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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

#111

Post by thaumaturgy »

mrcsparker wrote: post #96
thaumaturgy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried out Mensa briefly some years ago. I was just looking for new social circles. I have some pretty sharp older buddies that I play Go with weekly, they're a blast to talk to, and I thought I'd find some more of that. It was bad. Really, really bad. The local chapter had a tiny handful of post-retirement members. I knew a ton of folks in my community at the time, a bunch of them were smart, active people, and non…

Just out of curiosity, which super hero did they pick? I would imagine that Superman wouldn’t have to be too bright but I don’t know much about his character.

I honestly don't remember. I dimly recall facepalming so hard that I woke up on the floor a little while later. There may've been a mild concussion.

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

#112

Post by DoreenMichele »

ralfd wrote: post #110
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.…

http://infoproc.blogspot.de/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-iq... Stephen Hsu argued there that Feynmans school iq test must have had a low ceiling. From what we know about the consistently high IQ scores of other incredibly bright theoretical scientists that sounds likely.

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, we just cannot reliably assert that someone's IQ is, say, above 200.)

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 tests than I know, so I see no reason to defer to his opinion.

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.

I am not just screwing with people here. I have studied the space and I think there are serious problems with talking about IQ like it is concrete, unchangeable, primarily inherited with minimal influence from environmental inputs, etc.

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

#114

Post by thaumasiotes »

Recursing wrote: post #84
otalp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly in analysis of both children and grandmasters, IQ was negatively correlated with chess skills amongst elite players in the group.

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").

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

#115

Post by blueprint »

legulere wrote: post #103

Possible other explanation: People with higher IQ are just more often diagnosed with disorders, e.g. because they are more likely to go to a doctor

Flaws in those who are brighter also tend to be more visible, in my experience.

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

#116

Post by alexasmyths »

cromulent wrote: post #53
alexasmyths wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but if you can’t reasonably quantify it based on anything empirical," Simply the writing quality, grammar and sentence structure of the comments on HN would easily be enough to prove that HN readers (well, commenters) are above average. I spend enough time glazing over headlines, stories and comments from other sites out of casual interest and I'll bet any amount of money this is true.

Glazing over?

Ha ha ha. Ya. Glancing over. Irony :)

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

#117

Post by mikestew »

nzjrs wrote: post #108
DoreenMichele wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, I have studied the space some. I was Director of Community Life for The TAG Project for a bit. http://tagfam.org/ The last time I had this argument in a big way with people telling me I had no clue what I was talking about, some forum I belonged to was having a heated argument because they had the habit of posting ridiculous tests, like "What kind of dog are you?", and someone had posted an online IQ test and t…

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.

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

#118

Post by curun1r »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #78
llamaz wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How good you are at Go (or chess for that matter) has no correlation with your IQ. There are plenty of examples of people extremely good at chess that struggle, seriously, with academics (e.g. world champion Jose Raul Capablanca, and the youtuber and grandmaster Eric Hansen). Kasparov doesn't have 180+ IQ, which is a common myth. At some point he took the test and it turned out he had a respectable but definitely sub…

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.…

> This means our concept of IQ is likely inherently flawed

I'm not sure I'd say flawed so much as I'd say myopic. Which is absolutely still a flaw, but a very specific one that allows you to contextualize the results of an IQ test rather than discard them as worthless. IQ measures a subset of human intelligence pretty effectively, but misses the bigger picture. There's large parts of human intelligence that can't be measured using a test like that. A test can only provide stimuli for the mind and measure its reaction over the short period of time while taking the test. Among other things, it can't measure long-term recall or the ability to rehearse/learn information and skills over time, both qualities people would naturally associate with intelligence.

It's our need to have a single spectrum from mental retardation to genius-level that's led us to try to create a test which assigns a number to intelligence. But intelligence is multidimensional and an IQ test just fills in some of those dimensions.

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

#119

Post by boomboomsubban »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #107
boomboomsubban wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't saying your wrong about IQ tests. Pointing out one outlier isn't proof that it is flawed. Plus, this study doesn't care if IQ tests are a good way to rate intelligence, people who score well on them also are more likely to suffer disorders.

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.

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

#120

Post by WillPostForFood »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #112
ralfd wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://infoproc.blogspot.de/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-iq... Stephen Hsu argued there that Feynmans school iq test must have had a low ceiling. From what we know about the consistently high IQ scores of other incredibly bright theoretical scientists that sounds likely.

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 tests than I know, so I see no reason to defer to his opinion.

Maybe there is some nuance I'm missing, but those two paragraphs seem to be arguing the same point - that a 125 score was probably not accurate, but hitting the ceiling of the test? I.e. you and Hsu agree. Here is Hsu's full quotation (never said "bad").

To understand this score we have to remember that typical IQ tests (e.g., administered to public school children) tend to have low ceilings. They are not of the kind that Roe used in her study. One can imagine that the ceiling on Feynman's exam was roughly 135 (say, 99th percentile). If Feynman received the highest score on the mathematical portion, and a modest score of 115 on the verbal, we can easily understand the resulting average of 124.

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