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I have a strong hunch that for reasonably smart people, IQ tests are gameable the same way academic tests are. I mean, if you test someone "out of the blue" you

I have a strong hunch that for reasonably smart people, IQ tests are gameable the same way academic tests are. I mean, if you test someone "out of the blue" you get some measure on how much they know. If they prepare, the more they do that the higher the score. First time I competed for admission at one of the best universities in my country, I failed. For the next year I kept preparing myself, 8 hours per day math and physics. Next year I got admitted first. Am I smart or am I stupid? Depends how and what you measure.

PavlovsCat 8y ago
I took an IQ test once, when I was 17. It was a sunny day in February, I was well rested, had nice breakfast and even managed to get a sneaky toke while my mother was in the shower. I prepared by singing to the radio in the car. It took a few hours and I got the results on another day, so it was a "real IQ test", though I'd have to look up the exact type. But it doesn't matter anyway. I scored 142 that day, and there is no way I'll ever take an intelligence test again. It made me kind of an asshole for a while, too, I found it hilarious to respond to stuff like "it's cold outside, don't you want to take a jacket" with "I have an IQ of 142, don't you think I'd know when I need to take a jacket?". But even then I knew I was feeling really good that day, and answered quickly, and what I didn't know I maybe sometimes guessed correctly. I didn't take it serious serious. But it also wasn't just a joke to me, either. When I as a little kid, I was reading a comic with the neighbour's kid who was 2 years older, and I remember coming to the end of a page and waiting for him to turn to the next one any moment, and being surprised at how long it took for him to do that. I was excited for a second becuse I thought "I read faster than this guy and I only just learned it!", then I scolded myself and thought "no, he's probably just taking time to actually look at the images in detail". Knowing that there's at least some fuzzy objective-ish substantation for actually being above average in some areas offered some closure to that kind of stuff, and from then on out allowed me to not have to prove myself when someone who I felt wasn't that bright insulted my intelligence. But it's good I didn't take a test with such a result at age 12, that would have been a social disaster I'm sure. Ultimately, I didn't make myself, nobody made themselves, so at best intelligence still only gift, and even more importantly a responsibility. Honesty and kindness are much more valuable in a person than any amount of intelligence, IMO. Intelligence often just allows us to deceive ourselves and others better, and I think many of the major problems in the world we ascribe to stupidity are in large part so big due to intelligent people either not pulling their weight, or actively exploiting and molding people more simple than them. > Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. -- Albert Einstein, who had a very high IQ, so. Screw intelligence, let's strive to be wise and kind. Intelligence is just a bonus, a nice to have, like being a bit more agile, or like a computer having more RAM, less latency etc. -- but it doesn't make a bad application something entirely different.
- late2part 8y ago
  most sources suggest that Schumacher said this quote, not Einstein. http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2007/03/quote-verification.html http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2007/03/quote-verification.htm...
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    https://books.google.de/books?id=oA0IAQAAIAAJ&q="more+violent" https://books.google.de/books?id=oA0IAQAAIAAJ&q="more+violen... Thanks, and from that snippet I can tell he probably also said many other things that are true and still unheeded. We will perish sooner than those things will stop being true.
postingtoofast 8y ago
Another comment mentioned something called 'progressive matrices', these tests are not based on any crystalized (studyable) knowledge. You could practice solving the sort of visiospatial puzzles that they pose but then you'd ruin your results. People who use these tests are expected to have not had much/any experience with solving the types of puzzles it presents.
- pl1234 8y ago
  "You could practice solving the sort of visiospatial puzzles that they pose but then you'd ruin your results." You are contradicting yourself. First you claim it is not based on studyable knowledge, then you claim studying for the tests ruins the results. Some people solve similar puzzles during their life and get practice for the tests, others do not.
  - postingtoofast 8y ago
    Fair enough. They are trainable to a point from what I understand. I was thinking along the lines of rote memorization. The main thing people are hoping to measure as I understand it is the quickness with which one learns to recognize patterns and organize concepts. Measuring someone's quickness when they aren't starting from zero will obviously have a bias. Luckily it's easy for field researchers to find people who aren't solving symmetry puzzles in their spare time, or taking courses about abstract algebra.

PavlovsCat 8y ago

I took an IQ test once, when I was 17. It was a sunny day in February, I was well rested, had nice breakfast and even managed to get a sneaky toke while my mother was in the shower. I prepared by singing to the radio in the car. It took a few hours and I got the results on another day, so it was a "real IQ test", though I'd have to look up the exact type. But it doesn't matter anyway. I scored 142 that day, and there is no way I'll ever take an intelligence test again. It made me kind of an asshole for a while, too, I found it hilarious to respond to stuff like "it's cold outside, don't you want to take a jacket" with "I have an IQ of 142, don't you think I'd know when I need to take a jacket?". But even then I knew I was feeling really good that day, and answered quickly, and what I didn't know I maybe sometimes guessed correctly. I didn't take it serious serious. But it also wasn't just a joke to me, either. When I as a little kid, I was reading a comic with the neighbour's kid who was 2 years older, and I remember coming to the end of a page and waiting for him to turn to the next one any moment, and being surprised at how long it took for him to do that. I was excited for a second becuse I thought "I read faster than this guy and I only just learned it!", then I scolded myself and thought "no, he's probably just taking time to actually look at the images in detail". Knowing that there's at least some fuzzy objective-ish substantation for actually being above average in some areas offered some closure to that kind of stuff, and from then on out allowed me to not have to prove myself when someone who I felt wasn't that bright insulted my intelligence. But it's good I didn't take a test with such a result at age 12, that would have been a social disaster I'm sure. Ultimately, I didn't make myself, nobody made themselves, so at best intelligence still only gift, and even more importantly a responsibility. Honesty and kindness are much more valuable in a person than any amount of intelligence, IMO. Intelligence often just allows us to deceive ourselves and others better, and I think many of the major problems in the world we ascribe to stupidity are in large part so big due to intelligent people either not pulling their weight, or actively exploiting and molding people more simple than them. > Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. -- Albert Einstein, who had a very high IQ, so. Screw intelligence, let's strive to be wise and kind. Intelligence is just a bonus, a nice to have, like being a bit more agile, or like a computer having more RAM, less latency etc. -- but it doesn't make a bad application something entirely different.

late2part 8y ago
most sources suggest that Schumacher said this quote, not Einstein. http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2007/03/quote-verification.html http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2007/03/quote-verification.htm...
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  https://books.google.de/books?id=oA0IAQAAIAAJ&q="more+violent" https://books.google.de/books?id=oA0IAQAAIAAJ&q="more+violen... Thanks, and from that snippet I can tell he probably also said many other things that are true and still unheeded. We will perish sooner than those things will stop being true.

postingtoofast 8y ago

Another comment mentioned something called 'progressive matrices', these tests are not based on any crystalized (studyable) knowledge. You could practice solving the sort of visiospatial puzzles that they pose but then you'd ruin your results. People who use these tests are expected to have not had much/any experience with solving the types of puzzles it presents.

pl1234 8y ago
"You could practice solving the sort of visiospatial puzzles that they pose but then you'd ruin your results." You are contradicting yourself. First you claim it is not based on studyable knowledge, then you claim studying for the tests ruins the results. Some people solve similar puzzles during their life and get practice for the tests, others do not.
- postingtoofast 8y ago
  Fair enough. They are trainable to a point from what I understand. I was thinking along the lines of rote memorization. The main thing people are hoping to measure as I understand it is the quickness with which one learns to recognize patterns and organize concepts. Measuring someone's quickness when they aren't starting from zero will obviously have a bias. Luckily it's easy for field researchers to find people who aren't solving symmetry puzzles in their spare time, or taking courses about abstract algebra.