3 ms·

What measures general intelligence better than IQ tests?

wruza 4y ago
Recently there was Norway Mensa test article on the frontpage. I went through 2/3 of it and got bored, short of 2 points to be a proud member. But if you give me a room with a crime and suggest to deduct it, I will fail, because my deduction sucks. If you give me 7x7 hard mathdoku, I will also fail, because permutations of 6 is my max capacity. If you give me your primitive 120iq business, it will fail, because I’m a silly perfectionist removed from reality. But I guess most top mensa members will also fail on something as simple as e.g. leetcode 85. I don’t know if any hypothesis in itt/tfa are true or false, but regarding IQ tests I’d like to see much more diversity than stupid boolean ops and rotation over and over.
xorcist 4y ago
This is a definitions game trap. You can not measure what you can not define.
- annyeonghada 4y ago
  Really? Thermometers have existed since way before the introduction of the concept of temperature, as rigorously defined in Physics. You can measure "something" and notice that that X is correlated to Y and investigate what that X is.
  - xorcist 4y ago
    No, the concept of heat and temperature has been along for many millennia before any thermometers were available, along with completely workable theories of heat transfer. The thermometer as we know it didn't exist until the 17th century! Although the Chinese seems to have measured temperature with clay pots since at least the 6th century. The concept of an innate ability to be smart, however, is something else entirely. It is at best a question "I know it when I see it", but where two observers seldom agree. Compare the concept of "love". It is also an age old idea, a word that exists in all languages and used in conversation every day, but the vain of trying to get observers to agree on it has rightly been a trope for millennia. The similarities doesn't end there, with books and courses being peddled on the subject of quantifying and scoring it. Very few of these have any scientific ambitions to speak of however, even among the most grandiose of claims.

Recently there was Norway Mensa test article on the frontpage. I went through 2/3 of it and got bored, short of 2 points to be a proud member. But if you give me a room with a crime and suggest to deduct it, I will fail, because my deduction sucks. If you give me 7x7 hard mathdoku, I will also fail, because permutations of 6 is my max capacity. If you give me your primitive 120iq business, it will fail, because I’m a silly perfectionist removed from reality. But I guess most top mensa members will also fail on something as simple as e.g. leetcode 85. I don’t know if any hypothesis in itt/tfa are true or false, but regarding IQ tests I’d like to see much more diversity than stupid boolean ops and rotation over and over.

xorcist 4y ago

This is a definitions game trap. You can not measure what you can not define.

annyeonghada 4y ago
Really? Thermometers have existed since way before the introduction of the concept of temperature, as rigorously defined in Physics. You can measure "something" and notice that that X is correlated to Y and investigate what that X is.
- xorcist 4y ago
  No, the concept of heat and temperature has been along for many millennia before any thermometers were available, along with completely workable theories of heat transfer. The thermometer as we know it didn't exist until the 17th century! Although the Chinese seems to have measured temperature with clay pots since at least the 6th century. The concept of an innate ability to be smart, however, is something else entirely. It is at best a question "I know it when I see it", but where two observers seldom agree. Compare the concept of "love". It is also an age old idea, a word that exists in all languages and used in conversation every day, but the vain of trying to get observers to agree on it has rightly been a trope for millennia. The similarities doesn't end there, with books and courses being peddled on the subject of quantifying and scoring it. Very few of these have any scientific ambitions to speak of however, even among the most grandiose of claims.