13 ms·

http://infoproc.blogspot.de/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-iqs-of-eminent.html http://infoproc.blogspot.de/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-iq... Stephen Hsu argue

by ralfd 9y ago

http://infoproc.blogspot.de/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-iqs-of-eminent.html http://infoproc.blogspot.de/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-iq... Stephen Hsu argued there that Feynmans school iq test must have had a low ceiling. From what we know about the consistently high IQ scores of other incredibly bright theoretical scientists that sounds likely.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
The reality is that most IQ tests do not go all that high. It is quite challenging to get an accurate IQ score above a certain range. It requires not only the right assessment tools -- ie tests -- but a trained professional administering it. Gifted kids mess with test administrators all the time, sometimes intentionally so. (Plus, to get a super high score, you need to test the child by about age 7. After that age, we just cannot reliably assert that someone's IQ is, say, above 200.) If the test administered to Feynman only went to 130, as some do, then a test score anywhere close to that, such as 125, can be assumed to have "ceilinged the test." It can be viewed as a floor for the person's IQ, a minimum score suggesting it is at least that high. Thus, Stephen Hsu's assertion that it must have just been a bad test with a low ceiling suggests to me that Mr. Hsu knows a great deal less about IQ tests than I know, so I see no reason to defer to his opinion. Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge, good scores in kids strongly correlate to kids coming from upper middle class families with well educated parents, etc. So I think there is quite a lot of room for saying that if you take any child and feed them excellently well, dote on them, invest a lot of parental and societal time, effort and other resources in them, they will tend to perform better than average, both on IQ tests and in life generally. I am not just screwing with people here. I have studied the space and I think there are serious problems with talking about IQ like it is concrete, unchangeable, primarily inherited with minimal influence from environmental inputs, etc.
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  If the test administered to Feynman only went to 130, as some do, then a test score anywhere close to that, such as 125, can be assumed to have "ceilinged the test." It can be viewed as a floor for the person's IQ, a minimum score suggesting it is at least that high. Thus, Stephen Hsu's assertion that it must have just been a bad test with a low ceiling suggests to me that Mr. Hsu knows a great deal less about IQ tests than I know, so I see no reason to defer to his opinion. Maybe there is some nuance I'm missing, but those two paragraphs seem to be arguing the same point - that a 125 score was probably not accurate, but hitting the ceiling of the test? I.e. you and Hsu agree. Here is Hsu's full quotation (never said "bad"). To understand this score we have to remember that typical IQ tests (e.g., administered to public school children) tend to have low ceilings. They are not of the kind that Roe used in her study. One can imagine that the ceiling on Feynman's exam was roughly 135 (say, 99th percentile). If Feynman received the highest score on the mathematical portion, and a modest score of 115 on the verbal, we can easily understand the resulting average of 124.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    TLDR: Stephen Hsu and I are coming from very different mental models. His mental model asserts that it is very, very important that we keep promoting this elitist intellectual stuff. Note how he has fancy degrees and is important enough to get interviewed, while I remain some big fat nobody, having walked away from my National Merit Scholarship and done the full time homemaker thing for a lot of years, in part because I could not stomach the toxic environment involved in being One Of The Smart Kids (that all the teachers trained everyone else to hate). I elaborated some on my mental model in this paragraph: Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge, good scores in kids strongly correlate to kids coming from upper middle class families with well educated parents, etc. So I think there is quite a lot of room for saying that if you take any child and feed them excellently well, dote on them, invest a lot of parental and societal time, effort and other resources in them, they will tend to perform better than average, both on IQ tests and in life generally. Part of what I am arguing is that we make up a measurement that validates that our "best" people -- like well educated, well heeled white males -- are best because they have this innate quality called high IQ and then we channel the "smart kids" from "good homes" into classes that cause them to test well. The mental model that some kids are inherently more deserving of investment at school because they are smarter and do better than other kids winds up being self-fulfilling prophesy. Sort of like redlining of Black neighborhoods was self-fulfilling prophesy, causing Blacks to remain poor and their neighborhoods to remain not worth investing in by banks. So, hopefully that clarifies it for you because I already said I am stepping away from this discussion. Adieu.
    - WillPostForFood 9y ago
      Your greater disagreement with Hsu seems to be clouding your view on narrow point that you actually agree with him on.
      - DoreenMichele 9y ago
        That feels to me a little like someone telling me "We both agree that this person is currently a slave, so let's not allow your heartfelt belief that slavery is immoral interfere with our use of this slave. Moving on." And I imagine I will regret saying that, but I can't see letting that stand and saying nothing.
- ben_w 9y ago
  > After that age, we just cannot reliably assert that someone's IQ is, say, above 200. To add to all the other criticisms of IQ score, it’s defined to be mean-100-σ-15* — so nobody has an IQ of over 197, and only newborn anenephalactics ever score as low az IQ 3… and perhaps not even then if they score the same as the comatose. * or σ-16, which changes the subsequent statements a little.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - soVeryTired 9y ago
    There's no guarantee that the normal distribution is a good model in the tails though. A former lecturer of mine would often assert that nothing is normal in the tails.
  - barry-cotter 9y ago
    IQ is fat tailed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat-tailed_distribution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat-tailed_distribution I regret I can’t find anything on Bing but the below but Google’s blocked where I am. https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2014/10/13/fat-tailed-and-long-tailed-distributions.html https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2014/10/13/fat-tailed-and-... There are some other cases where it is generally thought that the distribution is normal, but it is not (in real samples). IQ has too many people in both far ends and has a different shaped tail on the right and left (the maximum is 200 or so, but the minimum is about 40). Weight of adults also has too many in the right tail and is not fully symmetric, but its right tail is also long (unlike that for IQ).
    - ben_w 9y ago
      From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient > When current IQ tests were developed, the median raw score of the norming sample is defined as IQ 100 and scores each standard deviation (SD) up or down are defined as 15 IQ points greater or less, IQ itself — not intelligence or even score on an IQ test — is by definition not fat tailed. If a particular IQ test doesn’t produce a normal distribution, that test is wrong. At least, wrong by the current standard definition of IQ; there have been others, and the very fact that it is flawed means there probably will be a new one in future.
- lucio 9y ago
  >Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge Raven Progressive Matrices, I believe the most used IQ test today is not influenced by cultural knowledge. IQ has an amazingly high correlation with academic success and work success, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM it is worthwhile
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matric... Wikipedia says that people with autism and asperger's outperform other people on Raven's tests. Most people view ASD individuals as seriously cognitively impaired and they are often seen as low IQ, so I have trouble with your assertion. It suggests that people the world sees as highly impaired whose lives typically are harder than average are smarter than the rest of us. This completely flies in the face of every definition I have ever seen for IQ as a general predictor of competence. Wikipedia also says the answers for Raven's matrices have been leaked, making them useless as an assessment tool.
    - Houshalter 9y ago
      >Most people view ASD individuals as seriously cognitively impaired and they are often seen as low IQ, so I have trouble with your assertion. Popular culture stereotypes autists as being highly intelligent.
      - DoreenMichele 9y ago
        https://www.appliedbehavioranalysisedu.org/is-autism-associated-with-higher-intelligence/ https://www.appliedbehavioranalysisedu.org/is-autism-associa... The very existence of autism calls into question our historical conceptualization of intelligence and IQ testing. I have two ASD sons. They are very bright. They also have some serious personal struggles. So, which is it? Does IQ measure general competence or does it measure something else? Because this latest twist in the conversation seems just ridiculous.
- gozur88 9y ago
  >Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge, good scores in kids strongly correlate to kids coming from upper middle class families with well educated parents, etc. Why do you assume that's cause and not effect?

by ralfd 9y ago

DoreenMichele 9y ago

The reality is that most IQ tests do not go all that high. It is quite challenging to get an accurate IQ score above a certain range. It requires not only the right assessment tools -- ie tests -- but a trained professional administering it. Gifted kids mess with test administrators all the time, sometimes intentionally so. (Plus, to get a super high score, you need to test the child by about age 7. After that age, we just cannot reliably assert that someone's IQ is, say, above 200.) If the test administered to Feynman only went to 130, as some do, then a test score anywhere close to that, such as 125, can be assumed to have "ceilinged the test." It can be viewed as a floor for the person's IQ, a minimum score suggesting it is at least that high. Thus, Stephen Hsu's assertion that it must have just been a bad test with a low ceiling suggests to me that Mr. Hsu knows a great deal less about IQ tests than I know, so I see no reason to defer to his opinion. Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge, good scores in kids strongly correlate to kids coming from upper middle class families with well educated parents, etc. So I think there is quite a lot of room for saying that if you take any child and feed them excellently well, dote on them, invest a lot of parental and societal time, effort and other resources in them, they will tend to perform better than average, both on IQ tests and in life generally. I am not just screwing with people here. I have studied the space and I think there are serious problems with talking about IQ like it is concrete, unchangeable, primarily inherited with minimal influence from environmental inputs, etc.

WillPostForFood 9y ago
If the test administered to Feynman only went to 130, as some do, then a test score anywhere close to that, such as 125, can be assumed to have "ceilinged the test." It can be viewed as a floor for the person's IQ, a minimum score suggesting it is at least that high. Thus, Stephen Hsu's assertion that it must have just been a bad test with a low ceiling suggests to me that Mr. Hsu knows a great deal less about IQ tests than I know, so I see no reason to defer to his opinion. Maybe there is some nuance I'm missing, but those two paragraphs seem to be arguing the same point - that a 125 score was probably not accurate, but hitting the ceiling of the test? I.e. you and Hsu agree. Here is Hsu's full quotation (never said "bad"). To understand this score we have to remember that typical IQ tests (e.g., administered to public school children) tend to have low ceilings. They are not of the kind that Roe used in her study. One can imagine that the ceiling on Feynman's exam was roughly 135 (say, 99th percentile). If Feynman received the highest score on the mathematical portion, and a modest score of 115 on the verbal, we can easily understand the resulting average of 124.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  TLDR: Stephen Hsu and I are coming from very different mental models. His mental model asserts that it is very, very important that we keep promoting this elitist intellectual stuff. Note how he has fancy degrees and is important enough to get interviewed, while I remain some big fat nobody, having walked away from my National Merit Scholarship and done the full time homemaker thing for a lot of years, in part because I could not stomach the toxic environment involved in being One Of The Smart Kids (that all the teachers trained everyone else to hate). I elaborated some on my mental model in this paragraph: Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge, good scores in kids strongly correlate to kids coming from upper middle class families with well educated parents, etc. So I think there is quite a lot of room for saying that if you take any child and feed them excellently well, dote on them, invest a lot of parental and societal time, effort and other resources in them, they will tend to perform better than average, both on IQ tests and in life generally. Part of what I am arguing is that we make up a measurement that validates that our "best" people -- like well educated, well heeled white males -- are best because they have this innate quality called high IQ and then we channel the "smart kids" from "good homes" into classes that cause them to test well. The mental model that some kids are inherently more deserving of investment at school because they are smarter and do better than other kids winds up being self-fulfilling prophesy. Sort of like redlining of Black neighborhoods was self-fulfilling prophesy, causing Blacks to remain poor and their neighborhoods to remain not worth investing in by banks. So, hopefully that clarifies it for you because I already said I am stepping away from this discussion. Adieu.
  - WillPostForFood 9y ago
    Your greater disagreement with Hsu seems to be clouding your view on narrow point that you actually agree with him on.
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      That feels to me a little like someone telling me "We both agree that this person is currently a slave, so let's not allow your heartfelt belief that slavery is immoral interfere with our use of this slave. Moving on." And I imagine I will regret saying that, but I can't see letting that stand and saying nothing.
ben_w 9y ago
> After that age, we just cannot reliably assert that someone's IQ is, say, above 200. To add to all the other criticisms of IQ score, it’s defined to be mean-100-σ-15* — so nobody has an IQ of over 197, and only newborn anenephalactics ever score as low az IQ 3… and perhaps not even then if they score the same as the comatose. * or σ-16, which changes the subsequent statements a little.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- soVeryTired 9y ago
  There's no guarantee that the normal distribution is a good model in the tails though. A former lecturer of mine would often assert that nothing is normal in the tails.
- barry-cotter 9y ago
  IQ is fat tailed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat-tailed_distribution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat-tailed_distribution I regret I can’t find anything on Bing but the below but Google’s blocked where I am. https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2014/10/13/fat-tailed-and-long-tailed-distributions.html https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2014/10/13/fat-tailed-and-... There are some other cases where it is generally thought that the distribution is normal, but it is not (in real samples). IQ has too many people in both far ends and has a different shaped tail on the right and left (the maximum is 200 or so, but the minimum is about 40). Weight of adults also has too many in the right tail and is not fully symmetric, but its right tail is also long (unlike that for IQ).
  - ben_w 9y ago
    From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient > When current IQ tests were developed, the median raw score of the norming sample is defined as IQ 100 and scores each standard deviation (SD) up or down are defined as 15 IQ points greater or less, IQ itself — not intelligence or even score on an IQ test — is by definition not fat tailed. If a particular IQ test doesn’t produce a normal distribution, that test is wrong. At least, wrong by the current standard definition of IQ; there have been others, and the very fact that it is flawed means there probably will be a new one in future.
lucio 9y ago
>Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge Raven Progressive Matrices, I believe the most used IQ test today is not influenced by cultural knowledge. IQ has an amazingly high correlation with academic success and work success, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSo5v5t4OQM it is worthwhile
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matric... Wikipedia says that people with autism and asperger's outperform other people on Raven's tests. Most people view ASD individuals as seriously cognitively impaired and they are often seen as low IQ, so I have trouble with your assertion. It suggests that people the world sees as highly impaired whose lives typically are harder than average are smarter than the rest of us. This completely flies in the face of every definition I have ever seen for IQ as a general predictor of competence. Wikipedia also says the answers for Raven's matrices have been leaked, making them useless as an assessment tool.
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    >Most people view ASD individuals as seriously cognitively impaired and they are often seen as low IQ, so I have trouble with your assertion. Popular culture stereotypes autists as being highly intelligent.
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      https://www.appliedbehavioranalysisedu.org/is-autism-associated-with-higher-intelligence/ https://www.appliedbehavioranalysisedu.org/is-autism-associa... The very existence of autism calls into question our historical conceptualization of intelligence and IQ testing. I have two ASD sons. They are very bright. They also have some serious personal struggles. So, which is it? Does IQ measure general competence or does it measure something else? Because this latest twist in the conversation seems just ridiculous.
gozur88 9y ago
>Yet, also, IQ tests are strongly influenced by cultural knowledge, good scores in kids strongly correlate to kids coming from upper middle class families with well educated parents, etc. Why do you assume that's cause and not effect?