My IQ • Hacker News Board

Re: My IQ

#61

Post by charonn0 » Sun, Nov 04, 2012, 7:23 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #47

nacker wrote: post #29

IQ tests share this property of undervaluing creativity and overvaluing conformity with academic work in general. Witness my favorite renegade intellectual, Robert Pirsig, from his Wikipedia page: 'While doing laboratory work in biochemistry, Pirsig became greatly troubled by the existence of more than one workable hypothesis to explain a given phenomenon, and, indeed, that the number of hypotheses appeared unlimited…

Science has several rules of thumb, Occams Razor says that the simpliest is usually the more likely, and the assumption that the universe operates according to universal, consistant mathematical rules means that you should favour theories that match every other part of observable reality, the rule of thumb that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is like occam's razor and means, again, choose the simp…

And if more than one theory is more-or-less equally probable, simple, and in accord with observed reality then you test all of them to see which you can eliminate. Repeat.

Re: My IQ

#62

Post by abaillargeon » Sun, Nov 04, 2012, 7:24 PM UTC

Shenglong wrote: post #15

|Cow, hen, pig, sheep The standard answer is supposed to be hen, as it is the only bird. I believe the standard answer is a "hen" because it's the only one that is gender-specific. In fact, it is distinctly the odd-one out because it doesn't even refer to a specific genus (or even family) of animal. I'm all for creativity (I have the same complaint often) but there needs to be some sort of standardization in communic…

I've seen a few comments on HN and the blog about this question -- I think it's important to note that the article mentions this question was a set of pictures:

>>One test had many rows of small pictures, and I had to choose the odd one out in each row.

So the arguments about the number of letters, the order of the letter, etc wouldn't make sense here.

Re: My IQ

#63

Post by nacker » Sun, Nov 04, 2012, 7:26 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #47

nacker wrote: post #29

IQ tests share this property of undervaluing creativity and overvaluing conformity with academic work in general. Witness my favorite renegade intellectual, Robert Pirsig, from his Wikipedia page: 'While doing laboratory work in biochemistry, Pirsig became greatly troubled by the existence of more than one workable hypothesis to explain a given phenomenon, and, indeed, that the number of hypotheses appeared unlimited…

Science has several rules of thumb, Occams Razor says that the simpliest is usually the more likely, and the assumption that the universe operates according to universal, consistant mathematical rules means that you should favour theories that match every other part of observable reality, the rule of thumb that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is like occam's razor and means, again, choose the simp…

Yes. The context that has to be taken into account includes the social context, ie. 'I am sitting in a room taking a test, I cannot request clarification of the question, the person who wrote this test may be far less intelligent than me, etc'.

By making an effort to choose the possible answer that I perceive as the most boring and conformist, rather than one I might find brilliant, funny, novel, and suggestive of further even more interesting ideas, I am pursuing a strategy of "favouring theories that match every other part of observable reality", as you put it.

Re: My IQ

#64

Post by 3pt14159 » Sun, Nov 04, 2012, 7:27 PM UTC

jhuckestein wrote: post #51

My dad made me take one when I was a kid and I did really well, but even then I thought it was stupid. The first issue is addressed in this blog post. The questions just aren't good enough. This is nobody's fault really, because it is very difficult to come up with a set of hard questions that measure your intellect and don't require lots of domain specific knowledge. It's either within a certain domain. If everyone…

Studies show high correlation between iq and a host of personal outcomes (divorce, income, etc).

Many iq tests actually measure multiple types of intelligences then combine them.

Re: My IQ

#65

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Nov 04, 2012, 7:27 PM UTC

jhuckestein wrote: post #51

My dad made me take one when I was a kid and I did really well, but even then I thought it was stupid. The first issue is addressed in this blog post. The questions just aren't good enough. This is nobody's fault really, because it is very difficult to come up with a set of hard questions that measure your intellect and don't require lots of domain specific knowledge. It's either within a certain domain. If everyone…

[deleted]

Re: My IQ

#66

Post by gatekeepr » Sun, Nov 04, 2012, 7:28 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #47

nacker wrote: post #29

IQ tests share this property of undervaluing creativity and overvaluing conformity with academic work in general. Witness my favorite renegade intellectual, Robert Pirsig, from his Wikipedia page: 'While doing laboratory work in biochemistry, Pirsig became greatly troubled by the existence of more than one workable hypothesis to explain a given phenomenon, and, indeed, that the number of hypotheses appeared unlimited…

Science has several rules of thumb, Occams Razor says that the simpliest is usually the more likely, and the assumption that the universe operates according to universal, consistant mathematical rules means that you should favour theories that match every other part of observable reality, the rule of thumb that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is like occam's razor and means, again, choose the simp…

The problem with Occam's Razor is that it requires you to identify the simplest explanation. In fields like for example molecular biology deciding what is 'the simplest' often is difficult and debatable.

Re: My IQ

#67

Post by satyajitsdt » Sun, Nov 04, 2012, 7:30 PM UTC

Having given my share of IQ tests, personally I always felt that they lacked in many sense. Once while researching about it I came across theory of multiple intelligence by Howard Gardner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligence...). Though not completely clear the basic idea behind it seems more logical to me.

Re: My IQ

#68

Post by evincarofautumn » Sun, Nov 04, 2012, 7:31 PM UTC

nacker wrote: post #29

IQ tests share this property of undervaluing creativity and overvaluing conformity with academic work in general. Witness my favorite renegade intellectual, Robert Pirsig, from his Wikipedia page: 'While doing laboratory work in biochemistry, Pirsig became greatly troubled by the existence of more than one workable hypothesis to explain a given phenomenon, and, indeed, that the number of hypotheses appeared unlimited…

A similar thing occurred to me not too long ago, when I was learning about type theory: if you have the type of some function, then the set of possible implementations of that function is (usually) countably infinite, so the type doesn’t really tell you anything. But of course you probably care only about one of the simplest, so the type really does tell you an awful lot.

Anyway, I’m with you on the business of IQ tests. The problem is that as answers become increasingly open-ended, they are both more representative of a person’s actual intelligence, and more difficult to score objectively.

Re: My IQ

#69

Post by gnosis » Sun, Nov 04, 2012, 7:32 PM UTC

paisawalla wrote: post #2

Great insight. Regarding Mensa itself, or any claims to intellectual superiority: one of the big lessons of my life has been that being intelligent has no intrinsic value. If you are unable to manifest your intelligence in a way that can substantially (disproportionate to your effort) improve your life or the lives of others, then your mind doesn't matter. It has no impact in the world, and I am not the first person…

"And what did the genius do when not teaching LSAT prep courses? Why, he worked at Target."

Kafka was a clerk at an insurance company. Einstein was an assistant patent examiner. Wittgenstein was a gardener at a monastery and then a primary school teacher.

Van Gogh only ever sold one painting during his life, and that was to his brother.

There are hordes of other people widely regarded as "geniuses", who lived and died in dire poverty. Many others were cheated out of the fame and fortune they deserved by others who got the credit. And many more are probably still unrecognized.

The cold hard fact of the matter is that the world generally does not reward intelligence, "genius", or even hard work. True, some have the temperament and luck to scale the greasy pole of "success", but many others don't -- or choose to focus their energies elsewhere.

Re: My IQ

#70

Post by sarah2079 » Sun, Nov 04, 2012, 7:32 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #47

nacker wrote: post #29

IQ tests share this property of undervaluing creativity and overvaluing conformity with academic work in general. Witness my favorite renegade intellectual, Robert Pirsig, from his Wikipedia page: 'While doing laboratory work in biochemistry, Pirsig became greatly troubled by the existence of more than one workable hypothesis to explain a given phenomenon, and, indeed, that the number of hypotheses appeared unlimited…

Science has several rules of thumb, Occams Razor says that the simpliest is usually the more likely, and the assumption that the universe operates according to universal, consistant mathematical rules means that you should favour theories that match every other part of observable reality, the rule of thumb that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence is like occam's razor and means, again, choose the simp…

In a lot of modern biology however you will have tens or hundreds of thousands of equally simple competing hypotheses. Biologist have had to adapt to this by using multiple hypothesis testing methods, but Prisig was working well before this became standard, so perhaps this was the barrier he was running up against.