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.
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.