as someone who likes the puzzles of iq tests:
IQ tests are all bullshit.
I was tested as a child, as part of a battery of other tests.
According to that, I’m a genius.
Its obvious its bullshit.
It has its use. Comparing numbers? Not so much, unless you are working on a patient with your team as part of your job and all
it’s original use was actually clever.
the idea was to compare students by their mental development rather than are to allocate classes.
but it was quickly picked up by race “scientists” to promote eugenics.
The only difference in high score vs low score on an IQ test Imo is the ability to recognize that one is truly foolish and knows nothing. As I say that I realize that accepting you don’t know everything is actually a great way to encourage yourself to learn more hence improving effective intelligence… Maybe its not all Bullshit?
“Answer sheet for all 29 questions.”
So for only $45 you can have a certified 200 iq I guess.
39 questions, that must be very serious IQ testing going on there … /s
Being charitable I assume this is after you complete the test, but you can just look up the answers for free!
The extra $20 is for taking the test again with the answer sheet next to you
The real part of the test that determines whether or not you’re an idiot
By posting this to boast, it demonstrates that his IQ is much lower as he is unable to read the room.
By taking a paid IQ test he failed the test.
The room is LinkedIn, though, they love this shit
That’s QE though right?
I got 135 once as a kid, and then as an older kid, younger adult, studied up on and learned many of the flaws with IQ testing, one of many being that… you can study for them, and perform better.
That’s not supposed to be possible if it is measuring some kind of fundamental, inherent quality about you that cannot meaningfully change.
I did an online one in the early days of the Internet, and scored a 137. I have zero faith it has any accuracy. My buddy also did it and got a 145, I believe his is above mine but still, no faith that the numbers are correct.
IQ tests are deeply and inherently flawed, usually based on the fact that you can both quickly read, understand the intent of the question, and respond with whatever the writer of the test feels is correct in a timely fashion.
And if you don’t realize how much of what I just wrote is subjective based on lived experience, and specific parameters about you that have nothing to do with how intelligent you are, then congratulations, you’re probably above average.
Yeah a lot of online ones were and still are BS, my parents put me through an actual, go to a place, sit and do a test for multiple hours kind of thing.
I am not sure that they actually needed to, but the explanation they gave me was that it was needed to get into the ‘gifted’ program in Elementary School…
Always stood out as weird to me, most of the other kids in it never did a whole ass IQ test, they just had really good grades and their parents asked the school nicely… … ???
EDIT: Also uh, IQs are supposed to be noralized at 100… so… by standard deviations…
If I really am 135, then I’m in roughly the top 2% of the population.
If your friend is really above 145… they’d be in roughly the top tenth of a percent of all humans.
???
I think most intelligence tests are flawed to that degree. Memorizing facts is far from true intelligence. For one, they never consider emotional intelligence in the equation. Which to me should be one of the highest standards. Empathy, for example, should be considered in intelligence tests.
My view would be that the abilility to memorize and retain a number of facts is a kind of intelligence, to me the most obvious example would be in say, reading comprehension: If you read a chapter of a fiction novel, but then cannot recall new characters, important actions, etc, thats a problem…
But at the same time, yes, EQ, empathy, emotional intelligence does seem to be another important, multidimensional component to human cognitive abilities… but it is unclear to me how one could really make some kind of metric to truly measure the say, relative capacity for empathy.
Further, if your definition is closer to ‘emotional intelligence’… well again, speaking as an autist, this is something that gets wildly misunderstood and mis-assessed by neurotypicals just all the time, in my experience.
I have a great deal of capacity for empathy, I have consistently demonstrated this via action and words throughout my life… but most of the time, neurotypicals will conclude the exact opposite about me, because of a single instance where my tone or expressions or verbiage were slightly ‘off’ from what they evidently wanted, and then they’ll say I was disingenuous, cruel, callous, etc… despite the two of us having had a years long history of me being emotionally available for them, supoortive of them.
If you know of an existing, or have a proposal for some kind of EQ metric/test, I’d be interested in seeing it, … and again, I agree that in concept, EQ is an important aspect of human cognition… but I am skeptical that any kind of useful metric or test for it could exist, beyond doing like a full psych eval of someone over the course of months.
The whole concept of a metric like this is that it would be objective, intercomparable… and presumably, indicate something that is to at least a significant degree, relatively fixed throughout time.
The nature of emotion seems to me to be diametrically opposed to both of these… people can often be quite emotionally stable as a baseline, but then act erratic after or during a period of significant stress or trauma… or joy and pampering… and many people and cultures have different baselines for what they even view as something like ‘emotionally welcoming/understanding.’
I am deficient in IQ and EQ lol. Sucks.
It is actually worse.
it is known that areas which got access to a formal education (schools), would get quickly much better average IQ score than before.
If just visiting school increases your IQ (some measurements suggest 14 points), then it is clearly not a fundamentale quality.
So even without specifically learning for the test, you can learn for the test.
Yeah, haha, the most useful predictive metric for how a person will generally turn out in life, socioeconomically, that I am aware of… is still the zipcode you grew up in.
For any non USAsians, thats the post code, the fairly granular level ‘what town/city/neighborhood did you grow up in’.
Whole lotta Nurture against the innate Nature of your genes or whatever.
I’ve taken several thoughout my life and as a kid I always got >130. At 14 I did one and got 127 so I did exactly what you described and trained for the parts I hadn’t succeeded at. Next test was >130 again. I’m not sure if I got smarter through studying or just better at taking the test though. Especially since the difference between the results is pretty small honestly.
Studying to ace an IQ test shows you’re not debilitatingly mentally challenged, though. I think that’s all the test is really good for.
Good point. Ultimately this leads me to question the existence of some fixed quality of intelligence. People are growing, adapting, and learning through their lives, so a fixed number defining general intelligence is likely a moot concept.
On top of the prior point lies another major issue with any sort of “general intelligence” test: defining “general intelligence”. Intelligence comes in many forms: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, existential intelligence, and more. The IQ test does not test all forms of intelligence.
This being said, It is likely impossible to test all forms of intelligence in one test; and even if we could create this test, how would this test handle differently abled people. For example, a completely blind person would fail the visual intelligence portion every time (for obvious reasons).
IQ is highly correlated with life outcomes like income, life expectancy, employment, and crime. Maybe it doesn’t measure “intelligence,” but it measures something which appears to be very important for modern society. There are undoubtedly different forms of intelligence which are not measured by an IQ test.
This is a good point to bring up, but this correlation is still being debated: the causal connection between the IQ test and the correlation is unclear, and there is debate on whether the correlation is being constructed through bad data or analysis techniques. Because of this, no one can confidently claim whether IQ tests predicts good job performance, employment, etc.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4557354/
[Skip to the conclusion at the end to get the tldr, since this is a long scientific publication]
Thanks for the study. I agree on all points. This is the challenge with sociological research: it is unethical to conduct controlled studies. We will never have controlled IQ research. The study suggests we continue to perform better quality primary research, and I fully agree. Until then, as per the data in the study, the correlative evidence remains compelling. At least as far as sociological research goes.
I tend to think this research is more compelling and useful at the macro level. We should bear in mind that the correlative coefficient between IQ and income is only between 0.2 and 0.4. There are many other factors which also impact outcomes.
Yeah but I’m pretty sure the relative wealth/affluence of the neighborhood you grew up in is significantly more strongly correlated with overall life outcomes, and is also cross correlated with IQ itself, broadly, over many societies and locales.
Which would indicate that focusing on ‘IQ’ is a red herring, and to a significant degree becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy… not to mention gives rise to an ultimately false notion of a meritocratic society, when the reality is much, much closer to ‘its who you know, not what you know’, a nepotistic society.
Yeah but I’m pretty sure the relative wealth/affluence of the neighborhood you grew up in is significantly more strongly correlated with overall life outcomes
That is, surprisingly, incorrect. A meta-analysis by Strenze (2007) showed that the predictive power of IQ is slightly stronger than that of parental socio-economic status (SES) (Table 1). Specifically, IQ measured before age 19 outdoes parental SES in predicting future educational attainment, occupational status, and income after age 29 (see “best studies” on Table 1). In other words, if you want to predict an adolescent’s success in adulthood along a given metric of success (e.g., income, educational attainment, or occupational status), it is more useful to know that adolescent’s IQ than to know the success of their parents along that same metric. In the conclusion of the analysis, Strenze (page 416) argues that this would be unexpected if the predictive power of IQ could be attributed primarily to its association with parental SES:
Despite the modest conclusion, these results are important because they falsify a claim often made by the critics of the “testing movement”: that the positive relationship between intelligence and success is just the effect of parental SES or academic performance influencing them both (see Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Fischer et al., 1996; McClelland, 1973). If the correlation between intelligence and success was a mere byproduct of the causal effect of parental SES or academic performance, then parental SES and academic performance should have outcompeted intelligence as predictors of success; but this was clearly not so. These results confirm that intelligence is an independent causal force among the determinants of success; in other words, the fact that intelligent people are successful is not completely explainable by the fact that intelligent people have wealthy parents and are doing better at school.*
The meta-analysis does find that parental SES also correlates significantly with the future outcomes of the child. However, because youth IQ and parental SES are correlated, it is possible that some unspecified portion of the predictive power of youth IQ is due to its correlation with parental SES (or vice-versa). To get a more precise estimate of the effects of youth IQ (independent of parental SES), we need to estimate the predictive power of IQ after controlling for parental SES.
Success is undoubtedly multi-factorial. Who you know is important. So is parental educational achievement, access to nutritional food, an absence of violence in the home, IQ, etc.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4749462/
Here is a more recent meta-analysis from 2015 that concludes that the genetic additive effect on total outcomes is significant and distinct from the SES…
But only in the US.
In Europe, Australia, elsewhere, the genetic additive effect is statistically insignificant.
(IE, SES is the dominant factor)
This meta-analysis of published and unpublished data provided clear answers to our three questions.
First, studies from the United States supported a moderately sized Gene × SES interaction on intelligence and academic achievement (a′ = .074; Fig. 1).
Second, in studies conducted outside the United States (in Western Europe and Australia), the best estimate for Gene × SES magnitude was very slightly negative and not significantly different from zero.
Third, the difference in the estimated magnitude of the Gene × SES effect between the U.S. and the non-U.S. studies was itself significant.
…
Fig 1, Variance vs SES, in the US
(my own commentary: the wealthier you are in the US, the more of a complete crapshoot it is whether or not you are smart or stupid… because IQ doesn’t matter for wealthy people.)
…
…the cross-national difference identified does not appear to be an epiphenomenon of cross-national differences in the age ranges examined or the particular intelligence or achievement outcomes measured.
…
Interestingly, as can be seen by comparing Figures 2 and S2, these Gene × Age trends closely parallel the U.S. Gene × SES effect. Genes account for considerably more variation in intelligence both at higher ages and in higher U.S. socioeconomic contexts.
Indeed, both phenomena may reflect a process of increased and accumulated effects of gene-environment transactions with the increased opportunity that comes with both social class and age (Tucker-Drob et al., 2013; Turkheimer & Horn, 2014).
…
Without conducting my own entire study…
My read on this is that the genetic component is much more significant in the US than in other places…
… because the US is significantly more economically stratified, nepotistic, and has a broken education system where rich idiots can get all the education they want, and skate by, but you basically have to be a diligent and lucky genius to escape poverty and the shit-tier education it has bestowed you with.
The noted tendency of age to also be correlated with SES and genetics in the US, is again, imo, explained by our vastly broken healthcare system just literally killing you if you are either poor, or stupid.
If I am not mistaken, we are uh, still trending downward on overall life expectancy, as compared to most other developed countries in this study sample set where life expectancy either was not badly affected by COVID, or was but has since rebounded.
…
But uh yeah, going back to this more recent study… looks like genes have a less meaningful impact than your SES in civilized areas of the world.
Here in the US, we only have downward class mobility, unless you are very, very clever, and continuously lucky, continuously reinvesting those gains from your cleverness into social and financial capital without making any ‘bad investments’, or ever having any sudden medical or financial disaster happen to you.
Kakistocracy: Rule by the least fit to govern, the worst qualified, the most unscrupulous.
…
Anyway, not to sound like I am directing my venom here at you, I do very much appreciate you bringing an actual comprehensive meta analysis and giving a very good and well reasoned read on it, with caveats. =D
On top of the prior point lies another major issue with any sort of “general intelligence” test: defining “general intelligence”. Intelligence comes in many forms: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, existential intelligence, and more. The IQ test does not test all forms of intelligence.
This, a million times this.
Intelligence is not simply a thing like an INT stat in an rpg game that just generally makes you more cognitively capable and/or knowledgeable with just consistently broad applicability.
Theres a ton of research that’s gone into how to actually teach children and people things that suggests… sure, there is to some extent a broad cognitive ability, but there is also a huge multidimensional component, more domain specific element to different levels of aptitude with different kinds of thinking.
…
Like, me, I’m autistic… innately good at clear cut and logical things, innately terrible at anything approaching fuzzy logic, like socializing.
I had to put a massive amount of effort into learning that… people often don’t literally mean what they literally say, how intonation works, how context works in social situations…
… whereas I excelled at learning how to read and write and do math, how to do logic and critical thinking, apply frameworks of thinking across different fields of knowledge, memorize knowledge sets from books or what not.
Kinesis intelligence? Eh, I’d say I’m decent at it naturally, but that’s been greatly augmented by 10+ years of Karate, a bit of shooting range practice, learning the basics of a few instruments… but I’m no where near as ‘body’ or ‘dexterity’ intelligent as many others I’ve met.
…
Anyway, yeah, theres a lot of interesting empirical research nowadays that shows different areas of the brain being more or less engaged in certain kinds of activities, and then trying to basically reverse engineer how all that works, but its enormously complicated.
Also: Epigenetics is a thing.
Nature gives you your DNA… but Nurture changes which parts of it are more used, more activated.
Its all enormously more complex than reducing a person down to a single number.
Oh right and the other big one: implicit cultural bias in the IQ tests themselves. I think this is (somewhat?) less of a problem in actual legit IQ tests these days, but for a very, very long time, it was a huge problem that just resulted in basically scientific racism.
…
tl:dr;
anyone who is boasting about their IQ without a gazillion caveats is doing the dunning-krueger thing, overestimating their actual cognitive abilities.
If he was rational, he would understand that companies like this have a huge incentive to inflate the score of anyone participating.
If he had got an 87, do you think that he would have posted his score?
Absolutely not, then the company would not get free advertising, costing them business.
I don’t believe it is fully fake, but I would not be surprised to see them rounding up any edge cases, this goes for the entire industry
The first time I took an online IQ test was when I was about 12 years old, around 2001. Even then, when I got back high results, I thought, “They probably make everyone’s score high, to encourage them to share the test. I’m going to take this result with a grain of salt.”
I never shared it, because I didn’t trust it. I soon learned that IQ tests are culturally biased anyway, and later on learned about the more up-to-date multiple-intelligence tests.
Seeing a grown adult taking and sharing an online IQ test in this day and age, my inner 12-year-old is rolling her eyes. It seems like someone is desperate for validation.
2001 is a really high IQ…
IQ tests are only useful for comparing population groups with the same shared culture. Think two Midwest towns, but the one that has a chemical plant is 20 points lower. You can’t use it to compare different groups that have different skill sets for survival. You can not use it for individuals at all.
Similar experience in junior high, took an in-person IQ test and scored highly but instead I thought “this will make people feel envious, I’ll keep it to myself.” When I found out how stupid being proud of IQ results was, I was so glad junior high me lucked his way through cringe-inducing-memory-free.
Also I watched an hour long documentary about “the man with the highest IQ in the world” with my mom and thought “this guy is insufferable, must be related to high intelligence.” But no, it was trash reality TV disguised as a documentary. I think the guy believed he was an unparalleled genius, though.
I tried some free test once and got something like 90 lol
I’m pretty sure being of average intelligence (as far a test with its own flaws and limitations can tell) is nothing to be ashamed of, just like being of average height is nothing to be ashamed of.
I took one when I was a kid and got a 136, and I feel like an idiot fairly regularly. I don’t think these tests a definitive measures of intellectual “superiority”
It what you do with what you’ve got that counts.
I have taken free tests when I have been bored, I have got results within the range of 80 to 120, safe to say, I don’t have a lot of trust in them…
I took a test as a kid and 30 years later and they both said 114. Honestly did not expect that.
For all the posturing some people you meet in daily life do about “being smart”, I think most of us are pretty damn average. Most people still have the capacity to accomplish anything they want (within reason) if they’re willing to put in enough time and effort on a consistent basis.
I think most of us are pretty damn average.
That’s true. Like, by definition.
Has more to do with the distribution than the definition. If everyone were either a moron or genius, nobody would be average without changing the definition.
True!
If he got 87 he can still feel “superior” to about 15% of people, though good luck figuring out who those are.
Rookie. I’m on a wholly different intelligence power level, as this completely factual certificate certifies!
Is this metric or imperial?
it’s like c/f when they get far beyond terrestrial norms, they pretty much intersect. same thing with far far below the norms.
Yes
High IQ answer
I never did understand why so-called smart people pay money to be told they’re smart.
Edit: Probably the reverse of the reason people are paid to tell others, people like you, that you’re a no-good waste of space and you don’t deserve me even addressing lifeforms as low as you; you disgusting piece of human excrement. That’ll be £50, maggot.
Absolutely.
As a genuinely smart person I can do that for myself for free. 😏
I think I’m going to start a testing company with a big-titty mummy milf making a video for each person with a “high iq” instead of a paper certificate. I’ll make a bazillion!
Why would she need a bazillion, unless she’s going to be naked?
“That’ll be $50. Ok here it is. Thank you. You’re welcome.”
-Me
And I do!
I worked for 40 years at a company that made most of NASA’s rocket engines, and a host of other impressive technology. There were many, many geniuses there - lots of literal rocket scientists, and leaders in fields like materials science and chemical engineering. One thing I learned early on was that most of the true geniuses looked down on people who mentioned being members of Mensa. It was like a red flag that the person cares too much about being perceived as smart. People who care so much about that put more energy into fostering the image than actually contributing.
and a host of other impressive technology.
like lasers right? Tell me we have laser weapons in space! Or do you mean really small but smart contributions that no one other than rocket scientists would know about!
As for MENSA - for sure. Pretentious little kiddies.
We actually had a very cool laser program for many years. One of the times that the company changed hands, the parent company kept the lasers part.
But we did a lot of very neat electrical power systems, including the whole electrical power management system for the space station.
But we did a lot of very neat electrical power systems, including the whole electrical power management system for the space station.
Can a potato power it?
Might have to disable the slow clap functionality of the AI while on potato power
That probably would have been a good design feature because it turns out potatoes grow well in space, but we opted to go with solar power.
Yes but very shortly.
My intuition is that “smart” is a vague word that means a lot of things, but almost all of those interpretations are generally seen as a positive and respectable. The idea of being respected is inherently appealing, so if we entirely conflate the colloquial meanings with a very specific meaning that can be measured accurately on a linear scale, well then you can just show people your good number and take a shortcut to being revered without having to actually behave in an observably respectable way in front of other people.
A person taking an iq test has experience with claims of being smart being met with skepticism, so the next idea is that a third party would help clear up that misunderstanding. They’re not paying to be told they’re smart, they’re paying for the certificate from a third party to back them up.
My guess is that overlooking the obvious issues is more about desperation than anything else. No one calls someone intelligent to convey that they can score high on a specific test that measures nothing meaningful. It also should be very natural to ask whether other people might find reason to doubt the value of a certificate. Not doing any investigation into these thoughts is pretty fucking stupid, but stupid to the point where I think there has to be a certain level of desperation to not see them at all.
Wow you wrote a lot of nonsense. “IQ” tests are BS. The tests were sold to companies in the 50s to address the changing employment needs (more computing / logical / spatial awareness, than previous posts) and science - proper science - has moved on way past the concept of IQ. There are many different branches of IQ that one single test doesn’t address.
Wow you wrote a lot of nonsense.
I’m reading what you’re writing as saying IQ tests should not be taken seriously but it also sounds like you’re disagreeing with me for writing that I think IQ tests are a garbage concept that someone would be inclined to buy into if they’re overly insecure and want a shortcut to claim that they’re “smart”. What did I write that you actually disagree with?
I was replying to a comment wondering how people can take them seriously and I was trying to imagine what could lead a person to entirely avoid looking at the very obvious reasons why iq tests should not be treated seriously. It feels like you’re condescending to me while holding the same opinion I have.
I think it’s more they want a proof that they aren’t bragging or crazy when they do feel like they are surrounded by morons. Not sure about the need to show off though. That seems silly. We got both kids tested at the behest of the school so it’s an officially recognized test (WPPSI-IV) but I didn’t need a test to tell me I have clever kids. Nor do the teachers after about five minutes chatting with them, usually. But it was useful to get them sorted in the upper class when there was a doubt. Also it was nice to have some fine grained detail and an actual statistical value of just how different they are. Something I try to keep in mind when dealing with them on the daily. In France we use the term “High Intellectual Potential” and that’s really all it is : potential. It’s up to me not to waste it and help them flourish now. So far the teachers also see it and the best they can to also help them flourish but clearly the public school system is barely equipped to grow that potential when there are so many kids in difficulty. A single “social case” kid in a class can fuck things up for everybody around them, it’s a fucking nightmare…
I didn’t need a test to tell me I have clever kids
Every parent thinks their child is super smart and often argues with teachers over it.
Nor do the teachers after about five minutes chatting with them,
Teachers will think of you as ‘those’ parents who they have to pretend your child is gifted around. I’m not sure if you’re implying you think teachers can tell if your children are super smart after five minutes of chatting with them, but, trust me, they can’t, and don’t.
A single “social case” kid in a class can fuck things up for everybody around them, it’s a fucking nightmare…
You sound charming. Can’t you afford to send them to a reputable private school? Oh, That’s too bad. Sounds like you’re wasting the kids’ “potential”
WPPSI-IV
A single test is BS. A waste of time. A current score is not predictive of future ability and is pretty much worthless. I can tell you that your teachers ignore the score (regardless of what they tell you to your face), even though they seem to have recommended it - presumably they get a kickback from the company that tests the child for the referral (if the school did recommend it, that reveals more about your school than you realise). Additionally, the test has specific weaknesses. But hey, you get to come on Lemmy and post how “smart” your children are.
My reply didn’t overlook test justifications, nor does your explanation actually justify IQ tests. Shame.
Yeah I went to take that same test to see how high it scored, and flex on this chud with a higher score. “Free test” then charges $15 for results. Screw that, I’m not doing that for a bit.
But for those who are curious, it’s a pretty straightforward multiple choice pattern recognition test. It’s not really difficult at all. Pretty sure I got every question right in like a quarter of the allotted time. It’s really funny that he described it as “time crunching” and “adrenaline pumping”.
As a kid, I got a high score. As an adult, I don’t remember what it was. I’m an idiot now
username checks out. I also don’t know lol.
Hah, Superior! I’m on Huron level, babie!
Ya, well I’m Huron/Michigan/Georgian Bay!
Well done! I’m still Eerie :/
Hilarious
Name is different. Invalidated.
Could be that Ahmed is just his father’s name as Arabs tend to give their kids the middle names of the fathers before them. It can sometimes create very, very, very, VERY long names if the chain isn’t broken. Have heard of cases where the man had like 50 middle names. It is kind of crazy.
Of course, that doesn’t explain why he would decide to not have his last name on the certificate if it really is his, but this could be an explanation for the name.
Did you know the most common name in the arabic language is “Ibn”?
I didn’t! Would have thought Muhammed/Mohammad/etc would be the most common one. Mostly because I feel like almost every Arab man I meet is named some version of Muhammed. :D
