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IQ is not intelligence. IQ is a number determined by a culturally biased test. The most likely reason scores are dropping, is that test-makers are not keeping

IQ is not intelligence. IQ is a number determined by a culturally biased test. The most likely reason scores are dropping, is that test-makers are not keeping up with changes in culture. People are 2019-smart and getting lower scores because they're not 1970-smart.

throwaway5752 7y ago
I feel like you'd have to content with test reliability, correlation with other measures of intelligence, and the general multi-decade upward trend (not specific to 1970s, the Flynn effect). It's possible there is something to this.
aik 7y ago
What does 2019-smart mean though? People's brains are optimized for better handing of super-stimulating entertainment? Does that translate into better problem solving and other important skills? Have the importance of those smarts related to those skills changed in 50 years? If not, adjusting the IQ tests to match these doesn't make sense.
- baddox 7y ago
  I think it's more that "problem-solving skills" are only defined in terms of a set of problems, and the set of problems that are encountered in everyday life changes over time.
- skywhopper 7y ago
  "What does <year>-smart mean though?" is the question you have to answer to make an IQ test. And it's impossible to answer. IQ test-makers have been getting it wrong in various ways since they started. All an IQ test can tell you is how well you do on IQ tests. If IQ correlates to other outcomes, that's because the test was designed (intentionally or not) to correlate with those other outcomes, not because IQ test-makers are meta-geniuses who know the answer to "What does <year>-smart mean though?"
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    US military uses an IQ test (ASVAB) for personnel assignment. It doesn’t matter what intelligence “actually” is, or how well IQ tests measure it. What is important is that IQ tests are extremely useful in predicting education success, doing effective job assignment, explaining various socioeconomic variables, which is why we use them.
ryandrake 7y ago
How does “culture” play a biasing role? Is there an example of a question that someone 1970-smart will answer correctly but someone 2019-smart will get wrong? Curious.
- thebooktocome 7y ago
  People in 1970 had to navigate with paper maps, which is actually a cognitively loaded activity. People in 2019 do not, so they don't get the same amount of spatial reasoning exercise from that activity.
- HuShifang 7y ago
  I don't have domain expertise here, but I suspect one example would be simple numerical calculation: electronic devices are so widely available today that hardly anyone can do long division in their head, or by hand for that matter, whereas relatively many more people in 1970 probably could, and had no ready electronic alternative. Whether people in 2019 could learn this skill as well as people in 1970 if it were deemed a priority, I don't know, but I think it's fair to say that the skill was much more valued in 1970, and considered a more integral aspect of "intelligence." (And of course, numeracy only became so important relatively recently in history -- centuries ago, the ability to successfully hunt and forage was much more essential to most people's definition of "smart" than anything involving numbers.)
  - erentz 7y ago
    I’ve not seen any numerical calculation in an IQ test I’ve done that isn’t in some form just a puzzle and that doesn’t get more advanced than basic arithmetic. Being able to reason about numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication etc. is perfectly in line with measuring intelligence.
    - HuShifang 7y ago
      Correct -- I took the parent question to be about shifting cultural definitions of "smart" and not about IQ tests specifically.
anon1m0us 7y ago
If IQ isn't intelligence, then what is?
- fwip 7y ago
  IQ is a measure developed a hundred years ago to distinguish learning-disabled children from "lazy, normal" children. "What is intelligence?" is a broad enough question that you could write your dissertation on it.
- skywhopper 7y ago
  Nothing we can quantify.
  - anon1m0us 7y ago
    Are you suggesting it's just ... like porn then? You know it when you see it? Do you not think in general, people who score higher on IQ tests are in fact "more intelligent" than people who score lower on IQ tests? Even the ones that just have shapes in them and you have to find the correct next matching one for the position? How can those be culturally biased?
- Will_Parker 7y ago
  I'd say all of Shakespeare, Jimi Hendrix, LeBron James, Martin Luther King (keep on going if you like) have a form of extreme intelligence not measured well by IQ tests. The kinds of problems in IQ tests are one thing our brain can adapt to solve but humans are so incredibly neuroplastic that IQ is much too narrow a concept to be definitive.
  - anon1m0us 7y ago
    We are talking about general civilization's aggregate IQ though. Sure, there are people too smart or exotic to measure, but that's true on both ends of the spectrum, so might they balance out? Perhaps, you know, in the past, it was more difficult for those with lower IQ's to survive. Now people with lower IQ's can survive for longer, which is good for them -- absolutely! -- however, it would reduce average IQ's. That would also suggest, this isn't something bad for civilization like the article suggests. Perhaps the same number of incredibly intelligent people like the ones you mention are better able now in this modern age to get their solutions to more people to make it easier to live.
AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
Sorry, I fail to see how asking to choose a specific geometric figure out of four can be culturally biased. Unless we embrace the culture of "there are no wrong answers".
- tomdell 7y ago
  Different communities use different variants of the English language - different words, different grammar, and different meanings for the same words. The standard English on most English IQ tests is not going to be as accessible or understandable to somebody who speaks a different dialect and isn't as familiar with standard English.
  - bufferoverflow 7y ago
    (Reputable) IQ tests don't have English or any other language. They are purely visual and abstract. You can claim bias against blind people, but cultural bias is nonsense.
    - wongarsu 7y ago
      From my experience of IQ tests administered in Germany the tests have multiple parts, among others one about reasoning about abstract shapes, one about spatial reasoning, and one about language (naming related words under time pressure and similar).
    - tomdell 7y ago
      The most commonly used IQ tests all use language and specifically test verbal comprehension (Wechsler, Stanford-Binet, Woodcock-Johnson, etc.).
      - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
        Those are not reputable.
    - anoncake 7y ago
      It depends on what you use them for. If you want to compare the intelligence of people from different cultures, you need a culturally neutral test (whether such a thing exists is another question). For clinical diagnosis, when what you want to test is whether an individual is retarded or if there are suspicious patterns in their test results – like a large difference between their score at different subtests – I don't think it matters. There are (or were) actually tests used by psychologists that include testing one's vocabulary. Which is knowledge, not intelligence.
ryanmarsh 7y ago
I took an IQ test recently. It was all finding patterns in shapes. Very different from, say, the SAT. What about this would be culturally biased? The test could literally be administered in any language or even orally to someone who couldn’t read.
- lawlessone 7y ago
  You've likely been exposed to tasks such as this or similar before. not everyone has. I don't think these are as unbiased as we like to think they are.
  - mutzp 7y ago
    Create an IQ test where "2019-smart" people would do well but "1970-smart" people would fail.
- tokai 7y ago
  I remember reading somewhere that people raised in modern housing and cities could cultivate a better affinity for thinking about geometric shapes. That could give a cultural bias against the global rural south.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  > It was all finding patterns in shapes... What about this would be culturally biased? Well, a culture that doesn't stress pattern finding in schooling would be at a disadvantage, for example. You can also practice pattern finding, and get better at it. That indicates it's not a very effective test of intelligence, which you're supposed to just either have or not have. You're testing a learned skill, not raw intelligence.
Romanulus 7y ago
Your comment is so wrong that you've actually caused a drop in the IQ of those reading it.
- dang 7y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please read and follow the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Edit: you've posted a ton of unsubstantive comments to HN. Would you please stop doing that? We're hoping for thoughtful conversation here.
mutzp 7y ago
Have you seen an IQ test? It's the most neutral thing there is, culturally-speaking. Also what does it mean to be 1970/2019-smart?
- chmod775 7y ago
  1970 smart is being able to diagnose and repair a problem with your own car or maybe having hobbies that require some form of creative thinking and problem solving. 2019 smart is to know how to browse Instagram while on your way to work without running headfirst into a wall. /jk
  - synthc 7y ago
    2019 smart is figuring out how to build webapps, hacking on microcontrollers or other hobbies that require some form of creative thinking and problem solving.
driverdan 7y ago
I'm surprised how many people here don't understand the inherit biases IQ tests have. In order for something to test intelligence you shouldn't be able to improve your score by learning, practicing, or studying. Scores should be reproducible. I've yet to see an IQ test that didn't test skills you could improve by practicing. They also assume knowledge. For example, the IQ test I had when I was young included word comparisons. This tested vocabulary more than intelligence. Someone who didn't have a formal education or didn't know English well would score lower regardless of their intelligence. IQ is not highly regarded in psychology. It's more reliable than garbage like Meyers-Briggs but is not a true test of intelligence.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  In order for something to test intelligence you shouldn't be able to improve your score by learning, practicing, or studying. You cannot really improve your IQ score by any significant margin by studying in general, unless you memorize the answers on a particular test. This doesn’t make the IQ tests any less useful or valid than SAT or MCAT. Scores should be reproducible. They are. Test-retest correlation on high quality IQ tests are well north of 0.9 I've yet to see an IQ test that didn't test skills you could improve by practicing. If you practice (I.e. memorize the answers) for a specific test, e.g. Wechsler, you won’t get any gain on Stanford Binet, for example. They also assume knowledge. For example, the IQ test I had when I was young included word comparisons. This tested vocabulary more than intelligence. Someone who didn't have a formal education or didn't know English well would score lower regardless of their intelligence. Yes, because intelligent people tend to have more knowledge. People don’t attain vocabulary simply by being taught the words at school. Vocabulary is learned by experiencing contact with words, and intelligent people tend to seek these experiences more. But yes, comparing an Englishman and Korean on an English-language analogies section of WAIS makes no sense. Fortunately, there almost always is measurement invariance within same country/culture, meaning that the tests measure the same latent ability.
- sisu2019 7y ago
  Literally the opposite is true. What is it about IQ that makes people straight up hallucinate the opposite of reality.
ahallock 7y ago
I agree it's a measurement and does not encompass every aspect of intelligence, but I thought they developed tests which had no cultural component, using symbols and patterns.
martin-adams 7y ago
I think what you’re saying could be posed as a question. Is an IQ test a useful measure of intelligence in the same way in 2019 than in 1970?
lee 7y ago
IQ is probably one of the closest tools we have to measuring intelligence, at least in terms of a person's ability to process information and reason about it. IQ is not intelligence, but it's the closest thing to approximate it for certain cognitive aspects.

throwaway5752 7y ago

I feel like you'd have to content with test reliability, correlation with other measures of intelligence, and the general multi-decade upward trend (not specific to 1970s, the Flynn effect). It's possible there is something to this.

aik 7y ago

What does 2019-smart mean though? People's brains are optimized for better handing of super-stimulating entertainment? Does that translate into better problem solving and other important skills? Have the importance of those smarts related to those skills changed in 50 years? If not, adjusting the IQ tests to match these doesn't make sense.

baddox 7y ago
I think it's more that "problem-solving skills" are only defined in terms of a set of problems, and the set of problems that are encountered in everyday life changes over time.
skywhopper 7y ago
"What does <year>-smart mean though?" is the question you have to answer to make an IQ test. And it's impossible to answer. IQ test-makers have been getting it wrong in various ways since they started. All an IQ test can tell you is how well you do on IQ tests. If IQ correlates to other outcomes, that's because the test was designed (intentionally or not) to correlate with those other outcomes, not because IQ test-makers are meta-geniuses who know the answer to "What does <year>-smart mean though?"
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  US military uses an IQ test (ASVAB) for personnel assignment. It doesn’t matter what intelligence “actually” is, or how well IQ tests measure it. What is important is that IQ tests are extremely useful in predicting education success, doing effective job assignment, explaining various socioeconomic variables, which is why we use them.

ryandrake 7y ago

How does “culture” play a biasing role? Is there an example of a question that someone 1970-smart will answer correctly but someone 2019-smart will get wrong? Curious.

thebooktocome 7y ago
People in 1970 had to navigate with paper maps, which is actually a cognitively loaded activity. People in 2019 do not, so they don't get the same amount of spatial reasoning exercise from that activity.
HuShifang 7y ago
I don't have domain expertise here, but I suspect one example would be simple numerical calculation: electronic devices are so widely available today that hardly anyone can do long division in their head, or by hand for that matter, whereas relatively many more people in 1970 probably could, and had no ready electronic alternative. Whether people in 2019 could learn this skill as well as people in 1970 if it were deemed a priority, I don't know, but I think it's fair to say that the skill was much more valued in 1970, and considered a more integral aspect of "intelligence." (And of course, numeracy only became so important relatively recently in history -- centuries ago, the ability to successfully hunt and forage was much more essential to most people's definition of "smart" than anything involving numbers.)
- erentz 7y ago
  I’ve not seen any numerical calculation in an IQ test I’ve done that isn’t in some form just a puzzle and that doesn’t get more advanced than basic arithmetic. Being able to reason about numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication etc. is perfectly in line with measuring intelligence.
  - HuShifang 7y ago
    Correct -- I took the parent question to be about shifting cultural definitions of "smart" and not about IQ tests specifically.

anon1m0us 7y ago

If IQ isn't intelligence, then what is?

fwip 7y ago
IQ is a measure developed a hundred years ago to distinguish learning-disabled children from "lazy, normal" children. "What is intelligence?" is a broad enough question that you could write your dissertation on it.
skywhopper 7y ago
Nothing we can quantify.
- anon1m0us 7y ago
  Are you suggesting it's just ... like porn then? You know it when you see it? Do you not think in general, people who score higher on IQ tests are in fact "more intelligent" than people who score lower on IQ tests? Even the ones that just have shapes in them and you have to find the correct next matching one for the position? How can those be culturally biased?
Will_Parker 7y ago
I'd say all of Shakespeare, Jimi Hendrix, LeBron James, Martin Luther King (keep on going if you like) have a form of extreme intelligence not measured well by IQ tests. The kinds of problems in IQ tests are one thing our brain can adapt to solve but humans are so incredibly neuroplastic that IQ is much too narrow a concept to be definitive.
- anon1m0us 7y ago
  We are talking about general civilization's aggregate IQ though. Sure, there are people too smart or exotic to measure, but that's true on both ends of the spectrum, so might they balance out? Perhaps, you know, in the past, it was more difficult for those with lower IQ's to survive. Now people with lower IQ's can survive for longer, which is good for them -- absolutely! -- however, it would reduce average IQ's. That would also suggest, this isn't something bad for civilization like the article suggests. Perhaps the same number of incredibly intelligent people like the ones you mention are better able now in this modern age to get their solutions to more people to make it easier to live.

AlexTWithBeard 7y ago

Sorry, I fail to see how asking to choose a specific geometric figure out of four can be culturally biased. Unless we embrace the culture of "there are no wrong answers".

tomdell 7y ago
Different communities use different variants of the English language - different words, different grammar, and different meanings for the same words. The standard English on most English IQ tests is not going to be as accessible or understandable to somebody who speaks a different dialect and isn't as familiar with standard English.
- bufferoverflow 7y ago
  (Reputable) IQ tests don't have English or any other language. They are purely visual and abstract. You can claim bias against blind people, but cultural bias is nonsense.
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    From my experience of IQ tests administered in Germany the tests have multiple parts, among others one about reasoning about abstract shapes, one about spatial reasoning, and one about language (naming related words under time pressure and similar).
  - tomdell 7y ago
    The most commonly used IQ tests all use language and specifically test verbal comprehension (Wechsler, Stanford-Binet, Woodcock-Johnson, etc.).
    - eeZah7Ux 7y ago
      Those are not reputable.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    It depends on what you use them for. If you want to compare the intelligence of people from different cultures, you need a culturally neutral test (whether such a thing exists is another question). For clinical diagnosis, when what you want to test is whether an individual is retarded or if there are suspicious patterns in their test results – like a large difference between their score at different subtests – I don't think it matters. There are (or were) actually tests used by psychologists that include testing one's vocabulary. Which is knowledge, not intelligence.

ryanmarsh 7y ago

I took an IQ test recently. It was all finding patterns in shapes. Very different from, say, the SAT. What about this would be culturally biased? The test could literally be administered in any language or even orally to someone who couldn’t read.

lawlessone 7y ago
You've likely been exposed to tasks such as this or similar before. not everyone has. I don't think these are as unbiased as we like to think they are.
- mutzp 7y ago
  Create an IQ test where "2019-smart" people would do well but "1970-smart" people would fail.
tokai 7y ago
I remember reading somewhere that people raised in modern housing and cities could cultivate a better affinity for thinking about geometric shapes. That could give a cultural bias against the global rural south.
ceejayoz 7y ago
> It was all finding patterns in shapes... What about this would be culturally biased? Well, a culture that doesn't stress pattern finding in schooling would be at a disadvantage, for example. You can also practice pattern finding, and get better at it. That indicates it's not a very effective test of intelligence, which you're supposed to just either have or not have. You're testing a learned skill, not raw intelligence.

Romanulus 7y ago

Your comment is so wrong that you've actually caused a drop in the IQ of those reading it.

dang 7y ago
Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please read and follow the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Edit: you've posted a ton of unsubstantive comments to HN. Would you please stop doing that? We're hoping for thoughtful conversation here.

mutzp 7y ago

Have you seen an IQ test? It's the most neutral thing there is, culturally-speaking. Also what does it mean to be 1970/2019-smart?

chmod775 7y ago
1970 smart is being able to diagnose and repair a problem with your own car or maybe having hobbies that require some form of creative thinking and problem solving. 2019 smart is to know how to browse Instagram while on your way to work without running headfirst into a wall. /jk
- synthc 7y ago
  2019 smart is figuring out how to build webapps, hacking on microcontrollers or other hobbies that require some form of creative thinking and problem solving.

driverdan 7y ago

I'm surprised how many people here don't understand the inherit biases IQ tests have. In order for something to test intelligence you shouldn't be able to improve your score by learning, practicing, or studying. Scores should be reproducible. I've yet to see an IQ test that didn't test skills you could improve by practicing. They also assume knowledge. For example, the IQ test I had when I was young included word comparisons. This tested vocabulary more than intelligence. Someone who didn't have a formal education or didn't know English well would score lower regardless of their intelligence. IQ is not highly regarded in psychology. It's more reliable than garbage like Meyers-Briggs but is not a true test of intelligence.

xyzzyz 7y ago
In order for something to test intelligence you shouldn't be able to improve your score by learning, practicing, or studying. You cannot really improve your IQ score by any significant margin by studying in general, unless you memorize the answers on a particular test. This doesn’t make the IQ tests any less useful or valid than SAT or MCAT. Scores should be reproducible. They are. Test-retest correlation on high quality IQ tests are well north of 0.9 I've yet to see an IQ test that didn't test skills you could improve by practicing. If you practice (I.e. memorize the answers) for a specific test, e.g. Wechsler, you won’t get any gain on Stanford Binet, for example. They also assume knowledge. For example, the IQ test I had when I was young included word comparisons. This tested vocabulary more than intelligence. Someone who didn't have a formal education or didn't know English well would score lower regardless of their intelligence. Yes, because intelligent people tend to have more knowledge. People don’t attain vocabulary simply by being taught the words at school. Vocabulary is learned by experiencing contact with words, and intelligent people tend to seek these experiences more. But yes, comparing an Englishman and Korean on an English-language analogies section of WAIS makes no sense. Fortunately, there almost always is measurement invariance within same country/culture, meaning that the tests measure the same latent ability.
sisu2019 7y ago
Literally the opposite is true. What is it about IQ that makes people straight up hallucinate the opposite of reality.

ahallock 7y ago

I agree it's a measurement and does not encompass every aspect of intelligence, but I thought they developed tests which had no cultural component, using symbols and patterns.

martin-adams 7y ago

I think what you’re saying could be posed as a question. Is an IQ test a useful measure of intelligence in the same way in 2019 than in 1970?

lee 7y ago

IQ is probably one of the closest tools we have to measuring intelligence, at least in terms of a person's ability to process information and reason about it. IQ is not intelligence, but it's the closest thing to approximate it for certain cognitive aspects.