Do you believe in IQ?

If I remember correctly, it doesn’t measure your math, English, science and history skills, but rather general critical thinking and problem solving. I could be wrong though. It’s been a while.

Anyway, I think it exist, but it’s clearly not everything. I have an I.Q. of about 140 but I’m a high C/low B student at best. Work ethic and dedication are both major factors.

Different people have different strengths, skills, talents, endowments..It can be an ability to sing, dance, draw, build a dry wall, play the banjo, replace a catalytic converter (whatever that is), edit, spell, understand calculus, recognize trees from their bark alone, cut a cat’s nails, know the difference between it’s and its, bake a gorgeous apple pie. IQ measures only some skills, but it does measure them.

I think IQ measures spatial thinking and one other thing (pattern recognition? vocabulary?).

Strangely enough, there seem to be correlations between IQ and certain factors, like education.

@drdoombot the reason behind the correlations could be because the both work within the same system of learning and interpreting knowledge, however through someone in from a different culture and/or learning style and it mucks things up.

The ability to delay gratification is the latest fad in the world of seeing how well a child will do in later life. An experimenter asks a four year old to put off eating a marshmallow until he returns, at which point the child will receive an additional marshmallow—if she has waited. In a longitudinal study, the four year old who can wait (and get a promised additional marshmallow when the tester returns some no. of minutes later) seems to be the one who achieves success as an adult.

Here’s a link to an article in the New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer
and here’s a funny utube showing how hard it is to have self control: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWW1vpz1ybo

@gailcalled: The difference between “its” and “it’s” is neither a jot nor a tittle.

IQ is correlated with success in school and at work. The question is: do you really want to measure success that way?

Personally, I think the things that make people really good at school and traditional work are pretty damn boring. I much prefer people who think in ways that scare schools and employers. They often don’t do so well on IQ tests, but damn! Are they some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met!

I’ve found that people who join Mensa tend to be somewhat limited in their view of the world. Obviously this is not true of all Mensa members, but I’ve found it is often true. They tend to overly value themselves because of their high IQs but they also seem to have an awful lot of social misfits amongst their membership. And I mean misfits. Not just shyness and lack of confidence, but serious difficulties in communicating with others without insulting them.

The very idea of forming a club around people who test well makes me shudder. I can’t, for the life of me, imagine why one would want to hang out with good test-takers.

I haven’t taken an IQ test since I was applying to college. People might think I have a high IQ, but there is no relevant evidence to prove that. I can claim any score I want, and it amuses me to claim a very average score, just so I can mess with people who think the number means anything useful.

I think it is very important to evaluate people in many other ways besides how well they do on tests. I don’t think I really want to hang out with people who are good corporate climbers. I don’t want to hang out with people who study so terribly hard in school that they have time for nothing else.

But the world is enamored with this idea of “intelligence,” and thus many are respected who really don’t deserve it—at least, in my opinion. Which the IQ people don’t care about—especially since I haven’t taken their tests.

I don’t believe in IQ:

You can’t throw a stone through the internet without hitting 20 claims that Bush was the “stupidest President ever” yet I can’t find the first article that suggested that he had a below average intelligence.

I. Q. as indicated by a so-called ‘intelligence test’ is a real thing, therefore it is not necessary to “believe” in it. It is a score derived from a standardized test, and nothing more.

It’s meant to be an objective measure of one’s ability to reason and figure things out, that’s it, nothing more. Problem is, people think it’s a measure of “how smart you are”. It works if you use it for what it’s intended, if you try to over-reach, you’ll find there are a lot more ways to be “smart” than just IQ.

It’s just a tool for distinguishing natural blondes from bleached blondes without indecent exposure.

I wonder just how strongly IQ correlates with success and if it contains racial or ethnic bias.

@proXXi, I don’t think that that form of intelligence is what most people meant. Bush seemed to have no emotional/social intelligence; about how to read people, how to convey true empathy, etc. Something about how he communicated with people seemed stunted, and never mind the malapropisms, but the current President is a genius in social skills. Clinton was the same, and both of them have analytical and other book smarts as well. I’m not saying I’m in love with either of them, either, but I recognize that they are better able to get themselves across to people.

Yes, with margins of errors of course. But I also believe in EQ, CQ and SQ.

@LostInParadise: It seems possible that there might be a racial bais involved in IQ testing.

That said, I wish people would follow my racism defeating example: Stop worrying about it and live your life.

So the average Japanese might be more intelligent than I, ask me if I give a shit.

@aprilsimnel: I’ll agree that Bush wasn’t a skilled communicator when speaking to the public (McCain and Palin are far worse)

Yet unlike Obama and Clinton, Bush was much more intellectually honest. His sticking to his convictions despite the damage to his popularity being proof IMO.

There certainly is a racial, perhaps moreso socioeconomic, bias. In that those who are part of the majority have the type of education that allows them to achieve better on standardized tests.