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My IQ

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Re: My IQ

#151

Post by jmpeax »

wwweston wrote: post #111
rmc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 author didn't name Occam's Razor, but she did touch on the idea that simplicity can be an unhelpful or ambiguous criteria to apply: "Usually when you are asked to continue a pattern the assumption is that you are supposed to choose the simplest way. But sometimes it is difficult to decide what the testers think the simplest way is. Can you replace the question mark with a number in the following sequence: 31, ?,…

I think in this case simplicity does reveal the answer. I would put 30 because the sequence becomes a repeating sequences of 31, 30. Answering 28 requires making the assumption that the sequence of numbers represent days of the month, which has a higher information entropy making the sequence less simple.

Re: My IQ

#152

Post by vacri »

Note that a proper IQ test must be administered by a trained professional and takes a couple of hours. This is simply because there are so many pitfalls that there is no other way - anything else that calls itself an IQ test is a pale imitation and can't be anything but flawed, for all the usual criticisms. What the author describes may be what Mensa need for admittance, but it's not a proper IQ test.

Re: My IQ

#153

Post by nacker »

wmil wrote: post #54
jkimmel wrote: post #4

IQ tests have long been criticized by a variety of groups. At the end of the day, it merely measures your ability to perform well on tests that are similar to an IQ test. Traditionally, this set was populated with academic tests, so the IQ could be used to predict your performance in schools (it was actually designed to predict the performance of French schoolchildren.) However, as the school based subjects have broa…

That's not really true. IQ doesn't predict well on the high end, but it's useful for predicting the outcomes of middle intellect people. And it works better for groups than for individuals. For instance, IQ scores are bad at predicting wealth but are the best predictor of adult poverty we have. And the US military uses them extensively. They generally don't allow anyone in with an IQ score below 90.

Funny, the police in Police State USA prefer low IQ's ' on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training'

Or perhaps that being smart doesn't make you an enthusiastic state thug?

http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/sto...

Re: My IQ

#154

Post by tikhonj »

gjm11 wrote: post #134
tikhonj wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the approach of coming up with a hypothesis and testing it is called "frequentist inference", in opposition to "Bayesian inference". However, I'm not terribly well versed in the subject and was hoping somebody could give a clear explanation of the difference between the two.

"Bayesian" and "frequentist" are descriptions of interpretations of probability more than of methods of inference . Briefly and inexactly: A frequentist says that a probability is the answer to a question of the form "if we repeat this situation many times, what fraction of the time will this happen?"; a Bayesian says that many other things, such as (idealized) subjective degrees of belief, behave like probabilities…

Thanks for the great explanation. It definitely made things clearer.

Re: My IQ

#155

Post by gnosis »

telemachos wrote: post #127
gnosis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 die…

> Einstein was an assistant patent examiner. Wittgenstein was a gardener at a monastery and then a primary school teacher. I take your point, but Einstein and Wittgentsein are not good examples. You list jobs they held, but those jobs don't reasonably express the success either man had in his lifetime. Einstein was also a member of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies from 1933 to 1955 (when he died)[1]. Wittge…

My point was the OP appeared to be judging by the jobs an individual held at one point in time. Judged by the same criteria, Einstein, Wittgenstein, and Kafka would have fared no better.

The fact that Einstein and Wittgenstein held more prestigious positions at other points in their lives would not have spared them from an attitude like the OP demonstrated at the time they held the more menial jobs, and judging only by those menial jobs.

Who knows what heights of glory this particular Target employee will climb to in the future? History is even more full of people who once held menial jobs but then went on to achieve vast fame and fortune (and perhaps even be judged a "genius" by many).

We also don't know what this particular Target employee did before he worked at target and taught LSAT courses. Perhaps, like Wittgenstein, he'd been a lecturer at Cambridge and was awarded some prestigious degree.

Ok, I know that's stretching credibility. He probably wasn't. But my point is that we don't know his past or his future. All we know are two job titles and his boast of being a genius. Should we judge him based on just those couple of facts? Or should we withhold judgment? My vote is for the latter.

Finally, I never claimed that Einstein or Wittgenstein weren't recognized during their lifetimes, just that Kafka and Van Gogh weren't, and that many others who are generally considered "geniuses" now weren't either.

Re: My IQ

#156

Post by vacri »

mynameishere wrote: post #84
wmil wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really true. IQ doesn't predict well on the high end, but it's useful for predicting the outcomes of middle intellect people. And it works better for groups than for individuals. For instance, IQ scores are bad at predicting wealth but are the best predictor of adult poverty we have. And the US military uses them extensively. They generally don't allow anyone in with an IQ score below 90.

Yes, every time the subject comes up, this whole crowd of relatively intelligent people go into a moral dance about how stupid IQ tests are. They were never meant to predict genius. The point is to organize people efficiently when you're slotting them for guard duty or heavy equipment operation or officer candidate school. Someone who points out BS about non-Kosher pigs and obscure integer sequences is being clever f…

This is a most underrated point - IQ is more important in a demographic sense than in mensa-style braggatry.

Re: My IQ

#157

Post by gnosis »

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.

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.

Re: My IQ

#158

Post by wybo »

gbrindisi wrote: post #3

What are the benefits of being a member of Mensa?

It is a nice way to meet other people that are (somewhat) smart (in a new city, or beyond ones social circle). What is especially good about it is the relative diversity of backgrounds that members are from (and different ages).

However the atmosphere at Mensa varies much from area to area (sometimes a bit pretentious, but in other areas very low key, pleasant and surprisingly open). And one should not take it too seriously.

Re: My IQ

#160

Post by gnosis »

nacker wrote: post #131
furyofantares wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think jessedhillon was saying that someone working a menial job must not be highly intelligent. His point was that such a person isn't getting much value out of being highly intelligent (he was presenting it as a supporting point in favor of his claim that 'being intelligent has no intrinsic value').

I believe that the idea that someone who works a "menial" job "isn't getting much value out of being highly intelligent" is the fundamental misconception here. If you are a genius, your time is not necessarily well spent on ANY job, whether it is considered menial or not by the intellectually unwashed masses, unless it is for exercise, relaxation, sustenance, or pleasure. I refer you to the classic essay The Outsider…

You might be interested in Colin Wilson's book "The Outsider"[1], which was written more than 30 years before the essay you quote.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsider_(Colin_Wilson)

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