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My IQ

blog.tanyakhovanova.com

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Re: My IQ

#191

Post by slurgfest »

jessedhillon wrote: post #150
gnosis wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No, I was judging him by his accomplishments" What made you think your LSAT instructor's accomplishments were limited to his job titles? What do you know about this man apart from those two facts? Kafka and Van Gogh were completely unknown and unappreciated during their lifetimes. Kafka even burned 90% of his work before he died. There are countless other examples of people who were only discovered and appreciated a…

If you want to debate the merits of inferring accomplishment from a person's job, that's fine. To call that my main argument, and countering it with your sample size of three, is trolling.

Here is the point: if all you know about someone is that they run a cash register, that doesn't tell you that they are unable to do anything else. This argument does not rely on sample sizes.

Re: My IQ

#192

Post by slurgfest »

bennyg wrote: post #103
paisawalla wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP was judging a person by his job, and implying that the person in question couldn't be a genius because he worked at a menial job. No, I was judging him by his accomplishments -- a measure by which your counterexamples shine, and the LSAT instructor falls down. All of the people you mention were successes in some way outside of their job, and they met my other criteria: they disproportionately advanced the stat…

But still, don't you think it's a little premature to judge your Target worker? Einstein was a patent worker while he thought about and conceptualized Special Relativity. Do you know what that fella' was doing in his free time? I still agree with the main point though - IQ doesn't mean anything except another avenue of high potential. Just like being extremely physically fit and a better athlete leaves you with high…

You learn a lot more about Einstein's potential by testing his IQ than by looking at his job history. If it turns out that the Target Einstein is too lazy to do any physics, that's OK, the IQ test will still tell you vastly more about what he COULD do under the right incentives.

Re: My IQ

#193

Post by slurgfest »

cdooh wrote: post #33

Never quiet thought of it like this. There some things that would seem obvious to me but reading this realise perhaps not so much. Anyway IQ tests have long fallen out of fashion as they only measure a certain type of intelligence

Fashionable or not, intelligence tests are still much more indicative of (e.g. academic) potential than many other things people use to make hiring decisions.

Re: My IQ

#194

Post by [deleted] »

gnosis wrote: post #157
jessedhillon wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to debate the merits of inferring accomplishment from a person's job, that's fine. To call that my main argument, and countering it with your sample size of three, is trolling.

Considering your sample size of one, calling me a troll for using a sample size of three is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Also, I never claimed that was your main argument. I just said that that's the part of your post I was replying to.

[deleted]

Re: My IQ

#195

Post by slurgfest »

freework wrote: post #78

IQ tests are just like anything else in life: If you practice enough, you will get good. If you are motivated enough to spend 10 hours a day practicing taking IQ tests, you will eventually get a high score. If you are motivated enough to practice the guitar 10 hours a day, you'll eventually become a guitar virtuoso. If you are motivated enough to spend 10 hours a day writing code, you'll eventually become a Rob Pike…

Ironically, this is similar to the original logic of the IQ test. If you are able to pick up and figure out the given questions quickly, you should be able to pick up and figure out many other things quickly, which is a pretty normal definition of intelligence.

There is no shortage of people who will do poorly at IQ tests because of cognitive difficulties and (sure) lack of motivation to practice. Does loading on factors like these make IQ tests less predictive of academic or career outcomes? No, both of those things also require a combination of cognitive ability and motivation.

Re: My IQ

#196

Post by Alex3917 »

I used to be in the Promethius Society, which is people with an IQ of 148+. I don't actually have an IQ of 148+ as far as I know, they just weren't smart enough to properly password protect thei Ning group. I have to say though after reading through the threads, most of them seemed vastly less intelligent than the smarter HN posters here.

Re: My IQ

#197

Post by [deleted] »

graeme wrote: post #25
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…

That's interesting. I'm an LSAT instructor. My first reaction to reading the instructor's comment was, 'Ha, only 165, he's no genius'. But, MENSA accepts 163 as a cutoff LSAT score for entry. So if MENSA == genius, then he is a genius. Among people who take the LSAT though, he's only 92nd percentile. He doesn't have much business teaching the test. Anyone who's at an Ivy League law school has a better score than him.…

[deleted]

Re: My IQ

#199

Post by gurkendoktor »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #120
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…

I find interesting the backlash against those who may have any interest in knowing their IQ, or god-forbid even feel good about it. What your anecdotes tell me is not that IQ itself is meaningless, but that success has a large factor of luck involved. It's a failing of our society that genuinely high IQ people are not out there working to improve the lot of mankind. This growing trend of derision for those who acknow…

> It's a failing of our society that genuinely high IQ people are not out there working to improve the lot of mankind.

Or maybe it's a failing of those high IQ people? The genius who proudly saves the codebase at Zynga every single day is completely useless compared to any single nurse working her shift right now. Even the doctor at the top of the hospital does not necessarily have a stellar IQ. What other way is there to put it? Should we feel bad for smart people because society tricks them into financial services rather than less-paid cancer research? (No one would look down on someone who does the latter.)

Re: My IQ

#200

Post by gurkendoktor »

FaceKicker wrote: post #141

> But the biggest problem was that the idea of crossing the odd object out seems very strange to me in general. What is the odd object out in this list? > Cow, hen, pig, sheep. > The standard answer is supposed to be hen, as it is the only bird. But that is not the only possible correct answer. For example, pig is the only one whose meat is not kosher. And, look, sheep has five letters while the rest have three. Thes…

> I would guess that your ability to correctly answer an "ambiguous" question like that measures your ability to effectively communicate with other humans

So it measures how good you are at not thinking outside of the box? ;)

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