belief and IQ

[dashwood]

hy guys
i've been reading your forum for about four weeks now and decided to join you, which unfochanetly means the collective IQ will decrease but you will have to forgive me for that.
i have an anicdote that, i think, answers a vital question, and that is; why do people believe odd things?

yesterday i tried to log on to this forum, i tried and tried, but i could not log on, i looked through my password book but could not find my log-in details. so i contacted John Jackson, who informed me that the reason i could not log in was that i had, in fact, not joined yet.

so i joined and here i am. but the combination of the belief that i was already a member and my low IQ lead me to the log-in unpleasentness.

what i am getting at is weither you believe in an old man with a white beard, who knows everything you do and will punish you if you do wrong (father christmass) or not it is your IQ that dictates what you do with that knowlage, belief is the bomb and knowlege dictated wiether you light the fuse or not...

[Cuddles]

The trouble with IQ is that it doesn't really mean anything. IQ is supposed to be an absolute measure of intelligence, one that is the same from the day you are born to the day you die and that depends on nothing other than your brain. Unfortunately, it isn't. All an IQ test measures is your ability to take IQ tests, and it is very easy to practice and improve. This makes the whole thing pretty pointless, since you could have an average IQ one day, take a course in maths and logic and end up 10 points higher a couple of weeks later.

There is also the problem that there isn't really any good definition of what intelligence actually is. Is someone who can do long division in their head more intelligent than someone who can write a piano concerto? What if you can do both, but have trouble tying your laces? The sort of questions IQ tests ask tend to focus on maths, logic and spatial awareness, which are certainly useful things to be good at, but are far from the only things that matter in life. If you want to be a scientist, a high IQ is generally a good thing. If you want to be a social worker, how is it relevant if you can work out which coloured square comes next in a sequence?

Finally, a problem that I have myself is that if you find those sort of questions easy, there are usually several answers possible. This means that instead of being a question that you can either get right or wrong, it becomes simply a game of guessing, or knowing from experience, which answer the questioner wants you to give. No doubt this is also a useful skill to have, but is not supposed to be anything to do with IQ tests.

Basically, all that waffling is trying to say that IQ is essentially meaningless. If you're going to be doing a lot of the sort of thing IQ tests test, then they're a decent test of your ability. If you're not, they're completely pointless. In addition, most of the tests you see around aren't just trying to test something that's poorly defined, they don't even test it properly. If a free online test tells you you have a certain IQ, don't believe a word of it. Professional tests tend to at least be consistent with each other, but as I say above, what they actually mean is not much other than your ability to take the tests.

As for why people believe things, I suspect there may actually be some correlation with IQ. IQ tests look at logic and spatial awareness, which are exactly the skills needed to avoid many of the traps believers fall into. However, note the important word "skills". You can learn logic. You can improve spatial awareness. There is certainly some genetic component as well, but IQ is nowhere near as fixed as some people would like to believe. Similarly, just because some people believe weird things now does not mean that they always will, as many posters here can demonstrate.

[Janot]

The trouble with IQ is that it doesn't really mean anything.

I see where you are coming from, but I wonder whether this quote is overstated.

Imagine you were at a loose end and invited to spend an evening of strangers. Would your inclination to go be exactly the same if you were told that their IQs were all around 130, or were all around 70?
My guess is that you would be far more inclined to go in the former case, because the probability of your actually enjoying their company would be different. If so, then it does mean something to you after all. (I'm not by any means trying to claim any positive correlation between niceness and IQ, but there is a higher probability of your being able to communicate with them).

[Cuddles]

But that's the problem with being able to improve your score. What does it mean to say that someone has an IQ of 70 if they can change their score to 100 with a couple of weeks practice? To be fair, it is overstated a little. IQ tests can be used to see broad differences, so someone who scores 50 really is stupid while someone who scores 150 is pretty damn smart. The trouble with this is that it's pointless. You really don't need an IQ test to tell that, and that isn't what they're used for. What they are generally used for is either to give people an absolute score for their intelligence, which is meaningless, or to distinguish between people who are close together, which they can't do. 5 or 10 points difference, which apparently matters to some people, can just be the difference between missing your cup of coffee in the morning, or having taken another test recently.

The main problem is that IQ tests are a qualitative measure that pretends to be quantitative. If you use them for what they can do, seeing broad differences, they mean something but are fairly pointless. If you use them for what they can't do, they are just meaningless.

Edit: Another thing that's worth noting is that IQ tests are deliberately designed so that there are no differences between men and women. The thing is, men and women are different, and there's no point pretending otherwise. So the tests miss at least part of what they claim to measure on purpose.

[Janot]

Another thing that's worth noting is that IQ tests are deliberately designed so that there are no differences between men and women. The thing is, men and women are different, and there's no point pretending otherwise. So the tests miss at least part of what they claim to measure on purpose.

I agree totally, because it all begs the question of what constitutes intelligence. The different abilities of the sexes renders this to a large extent a matter of opinion, which leaves the actual figures with very little meaning.