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You know, I often wonder how smart people are but more often I wonder how smart people think they are. Even though I agree that the measurement of intelligence as a scalar is naive, I think it still holds enough validity to be used unashamedly. Having established then that we can overlay an ordering relation on intelligence without a complete loss of validity the quetion is where do you fall on the line? (or rather where do you think you do)

I'd say that I'm more educated than most people given my age, and that I'm more academically driven than most people. Perhaps I have better pattern recognition and learn more easily than the average human. I would say that this is a more a result of circumstance rather than inate ability, but then, I've always been told that I'm too modest.
I also almost mixed up mouthwash and Gatorade today.

without total loss of validity eh? So given your premise you arive at your conclusions without fallacy? so you are taking on the IQ stance, and you agree with this g factor? you think in general we can say there is such a thing? Your poll options can be replaced by IQ ranges, so that, I think it's pointless to ask people how smart they "think" they are, since it's going to be different than the test dictates. Why don't you just ask them for their IQ number?

I mean is this a 'how do you perceive yourself' kind of question?

I think that it's very hard to achieve certain honesty in such topics, simply because it's a loaded question. People have defenses regarding how smart they regard themselves. For example, layra-chan may be too modest and others too forward. All you're asking people is to tell you their insecurities, I would never ask someone up front 'how generally smart do you think you are?' for a number of reasons. One, the question has no purpose. So what if you are 'in general' (going with this whole IQ thing) a genius, because if you are abhorrently lazy it doesn't really mean a s**t. Second, if you are mathematically inclined but have horrible people skills you are still very bad at your receptionist job. Thirdly there are different kinds of thinkers, divergent and convergent (for example, I'm sure you've encountered those in your reading I have one of those nifty IQ books myself), such that the manner in which you think is most likely different from the manner in which someone else thinks.

You can say, a person with a higher general intelligence will approach a task and achieve a more successful outcome, but you can only make a broad generalization, since there are too many variables to account for, right? I mean, it depends on what kind of task it is (this is my opinion no footnote). If the task is to raise a child then who cares if your IQ is 167? If the task is to pick up garbage than success rates (unless you're mentally challenged) will not have a large deviation curve. If the task is to build a bridge, then between the civil engineer who's got only an above average IQ of 127 and the genius pianist I'd rather rest the safety of people to cross the bridge in the hands of the expert and I am positively sure that she shall have a higher success rate.

I think that an more interesting line of discussion would be: how do we measure intelligence? how do we define intelligence?

I find it a more interesting to question your axiom, which would be: let us assume IQ works, since the inhibitions to answering your question will stem from that axiom.

Rhethoric question.


What does it predict?


Information might be interesting to you but it still has no purpose.



The manner in which you think IS an issue, are you NOT familiar with the whole ‘divergent vs. convergent’ idea in IQ, I’m sure you’ve done your reading, right? I mean for someone who claims to have done the reading by posting an excruciatingly long mildly informative paragraph without even beginning to answer the question must know what it is. Here’s the unnecessary paragraph:

gee that’s, that’s a lot of bs.

Never asked you to do it.


Then careful what you say, the manner in which you think is actually something people dealing with IQ test’s deal with, don’t dismiss ideas without proper reference. I have a book on IQ, it has IQ tests in it actually, and it’s made by the “Mensa” Society.

So the point of the g-factor idea is NOT to “predict the amount of success rate a person can approach a task with”? I kinda thought that that’s what it was all about. If you take a person with 160 IQ and a person with 100 IQ who is going to do the pattern recognition task better? Who is going to do the word organization task better? Who’s going to do the number sense and logic task better? Clearly the person to do such things better will be the one with the higher IQ, because the one with 160 scored better on those tasks. I mean without that, you have a purposeless, baseless, vague, general, unspecified idea which means nothing. If the ‘g-factor’ tells you who is ‘smarter’ (generally of course, as you refer to it) then the smarter person should be able to perform better, because if that is not the case then you may have just proven that intelligence might not mean anything nor for that matter exist. I feel I haven’t explained myself in this are fully yet. I shall try to clarify.

Inherently we perceive intelligence as a hierarchy, those who are not intelligent to those who are more intelligent. When someone does something well we say that they are ‘smart’. Example: “wow, how where you able to solve that integral? You must be smart”. Even though the word “intelligence” is not well defined we use it in such a way as to delineate those who perform better from those who don’t (this can be in various tasks). If this test determines who is more intelligent, but the intelligent person can’t do things better then this test did not determine who is more intelligent. It can even be said that it does nothing.



You see that is the issue. You’ve hit upon it. If they score well on certain questions, they will score well on other questions. The powers of the IQ test are to predict how well a person will do on an IQ test. It is a test enclosed all in on itself. As I said before, there is a definite correlation between intelligence and success or ‘performance’ (as you like to say, like a car) which would be foolish to deny. Clearly, in our society, we say successful people are smart, they are intelligent. If they are illiterate, they might be shrewed, they might have connections, and knowing how to use them makes them intelligent. If we are to look at the literal meaning of things I would not say Bush is stupid. In person I say he is stupid all the time, but that is in conversation, in debate it is important to have good definitions. Bush is uneducated, illiterate, but he did become president of the United States, clearly he is intelligent politically. He is just like Stalin was. Stalin kept his mouth shut (because he knew he couldn’t argue against Trotsky) but he was able to be patient, pull the right strings and boom: dictator of USSR.

I still disagree with that. I would say the IQ has no smidgeon of credulity.

Not at all. What I disagree with is your idea of ‘general intelligence’. I would argue that there is no such concept. What I would call it is: defining what is average and what is the norm in our society. See, I would focus on your word “general” rather than the word “intelligence”, since I’ve already shown that intelligence has correlations to performance and your definition of ‘general intelligence’ has no correlation to performance. You are not really measuring any kind of intelligence. What you are doing is figuring out what kinds of tasks the average person can do, and then comparing how others do them and if they can do them better. But does doing those tasks better make a person more intelligent? No, because it doesn’t make them more successful. In society, you are what you do, and if you don’t do anything I would have no problem labeling you as ‘stupid’.

Now you run into a couple of problems. The IQ tests certain pathways in your brain, but not others. It doesn’t test pathways which lead to you acting on particular thoughts, you actually going to get that job, you actually asking that man out, it tests things like solving fun puzzles. A person can have a better affinity with people but a lesser affinity at solving those puzzles and hence the idea of general intelligence is inadequate.

Human thought and emotion is too varied to be labeled and categorized, people are too complex to be compared on levels other than biologically. Intelligence is an ill-defined abstract idea which we associate with many things, but above all there is a clear link between what we see as success in society and how we use the term ‘intelligence’. The IQ does not measure success and cannot predict performance it doesn’t define intelligence and it definitely doesn’t measure it. On the overall I’d say, other than bitching about oneself and pointing out one’s insecurities about oneself in front of a slew of strangers, this thread is baseless. How dare you insult my depth and complexity as a person? And, how dare you insult my intelligence? wink

I didn't say your thread IS baseless, I said it was except for bitching and point out each other's insecurities, that's not the same. Richard Nixon can stay hwr.

what you said was unnecessary not untrue.

you were quick to dismiss the 'divergent vs. convergent' topic but mensa wrote for two pages in their book, they got some way of 'labelling' the manner in which people think.

"perfomance" of a human being... the adjectives used can be used for inanimate objects, that's why I felt like we were comparing human beings to cars. Like in one of those commercials for subaru where the word 'performance' is used so often.

now the sentence exerpt: "major psychological construct in terms of psychometric and factor analytic criteria that further research along these lines is very unlikely either to disconfirm the construct validity of g or to add anything essentially new to our understanding of it"

to say 'it has been established as a major psychological construct' is like to say 'it has been established' so they got a theory. What do they mean by major? they don't mean ultimate, to be sure. It's just kind of like saying, it might be important, and you should take a look at it, or maybe even: if you wish to discuss certain things you need to know of its existance aka, it's there.

ok - 'psychometric and factor analytic criteria' basically a number way of denominating intelligence.

further research along 'these lines' so basically, we cannot refine our science of putting a number to intelligence. basically what that sentence says is 'we got the best way of making it into a number' that's nice, it doesn't say 'we have an undisputed theory of intelligence'. They have a thoery, along a 'factor analytic criteria' way. It doesn't necessitate that no other theory could be better at defining human being's intelligence.

Don't get carried away by the big words pardigm, actually read into it. Thanks for the links, they're great. I am not pursued into going to read through all of them hwr, just like I'm not asking you to read my 'popoularized' book. If you have something specific to discuss you can point it out.

oh 'your idea' sorry, I have a tendency to write my debates in the manner that I speak. 'the idea'.


how do psychologists define intelligence? please, enlighten me. tell me all about psychology, no I'm serious, I don't know.

so 'polite' and 'rude' are emotions? do you realize that what is an emotion and what isn't is still debated? (hey wait, I'm pulling out my ToK credentials, they're not much, one course in theory of knowledge) oh yeah, how do you define emotions?

the guy with the porche is not necessarily 'successful' - that depends on your definition of successful. Ghandi was successful in putting forth a non-violent resistance movement, so was Martin Luther King. If someone is successful in getting rich, then yes, they are brilliant. If that guy bought the porche with the money that he earned, yes, he is brilliant, if that guy's mother bought him the porche with her money, then she is brilliant for making so much money.

Wait, so IQ DOES predict performance? wait, didn't you say the opposite? wait let me quote you: You said it yourself, it would be ridiculous, so ridiculous.

I think you are misunderstading me, I never said that you did either. it's part of the argument, you have to take it as a whole.


how are you not? I mean you drop the quote, provide no explaination for it, pursue with no reference to it and expect it to explain itself?



but the quote you just used had it specifically in it's definition "successfully meet challenges and achieve goals", that is, completing the task in a successful manner.


exactly you can't quantitatively compare people's emotions, that's exactly what I meant.


I don't have a definition, I find it excruciatingly frustrating when I try to think of one. The whole thing bothers me, the lack of definite borders, but in a way it's a reassurance of our own humanity (if such a vague term can be used I hope you understand what I mean).


There are three different appraoches to emotion, the first you stated is a biological approach, they are all, like you said 'operational, hence approximate, and incomplete.


People use terms such as 'that was genius' though. "that defense is genius", "did you see that pass, that was smart" and for an actor and for artists, intelligence is definitely a factor. I think that your statement for phsyics is a misconception. For every profession there are people with affinities or people who work hard for it and I think that if they achieve some amount of success people will recognize that. Society recognizes its benefactors (with some exceptions where the amount of benefit in a situation is not obvious at first, for example in a daring work of art or a daring theory or a daring concept or idea).

The last part of your arguement I want to comment on, but right now I need to go, I will get back to you tmrw.

Bolding mine.

But how angry is angry? What if someone is midly exasperated instead? What if someone hides their anger better?

If you have a subjective comparision and are unable to get meaningful numbers that stand on their own, is it really quantitative, not qualitative?

Well ultimately the g-factor is not terribly important. It does have some real value, use, and validity but it is certainly a long way from a general view of intelligence which is more or less what I have been saying from the beginning. But only demonstrating that g-factor approaches are inadequate is not enough. What do you think the model is missing?