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I love when people ask "what does your IQ score measure". The only thing it can possibly measure is your ability to perform an IQ test. Now you can ask the ques

I love when people ask "what does your IQ score measure". The only thing it can possibly measure is your ability to perform an IQ test. Now you can ask the question "What does your IQ score strongly correlate with", but I'm pretty sure as it stands 'intelligence' is not well defined enough assign it a quantitative value (or even know if one can be defined). I used to hate standardized tests (and still somewhat do in principle) but when you can show that a test score correlates to performance it does make sense to assist in making decision when there are very large sets of data to process (like college applications). It turns out that SATs do correlate somewhat to freshman year performance. It doesn't really matter if it's for the right reason, if you have thousands of similar applicants it makes sense to use that data point if there are no other options. This is the logic of machine learning too: I don't really care why 2 variables correlate, if they do it can help me make decisions. The issue for me is that I have yet to see anything interesting about what IQ really correlates to. Pretending it is a test that measures intelligence is completely asinine if you take 2 minutes to think about what that claim means.

jpulgarin 15y ago
Correlates somewhat to academic performance, lifetime earning, SAT scores etc...
bad_user 15y ago
I think it is generally understood by psychologists, sociologists and statisticians that intelligence is not something that you can "measure". Nobody in the know even pretends that. What happens is that people would rather put faith in the correlation between IQ scores and intelligence, rather than nothing at all. It's annoying as hell as IMHO a +/- 15 points doesn't mean anything, but that doesn't stop people making decisions based on that. On the other hand you can clearly say that somebody with an IQ of 240 is gifted or that somebody with an IQ of 60 is challenged. The problem with SAT scores is that people doing well on it are the people fresh out of high-school. You cannot give a SAT test to somebody that's been 10 years out of high-school or to a 10 year old.
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vacri 15y ago
A real IQ test is a decent measure of general intelligence. It does, however, take a trained professional several hours to administer - precisely because this is necessary to counter most of the criticisms levelled at "IQ tests are crap". Components of the IQ test can also be used to track individual aptitudes. But because it's so resource intensive to conduct, pretty much any time you've heard someone say "My IQ is -foo-", you can be fairly sure it's not from the formal test. Everything else that calls itself an IQ test is really a form of pop science quiz and of course has flaws. Any test that you're supposed to administer yourself is not the IQ test - that's the easiest first step.
- Homunculiheaded 15y ago
  but how do you quantify intelligence in order to determine that there is a relationship between it and an IQ test score? If you can say that a real IQ test is a decent measure of intelligence, how to do you know this? Let's say I have a Teakettle test which assigns a score to the temperature of the water in a teakettle based on only qualitative properties of a teakettle (is it whistling, is it rumbling, does touching it cause pain?). This test is probably good at assessing the extreme cases (water is 212 F, water is around 70F) but I'd guess it's a poor predictor of temperature. Now if you gave me a thermometer I could see how correct my test was. The problem is we don't have a thermometer for intelligence (that I know of) and more important I don't know if there is any consensus that 'intelligence' can even be assigned a quantitative value the same way the vibration of molecules can. Now maybe the IQ test, like the Teakettle test, is a good summation of qualitative properties. Now you can compare this quantitative value to others to show a useful correlation. The Teakettle test may be a really great way to predict time to tea-time. An IQ score can only be useful if it shows a strong correlation to other, quantitative things (SAT score, salary, life expectancy, number of hairs in eyebrows) To say that a real IQ test is a decent measure of intelligence seems to be at best a tautology.
  - vacri 15y ago
    The IQ test is multivariate and has a number of axes which are not boolean like your teakettle test is. Intelligence is not a property like physical attributes. It is fuzzy and has a lot of aspects. Some forms of intelligence aren't tested with the IQ test (unless somehow done recently), the primary one that comes to mind is social nous. The psychology of intelligence is a complex, varied, and interesting field, and those who naysay "you can't study / define / measure intelligence!" are submitting to pop science just like "take this pop IQ quiz!". I've lost track of it over the years, but there are reams of research into intelligence, what it is, how it's defined, how tests do or don't reflect intelligence. The IQ test covers a lot of different aspects of intelligence - it gives a fairly comprehensive representation of many aspects, and hence why it's a decent measure of intelligence. It's not a cut-and-dried thermometer measure, yes - but this is because psychology never works that way, something that engineers have trouble getting their heads around. Nothing in psychology is concrete, and if you're going to dismiss based on not being 100% precise, well, then psychology can't exist, nor can any of the fields based from it (like sociology, criminology, so on and so forth)
byrneseyeview 15y ago
I'll take the other side of that bet! What kind of odds would you give me that a group of people in the 10th percentile will have a higher average income than a group of people from the 90th percentile? If all IQ measures is your ability to take an IQ test, I think you'd be pretty confident that the bottom 10% will perform about as well as the top 10%. So, would you up up for 1:1 odds on that? If you're willing to bet consistently with your beliefs, please get in touch; my email address is in my profile.
- Steko 15y ago
  "If all IQ measures is your ability to take an IQ test, I think you'd be pretty confident that the bottom 10% will perform about as well as the top 10%." Unless the top 10% has some systemic advantage at taking IQ tests. Type words into a search engine for further inquiries in this area.
  - byrneseyeview 15y ago
    Doesn't that seem kind of redundant? "People who do well on IQ tests have systematic advantages which allow them to do well on IQ tests, but IQ tests are meaningless." Obviously, it's possible to imagine a world in which IQ is not largely heritable, and in which rich people pay lots of money to game their kids' IQ numbers, and then the kids somehow use these IQ test numbers to get better jobs (even though IQ testing from employers is basically illegal). But we can adjust for that. I'd be happy to do the same bet controlling for parental socio-economic status.
    - Steko 15y ago
      "it's possible to imagine a world in which IQ is not largely heritable, and in which rich people pay lots of money to game their kids' IQ numbers, and then the kids somehow use these IQ test numbers to get better jobs" You don't need to imagine that world, we live in it. Kids who go to private schools with SAT prep classes and practice the test dozens of times are at a several hundred point advantage to kids who don't. This gets them into better colleges which gets them better jobs and gets them better income.
esrauch 15y ago
> I love when people ask "what does your IQ score measure". The only thing it can possibly measure is your ability to perform an IQ test. This is a completely random statement. You could just as easily say that an analog scale doesn't measure weight, it measures how much a spring compresses when an object is placed on top of it. Since the spring is different every time, even the same scale is not going to be the same every day. Measuring something and what it correlates with is exactly the same thing, and the distinction you are making is absurd pedantry. I don't really have any strong opinion about your actual stances.
- Homunculiheaded 15y ago
  Weight isn't some property we just defined based on the compression of a spring, and we aren't measuring just a correlation. When we measure weight on an analog scale we already know several, quantitative physical properties of the spring, we also have a mathematical model of how exactly the compression of a spring is directly related (not correlated) to the force of weight. Given that we know all of the additional variables of a spring we take it's compression and determine the weight. Inaccuracies in analog scales are not due to some stochastic process involved with the correlation between weight and compression, but inaccuracies measuring the quantitative properties of the spring. In an IQ test we are merely counting a set of qualitative properties (answered question n correctly). There is no underlying model that we are using to determine "intelligence", there is nothing quantitative about the IQ test other than counting the correct answers. We don't even have a quantitative model of intelligence at all, so there is simply no way to measure it. It is not pedantry to say that what an IQ test does is merely measure answered questions and not intelligence. If there where a.) a quantitative model of intelligence, and b.) a formula mapping this to IQ tests then, yes we could say we were measuring intelligence in the same way an analog scale measures weight.
  - esrauch 15y ago
    > what an IQ test does is merely measure answered questions and not intelligence. I get your point, but I think it is still not quite a cut and dry as you are making it. The issue is not that intelligence is something quantifiable for which they haven't been able to map IQ on to; intelligence is just an ill-defined concept. Absolutely nothing can possibly measure or map onto intelligence because there just is no real definition of the word. Saying that IQ measures intelligence is the same as saying that answering questions on a standardized test requires intelligence, which seems like a perfectly reasonable and valid definition to me. Would you bring up this argument someone said "He solved that math problem that has been open for hundreds of years, he is intelligent". Would you jump in and say "actually, solving math problems isn't necessarily a measure of intelligence, which is what you are implying". All that solving famous unsolved math proofs shows is that you are better at solving math proofs that a bunch of other people who try to solve math proofs, what does that have to do with intelligence!

jpulgarin 15y ago

Correlates somewhat to academic performance, lifetime earning, SAT scores etc...

bad_user 15y ago

I think it is generally understood by psychologists, sociologists and statisticians that intelligence is not something that you can "measure". Nobody in the know even pretends that. What happens is that people would rather put faith in the correlation between IQ scores and intelligence, rather than nothing at all. It's annoying as hell as IMHO a +/- 15 points doesn't mean anything, but that doesn't stop people making decisions based on that. On the other hand you can clearly say that somebody with an IQ of 240 is gifted or that somebody with an IQ of 60 is challenged. The problem with SAT scores is that people doing well on it are the people fresh out of high-school. You cannot give a SAT test to somebody that's been 10 years out of high-school or to a 10 year old.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

vacri 15y ago

A real IQ test is a decent measure of general intelligence. It does, however, take a trained professional several hours to administer - precisely because this is necessary to counter most of the criticisms levelled at "IQ tests are crap". Components of the IQ test can also be used to track individual aptitudes. But because it's so resource intensive to conduct, pretty much any time you've heard someone say "My IQ is -foo-", you can be fairly sure it's not from the formal test. Everything else that calls itself an IQ test is really a form of pop science quiz and of course has flaws. Any test that you're supposed to administer yourself is not the IQ test - that's the easiest first step.

Homunculiheaded 15y ago
but how do you quantify intelligence in order to determine that there is a relationship between it and an IQ test score? If you can say that a real IQ test is a decent measure of intelligence, how to do you know this? Let's say I have a Teakettle test which assigns a score to the temperature of the water in a teakettle based on only qualitative properties of a teakettle (is it whistling, is it rumbling, does touching it cause pain?). This test is probably good at assessing the extreme cases (water is 212 F, water is around 70F) but I'd guess it's a poor predictor of temperature. Now if you gave me a thermometer I could see how correct my test was. The problem is we don't have a thermometer for intelligence (that I know of) and more important I don't know if there is any consensus that 'intelligence' can even be assigned a quantitative value the same way the vibration of molecules can. Now maybe the IQ test, like the Teakettle test, is a good summation of qualitative properties. Now you can compare this quantitative value to others to show a useful correlation. The Teakettle test may be a really great way to predict time to tea-time. An IQ score can only be useful if it shows a strong correlation to other, quantitative things (SAT score, salary, life expectancy, number of hairs in eyebrows) To say that a real IQ test is a decent measure of intelligence seems to be at best a tautology.
- vacri 15y ago
  The IQ test is multivariate and has a number of axes which are not boolean like your teakettle test is. Intelligence is not a property like physical attributes. It is fuzzy and has a lot of aspects. Some forms of intelligence aren't tested with the IQ test (unless somehow done recently), the primary one that comes to mind is social nous. The psychology of intelligence is a complex, varied, and interesting field, and those who naysay "you can't study / define / measure intelligence!" are submitting to pop science just like "take this pop IQ quiz!". I've lost track of it over the years, but there are reams of research into intelligence, what it is, how it's defined, how tests do or don't reflect intelligence. The IQ test covers a lot of different aspects of intelligence - it gives a fairly comprehensive representation of many aspects, and hence why it's a decent measure of intelligence. It's not a cut-and-dried thermometer measure, yes - but this is because psychology never works that way, something that engineers have trouble getting their heads around. Nothing in psychology is concrete, and if you're going to dismiss based on not being 100% precise, well, then psychology can't exist, nor can any of the fields based from it (like sociology, criminology, so on and so forth)

byrneseyeview 15y ago

I'll take the other side of that bet! What kind of odds would you give me that a group of people in the 10th percentile will have a higher average income than a group of people from the 90th percentile? If all IQ measures is your ability to take an IQ test, I think you'd be pretty confident that the bottom 10% will perform about as well as the top 10%. So, would you up up for 1:1 odds on that? If you're willing to bet consistently with your beliefs, please get in touch; my email address is in my profile.

Steko 15y ago
"If all IQ measures is your ability to take an IQ test, I think you'd be pretty confident that the bottom 10% will perform about as well as the top 10%." Unless the top 10% has some systemic advantage at taking IQ tests. Type words into a search engine for further inquiries in this area.
- byrneseyeview 15y ago
  Doesn't that seem kind of redundant? "People who do well on IQ tests have systematic advantages which allow them to do well on IQ tests, but IQ tests are meaningless." Obviously, it's possible to imagine a world in which IQ is not largely heritable, and in which rich people pay lots of money to game their kids' IQ numbers, and then the kids somehow use these IQ test numbers to get better jobs (even though IQ testing from employers is basically illegal). But we can adjust for that. I'd be happy to do the same bet controlling for parental socio-economic status.
  - Steko 15y ago
    "it's possible to imagine a world in which IQ is not largely heritable, and in which rich people pay lots of money to game their kids' IQ numbers, and then the kids somehow use these IQ test numbers to get better jobs" You don't need to imagine that world, we live in it. Kids who go to private schools with SAT prep classes and practice the test dozens of times are at a several hundred point advantage to kids who don't. This gets them into better colleges which gets them better jobs and gets them better income.

esrauch 15y ago

> I love when people ask "what does your IQ score measure". The only thing it can possibly measure is your ability to perform an IQ test. This is a completely random statement. You could just as easily say that an analog scale doesn't measure weight, it measures how much a spring compresses when an object is placed on top of it. Since the spring is different every time, even the same scale is not going to be the same every day. Measuring something and what it correlates with is exactly the same thing, and the distinction you are making is absurd pedantry. I don't really have any strong opinion about your actual stances.

Homunculiheaded 15y ago
Weight isn't some property we just defined based on the compression of a spring, and we aren't measuring just a correlation. When we measure weight on an analog scale we already know several, quantitative physical properties of the spring, we also have a mathematical model of how exactly the compression of a spring is directly related (not correlated) to the force of weight. Given that we know all of the additional variables of a spring we take it's compression and determine the weight. Inaccuracies in analog scales are not due to some stochastic process involved with the correlation between weight and compression, but inaccuracies measuring the quantitative properties of the spring. In an IQ test we are merely counting a set of qualitative properties (answered question n correctly). There is no underlying model that we are using to determine "intelligence", there is nothing quantitative about the IQ test other than counting the correct answers. We don't even have a quantitative model of intelligence at all, so there is simply no way to measure it. It is not pedantry to say that what an IQ test does is merely measure answered questions and not intelligence. If there where a.) a quantitative model of intelligence, and b.) a formula mapping this to IQ tests then, yes we could say we were measuring intelligence in the same way an analog scale measures weight.
- esrauch 15y ago
  > what an IQ test does is merely measure answered questions and not intelligence. I get your point, but I think it is still not quite a cut and dry as you are making it. The issue is not that intelligence is something quantifiable for which they haven't been able to map IQ on to; intelligence is just an ill-defined concept. Absolutely nothing can possibly measure or map onto intelligence because there just is no real definition of the word. Saying that IQ measures intelligence is the same as saying that answering questions on a standardized test requires intelligence, which seems like a perfectly reasonable and valid definition to me. Would you bring up this argument someone said "He solved that math problem that has been open for hundreds of years, he is intelligent". Would you jump in and say "actually, solving math problems isn't necessarily a measure of intelligence, which is what you are implying". All that solving famous unsolved math proofs shows is that you are better at solving math proofs that a bunch of other people who try to solve math proofs, what does that have to do with intelligence!