I hear people say that high IQ doesn’t mean you are automatically good at something, but what does it mean then, in terms of physical properties of the brain? And how do they translate to one’s abilities?
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Speaking as someone who used to test at the high end of school IQ tests, it means you are good at demonstrating the things IQ tests measure *under exam conditions*. Usually that’s shape and spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, memory, sometimes things like reading comprehension, vocabulary and logic – and it significantly overvalues quick thinking over accurate thinking, because tests are usually timed. The tests taken in childhood produce a score for where you are expected to be for your age and ideally also your background (if you never saw a book you won’t be able to read, for an extreme example), and compare your test scores to that to give an index that might measure how smart you are. I read better aged 7 than many adults do, for example, and can still get through an entire novel on a two hour plane flight aged 40.
‘High IQ’ like I have (had?) is pretty well associated with being good at the kinds of tests you do in maths and science at school. I got great grades and hardly worked for them. I am still very convinced that I do not think any better than people closer to the mean on IQ tests, but I did think noticeably much *faster* than my peers at Cambridge (many of whom were, not being funny, very very much better than me at all the things I’m supposed to be good at) and I come across in conversation as a lot smarter than I actually am.
It’s also a danger to a kid’s education to let them skate based on their test taking skills. My teachers didn’t get on my case about homework because I literally couldn’t have better test grades. I nearly crashed and burned at Cambridge University – I had to re-learn how to study *aged 19*, on my own, when I could no longer get by on photographic memory, reading comprehension and basic logic.
IQ is an attempt to measure human intelligence. It could be thought of as a measure of how quickly you can learn something.
The IQ mostly measures abstract reasoning rather than content knowledge. That’s why people say it’s a series of puzzles. You have to (as quickly as possible) figure out the pattern presented and extend it. Or find the most efficient way to reconstruct a pattern that’s been scattered. Sort of like a rubic’s cube needs to be put back together. The patterns become more abstract as you progress, so they become harder to figure out. The reasoning being that if you can still solve them, you must be exceptionally intelligent.
Just to reiterate, the IQ test is not designed to measure content knowledge. You can be brilliant and not be a walking encyclopedia. But when learning about gravity, having a high IQ would make it easier to understand what it means for it to be a rate of acceleration or, in math, why tangent lines have practical applications.
Speaking as someone who used to test at the high end of school IQ tests, it means you are good at demonstrating the things IQ tests measure *under exam conditions*. Usually that’s shape and spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, memory, sometimes things like reading comprehension, vocabulary and logic – and it significantly overvalues quick thinking over accurate thinking, because tests are usually timed. The tests taken in childhood produce a score for where you are expected to be for your age and ideally also your background (if you never saw a book you won’t be able to read, for an extreme example), and compare your test scores to that to give an index that might measure how smart you are. I read better aged 7 than many adults do, for example, and can still get through an entire novel on a two hour plane flight aged 40.
‘High IQ’ like I have (had?) is pretty well associated with being good at the kinds of tests you do in maths and science at school. I got great grades and hardly worked for them. I am still very convinced that I do not think any better than people closer to the mean on IQ tests, but I did think noticeably much *faster* than my peers at Cambridge (many of whom were, not being funny, very very much better than me at all the things I’m supposed to be good at) and I come across in conversation as a lot smarter than I actually am.
It’s also a danger to a kid’s education to let them skate based on their test taking skills. My teachers didn’t get on my case about homework because I literally couldn’t have better test grades. I nearly crashed and burned at Cambridge University – I had to re-learn how to study *aged 19*, on my own, when I could no longer get by on photographic memory, reading comprehension and basic logic.
It measures cognitive abilities, and it is one of (not necessarily the most important in all cases) factors that predict (correlation, not necessarily causation) academic and work success.
It is the subject of a lot of controversy, as curiously sports competitions that rank specific physical abilities that may correlate to specific real life abilities are OK, but anything trying to rank specific intelligence abilities are sort of taboo.
Also because it may be a perverse self fulfilling correlation, as it may boost or harm your self confidence and dedication, which has an even higher correlation to success in many cases than IQ alone.
Some argue that it is biased, but then academia and jobs is also biased, and the correlation has been measured.
It measures cognitive abilities, and it is one of (not necessarily the most important in all cases) factors that predict (correlation, not necessarily causation) academic and work success.
It is the subject of a lot of controversy, as curiously sports competitions that rank specific physical abilities that may correlate to specific real life abilities are OK, but anything trying to rank specific intelligence abilities are sort of taboo.
Also because it may be a perverse self fulfilling correlation, as it may boost or harm your self confidence and dedication, which has an even higher correlation to success in many cases than IQ alone.
Some argue that it is biased, but then academia and jobs is also biased, and the correlation has been measured.
IQ is an attempt to measure human intelligence. It could be thought of as a measure of how quickly you can learn something.
The IQ mostly measures abstract reasoning rather than content knowledge. That’s why people say it’s a series of puzzles. You have to (as quickly as possible) figure out the pattern presented and extend it. Or find the most efficient way to reconstruct a pattern that’s been scattered. Sort of like a rubic’s cube needs to be put back together. The patterns become more abstract as you progress, so they become harder to figure out. The reasoning being that if you can still solve them, you must be exceptionally intelligent.
Just to reiterate, the IQ test is not designed to measure content knowledge. You can be brilliant and not be a walking encyclopedia. But when learning about gravity, having a high IQ would make it easier to understand what it means for it to be a rate of acceleration or, in math, why tangent lines have practical applications.
IQ is an attempt to measure human intelligence. It could be thought of as a measure of how quickly you can learn something.
The IQ mostly measures abstract reasoning rather than content knowledge. That’s why people say it’s a series of puzzles. You have to (as quickly as possible) figure out the pattern presented and extend it. Or find the most efficient way to reconstruct a pattern that’s been scattered. Sort of like a rubic’s cube needs to be put back together. The patterns become more abstract as you progress, so they become harder to figure out. The reasoning being that if you can still solve them, you must be exceptionally intelligent.
Just to reiterate, the IQ test is not designed to measure content knowledge. You can be brilliant and not be a walking encyclopedia. But when learning about gravity, having a high IQ would make it easier to understand what it means for it to be a rate of acceleration or, in math, why tangent lines have practical applications.
It measures cognitive abilities, and it is one of (not necessarily the most important in all cases) factors that predict (correlation, not necessarily causation) academic and work success.
It is the subject of a lot of controversy, as curiously sports competitions that rank specific physical abilities that may correlate to specific real life abilities are OK, but anything trying to rank specific intelligence abilities are sort of taboo.
Also because it may be a perverse self fulfilling correlation, as it may boost or harm your self confidence and dedication, which has an even higher correlation to success in many cases than IQ alone.
Some argue that it is biased, but then academia and jobs is also biased, and the correlation has been measured.
Not much. It’s not a perfect system and its main use is establishing baselines and reference points when testing groups of people for certain things but it’s not objective by any means. For example if I’m conducting a study on a group of people on their cognitive abilities, having them take IQ tests helps give a reference to compare them by. It’s not that it’s an absolute measure of intelligence but in that particular case its problems are somewhat mitigated by the fact that all participants take a test.
But there are several issues with it. For one it only tests certain abilities, and a lot of it revolves around math to a degree. You’re not asked to solve equations but you are often asked to analyse number sequences and discern patterns in numbers and the like. I get why, since in many ways being good at math and having high intelligence are considered tautological, but there’s issues with that. Obviously not all smart people are good at math and not all people good at math are necessarily smart.
Math, is a learned skill. If you sit down and study math you get better at it, and that’s arguably the main flaw tih IQ tests as well. They can be trained, you can take IQ tests repetitively and get increasingly higher scores. That doesn’t mean you’re getting smarter by studying a specific set of exercises, it just means you’re getting better at IQ tests, which proves that they’re not objective. An objective intelligence test would produce the same results no matter how many times you took it.
The idea that you can quantify and accurately measure intelligence or even define it accurately is itself up for debate.
There have been efforts to take “how good is your brain” and answer the question with a single number, the larger the number the smarter you are. The idea being you can use this as a predictor to select the best minds for certain training and education. It’s supposed to be unrelated to how much you have learned. So if I take an IQ test as a child, and I take an IQ test after college, I should score about the same because my IQ isn’t about how much I know.
But in practice, all the questions are answered via knowledge. People test higher with repeat attempts and study. So IQ is not a number attached to this underlying brain capacity. Many/most consider the idea of IQ flawed to the point of meaningless because currently there is not that separation from knowledge.
Further complicating and discrediting IQ is that it’s mostly used by elitists and supremacists as ‘evidence’ and rarely used by productive organizations as a predictor for anything (because it doesn’t seem to actually work).
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