What is the IQ scale based off of?
What difference does 1 IQ more make? or 10 more make?
Can it ever change over time or is it a creature’s/person’s own level of understanding rather than what they know?
In: Biology
It can change over time, and most versions of how it is tested/used are meant to measure a child’s development *compared to other people their age*. A kid with a high IQ does not (necessarily) have more knowledge or skills than an adult with a lower IQ, because the adult has years of learning and development more than the child has. It also doesn’t mean that child will continue to learn and develop well unless they have the education etc available that’s needed for that.
As a comparative scale, the numbers are based on standard deviations, so they tell you where people fall on a bell curve, which has a lot of people who fall near the middle with it becoming increasingly rare to be far away from there. 10 points is 1 standard deviation. 100 is the average score and about 2/3 of people fall within 10 points (one deviation) either up or down from there. But in that area there is a *ton* of variation, it is not at *all* unusual for somebody to have a score closer to 110 compared to the “true” average of 100. But variation, and the number of people in each group, decreases as you get to higher scores. For somebody to have an IQ of 130 or higher has a rarity of almost 1 in 1000. A few more points could make them 1 in 2000.
This doesn’t mean they’re “twice as smart” but it puts them slightly higher in a group of people that is already exceptional, therefore it is very rare for people to have an IQ that high.
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