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Kevin Langdon's 'Omni' IQ test
- empathy_m 2y agoLooking up one of the phrases from Langdon's statistical report ("Four Sigma Members") led me briefly to the rabbit hole of high-IQ societies, of which there seem to be many. Neat little interview here with Ronald Hoeflin, who habitually organizes high-IQ societies: https://in-sightpublishing.com/2022/02/28/an-interview-with-dr-ronald-k-hoeflin-on-high-iq-societies-titles-rarities-and-purposes-and-personal-judgment-and-evaluations-of-them-part-two-by-scott-jacobsen/ https://in-sightpublishing.com/2022/02/28/an-interview-with-... Hope he is doing well. Sounds like he has spent a very long time working on an Encyclopedia of Categories ( https://www.usiassociation.org/post/encyclopedia-of-categories-volume-4 https://www.usiassociation.org/post/encyclopedia-of-categori... ).
- graemep 2y agoIts not clear to me what the purpose of the high IQ societies Hoeflin founded was other than to give him a prominent role that he did not have at Mensa. > I was also very shy and unable to put myself forward socially in Mensa groups. At the higher-IQ levels, however, I had the prominent role of editor and even founder Its not my experience of Mensa which mostly operates in small groups. I just do not find people having a high IQ necessarily gives them a great deal in common.
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- nathanathan 2y agoIt was interesting to see how ChatGPT performed on the word problem about determining which weight is inaccurate: https://chatgpt.com/share/67611e29-6db4-800b-9ebd-00d793838085 https://chatgpt.com/share/67611e29-6db4-800b-9ebd-00d7938380... I was surprised by how poorly it did.
- ForHackernews 2y agoWhy does it include Chinese "bons mots" [see below] in so many of its answers? That would be an annoying quirk even if it were right, but it's especially obnoxious when it's being smugly stupid.
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- Y_Y 2y agoMaybe I should attack the bailey instead, but anyway I'm compelled to note that the French plural for "bon mot" is "bons mots". (I'd also like to offer this comment as evidence that humans too are fond of being obnoxious while being smugly stupid.)
- ForHackernews 2y agoAnd octopuses is the English plural of the loan word "octopus", but I'll edit if it warms the pedantic heart of a HackerNewser.
- Y_Y 2y agoThank you, and for the record, I say "octopodes".
- nathanathan 2y agoMy system prompt tells it to occasionally teach me Chinese words and phrases.
- jrflowers 2y agoIt is very clever that this test looks very complex on its face but the author made the answer to every question “B”
- flocciput 2y agoI was just thinking recently about how much I hate the imposition of time limits on things like this! Although I'm not super interested in figuring out my own or others' IQ, these are a fun set of questions to mull over.
- ripper1138 2y agoEh, if one person takes 10 min to solve a problem that takes another person 10 hours, we would usually say the faster individual is more intelligent.
- spiderfarmer 2y agoOnly if there is only one solution.
- jrflowers 2y agoThe trick given this rule is to simply decline to solve any problems. Keep your solve time at zero and laugh at the ten minute rubes
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- antegamisou 2y agoNot necessarily. If the problem was solved more easily if one possessed some specific amount of crystallized intelligence, one could say the "tardy" person turns out to have superior fluid intelligence.
- andrelaszlo 2y agoSpeed is just one dimension of intelligence, no? Who's more intelligent, person A that would score 80% on a test given 30 minutes, and 85% given 60 minutes; or person B that would score 50% given 30 minutes, but 99% given 60 minutes? Person A might be perceived as quick, have an accurate intuition, and able to come up with a lot of ideas. Person B on the other hand is of the slow and steady kind that will methodically and tirelessly work on a problem until it's solved.
- dekhn 2y agoThose "spatial reasoning" questions look a lot like the IQ test I took as a kid (my parent brought me to the psychology department to be tested for some reason). I really struggled with those and it wasn't until years later, talking with some other folks, that I realized I couldn't visualize mental rotations as well as most people. because of that, I invested heavily in 3d computer graphics, which helped tremendously when I worked in structural biology.
- Semaphor 2y ago> I realized I couldn't visualize mental rotations as well as most people I always struggled with those questions as well. Only decades later, when I realized I have aphantasia [0], did that, just like many other things, suddenly make sense. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
- jaggederest 2y agoFor what it's worth, I have perhaps the opposite[1], unless imagining a conversation or reading/writing I think almost entirely in mental pictures and the manipulation thereof. It's part of the reason my memory is so effective, and verbal reasoning confounds me to some degree. Cognitive behavioral therapy is definitely not set up for someone with no internal monologue, only an an internal "visiologue." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperphantasia PS "The vividness of mental imagery has a key role in the development and continuation of intrusive memories," ouch, does it ever. Every embarrassing moment I've ever had is right there at hand.
- yzydserd 2y agoLike GP, I remember doing these spatial reasoning puzzles as a kid, I thought as part of school curriculum. Like you, I have aphantasia. Unlike you, I’m very good at spatial puzzles like this. Hmm.
- Semaphor 2y agoI was decent at the simple ones, where I could essentially map them logically. As long as it was simple enough to keep every step in my brain kinda "as text", I could solve them. Those in school were simple like that. But IQ tests have more complicated ones, and there I’d not manage to keep everything in mind.
- viburnum 2y agoPractice will clearly improve your performance on puzzle questions like these. Is that really testing intelligence, or just interest and motivation for solving puzzles?
- bell-cot 2y agoIt's also testing for social class, educational quality, and attention span. While mostly validating existing hierarchies. And giving loads of people a reason to feel good about themselves. Really, what's not to like about IQ tests?
- kolektiv 2y agoDon't forget the very real and horrifying links with eugenics and the use of IQ testing to justify sterilisation and worse! It's the gift that keeps on giving.
- jerf 2y agoNot just that. Some IQ test puzzles that were difficult to understand when I encountered them "in the wild" went from bizarre to somewhere between trivial to doable when I read an explanation online of what they were even asking. My measured IQ would have taken quite a jump on just that one bit of information, were I taking those tests. Without sarcasm or rancor, you can profitably debate whether or not that means that those questions were just too hard and I really was indicating that I wasn't smart enough for them. I get that, and my point isn't about my intelligence or if it is measured properly; whatever it is, it is, and you are welcome to conclude that I'm just a dufus, especially if you get them without that hint. My point is more that if the tests are supposed to be good measures of whatever intelligence is, it is rather debatable whether they should have that characteristic. I do know I have never liked the "find the next number" tests; even before I learned about polynomial interpolation in school my protest has always been that any series of any numbers can be a pattern; there are an infinite number of patterns, and even constraining them down to the "human interesting" patterns isn't enough to nail down the patterns the IQ test writer is actually using. As a passing part of this post [1] I show a number of patterns in the OEIS that start with 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and do not proceed to 32, each of which does not proceed to 32 with a different number, and I just stopped looking after I had enough for a blog post and already was filtering the results to "things you might actually recognize", and I probably could have kept going for a while. (Yes, I'm aware that a normal IQ test won't be looking for "divisors of 496" at the beginning parts... but towards the end of a high-IQ test...?) Just realizing that they tend to confine themselves to varying levels of Newton's calculus [2] is enough to unstick me, and, again, bump my score just because I know something rather than because of "intelligence". (This also implies that the SAT proxy measure, even though it is not a direct IQ measurement, is likely to be more satisfactory, in the cases where the test takers have the relevant mathematical knowledge in advance. The SAT did not involve any problems that I had not encountered before, and to the extent that I passed and failed the various questions it can not be said it was due to lack of knowledge of what the questions even properly were on my part.) [1]: https://jerf.org/iri/post/2024/dry_strong/ https://jerf.org/iri/post/2024/dry_strong/ [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AuV93LOPcE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AuV93LOPcE
- lupire 2y agohttp://www.lumifont.co.uk/omnitest/omniQ55.htm http://www.lumifont.co.uk/omnitest/omniQ55.htm rewired knowledge of how loading a revolver works. If you don't spin between bullets, where does the 2nd bullet go? What if you spin, but it stops in the spot where the first bullet went?
- ggurface 2y agoI don't think you need to spin to load multiple bullets into a revolver. You can put all the bullets in the cylinder once you've opened it with any need readjusting/spinning.
- qup 2y agoThere are different styles. In many revolvers, the cylinder does not swing out from the body; rather, it is contained.
- scotty79 2y agoI think if it stops at where the first bullet is you just put the second one next to it. Btw, this question can be gambled a bit by using the fact that it has exactly one correct answer and going after easiest cases. This also makes the details of where you put the second bullet after a spin irrelevant provided that you don't always put it next to the first one. Often I'm surpised and delighted when problems are accidentally constructed so that "this has exactly one correct answer" provides a lot of infromation, sometimes more than half of the actual question provides.
- lupire 2y agohttp://www.lumifont.co.uk/omnitest/LangdonNorming.pdf http://www.lumifont.co.uk/omnitest/LangdonNorming.pdf 80% of people who submitted themselves for testing were male.