Intelligence Vs. Intelligent Quotient.

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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I have been thinking for some time that IQ does not directly reflect how clever we are. IQ does however does reflect learning potential and how fast we as humans can develops our minds and learn new things. But does this mean that someone with an IQ of 190 is ‘smarter’ than someone with only an average ‘100’,

President Bush has one of the lowest IQ’s in the history of U.S presidents yet a lot of people would call him ‘clever’. So we can’t safely say that the higher IQ you have the smarter you are, yet I have yet to meet a dumb person with a higher than average IQ.

If we take a look at the criminally insane briefly and consider their intelligence, most when measured have a higher than average IQ. So how were they dumb enough to get caught? My theory is the higher ones IQ – the more electrical synapses – increased chance for error (Like a car, if you are travelling at 30mph you are less likely to have an accident if you are doing 130mph the chance for error is dramatically increased.) This could explain the excuse ‘I don’t know what I was thinking’ and also explain why a man pushes his son, aged 6, from a balcony killing him. eveningtimes.co.uk/hi/news/5056090.html

With age comes a decrease in the bodies’ functionality, we become slower physically and mentally. I don’t think the younger generations are getting smarter just the older ones are getting dumber. As well as the bodies’ functionality decreasing so does the minds, this is why we hesitate when asked something or trying to remember something, because there are less electrical synapses therefore we cant access information as fast as we could likewise we could not run 100 meters as fast as we could. However, I heard someone where once ‘the mind: use it or lose it’. Learners are constantly activating their prefrontal cortex to keep their brain young and active through concentration and discovery. It doesn’t matter what you are discovering as long as it becomes a challenge for your brain, and you can explain it to someone else in three sentences or less. Learning must be practical and offers you the competitive edge to control unnecessary mental aging.

A little sketchy but you get the general drift.

In my very short life span I have met some incredible people, some with immensely high IQ’s and some without such impressive figures. I’ve noticed a pattern between the two, those with such high IQ’s tend to succeed academically and some even practically, however those with lower IQ’s tend to think more ‘intelligently’. Intelligence is a general mental capability that involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, and comprehend ideas and language. I think there is a direct link between intelligence and sociability. I don’t think I can really explain much or give any concrete evidence as to why as I’ve not had much time to think on this subject.

I would love to hear your thoughts and any feelings you may have in response to my post, anything that could help my understanding would be great.

Kind Regards,
Apple.

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IQ tests measure people compared to a standarised model of what they’ve decided intelligent people are. It doesn’t mean such thing’s an absolute.

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Apple, some of the most irrasible individuals score very well in IQ tests, talk about major ego trips. Try to deal with the academic snobs who bascially describe all opponents as undereducated idiots regardless of the evidence provided. Geez. One fool of a professor told me Lady Jane Grey was an accepted queen of England. Geez was the prof. pissed when I prove her incorrect. My grade was a B+ not my usual A- or A grade.

With regards,

aspacia :sunglasses:

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I think IQ tests are for and from the secular world.

Thought quality is different then thought quantity, also.

Interesting thread, anyways, thanks.

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Invading a contry rich of oil on the purpose to destroy any ‘terrorist’ threats, which was afganistan, and then suddently iraq - must’ve realised the oil was slightly over ‘thata’ way’they’. Then pin the blame on a leader who had no weapons of mass destruction who, until the invasion started, they had ignored for many years. Sounds like a clever plan to me.

Regards,
Apple.

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while many IQ tests do seem to be biased in certain ways, i have seen some of the ones from mensa and they are not heavily (at all!) concentrated on academic intelligence … nor secular ones. on that note, i can’t think of any possible way that the tests would be religious or secular with the actual questions that they use. the SAT, while accepted by mensa along with very few other academic intelligence tests, is not like their own.

basically i have found that IQ tests, or is supposed to test, your ability to recognize and use patterns, ideas and concepts. this is how a 4 year old can be a member of mensa.

as for why there are people with a high IQ that just seem to be idiots, there is a lot more than using concepts to how a person functions in society. to use your car analogy, if a person is capable of driving at 130mph (high iq) but doesn’t know anything about how the local laws on driving direction and signs work (emotional quotiant) than there will soon be a collapse.

a great book on this concept is Emotional Intelligence:Why it can matter more than IQ by Daniel Goleman deals with people’s ability to function, despite intelligence.

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Good post bishop, I will have to look into the emotional quotient book, and it makes sense. Many brilliant “diva” types are total children. Hopefully, this book will not only be in an academic shop as these are a fortune.

With regards,

aspacia :sunglasses:

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Been after a book like this for quite some time, reallly appreciate the reccomendation.

Regards,
Apple.

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Hey guys,

Good topic - but I have to say, a lot of the comments here are based a lot more on the popular conception of IQ rather than on any hard tests. And there is a lot of data out there on IQ.

It’s reasonable to suspect the following. Psychologists aren’t a dumb bunch (whatever dumb means!). The IQ test has been around for a while, and is still around. Why is it still around? Probably there’s SOME good reason, even if that reason isn’t as good as we’d like.

It turns out that the IQ test, of course, has a lot of flaws. It’s possible for people who are indisputably geniuses to score much lower than they deserve. (Good example: Richard Feynman, who according to James Gleik’s book “Genius” scored a 125, only in the top 3% or so.) However, these are by far the exception, rather than the rule.

The reason that IQ tests are considered worthwhile and important, and the reason we’re still talking about IQ today instead of knowing it to be as worthless as the idea that the elements are fire, air, …, is because there are a lot of tests showing its worth. It turns out that IQ predicts at LEAST 30% of an employee’s success at any given job. In many fields, this percentage is a lot higher.

This is why good employers will take someone with a high IQ over someone with a lower IQ but with more experience. Experience is easily gained, but IQ is essentially permanent (discounting blows on the head or drug use). A smart person with less experience may not perform as well as a less smart person with more experience in the first month of employment, but after that first month, the smarter person will win out every time.

This trend is so strong in more intellectual employment areas, such as computer programming, that those with very high IQs and zero experience will sometimes be hired to programming positions over those with good IQs and lots of experience. It turns out that, in programming, college GPA doesn’t mean a damn thing - it’s essentially all IQ.

Also, tests like the SAT and GRE and LSAT are all about (theoretically, discounting the stupid vocabulary sections) testing intelligence - and they’re considered valuable because we have many many decades of experimental evidence showing that the SAT (basically an IQ test) is a better predictor of success in college than anything else.

Not to pick on Aspacia, but…

This is demonstratably false. First, if we know of such things as human intelligence, then it has to be observable. If it is observable, it is testable - it just remains to create a test that actually works. Now, granted, IQ doesn’t measure all discerable areas of intelligence. Rather it measures more “stereotypical” intelligence. However, this is mostly due to a fluffy “everyone is smart in their own way” redefinitions of intelligence over the past 40 years or so. When you consider intelligence to be problem solving ability, the IQ test really does cover most of the areas you could reasonably include.

Areas like “emotional intelligence” are somewhat mislabeled. You can’t use emotions to solve a problem - it’s somewhat of a misnomer. However, this isn’t to overlook the fact that there is such a thing as being more or less emotionally aware, in a broad number of ways. Thus, measuring emotional awareness and perceptiveness is an interesting thing, and there are tests for it. (Women statistically do much better than men, by the way - surprise surprise.) Depending on who you ask, there are 4, 7, 12, or 20 areas of human “intelligence”, and there are tests for all of these areas, although some of the newer tests don’t seem to work as well as those that have been around for a decade or more.

The idea of a “farmer IQ test” is ridiculous. The IQ test measures raw ability, not experience.

Apple, my experiences have been fairly different from yours. I grew up in rural North Carolina, and was surrounded by people certainly dumber (lower IQ) than average. Most were hicks, farmers, rednecks, what have you. Very few were of appreciable intelligence, and fewer still were academically accomplished (as it is important to distinguish between the two). I was by far the brightest person in my school, and even though I never worked very hard, I was accepted to a top-5 University. There I met some absolutely phenomenal people, and it was very clear from those I met that the smarter they were, the better they thought (in an abstract sense) - which of course you’d expect. But also the smarter they were, the better they interacted with others (body language, eye contact, personability, etc.), and in general, they were all-around better people. There were obvious exceptions to this, but this was the general rule that I observed.

Anyway, those are my experiences. Any thoughts?

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So does the roundness of intellegence strech to emotional intellegence and social intellegence. I mean i find more than often those who are ‘book-smart’ are not very ‘street-smart’ Just an example.

Regards,
Luke x

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So here’s what I’ve noticed - you have book-smart people who really just study a lot and work very hard. They don’t tend to be very emotionally or socially intelligent because they never work at it, they’re just studying all the time. (Or maybe it’s genetic, too, who knows.) But then you get the TRULY intelligent people, those who are well-rounded, clever (possibly geniuses), and they’re normal or better than average in social situations in addition to their higher IQs.

You also get the smart awkward people - but I do think those are more the exception. If you get someone who is truly smart and doesn’t spend all his time studying, he’ll usually be socially skilled as well.

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This has been demonstrated many times - haha - Yes, i do agree.

Apple x

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Well, the problem as I see it here is “smart with regards to whom or what?” For example, I drive a vehicle. That vehicle as I very well know, spits out fumes that will likely contribute to mucking up the planet in such ways that I might not be able to live here anymore.

My roach friend does nothing other than eats and multiplies, but he doesn’t drive about in his roach mobile that might make the whole place uninhabitable for future roaches–or even his roach self.

Who is “smarter” in the sense of “survival”?

Intelligence, I think, is a reification.

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The process whereby concepts become material? I can agree to an extent, only because i have not considered that enough to arguee with it, lol.

Elaborate please!!!

Apple x

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Yep. Basically, I think that there are some things that are abstract in nature–like love, or intelligence, or sadness–and we label them those things only so we have some loose sense of being able to identify them. I don’t know what “sadness” is, although I suspect it’s probably an unpleasant state for most people. When I say I’m sad, I use it to suggest some state that is unpleasant and mournful–the exact nature of the state is unknown.

The closest anyone comes to measuring something like sadness is a Likert scale…but I really don’t know what a seven means or a five or a six or a three. If I cry but I only have a few tears, is that a five or a six? I don’t have any clue. That’s why Likert Scales are often hard to fill out. What are you saying, exactly? What’s a three?

Intelligence in my opinion is in the same boat. Yes, we have a word for it. We use it in all sorts of applications. We have words for things that aren’t real–like minotaur. We have words for things that are real…like cat…and then we have words that are abstractions of states like intelligence, or anxiety or what have you.

When we attempt to “measure” these things, we’ve taken something abstract in nature and have attempted to make it concrete. We’re treating intelligence AS IF it were a quantity that could be defined thoroughly. We don’t even really have a good basis for treating intelligence as a “quantity” with which to begin. How much sadness do you have? Wanna quantify it? How much happiness? Want to quantify it? Can you quantify these things, or do you only have a vague sense of “how much” of each you truly have?

That is what I meant by a reification.

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I think the roach example is another case of the misinterpretation of the word “intelligence”. Intelligence refers to problem-solving ability - it does not refer to wisdom, morality, or even the desire to use whatever problem-solving ability you have. It just refers to the ability.

Thus, in terms of survival, we are much smarter than the cockroach. Even in terms of the others, you have to understand that the cockroach CAN’T drive a polluting car. If he could, he probably would. And if he could, then you could test maybe comparitive wisdom, or at least environmental awareness. But he’s just a cockroach, so even there there isn’t much of a comparison.

Animals don’t fuck up the world because they can’t, not because they wouldn’t. It’s not just human nature - it’s the nature of life. We’re just beginning to feel selection pressures based on large-scale decisions - prior to the last 150 years, whatever inventions benefitted us immediately almost never detracted from our lives afterwards.

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i think that this answers the ‘book-smart’ vs ‘street-smart’ question many here have brought up. book-smarts do not test a person’s ability to problem solve. it mostly tests their memorization skills. street-smarts is more about a person’s ability to problem solve in a social environment. to recognize relationships and associations that happen around them. this would fit more into the definition of intelligence given above. problem solving doesn’t just have to be academically, it can be emotional, social, et. al.

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What I don’t find very intelligent is to try to separate “street-smart” to “book-smart” as if they were excluyent. It should be a matter of “intelligent” vs “knowledgeable”. A knowledgeable person will tell you the address to the closest Western Union branch in the city; an intelligent person will tell you the way to get there; which leads me to another debate: what’s more useless, an intelligent who is ignorant or a well-read idiot?

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Okay, I’ll tentatively accept this.

A cockroach has some abilities to solve problems we don’t have based on the fact that it is a cockroach. Radiation got you down? Dig down deeper and let your exoskeleton shield you.

We have thumbs and a thinking apparatus that presents us with certain ability to solve problems as well, but I’m not sure we are “smarter” for it. We simply utilize what we have as a function of how we are.

I don’t know if roaches have the ability to think formally or not, but maybe they have some superior roach instinct that allows them to see in neon red that alerts them to danger.

What exactly constitutes “smartness” in survival? Ability to solve problems? Does ability really matter if it isn’t utilized? What keeps us from saying “everyone has the ability but some don’t use it?” and thus implying everyone is actually intelligent equally? I’d say the only thing that really matters is the solution…not so much the ability–and roaches can demonstrate solutions–some we might not be able to bring about ourselves.

Here my tentative acceptance seems to be ending, unless somebody has a point I haven’t considered.

That’s true. I can’t hide in my exoskeleton either.

Perhaps.

Yes, although I have to say from a cockroach’s perspective, they may be having a similar chat about humans. (i.e. if a human could see in neon red to alert for danger he probably would, but he’s just a human.)

I’m not sure even if he COULD do these things we’d have a clear victor in the smarts category.

I don’t know that they can’t…but they sure can’t in the same way we can. I don’t know much about animal volition other than for humans, and I only know scant things about that.