Are you insecure about your intelligence?

[Reach]

I am saying that if you don't think we can accurately measure focus or motivation, why would you expect us to measure intelligence any better?

Because I consider many of the things IQ cross correlates with to fall within the definition of intelligence. These factors have high utility and predictive value.

If you want to define intelligence as something else, so be it. That most definitely ends the debate though, since there's nothing to talk about until you come up with a concrete definition of what intelligence is.

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/i...sts%20test.pdf
The best I could find given that I can't access the majority of psychological journal articles.

Interesting read.

The increases seen in this study are certainly quite impressive. It's important to note though, that they fall basically within the top range of standard error. That is to say, these results are not entirely unexpected. It's well known and accepted that variables other than intelligence itself can cause fluctuation in IQ scores, and many other studies have demonstrated gains of more than the 9 IQ points shown here under different conditions. I think this is pretty standard agreement within clinical psychology right now. That is why interpretation of scores needs to be done within context by a psychologist in a way that maximizes utility for the patient in question.


A key point in the study I think is that motivation explains more of the cross variance between IQ-motivation in non academically related factors than academic ones. That is, motivation has limited influence when compared to IQ in academic affairs, but can certainly affect life outcomes profoundly that are also correlated with IQ.

Another thing to note would be that they shown what types of gains can happen in situations of maximum motivation, they ignore the fact that average motivation is something that will obviously remain relatively stable throughout the lifetime. So, under ideal conditions we get ideal results, but under regular conditions you're going to get...I would presume, regular results. This is probably why motivation isn't a mediating factor in some of the variables discussed in the paper.

to what extent do you guys (reach n rubix) feel like you've conditioned yourselves to be incredibly efficient at dissecting/processing information, logic puzzles, etc? and to what degree has your confidence in deez matters perpetuated your talent?

It was always something I was good at. When I was little I learned quickly, was accelerated in school, and was strong in all subjects. Logical puzzles etc is just an extension of that, imo, that required little to no conditioning.

Scientific reasoning and debating on the other hand, is certainly something that required conditioning. I don't think this comes as intuitively to anyone. I know that my evidence based reasoning was quite poor when I was younger, and continues to improve with age.

[Reincarnate]

The results don't surprise me and fall in line with what I'd expect.

I know Cavernio doesn't like calling it "intelligence" because it can fluctuate under various conditions, but my point is that things like IQ/g/etc, despite whatever unexplained variance or errors or systematic problems they may contain, are still really good at predicting a wide variety of things. Call it whatever you want. Give incentives to an IQ test against baseline and you'll see increases *against a baseline* -- compare that result to another task/scenario/statistic with comparable incentive profiles and you'll probably see a similar jump. It's still going to be a valuable and well-measured tool.

Saying "I don't think that's measuring intelligence" -- well, okay. But it's measuring *something*, and that *something* is tightly correlated with quite a bit. It's reasonable to call it intelligence because, like Reach said, "Many of the things IQ cross correlates with to fall within the definition of intelligence. These factors have high utility and predictive value."

I'm not aiming this at you, Cavernio, but in general I dislike it when people try to knock intelligence/its measurements and argue it's so loose-weave as a way to justify someone being smarter than he really is. I think intelligence CAN be defined, and I think we have many great tools for assessing it.

[Kilroy_x]

Random question. If engineers are so smart, why do they always:

1. Settle for the very first explanation for a phenomenon that jumps into their head and defend it dogmatically
2. Do this regarding discussions which are the domain of fields they have never studied even in passing, or regarding issues which they can only possibly speculate about (like qualia).

[Reincarnate]

There are plenty of bad engineers.

1. I personally think taking an evidence/data-based approach is the way to go. It's almost always a bad idea to defend something dogmatically unless you really have a good idea about what it is you're defending.

2. I personally hate it when people do this: http://darkerview.com/darkview/uploa...physicists.jpg So many engineers at my school did this to Wharton students *all the damn time* and it was infuriating.

[jinxybat]

my parents are all teachers ( yes, all because I have some step parents to throw in there ) so I have a lot of learning forced upon me... every single vacation we go on involves some learning. If you fall asleep in the car, you're woken up to point out facts. XD

but I wish I was better at math.

[Reach]

There are plenty of bad engineers.

True. There are plenty of bad people at everything.

This is a fairly old study, but: http://www.eddieoneverything.com/wp-...ccupations.jpg

As you can see, there are engineers that are below average intelligence. Yikes.

Tried the test just for the sake of seeing what you meant. Indeed they are though. Most of times, I didn't even knew where the logic was.

I ended up with 130 which surprised me since I've run onto a lot of these questions xD

Is it normal that I get 130 on the TRI52 test and only 118 on the RAVEN one ?

I missed this earlier, but to answer your question: It's not abnormal. Usually scores would be closer together, but having them that far apart is not unusual.

With that said, the TRI52 is generally a more accurate test in the high range (Above 130), whereas the raven test is better with measuring IQ below 130. As such, the ravens result is probably more accurate (or an average of the two scores probably best estimates your IQ).

[Reincarnate]

Index of 163 on the TRI52, this test kicks the shit out of iqtest.dk imo. Some of those questions are annoying and easy to overthink, while others are damned obscure -- scary.

What's the ceiling on this test? I'm pretty sure 163 is close to the top (was only uncertain on maybe one or two questions)

EDIT: According to what I've found on Google, the test ceiling is about 168, so that implies I got 51/52 on the test itself. FFFFUUUUUUUUU. Why does this shit always happen? ****ing thing happened to me on the SAT and LSAT, too. It's like goddamned Test-Taking Blackflag Syndrome.

Also, I found a post by the creator of TRI52 who touches on some of the subjects brought up in this thread regarding measuring intelligence vs. factoring into account things that skew the rating: http://www.cerebrals.com/board/viewt...tart=30#p31435

EDIT2: Yep, went through the test again with my old answers and chose the other answer for one I was really torn about -- 168.

[Reach]

Originally Posted by Reincarnate

Index of 163 on the TRI52, this test kicks the shit out of iqtest.dk imo. Some of those questions are annoying and easy to overthink, while others are damned obscure -- scary.

What's the ceiling on this test? I'm pretty sure 163 is close to the top (was only uncertain on maybe one or two questions)

EDIT: According to what I've found on Google, the test ceiling is about 168, so that implies I got 51/52 on the test itself. FFFFUUUUUUUUU. Why does this shit always happen? ****ing thing happened to me on the SAT and LSAT, too. It's like goddamned Test-Taking Blackflag Syndrome.

Also, I found a post by the creator of TRI52 who touches on some of the subjects brought up in this thread regarding measuring intelligence vs. factoring into account things that skew the rating: http://www.cerebrals.com/board/viewt...tart=30#p31435

EDIT2: Yep, went through the test again with my old answers and chose the other answer for one I was really torn about -- 168.

That's a monster score, Rubix. Though I mean, if you've hit the ceiling of the LSAT and SAT, it's not really surprising. It puts you above the rest of FFR though (when I posted this before, iirc there were two people scoring over 150. It appears that mostly above average people browse forums and only exceptional people bother posting their scores :P )

To be fair though, getting one wrong isn't statistically different than a perfect score. At that point, you've already broken the ceiling of the test, meaning the test can't sufficiently measure your aptitude. I too have met the curse though; I got 89/90 on the perceptual portion of the DAT (Dental Aptitude Test). One person in Canada managed to beat my score. I guess I should be depressed about that, yeah? :P

163 is approaching the 1 in 100,000 level, though (At least in terms of spatial ability, but given your LSAT/SAT and cross correlations between verbal-spatial, your verbal index is probably just as high).

(I hope you're doing something useful with that intellect)

[Reincarnate]

Also beastly DAT, Reach, haha

[SCWolf]

I feel as if I could be smart if I put my mind to it. I have absolutely no drive, and ADHD. It's a struggle, but I'd love nothing more than to school every idiot that thinks they're the shit. If I could make learning something easier, I'd have graduated with honours.

[Cavernio]

"they ignore the fact that average motivation is something that will obviously remain relatively stable throughout the lifetime."

Erm, of course 'average' motivation can stay stable depending on whatever duration of time you're measuring an average, but nit-picking aside, if I understand what you're saying right now, I feel like I'm a perfect counter-example to the assumption.
Being a depression sufferer, my motivation over the past 10+ years has been all over the place, changing from one day to the next, and also changing in a larger, cyclical pattern. I know I'm dumber when depressed, I can hardly focus on anything even if I do manage to muster the motivation to try.

That intelligence tests relate to so many things, they are useful simply because they do, I wholly agree.

What 'emotionally' bothers me about them is that it often feels like there's an assumed 'innate' added before the 'intelligence' for those tests. The perception that you are dumb or smart can affect how well you perform on things. (Actually, I was reading somewhere when finding that other article that kids who are often praised as being intelligent will do worse than equally intelligent kids who aren't.) It's terrible to classify someone only to have them feel like they must fit into that classification and therefore won't try, which I feel is an unfortunate spin-off of intelligence testing. It's far more useful for a person to think that they can accomplish things and be successful despite having less than average intelligence, than to have them be told they're only as smart as a test tells them.

It's just very...uncritical to just assume intelligence tests as purely measuring intelligence. Individually, they're riddled with issues that show they don't just purely measure it. Like as soon as they're not going to include cultural bias (like vocabulary testing) (a complaint a lot of people have for intelligence testing, simply because they've heard that they are culturally biased), they seem only able to rely on visual means to test things like pattern finding. Tests of originality aren't even standard in measuring intelligence. Of course that so many of these tests are shown to correlate to each other means that there's obviously an underlying thread connecting these things, and it makes sense to call it intelligence, and it is this common thread where my ranting about focus and motivation come into play.

I'm not so much against specific testing of specific intelligences though, as that sort of thing has been proven to be quite useful. As that woman I mentioned earlier, programs like Fast Forward that she made are specifically designed to target problem areas of individual. Obviously in order to measure where people's problem areas are and if they can improve in them, they use some sort of standardized testing. However it is very specific in what it measures, and the problem areas that are addressed are very specific. This type of testing and classifying is clearly useful because then they can focus on how to improve those specific areas, and they do. The same can't be said for general intelligence or tests that say they measure it.

Something like SAT's have a very specific purpose, where getting a general idea about someone is ideal. But things like that are few. I mean, most jobs you don't need someone of general high intelligence, you need someone trained for it, and someone who possesses the specific smarts that you want. Sure, some jobs, a more general intelligence is what you want. But you'll still hire them based on your own criteria. The fact that your own/company's criteria for determining things like performance relates to IQ just shows that we don't need to rely on standardized testing. And reasons like that are why they aren't standard for highering. IQ seems more like something interesting than something actually useful.

SCWolf: look up Fast Forward. There do exist specific programs that I believe specifically have things that can help 'fix' ADHD, not just teach you how to compensate for it. Unfortunately, it appears geared specifically for kids, but the program was in part designed by adults who 'fixed' themselves as adults. It is also unfortunately not free, and the website I found looks very uninformative, but if you are seriously looking for ways to help yourself, you should look into it.

[AquaTeen]

I've never been insecure with my intelligence because it's what makes me so unique. I'm smarter than some people I know and I like them knowing that because I was a huge geek in high school and I used to help the popular people who mistreated me all the time with their English and Science homework. I used my intelligence in a sense to get my revenge for them hurting me by giving them wrong answers. They would ask how to spell a word and spell it out wrong and I'd tell them it was correct like once someone asked if Chocolate was spelled Choclate and I said yes or I'd give them a wrong answer to an obviously easy Science question because they were too dumb to know the answer so no my intelligence has seen me through a lot of hard times and a lot of hard scenarios making me even more confident in the intelligence in which I have and for the person that my intelligence has made me.

[ScylaX]

You're mildly mixing up intelligence and knowledge there.