rvacountrysinger wrote:
Growing up, I was always taught that IQ tests are really of no value, especially if you come from a good family. It was considered really tacky to place a lot of importance on IQ .It was a way to make the middle class people (or lower) to feel validated in some way since they had nothing else really going for them. Isn't this partially true? A lot of insecurity seems to be had when people brag about their IQ. Just because you're in Mensa doesn't mean you'll achieve anything important in life either. There are so many of these "gifted" people who don't do anything in life. Not even something charitable. I notice the middle classes tend to be pushier about academics. In my family, it was more respectable to get a "Gentleman C". Then you could finish your courses at Hampden Sydney, where you could play golf on the weekends.
If the test is well designed such that it tests skills and knowledge applicable to the individual's culture and demographic,then a person who scored very high will typically be very intelligent by most standards of that culture and demographic, and a person who scores very low will typically be very unintelligent by most standards of that culture and demographic. If you are a white, mainstream American male, who does not have much "scatter" your full scale IQ as given by the WAIS, is a fairly decent approximation of your abilities. If you are an Australian aboriginal who was born and raised at a "station" in the bush, or a Yanomami tribesperson in the Amazon, the test will likely fail to give an accurate idea of your actual intellectual abilities, because it's going to ask things that are not relevant to your culture or environment (the Yanomami only count to three and any number beyond that is "many", though they probably have an intuitive sense for higher numbers). The full scale IQ of these tests may also fail to represent your actual abilities if you have a lot of scatter.
For example, some people have low performance IQs but gifted level verbal IQs. These people have a difficult time doing things...for example, they may have a poor short term memory and get confused when presented with physical puzzles, but still possess a keen level of insight into themselves, their difficulties, and the world around them, and are able to articulate themselves well. These people would not strike someone as unintelligent.
Conversely, some people have low verbal IQs but high performance IQs. These people tend to be inarticulate, may or may not lack self insight, but are good at actually doing things.
The tests typically inherently also have a sex bias. As a patriarchal species, humans tend to explicitly value the male oriented and devalue the female oriented. For example, the tests have long been biased towards non-social intelligence. But females tend to excel in some areas of social intelligence that males tend to not, and as most people here probably understand by now, social intelligence is actually more important, in some instances, than non social intelligence. It's only recently that IQ tests have begun to take social intelligence into account, but they still fall short. If some of the tests used to evaluate whether or not a person is on the spectrum, were combined into contemporary IQ tests, I believe such tests would give a more accurate picture of the abilities of the individual. For example, my sister can concoct an entire story from someone's facial expression about their emotions and how they feel and why they feel that way and how they will respond, and be correct. I cannot give such an in depth or accurate evaluation of the subject.
Additionally, some people are professional IQ test takers. The tests can be studied for if a person is familiar with them. These people can obtain inflated scores which misrepresent their actual abilities. There are a number of different IQ tests by the way. A person could score 10 points higher one one than the other.
Mensa accepts various different tests for admission, not all of which are IQ tests. They will accept an IQ of 132 or higher on the Stanford-Binet test, which used to be the standard IQ test (I believe some version of the WAIS is the standard now). A person with an IQ of 132 by either test is gifted but not genius. These are bright individuals but not so bright that they would struggle to have fulfilling conversations with average people. They still have to try for good grades.
Two of my classmates were omnibus geniuses, and at least three of my professors. These are the people who might benefit from a high IQ society. "Complicated" things just automatically click in their head without much effort and they have a difficult time finding things they struggle to understand.
07 Jan 2018, 9:08 pm
