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The average IQ will always be 100. It will also always be perfectly normally distributed. Because it's designed that way. http://www.michna.com/iq.htm http://w
by LionessLover 10y ago
The average IQ will always be 100. It will also always be perfectly normally distributed. Because it's designed that way.
http://www.michna.com/iq.htm http://www.michna.com/iq.htm
> In truth the IQ is a purely statistical measure. It has no direct relation to brain performance, is not proportional to it, and doesn't even have any linear or otherwise straightforward relation to it. The only thing you can say is that somebody with a higher IQ will show higher scores on most other brain performance tests as well, but the IQ doesn't say how much higher.
- ricksplat 10y ago> The average IQ will always be 100 Except (and this counters GP post also): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect Our IQs are steadily increasing. Or so it appears ... With equivalent tests to those administered a few years ago scores are steadily increasing. It's not necessarily that we're getting smarter of course - far more likely to be the case that these tests become the "definition" of intelligence and our children are more specifically trained for them.
- MOARDONGZPLZ 10y agoI think the point is that IQ is always normalized to 100, so that "average" is 100% of the time "average" for the current population. Maybe a 100 IQ person now has more intellectual horsepower than a 100 IQ person from 200 years ago, but that doesn't have any effect on what is being said.
- ricksplat 10y ago> a 100 IQ person now has more intellectual horsepower than a 100 IQ person from 200 years ago That's not what I meant. I meant that "scores" were increasing - which is the reason for normalisation against present population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Flynn_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Flynn_ef... IQ test scores have been rising at an average rate of around three IQ points per decade So IQ in absolute terms has been increasing steadily - but this doesn't necessarily tell us anything about whether intelligence has been increasing or not.
- hellofunk 10y agoThere is an interesting TED lecture about the gradual rise in intelligence, how children are usually smarter than their parents.
- amelius 10y agoWell, our parents invented things like nuclear energy and semiconductor physics, while we invented, what, social media?
- mrdrozdov 10y agoSoftware that everyone in the world can use simultaneously. Sounds like a pretty good invention to me.
- amelius 10y agoExcept that it isn't. For example, if everybody in the world opened a single Google Docs document, then the system would break horrendously. This type of software is still very much compartmentalized.
- mrdrozdov 10y agoSounds like it's still a good problem for us to keep working on then :)
- Houshalter 10y agoThat's like saying stuff has gotten more expensive over time because of inflation. Yes it's literally true, but everyone knows to control for inflation. In the same way, because of the Flynn effect, average score on 1960-IQ tests is higher than 100. IQ does change over time. Anyway just because it wasn't designed to have a linear meaning doesn't mean it's useless. It measures what percent of the population scored better and worse than you. That's still a useful fact to know, just like people talk about "the top 1%" instead of specifying exact income brackets.
- CyberDildonics 10y ago> just because it wasn't designed to have a linear meaning doesn't mean it's useless. He didn't say that it was