can come out of knowing your IQ, and as others have said, there's other things that are so much more important. Smart people are unusually good at deluding themselves, for example. They get so used to being right they start to believe if they can rationalize it, it's obviously true and anyone who disagrees isn't as smart.

Having said that, I once made a girl angry in college because I asked the professor if grad school will actually be challenging because undergrad math for me was ridiculously easy.

I think the best way to describe IQ is that it defines your potential (w/i a margin of error), but it's everything else that determines how effectively you use that IQ.

A child with down syndrome will never win a nobel no matter how much they want to or how much effort they put into it. But having an IQ of 160+ will never guarantee you don't end up homeless in a ditch.

But in any case, what we're talking about is the meter-ruler called "IQ" and its use by the most batshit HRish elements of soceity, and the most pseudo-scientific elements of psychology.

In a world where major employers are using IQ to guide their hiring practices, we're not talking about a quiz on the back of cosmo.

We're talking about a world where business (, uni,...) has outsourced its obligations to fairly consider the merits of individuals to the cult of psychometricians extremely happy to provide astrological justifications for ruining people's lives.

An entire medical establishment has been created by the IQ test, which exists across (at least the west) as a filter on entrants. What strange, bizarre, and often poorly sutied creatures have found themsleves in positions within this establishment?

When one looks around at the society the IQ test has created, one should be aghast. Why, so often, are nurses better than doctors? (etc. etc.)

Knowing my IQ would let me know if that's reasonable and if I have any kind of shot at it. I know I'm smarter than average, but am I smart enough to be a top scientist? If i'm too stupid to attain my dream and I went for a phd, I would just be wasting my time, my life, my earnings for a dead end. It would be like dedicating your whole life to being a pro basket-ball player while having no shot because you're 5'10" (taller than average, but not tall enough).

Fit a straight line, find a straight line.

Where IQ scores correlate, it's at the very-low-score end. It doesnt correlate with independent objective performance measures at average-and-above.

The people writing those papers are psychologists, not statisticians, and often the most poorly trained. Most of it is either circular pseudoscience or unreporducible. Indeed, for much of the IQ literature to be "unreporducible" would be a great credit, since it would mean it had a testable thesis -- which, largely, it never does.

The beginning and end of IQ research is, largely, just that straight-line rulers can draw straight lines in any dataset you put them against.

IQ tests have their place, but they are grossly and frequently used inappropriately, imho.

Note that actual psychology researchers like Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg (and many others) have written quite a bit about various aspects of intelligence that the author alludes to. IQ is just one fairly narrow component of intelligence, and I don’t think that this point is debated much by modern researchers.

Let’s take the author’s arguments point by point:

> Problems with IQ

Summary: People use IQ scores in ways that are not appropriate for the measure. Boohoo.

This isn’t a problem with the test, it’s a problem with how the results are used.

> Intelligence cannot be separated from knowledge

IQ test creators acknowledge this, and they try to abstract out knowledge as much as possible. It’s not perfect, but it’s as close as they can get (especially for examinees in “the West”).

The author goes on to complain at length about “the injurious environment we push our kids into”, but this seems to be a different issue.

> IQ is no measure of intelligence

The author starts with “Intelligence is the ability to solve problems”. I would say that it’s the estimate of the capacity to solve problems. As the author mentions, other things come into play with regards to solving real-world problems. IQ tests don’t measure this and don’t claim to.

Interestingly, the author says “IQ tests might be as well replaced with tests of how fast people can count nickels”, and I think that this may not be as bad of a proxy for IQ as he thinks. The problem with nickels specifically is that some people may have done it before and/or may have been taught shortcuts. But if you give a test in which people have to count a variety of things of various shapes, sizes, values, etc. while on a timer, I’m guessing that the results would correlate fairly strongly with IQ.

> IQ is unreliable

Ah, totally agree, but I don’t think that it invalidates the test. This is a theme that I will come back to.

Any single IQ score should be seen as the minimum IQ for that person. There is a theoretical maximum (at least imho) for each examinee that is not always reached. There are so many things that cause people to score below this theoretical maximum, but very few things other than incredibly lucky guessing that will cause them to score above their theoretical maximum (and even this is eliminated when you factor in the confidence interval of a given result).

> Intelligence can be boosted

The theoretical maximum cannot be boosted. All one can do is improve the chances that they score as close to their theoretical maximum as possible (e.g., by getting good sleep, eating well, etc.).

> The psychological harm of IQ

Yes, if people misuse the score in ways that it was not intended (and many do), then it can cause psychological harm.

Any tool can be used in harmful ways, so I don’t think that this is news, and it certainly doesn’t invalidate the test.

> IQ myth

This section is just a weird diatribe of the author. He basically says that IQ doesn’t measure what he wants it to measure. As mentioned in my intro, psych researchers have explored the topic of intelligence writ large quite deeply.

> Child's IQ

Yeah. “Mental age” is an approximation. It’s not a bad one, but it is also misused. If people would just use it as a “directionally correct” measure, then it becomes more functional.

> Schools improve IQ

Same as above. School helps people score closer to their theoretical maximum. It doesn’t improve their theoretical maximum.

> IQ bloopers

Ugh. The author talks about IQ tests that have probably not been validated (at least not recently), and issues with not measuring the theoretical maximum.

Every standardized test used widely enough over time will have these “bloopers”. Every. Single. One.

> New forms of intelligence

Cool story. Arguably not intelligence. Definitely not the part of intelligence that IQ tests claim to measure.

> White supremacy

Very true.

Fwiw, it’s not just white people who think they are superior in terms of intelligence.

I have lived in some countries in which people have told me to my face about how much dumber on average white people are than [their race], using some sort of test score (typically a crude IQ proxy) as evidence. Of course, I’m the exception as a white person according to them, so I get a pass.

This is just another case of people misusing test scores. It’s rampant. It doesn’t make the test scores any less valid for their intended use.

CONCLUSION

This article just seems like a pseudo-scientific rant against IQ tests.

IQ tests aren’t perfect. They have a lot less utility than people think they do. That said, they do have some utility.

IQ tests are pretty good at discovering people at the extremes. One could argue that the folks at the extremes might warrant some different treatment.

IQ tests also do a decent job at identifying large gaps between individuals. This has less proven utility, but there is an idea that people with significantly different IQs perceive the world in different ways. This is a bit of a rabbit hole, but it’s an interesting line of inquiry.

tl;dr - Your IQ score is not you. Don’t worry about your score if it’s not at the extremes or if it’s not vastly different than your partner’s (it’s probably not, and if it is, you probably already expect that this is the case).