All about IQ tests

[Ilie Pandia]

I know that I could have looked this up on Google, but I confess on being lazy and realizing I could just ask Avalon :).

So here is the problem.

If someone is tested to have an IQ of 190, this means that the person who wrote the tests is at least IQ 191, right?

I was told that was not the case...

But then for me it's impossible to quantify just how intelligent can the "most intelligent human" be, if no one actually is capable of understanding this person!

This is why I think in order to be able to measure intelligence in smart people, you need to be at least as smart as them.

To illustrate this more dramatically:

Could a monkey perform an accurate IQ evaluation of a human? Most would agree that it's not possible. The monkey may conclude one of two things:

- the humans are either crazy
or
- they are so intelligent that they make no sense to me!

But just how intelligent the humans are, the monkey cannot comprehend and therefore any "IQ quotient" it may associate with the human tested, it's actually meaningless. It just says: crazy or higher than mine!

And now I get to the question in the title... who creates the IQ tests? The smartest people on the planet? And if not... then what's the value of those tests? Since it would be monkeys testing something well beyond their ability to comprehend...

(I don't mean to insult anybody with my analogies, I'm only trying to make it more visible. I am very well ware of very smart people whom I cannot comprehend and the distance between my abilities and theirs could be compared to the distance between a monkey and a human. It is what it is...).

[Carmody]

Here is an interesting place to start, regarding figuring out what is what in the world of 'intelligence tests'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_K._Hoeflin

Apparently, The chess champion Gary Kasparov concluded that a single genius with an IQ of, oh, lets say 190.. could dance circles around a room full of scientists and geniuses with an IQ of 170. Or about 20 iq points down, all relative at 190-170, as a differential.

dropping that to the 'norm' of 100 IQ points, means that the average university graduate, with an IQ of 125 could then dance circles around the average person with an IQ of 100.

The great equalizer is VIOLENCE. Those without intelligence resort to violence to achieve their desires and ends.

which tells you a considerable amount about the true nature of the NWO types.

They use violence as a norm, which means they are NOT intellectual giants as they cannot figure out non violent solutions. They simply are not intelligent enough.

War, murder, violence, etc is the last resort of the moron.

[scanner]

Trust me on this , the amount of people I've met in the UK who went to University are as dumb as a box of rocks . I kid you not . They may be proficient in their field of study , but as for anything out of that field they don't have a clue . IQ tests are for people who think they are more intelligent than anyone else .

[Shezbeth]

To my understanding, the IQ tests are designed to test both an individual's ability to think and reason, as well as learn in response to stimulus. It is a categorization, not necessarily a validation or uncontestable qualification.

That "legitimate" IQ tests are only able to be administered by Psychologists and Psychiatrists is most suspect IMO, but the idea that humans can consistently be observed to achieve various levels of 'score' based on their intellectual aptitude is (somewhat) well proven and documented. Still, the person who wrote the test ought to get a 'perfect' score though right? Even if they're not 'immaculately' intelligent, they wrote the darn thing!

IIRC the 'standardized' IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test goes by something like "The Adult Age Intelligence something something"; I'm deliberately not doing any refinitive research before making this post.

The idea is that as an organism ages there are observable trends and 'milestones' as far as mental ability are concerned, and the IQ test is geared toward categorizing 'premature' or 'unusual' advances (or retractions!) as compared to the aggregate 'normal' threshold. There are inherent flaws to this method, but (playing the devil's advocate) it's not designed as a perfect method.

Edit: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, I was WAY off.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient

[scanner]

Mensa is the answer you're looking for http://www.mensa.org.uk/

[Shezbeth]

Whoa there, Mensa is an organization which purports authority in the areas of IQ, but their tests and screenings are not standardized or officiated (other then by them). While this does not necessarily disqualify them as objective, neither does it qualify them as objective.

The standardized IQ tests are designed - or at least reportedly intended - to measure objective intellectual ability, whereas Mensa does so as a qualification for participation/membership (specifically, the top 2%).

[ghostrider]

IQ test cannot be that accurate , about four months ago I was curious about myself and I took three different IQ test and tested with an average IQ of 145 and I'm not that smart and computers still give me headaches ... but the questions seemed redundant , like the answers were so obvious it was boring ...

[DeDukshyn]

I always saw IQ tests as a simple test of different types of reasoning, and the proficiency of those to be used. Nothing more, and not really an "intelligence" test. The person with a 180 IQ but no knowledge and poor language skills, will not be able to express their intelligence very well - likewise a person with a 140 IQ and vast knowledge - has a greater range of expression to be able to show that 140.

Loved Carmody's post -- so true, so true ... It might not just be violence, but manipulation, deceit, spin, etc. -- you know, the stuff politicians are made of ;)

[Bill Ryan]

If someone is tested to have an IQ of 190, this means that the person who wrote the tests is at least IQ 191, right?



Hi, Ilie! This is interesting stuff.

I'd say that the higher the IQ (whatever that is!) — the harder it is to measure it, and the more meaningless the numbers are.

With most tests (but not all), speed is a factor. So the person with an IQ of 190 might be able to breeze through all the test questions in half an hour, but the poor soul who created it all might have worked in it for a month. :)

[scanner]

I agree , however it is the only standard of IQ tests (as far as I'm aware ) that is out there . I'm not promoting Menas , I only use them as a reference . Any test , imho , is what the outcome is to any problem set before you . Every person has a different answer to every problem, IQ has little to no meaning in my book . But hey I'm a dumb anyway so what do I know ;)

[Ilie Pandia]

Hi,

Thanks for your input. The replies here made me realize that we don't even know what intelligence is, so what does that say about a concept like 'IQ'.

And if we wake up to our "infinite potential" what happens then to the genetically inherited IQ limit :becky:?


With most tests (but not all), speed is a factor. So the person with an IQ of 190 might be able to breeze through all the test questions in half an hour, but the poor soul who created it all might have worked in it for a month. :)

Well, at least this is something I can wrap my mind around :cool:!

[Amenjo]

Hi Ilie,

The IQ test was obviously written by and coming from a certain mindset of psychologists and scientist that presumed their perception of intelligence was the only perception, hence they created the IQ test.

Although coming from the BBC I did find this documentary did give a more balanced view of intelligence. Although it didn't tackle the spiritual aspect ;)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jW8qF3tUDl8

I am on my iPhone so not sure if that link will work of desktops, so if not search for "what makes us smart bbc 2"

The answer obviously can't be judged by any standard test as tests are by their own definition scientific and intelligence goes beyond science :)

Love and Truth,

Amenjo

[Carmody]

Here's a little bit from one of the omega society members. It is quite nice. But, intelligence is no marker of ability to organize a sentence, or, possibly, the desire to care how that sentence is considered. I expect that he feels you'll get the proper gist, if you are intelligent enough.

(eg, I only look 'ok' due to the existence of firefox's built in spell checkers)

This way Kant saved philosophy from a certain death when it became clear that it should concentrate on its investigation of the structure of the mind, the beginning and end of all we know about oneself and the cosmos we create. Copernicus may have evicted man from center stage but Kant has put him back where he properly belongs, as the measure of all things that are and those that are not.

Just like a most powerful independent computer part cannot logically analyze its own performance while simultaneously being a dependent part of the unit it is attempting to analyze, neither can a brain logically have thoughts about itself. Is this the end of philosophy? Kant extended his categorical imperatives to include morality. He felt it within himself that entity that cemented harmoniously all of cosmos. But he could not prove it! Must you prove the reality of all truths? Is it faith, denied by reason, empiricism and secularism? Is psychology the ultimate justification? Faith is like man’s shadow, never leaves you, but the lights must be ‘turned on’ for you to experience it.(*)

The same science that, with Copernicus, Darwin and Newton, had caused man to be centrifugally ejected from his position at the center of creation has brought him back. Science is relative to the observer, to his physical context, to his own construction, to prevailing paradigms, influenced by his animical disposition, belief system and socio-cultural context.

The 'new' kids on the block, Chomsky and Wittgenstein, further reinforce Kant’s vision: the brain acts like a logical machine that translates environmental energy into a language code that enables man to have thoughts about his intuitions, communicate them and above all, realize against its own rational will, that a first cause likely exists, one that is uncaused, uncreated and intelligent.

http://www.delasierra-sheffer.net/ID1-Neurophilo-net/index.htm



(*)
I look at that... and I think that what he means..is that ..if it is faith, without the 'lights turned on' so to speak, is then mere dogma and orderly machinations like controlled religion, or military rigor.

Ie, hierarchy and control of people in threat enforced/enabled tiered systems, like that of the monkey/baboon clan or whatnot.

[Roisin]

My IQ back in grade school was avg. Not bad for someone who was in the school for the deaf, of which I am nearly so, but then I advanced to mainstream where I ended up in the National Honor Society in HS and then got a point avg. in college that was good enough to qualify for grad school.... all without hearing a word of whatever the teachers and prof's were saying in class.
Needless to say, I had to rely on other students notes and the textbooks to pull through.

My son though, who is normal, was in the gifted students program called GATE all through his school years. There are a number of exceptionally intelligent people in my family but as luck would have it, myself and some of my siblings were burdened with a hearing deficit that made things much, much more difficult in the academic area.

[Innocent Warrior]

I still have my human development book out from when I used it for another post, here's some excerpts on what it says about measuring intelligence...

"At the turn of the last century, Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon produced the forerunner of modern intelligence tests. In 1904, they were commissioned by the French government to devise a test that would identify "dull" children who might need special instruction. Binet and Simon devised a large battery of tasks measuring the skills believed to be necessary for classroom learning: attention, perception, memory, reasoning, verbal comprehension, and so on. Items that discriminated between normal children and those described by their teachers as slow were kept in the final test.

The test was soon revised so that the items were age-graded. For example, a set of "6-year-old" items could be passed by most 6-year-olds but by few 5-year-olds; "12-year-old" items could be handled by most 12-year-olds but not by younger children. This approach permitted the testers to describe a child's mental age - the level of age-graded problems that the child is able to solve. Thus, a child who passes all items at the 5-year-old level but does poorly on more advanced items - regardless of the child's actual age - is said to have a mental age of 5.

Binet's test became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale after Lewis Terman of Stanford University translated and published a revised version of the test for use with American children. Terman developed a procedure for comparing a child's mental age (MA) with his chronological age (CA) by calculating an intelligence quotient (IQ), which consisted of MA divided by CA and then multiplied by 100 (IQ = MA/CA X 100). An IQ score of 100 indicates average intelligence, regardless of a child's age: The normal child passes just the items that age-mates typically pass; mental age increases each year, but so does chronological age. The child of 8 with a mental age of 10 has experienced rapid intellectual growth and has a high IQ (specifically, 125); if she still has a mental age of 10 when she is 15 years old, then she has an IQ of only 67 and is clearly below average compared with children of the same age.

The Stanford-Binet, now in its fifth edition, is still in use (Roid, 2003). Its test norms - standards of normal performance expressed as average scores and the range of scores around the average - are based on the performance of a large, representative sample of people (2-year-olds through adults) from many socio-economic and racial backgrounds. The concept of mental age is no longer used to calculate IQ; instead, individuals receive scores that reflect how well or how poorly they do compared with others of the same age. An IQ of 100 is still average, and the higher the IQ score an individual attains, the better the performance is in comparison with that of age-mates."

In the section under, "What is intelligence?", it admits there is no clear consensus on the definition of intelligence. Experts offer different definitions, many of them centering on the ability to think abstractly or to solve problems effectively. For anyone who is of the opinion that the standard IQ test falls short of providing an accurate measurement of one's intelligence, I agree with you and I found Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences to be a more comprehensive view on intelligence and how we could better go about measuring it.

"Howard Gardner (1993, 1999/2000; Chen & Gardner, 1997) rejects the idea that a single IQ score is a meaningful measure of human intelligence. He argues that there are many intelligences, most of which have been ignored by the developers of standardized intelligence tests. Instead of asking, "How smart are you?" researchers should be asking, "How are you smart?" and identifying people's strengths and weaknesses across the full range of human mental faculties (Chen & Gardner, 1997). Gardner (1993, 2000) argues that there are at least eight distinct intellectual abilities:

1. Linguistic intelligence. Language skills, such as those seen in the poet's facility with words.
2. Logical-mathematical intelligence. The abstract thinking and problem solving shown by mathematicians and computer scientists and emphasised by Piaget.
3. Musical intelligence. Based on an acute sensitivity to sound patterns.
4. Spatial intelligence. Most obvious in great artist who can perceive things accurately and transform what they see.
5. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. The skilful use of the body to create crafts, perform, or fix things; shown, for example, by dancers, athletes, and surgeons.
6. Interpersonal intelligence. Social intelligence, social skill, exceptional sensitivity to other people's motivations and moods; demonstrated by salespeople and psychologists.
7. Intrapersonal intelligence. Understanding of one's own feelings and inner life.
8. Naturalist intelligence. Expertise in the natural world of plants and animals.

Traditional IQ tests emphasize the linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence and to some extent test spatial intelligence, perhaps because these are the forms of intelligence Western societies value most highly and work the hardest to nurture in school. But IQ tests can be faulted for ignoring most of the other forms of intelligence. Although Gardner does not claim that his is the definitive list of intelligences, he presents evidence suggesting that each of these eight abilities is distinct. For example, it is clear that a person can be exceptional in one ability but poor in others - witness savant syndrome, the phenomenon in which extraordinary talent in a particular area is displayed by a person otherwise mentally retarded (Treffert, 2000)."

Source: Rider, E., & Sigelman, C. (2009) Life-span human development.

Note: The emphasis on "How are you smart?" is my own.

[Gaia]

When I was a child, my parents made ​​me take an IQ test , I got a score of 135 , which surprised my doctor but not my mother.

I could already read , write and count at the age of 5 years and half. However, I do not think this is the right solution. Because a child needs to grow up with other children their age , whatever their level of intelligence.The meaning of the Intelligence Quotient ,it is actually an estimate of the mental age of an individual. Scores are scaled so that the average is 100;10 points above 100 mean 10 years of mental age in addition to our present age.

However, calculating the IQ of a child usually resolves as the level of culture based on personal experiences of life. For a 6 year old would have an IQ of 125 is not actually the mental age of a 31 year it will be even more interested in his toy cars or dolls even Einstein played games of children, despite his intellectual advance. Generally, a score above 130 means that the individual brain works differently from that of a normal individual; he will understand more quickly the issues and implications of a situation or problem will be more methodical in his search for elements of a solution , it does not dwell on the same points as his peers,and find a solution.

I do not take this kind of test too seriously because it is more useful to flatter the ego poor at accurately measuring the level of human intelligence.

[Roisin]

I still have my human development book out from when I used it for another post, here's some excerpts on what it says about measuring intelligence...

"At the turn of the last century, Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon produced the forerunner of modern intelligence tests. In 1904, they were commissioned by the French government to devise a test that would identify "dull" children who might need special instruction. Binet and Simon devised a large battery of tasks measuring the skills believed to be necessary for classroom learning: attention, perception, memory, reasoning, verbal comprehension, and so on. Items that discriminated between normal children and those described by their teachers as slow were kept in the final test.

The test was soon revised so that the items were age-graded. For example, a set of "6-year-old" items could be passed by most 6-year-olds but by few 5-year-olds; "12-year-old" items could be handled by most 12-year-olds but not by younger children. This approach permitted the testers to describe a child's mental age - the level of age-graded problems that the child is able to solve. Thus, a child who passes all items at the 5-year-old level but does poorly on more advanced items - regardless of the child's actual age - is said to have a mental age of 5.

Binet's test became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale after Lewis Terman of Stanford University translated and published a revised version of the test for use with American children. Terman developed a procedure for comparing a child's mental age (MA) with his chronological age (CA) by calculating an intelligence quotient (IQ), which consisted of MA divided by CA and then multiplied by 100 (IQ = MA/CA X 100). An IQ score of 100 indicates average intelligence, regardless of a child's age: The normal child passes just the items that age-mates typically pass; mental age increases each year, but so does chronological age. The child of 8 with a mental age of 10 has experienced rapid intellectual growth and has a high IQ (specifically, 125); if she still has a mental age of 10 when she is 15 years old, then she has an IQ of only 67 and is clearly below average compared with children of the same age.

The Stanford-Binet, now in its fifth edition, is still in use (Roid, 2003). Its test norms - standards of normal performance expressed as average scores and the range of scores around the average - are based on the performance of a large, representative sample of people (2-year-olds through adults) from many socio-economic and racial backgrounds. The concept of mental age is no longer used to calculate IQ; instead, individuals receive scores that reflect how well or how poorly they do compared with others of the same age. An IQ of 100 is still average, and the higher the IQ score an individual attains, the better the performance is in comparison with that of age-mates."

In the section under, "What is intelligence?", it admits there is no clear consensus on the definition of intelligence. Experts offer different definitions, many of them centering on the ability to think abstractly or to solve problems effectively. For anyone who is of the opinion that the standard IQ test falls short of providing an accurate measurement of one's intelligence, I agree with you and I found Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences to be a more comprehensive view on intelligence and how we could better go about measuring it.

"Howard Gardner (1993, 1999/2000; Chen & Gardner, 1997) rejects the idea that a single IQ score is a meaningful measure of human intelligence. He argues that there are many intelligences, most of which have been ignored by the developers of standardized intelligence tests. Instead of asking, "How smart are you?" researchers should be asking, "How are you smart?" and identifying people's strengths and weaknesses across the full range of human mental faculties (Chen & Gardner, 1997). Gardner (1993, 2000) argues that there are at least eight distinct intellectual abilities:

1. Linguistic intelligence. Language skills, such as those seen in the poet's facility with words.
2. Logical-mathematical intelligence. The abstract thinking and problem solving shown by mathematicians and computer scientists and emphasised by Piaget.
3. Musical intelligence. Based on an acute sensitivity to sound patterns.
4. Spatial intelligence. Most obvious in great artist who can perceive things accurately and transform what they see.
5. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. The skilful use of the body to create crafts, perform, or fix things; shown, for example, by dancers, athletes, and surgeons.
6. Interpersonal intelligence. Social intelligence, social skill, exceptional sensitivity to other people's motivations and moods; demonstrated by salespeople and psychologists.
7. Intrapersonal intelligence. Understanding of one's own feelings and inner life.
8. Naturalist intelligence. Expertise in the natural world of plants and animals.

Traditional IQ tests emphasize the linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence and to some extent test spatial intelligence, perhaps because these are the forms of intelligence Western societies value most highly and work the hardest to nurture in school. But IQ tests can be faulted for ignoring most of the other forms of intelligence. Although Gardner does not claim that his is the definitive list of intelligences, he presents evidence suggesting that each of these eight abilities is distinct. For example, it is clear that a person can be exceptional in one ability but poor in others - witness savant syndrome, the phenomenon in which extraordinary talent in a particular area is displayed by a person otherwise mentally retarded (Treffert, 2000)."

Source: Rider, E., & Sigelman, C. (2009) Life-span human development.

Note: The emphasis on "How are you smart?" is my own.

They've improved these tests to be more comprehensive, amongst other things too.

I took my IQ test back in the late 50's.

This test has changed a lot since then.

I'm close to 60 now.

[Harley]

Real interesting posts folks!


Who creates the IQ tests?
While I don't have the answer to that question, I believe that the IQ tests were/are created by professional academicians who have little (if any) experience in the real world.

Just like trying to apply a theory in the real world, how does that usually work out for you? More times than none, it takes some experimentation and tweaking of the theory before it can be applied in the real world. This is called experience.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is there has to be a balance between intelligence and experience, otherwise what good is there of having a high IQ?

Unless of course your only ambition in life is to be a career academician.


p.s. I'm an old guy, so you can trust what I say!

:)

[eaglespirit]

My IQ back in grade school was avg. Not bad for someone who was in the school for the deaf, of which I am nearly so, but then I advanced to mainstream where I ended up in the National Honor Society in HS and then got a point avg. in college that was good enough to qualify for grad school.... all without hearing a word of whatever the teachers and prof's were saying in class.
Needless to say, I had to rely on other students notes and the textbooks to pull through.

My son though, who is normal, was in the gifted students program called GATE all through his school years. There are a number of exceptionally intelligent people in my family but as luck would have it, myself and some of my siblings were burdened with a hearing deficit that made things much, much more difficult in the academic area.

...all without hearing a word of whatever the teachers and prof's were saying in class,
I had to rely on other students notes and the textbooks to pull through.


A very telling matter, Roisin : )
WE are here to share for advancement to higher ground, no hearing needed.

[Innocent Warrior]

Just like trying to apply a theory in the real world, how does that usually work out for you? More times than none, it takes some experimentation and tweaking of the theory before it can be applied in the real world. This is called experience.

Absolutely, even academics would agree with you here, ;) pretty much anyway. The current thinking concerning intelligence has been greatly influenced by a focus on two broad dimensions of intellect, "fluid intelligence" and "crystallised intelligence". Fluid intelligence is the ability to solve problems and crystallised intelligence is the knowledge acquired through education and life experience.

So, generally speaking, they lump experience in with schooling under the category of acquired knowledge.

[grannyfranny100]

:rolleyes:Deduct 50 points for too-lazy-to-look-it-up!!!

[Roisin]

My IQ back in grade school was avg. Not bad for someone who was in the school for the deaf, of which I am nearly so, but then I advanced to mainstream where I ended up in the National Honor Society in HS and then got a point avg. in college that was good enough to qualify for grad school.... all without hearing a word of whatever the teachers and prof's were saying in class.
Needless to say, I had to rely on other students notes and the textbooks to pull through.

My son though, who is normal, was in the gifted students program called GATE all through his school years. There are a number of exceptionally intelligent people in my family but as luck would have it, myself and some of my siblings were burdened with a hearing deficit that made things much, much more difficult in the academic area.

...all without hearing a word of whatever the teachers and prof's were saying in class,
I had to rely on other students notes and the textbooks to pull through.


A very telling matter, Roisin : )
WE are here to share for advancement to higher ground, no hearing needed.

That's very beautiful Eaglespirit [wiping off tear]. Thank-you!

And that's an A plus for Innocent Warrior for her contributions to this thread! ;)

[Carmody]

From the same 'omega' club member, ie IQ of over 176-180, we get this bit. Which I find interesting that I came to the same conclusion on my own, with simple observation:

The most significant event during the pre-linguistic stage is the establishment of the neuronal interconnectivity between all visceral organ effectors and centers of neural control at different anatomical levels, all servo-control systems independent of any cortical levels for base-level functioning. Thus, an intramural neuronal plexus (of Meissner and Auerbach) enveloping the entire digestive tube and extending to practically all visceral organ formations that evaginate from the tube as development goes on, is most of what is needed. Its self-regulatory activity can be modified by a peripheral autonomic nervous system that connects the viscera with the developing central nervous system (CNS, neuraxis), mostly at sub cortical levels. The autonomic regulation remains unconscious and without an organized ‘homuncular’ anatomic representation at the cortical levels. That is not to say that there are no connections between the ‘central autonomic’ loci (hypothalamus, limbic system, etc.) and the cortical levels of consciousness, they have been established by central stimulations in awakened patients (Penfeld) among other studies. The paucity of these connections belies their tremendous contribution to the ‘emotional’ content of thought beyond the pre-linguistic stage, when thought is articulated language, vocalized or not. Thus, changes in the internal physiological milieu (pH, smooth muscle stretching, oxygenation / hypercapnea, etc.) is first monitored by interoceptors, codified as action potentials that activate effectors to bring about an adaptive modification of localized visceral responses. There are no important neural pathways bringing visceral information to conscious cortical levels, regardless of claims by Yoga practitioners. This arrangement provides for a constant online input of internal, body-proper homeostatic variations to bear on conscious or unconscious activities.

Which is why I talk about getting past such things, getting past such organic, literal body borne origins and programming of the thought formation of/in the mind.


Which brings one to the birth and pre-birth model of self clearing (regression hypnosis, recall, etc), as a deep venture into the self. From that final relaxing of the self into a finer form of knowing and being, comes a natural rise in intelligence, as the pathways to thoughts are no longer as strongly governed by the limits of body borne formation.

This would be a slightly more scientific analysis of the act that the sages call 'going clear'.

this also gives you the 'skinny' on why the NMO types use fear to drive you to limit thought, to limit the emergence of intelligence through fear, desire, stress, etc. all things that limit the origins of through into smaller confined and controlled channels.

Realistically, it is impossible to form a thought, even after weeks, months...unless the body begins to relax and learn anew...weeks/months AFTER the TV and all it's noise has left your house or abode.

[mosquito]

Trust me on this , the amount of people I've met in the UK who went to University are as dumb as a box of rocks . I kid you not . They may be proficient in their field of study , but as for anything out of that field they don't have a clue . IQ tests are for people who think they are more intelligent than anyone else .

VERY true, and it's getting worse.

Anyone tempted to believe that intelligence is directly and inevitably linked to academic achievement need only consider George Walker Bush and Anthony Charles Lyndon Blair, both of whom have degrees from 2 of the world's top universities. Somehow the word "intelligent" doesn't seem to fit.

Knowledgeable does not equal intelligent.
Intelligent does not equal wise.

Like others, I've found there to be all sorts of differing test around, all purporting to measure IQ. So you will get different scores depending on the balance of the types of question in the test.

I think Bill hit the nail on he head Ilie, the tests are probably put together by people who take hours on end to devise a question (along with a correct answer) which you are required to answer in a minute !

[Operator]

---
Thanks for your input. The replies here made me realize that we don't even know what intelligence is, so what does that say about a concept like 'IQ'.
---


Ahh, good point ... a couple of weeks ago I decided to dive into the subject of Artificial Intelligence and saw a
introductory lecture from a professor on MIT:

TjZBTDzGeGg

Interesting stuff ... the distinction between human intelligence and normal computer automation is 'fantasy'.
Humans can 'imagine' something they never experienced before. He gave an example of running with a
bucket of water through the street. You've probably never done that before but can imagine what will
happen doing that. So how would fantasy relate to a high IQ score ... ?

[Atlas]

I just did two free online IQ tests to compare the results:


http://www.free-iqtest.net/ gave me 134.
http://www.iq-test.com/free-iq-test/ gave me "Your IQ score lies within a range of 127 up to 143." (which I guess would be 135)

[jackovesk]

Trust me on this , the amount of people I've met in the UK who went to University are as dumb as a box of rocks . I kid you not . They may be proficient in their field of study , but as for anything out of that field they don't have a clue . IQ tests are for people who think they are more intelligent than anyone else .

Isn't it funny how these so called ((Intellectuals)) are measured against others in society by way of the IQ Test...:shocked:

The strangest thing I always find is these people are often measured by their (Critical Thinking & Memory Retention)...:shocked:

Yet absolutely no-one is measured by their ((Emotional Intelligence)), my bet is that most of these so called Intellectual-Geniuses wouldn't even register on the ((EI-SCALE))...

Without Empathy/Emotion - There is 'No' intelligence and these are the ((FOOLS)) who are inducted by the elite at an early age to make our decisions & run our lives...:scared:

With these ((Sociopathic-Minions)) running things - No wonder the world has gone to shyte...:faint:

The IQ Tests are not a measure of one's overall intelligence and are outdated...:yes4:

[Tesseract]

An interesting paradox Ilie,


I think Bill gave a really good answer, however even with that contribution there is still more to consider. Compare a 20th century computer processor like the 486 with a tiny lab-scale quantum processor of today. The 486 can do far more calculations per second, but the quantum processor in my 'initial' view is more 'intelligent', to personify it, since it has a higher density of states than the 486. Consider whether or not you agree with this before reading the next paragraph.

Moving to the animal world, I have sometimes thought about the evolution of birds' brains over time. In order to achieve better flight the brain should be quite small, which would notionally make the bird less intelligent. However, some birds are relatively smart amongst animals (without going into how this is judged), which suggests that their brains may somehow be rather sophisticated, since they achieve this intelligence in such a small brain size. Their brain then, is more like the quantum processor, while land based animals that did not have to go through this evolution still have brains analagous to the old 486 processor. Therefore, if one is consistent of the logic of paragraph 1 above, suggests that the more clever members of the avian family are more intelligent than humans.

[giovonni]

In regards to ...

The term 'it's all academic' comes to mind ...

With the intended set of paralogical twisting of our true human nature and abilities.

[DeDukshyn]

I just did two free online IQ tests to compare the results:


http://www.free-iqtest.net/ gave me 134.
http://www.iq-test.com/free-iq-test/ gave me "Your IQ score lies within a range of 127 up to 143." (which I guess would be 135)



After drinking a few (almost several) beer, I got a 129 on the first post you tested. I've done a bunch of these and I always get between 125 and 137 <-- the best I've mustered. Pretty useless but ok for fun I guess ;).

[Atlas]

Pretty useless indeed. I did the test once again giving random answers only and I got an IQ "up to 100" which is the average if I understand correctly. So if you get "up to" the average IQ by giving only random answers, the test itself is not reliable. If anyone knows of a reliable free online IQ test, please post it here.

[Flash]

IQ test cannot be that accurate , about four months ago I was curious about myself and I took three different IQ test and tested with an average IQ of 145 and I'm not that smart and computers still give me headaches ... but the questions seemed redundant , like the answers were so obvious it was boring ...

LOL your 145 score just answered your doubts about accuracy of the tests. The answers were so obvious it was boring IS precisely BECAUSE you score 145. To a 100 score, they would have been unexpected and very challenging. IMO

Most standardised (standardisation IS very important to judge the quality of the test) IQ tests are quite accurate to measure the abilities to learn - period. They have been built to measure the abilities to learn, not to succeed in life, not to anything else in fact.

And as Carmody said, a 20 points differential is enormous in the ability to learn and process information very fast. Therefore the dumming down of America, the violent ones cannot stand the fast learners, because they would be deciphered easily. Solution: dumming down. However, i thought the average IQ test of University graduate was rather 115 to 120, but.... well,this is not that important altogether.

I met many mensa people lately, and sometimes I wonder how come they did pass the IQ tests as being in the top 2% lol. They sincerely do not always look that bright and emotionally could be quite unbalanced. But i can tell you that jokes fly in a very fast fashion when with them. You've got to be fast to catch up - or drink a lot so you think you caught up. :confused::p

I did study the how an IQ test is built up, and its objectives (how fast and easily one can learn) , in University.

And by the way, any trained technician can administer these tests, not only psychologists.

[Flash]

Trust me on this , the amount of people I've met in the UK who went to University are as dumb as a box of rocks . I kid you not . They may be proficient in their field of study , but as for anything out of that field they don't have a clue . IQ tests are for people who think they are more intelligent than anyone else .

Isn't it funny how these so called ((Intellectuals)) are measured against others in society by way of the IQ Test...:shocked:

The strangest thing I always find is these people of often measured by their (Critical Thinking & Memory Retention)...:shocked:

Yet absolutely no-one is measured by their ((Emotional Intelligence)), my bet is that most of these so called Intellectual-Geniuses wouldn't even register on the ((EI-SCALE))...

Without Empathy/Emotion - There is 'No' intelligence and these are the ((FOOLS)) who are inducted by the elite at an early age to make our decisions & run our lives...:scared:

With these ((Sociopathic-Minions)) running things - No wonder the world has gone to shyte...:faint:

The IQ Tests are not a measure of one's overall intelligence and are outdated...:yes4:

I agree with the above 100%

[Flash]

Trust me on this , the amount of people I've met in the UK who went to University are as dumb as a box of rocks . I kid you not . They may be proficient in their field of study , but as for anything out of that field they don't have a clue . IQ tests are for people who think they are more intelligent than anyone else .

VERY true, and it's getting worse.

Anyone tempted to believe that intelligence is directly and inevitably linked to academic achievement need only consider George Walker Bush and Anthony Charles Lyndon Blair, both of whom have degrees from 2 of the world's top universities. Somehow the word "intelligent" doesn't seem to fit.

Knowledgeable does not equal intelligent.
Intelligent does not equal wise.

Like others, I've found there to be all sorts of differing test around, all purporting to measure IQ. So you will get different scores depending on the balance of the types of question in the test.

I think Bill hit the nail on he head Ilie, the tests are probably put together by people who take hours on end to devise a question (along with a correct answer) which you are required to answer in a minute !

Bush and alike bought their diploma, they did not earn it, they bought it by giving funds to their universities. You cannot compare money with those who earned their diploma. Yet, those same diploma are a description of the ability to learn. As one PhD once told me, "I know a lot of useless information and I have learned to pass exams and a method to learn"

[ghostrider]

when I scored a high mark I knew there was something wrong with this picture , so I took two more test , same results ... it's just the way the questions are asked , and the time limit , if one can think quickly , it's easy ... I take their results with a grain of salt ...

[Innocent Warrior]

Maybe you guys are just clever? The tests don't even come close to measuring intelligence but they're not so bad at measuring intellectual intelligence. I did it a while ago now but the International High IQ Society (http://www.highiqsociety.org) test seemed ok.

[Observer1964]

If you work through IQ tests often enough you will score 200 eventually.

Through my life i did several IQ tests, and every time i scored a bit higher.
So I think it doesn't say that much, ppl can be dumbed down as well.

When you use ur muscles they get stronger, but if you then stop using them they weaken down again.
I think it is much like that with the brain as well.

The environment in wich you grow up also does a lot in how you develop.

Around 5:30 a experiment is described with mice that I feel is very relevant here.

gqcJqaXpWXg

[Matt P]

I find it humorous to see some posting their scores. Such ego. You wouldn't be doing this if you scored below 100. Think about that for a second.

[In my opinion] IQ tests are a waste of time. I think Gaia, Harley and Jackovesk hit the nails on the head.

In tests I took years ago, I found no true knowledge represented. Each time I couldn't help but think of a farmer, who knows how to grow a seed to a healthy fruit, care for the land, fix any mechanical problem, build any structure, love and care for and raise other animals, etc. None of his knowledge is represented by an IQ test and yet he is more intelligent than any doctor or scientist of professor.

[In my opinion] IQ tests are for ego driven humans, who would also drop their pants and measure their manlihood. Same thing. We all have intelligence that is unique and different. The doctor is no more intelligent than the carpenter. The college doctorate professor is no more intelligent than the pre school teacher. It is just different intelligences. But many humans think because they have a high degree from a good school or score well on standardized tests or make lots of money, they are superior to/smarter than other humans.

These tests also cannot measure what you can DO. An "unintelligent" person can have much more success in life than the book smart genius. IQ has little to do with success in life.

I'd also like to leave you with a thought/question. How many really intelligent, high IQ, people have you noticed who believe the official stories of JFK and 9/11, eat gmo food, disregard chemtrails, take vaccines, drink fluoride, stop at McDonalds, take their kids to learn common core at public schools, vote in rigged "elections" and know absolutely nothing about our repressed human history? Lots of 'em, right?

[edit: Just my opinion but I recommend to] Stop taking IQ tests and go outside and experience something.

Matt

[Pam]

Trust me on this , the amount of people I've met in the UK who went to University are as dumb as a box of rocks . I kid you not . They may be proficient in their field of study , but as for anything out of that field they don't have a clue . IQ tests are for people who think they are more intelligent than anyone else .



You have made an interesting point here, and my observations have been similar. I must admit to being one of those graduates. I have concluded that what we call intelligence and common sense are two different things. Frequently someone with a high IQ has very little common sense. They go out into the working world and expect to excel but may be very unproductive because they cannot master time management, they can't prioritize, and don't have good social skills, and often an inflated view of their value. I will take someone with lower intelligence and common sense any day over some high IQ "genious". Of course, there are exceptions.

[Bill Ryan]

-------

I'm not quite sure whether this is on topic or not!

I once got an e-mail from a woman who said that she was very autistic, that her measured IQ was 258, but it was probably more than that because she spent the first ten minutes of the test playing with her pencil.

:)

[Bill Ryan]

-------

And I should also tell this story before we get back on track here...

A friend of mine, who is a very gifted psychic, many years ago applied for university entrance, and were given (among other exams) an IQ test. They got a perfect score... like an IQ of 300 (or something). The examiners were all dumbfounded. What they didn't know was that my friend had just picked up and written down all the answers telepathically. :)

:focus:

[Shadowself]

Bill,


I'm not quite sure whether this is on topic or not!

I once got an e-mail from a woman who said that she was very autistic, that her measured IQ was 258, but it was probably more than that because she spent the first ten minutes of the test playing with her pencil.


Your last two posts in this thread about Psychics and Autism are VERY interesting.

It's interesting and a bit of synchronicity there as Autism is a "neurodevelopmental disorder" and I was contemplating doing a thread on this particular subject. There is a connection to what I'm preparing to do this thread on and this disorder. ;)

Note: this will be my first thread here...I'm a bit nervous...Yikes!

[Ilie Pandia]

Just so you know, I personally got what I was looking for from this thread and I will no longer keep track of it :).

[Atlas]

http://www.sciencedump.com/sites/www.sciencedump.com/files/10smartest.jpg

[Carmody]

And as Carmody said, a 20 points differential is enormous in the ability to learn and process information very fast. Therefore the dumming down of America, the violent ones cannot stand the fast learners, because they would be deciphered easily. Solution: dumming down. However, i thought the average IQ test of University graduate was rather 115 to 120, but.... well,this is not that important altogether.

I met many mensa people lately, and sometimes I wonder how come they did pass the IQ tests as being in the top 2% lol. They sincerely do not always look that bright and emotionally could be quite unbalanced. But i can tell you that jokes fly in a very fast fashion when with them. You've got to be fast to catch up - or drink a lot so you think you caught up. :confused::p

I did study the how an IQ test is built up, and its objectives (how fast and easily one can learn) , in University.

And by the way, any trained technician can administer these tests, not only psychologists.

I may have not remembered it correctly, they may have been speaking about doctorates.

If this is true, I find it quite depressing.


~~~~~~

Edit:

As for the list of geniuses above, where is their molecular theory?

Where is their dimensional theory?

Where is their quantum theory?

Where is their anti-gravity and dimensional drives?

Why aren't they re-writing the book on various branches of physics?

(and so on)

Are they more rote memory function/recall... than that of true exploratory/extrapolating creative genius?

Everything in this world that I see, I know for a fact, that I can improve on it. Alloys, materials, engines, anything material and mechanical, I can improve it... or write a completely different equation in that spot.

[Kari Lynn]

I feel IQ tests are more for others to judge you by, rather than to judge yourself. How accurate they are, if indepth, very, My youngest son was given one, in first grade school. His IQ was told to me by school staff and was surprisingly higher than average by about 20 points. But yet, in all other areas, he failed, couldn't write or read at his age level, (and still can't) so they held him back a year and he had to do first grade all over again the next year.
My mother used to work in a state hospital for mental patients. A doctor used to come in there who's IQ was considered a "Genious" but yet, that same man couldn't find his own car in the rather small parking lot.
So in my opinion, most who are exceedingly smart in one area, may be lacking in others. The average person who is on a level intellegence in all areas of learning would be better. Unless there is someone out there who is exceeding in ALL areas, but usually not the case.

[Flash]

And as Carmody said, a 20 points differential is enormous in the ability to learn and process information very fast. Therefore the dumming down of America, the violent ones cannot stand the fast learners, because they would be deciphered easily. Solution: dumming down. However, i thought the average IQ test of University graduate was rather 115 to 120, but.... well,this is not that important altogether.

I met many mensa people lately, and sometimes I wonder how come they did pass the IQ tests as being in the top 2% lol. They sincerely do not always look that bright and emotionally could be quite unbalanced. But i can tell you that jokes fly in a very fast fashion when with them. You've got to be fast to catch up - or drink a lot so you think you caught up. :confused::p

I did study the how an IQ test is built up, and its objectives (how fast and easily one can learn) , in University.

And by the way, any trained technician can administer these tests, not only psychologists.

I may have not remembered it correctly, they may have been peaking about doctorates.

If this is true, I find it quite depressing.

I agree with the depressing feeling.;)

Here some quotes from http://www.iqtester.co.uk/articles-about-iq/levels-of-iq-values.html


Levels of IQ values
Individuals with IQ values above 140 have excellent presumption for creative activity and show direction to others. Almost 3% of the population can reach IQ values within 130 and 140. This IQ value is exceptionally high.

IQ value above 140
Individuals who have IQ above 140 have excellent presumption for creative activity and show the right direction to others. They are geniouses in their era, think up new theories and instruments. There is approximately 0,2% of them in the population, among celebrities for example Bill Gates or Stephen Hawking.


IQ value between 131 and140
Almost 3% of the population can reach IQ values within 130 and 140. This IQ value is exceptionally high. Individuals with these values are good managers or professionals in the field aswell as good scientists and researchers. For example governor of California, former actor Arnold Schwarzenegger or actress Nicole Kidman have IQ in these values.


IQ values between 121 and 130
IQ values within 121 and 130 are highly above average. Individuals with these values will easily graduate university and are able to reach excellent results in creative and managerial activities. This group represents approximately 6% of the population.


IQ values between 111 and 120
Above-average intelligence. Individuals will graduate university without difficulties. If hardworking individuals can reach an extraordinary job in the market. There is approximately 12% of population with these IQ values.


IQ values between 101 and 110
Measured IQ values within 101 and 110 mean high average. Individuals with these values will graduate university with difficulties but with diligence and consequentiality can reach an excellent position in the job market. This group represents 25 % of the population.


IQ values between 91 and 100
IQ values within 91 and 100 mean average intelligence representing approximately 25% of population. Individuals with these values graduate high school without difficulties and will mainly work in middle management.


IQ values between 81 and 90
Individuals with these IQ values between 81 and 90 will graduate primary school and will be of use in manual professions and activities. These values mean slightly below-average intelligence. These individuals form 10% of the population.


IQ values between 71 and 80
This means a lower level of mental retardation. Individuals with these values graduate primary school with difficulties but are successfull in special schools. These individuals form one tenth of the population.


IQ values between 51 and 70
Individuals with IQ values within 51 and 70 will graduate special school with enough time, effort and help of others. They are able to serve themselves, follow daily duties. This means a slight mental retardation (debility). There is almost 7% of these individuals in the population.


IQ values between 21 and 50
Middle level of mental retardation (imbecility). Individuals with these values are unable to educate but able to serve themselves and live quite independentely. There is approximately 2% of these individuals.



IQ values up to 20
High level or mental retardation (idiocity). Individuals are unable to educate and unable to raise. Often they need help of other, cannot serve themselves, often live in their exclusive world and are unable to perceive their environment. They represent 0,2% of the population.



and this:



The average IQ of college students is in the 110-116 range. In the 1930s the average IQ of Harvard University graduates was 117. Today, competition is keener and IQs at Harvard and Yale include those above 117, but don't understimate what those with 116-119 IQs can do, as it is the average IQ of those in the life sciences. The average IQ of university level math professors is 134, and physicists, requiring a higher IQ to function as well as they'd like still remain in the 134-150+ arenas. Much success to you in whatever you choose. For art and music, it's not IQ that counts, but creativity and eye-hand coordination or ear to brain connections. https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006051611080

[Ellisa]

IQ tests only measure potential. As many of these posts point out, some people with high IQs are in menial jobs, and experience no advantage in being measurably brighter than almost anyone else. It is what we do with our intelligence that is important. Nowadays the EQ is considered to be of even greater importance than IQ. EQ is emotional quotient, that is how the intelligence of a person is applied to everyday life. Traditional IQ tests measure logic, 'mathematical' ability, and deductive reasoning. Creativity, application and persistence, for instance, are not so important in the IQ assessment. Some more recent teats try to allow for this omission, but it is difficult to assess creativity for example.

So IQ tests measure one sort of intelligence only, and they should never be considered the last word regarding future success or failure. What happens after the test can often have little to do with the measured test result, and in fact, it is possible to increase the IQ score by studying previous tests and and doing practice attempts, just like any other test!

[Shezbeth]

This is my favorite post from this whole thread, is the most insightful IMO, and I feel it bears repeating.


I find it humorous to see some posting their scores. Such ego. You wouldn't be doing this if you scored below 100. Think about that for a second.

[In my opinion] IQ tests are a waste of time. I think Gaia, Harley and Jackovesk hit the nails on the head.

In tests I took years ago, I found no true knowledge represented. Each time I couldn't help but think of a farmer, who knows how to grow a seed to a healthy fruit, care for the land, fix any mechanical problem, build any structure, love and care for and raise other animals, etc. None of his knowledge is represented by an IQ test and yet he is more intelligent than any doctor or scientist of professor.

[In my opinion] IQ tests are for ego driven humans, who would also drop their pants and measure their manlihood. Same thing. We all have intelligence that is unique and different. The doctor is no more intelligent than the carpenter. The college doctorate professor is no more intelligent than the pre school teacher. It is just different intelligences. But many humans think because they have a high degree from a good school or score well on standardized tests or make lots of money, they are superior to/smarter than other humans.

These tests also cannot measure what you can DO. An "unintelligent" person can have much more success in life than the book smart genius. IQ has little to do with success in life.

I'd also like to leave you with a thought/question. How many really intelligent, high IQ, people have you noticed who believe the official stories of JFK and 9/11, eat gmo food, disregard chemtrails, take vaccines, drink fluoride, stop at McDonalds, take their kids to learn common core at public schools, vote in rigged "elections" and know absolutely nothing about our repressed human history? Lots of 'em, right?

[edit: Just my opinion but I recommend to] Stop taking IQ tests and go outside and experience something.

Matt

[DeDukshyn]

This is my favorite post from this whole thread, is the most insightful IMO, and I feel it bears repeating.


I find it humorous to see some posting their scores. Such ego. You wouldn't be doing this if you scored below 100. Think about that for a second.

[In my opinion] IQ tests are a waste of time. I think Gaia, Harley and Jackovesk hit the nails on the head.

In tests I took years ago, I found no true knowledge represented. Each time I couldn't help but think of a farmer, who knows how to grow a seed to a healthy fruit, care for the land, fix any mechanical problem, build any structure, love and care for and raise other animals, etc. None of his knowledge is represented by an IQ test and yet he is more intelligent than any doctor or scientist of professor.

[In my opinion] IQ tests are for ego driven humans, who would also drop their pants and measure their manlihood. Same thing. We all have intelligence that is unique and different. The doctor is no more intelligent than the carpenter. The college doctorate professor is no more intelligent than the pre school teacher. It is just different intelligences. But many humans think because they have a high degree from a good school or score well on standardized tests or make lots of money, they are superior to/smarter than other humans.

These tests also cannot measure what you can DO. An "unintelligent" person can have much more success in life than the book smart genius. IQ has little to do with success in life.

I'd also like to leave you with a thought/question. How many really intelligent, high IQ, people have you noticed who believe the official stories of JFK and 9/11, eat gmo food, disregard chemtrails, take vaccines, drink fluoride, stop at McDonalds, take their kids to learn common core at public schools, vote in rigged "elections" and know absolutely nothing about our repressed human history? Lots of 'em, right?

[edit: Just my opinion but I recommend to] Stop taking IQ tests and go outside and experience something.

Matt

If you hadn't noticed, the whole thread has pretty much this theme all the way along. ;) No one is taking these scores seriously .. except ... ;)

But I definitely have to stop spending 4-6 hours a day taking IQ test over and over and over ... time to go outside and experience something I guess ... with all this constant IQ test taking I just haven't had the time ;)

[Ellisa]

I forgot to say that the first IQ tests were invented by a French (I think Professor), named Binet, about 100 years ago. I think he wanted to predict how well his students would achieve--- but I know they were adopted very early by the French army, to test recruits.

[Tangri]

IQ test is unreliable to categorize world population's learning capacity. They tried to use for educational assessment but it contains varied flaws. If people use it, they want show off them self or promote particular one.

[David Ansible]

I find it humorous to see some posting their scores. Such ego. You wouldn't be doing this if you scored below 100. Think about that for a second.

[In my opinion] IQ tests are a waste of time. I think Gaia, Harley and Jackovesk hit the nails on the head.

In tests I took years ago, I found no true knowledge represented. Each time I couldn't help but think of a farmer, who knows how to grow a seed to a healthy fruit, care for the land, fix any mechanical problem, build any structure, love and care for and raise other animals, etc. None of his knowledge is represented by an IQ test and yet he is more intelligent than any doctor or scientist of professor.

[In my opinion] IQ tests are for ego driven humans, who would also drop their pants and measure their manlihood. Same thing. We all have intelligence that is unique and different. The doctor is no more intelligent than the carpenter. The college doctorate professor is no more intelligent than the pre school teacher. It is just different intelligences. But many humans think because they have a high degree from a good school or score well on standardized tests or make lots of money, they are superior to/smarter than other humans.

These tests also cannot measure what you can DO. An "unintelligent" person can have much more success in life than the book smart genius. IQ has little to do with success in life.

I'd also like to leave you with a thought/question. How many really intelligent, high IQ, people have you noticed who believe the official stories of JFK and 9/11, eat gmo food, disregard chemtrails, take vaccines, drink fluoride, stop at McDonalds, take their kids to learn common core at public schools, vote in rigged "elections" and know absolutely nothing about our repressed human history? Lots of 'em, right?

[edit: Just my opinion but I recommend to] Stop taking IQ tests and go outside and experience something.

Matt

About your last quote. It's a good point. I distinguish IQ - the ability to learn things quickly and to learn complex things - with CONSCIOUSNESS. You can be very "intelligent" and nearly unconscious. Computers are intelligent and completely unconscious (so far and so far as we know). The brain is the computer self. How well your meat runs defines your iq. But you can be highly conscious and not have a very high IQ I think. People who are more conscious are perhaps more likely to have an independent thought or two - about 9/11 and so on.

[ZooLife]

http://www.annatheapple.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Comparisons.jpg

[Carmody]

-------

And I should also tell this story before we get back on track here...

A friend of mine, who is a very gifted psychic, many years ago applied for university entrance, and were given (among other exams) an IQ test. They got a perfect score... like an IQ of 300 (or something). The examiners were all dumbfounded. What they didn't know was that my friend had just picked up and written down all the answers telepathically. :)

:focus:

IMO, that is part of a balanced 'high intellect', the kind of thing you see in stories about hybrids, aliens, human seeming aliens etc. it is also seen in the contact with the 'higher self', in books from authors like Dr. Micheal Newton.

That was regression hypnosis, that he was doing. Going beyond birth, into the time between lives and other lives. When the conscious-unconcious barrier is removed, we can become quite connected, grounded, and highly intelligent. Besides having a great potential to be highly psychic (in those states).

Classic tales about the extremes of Buddhism and whatnot also venture straight into these areas. Some of us come into this world almost in such a state/condition.

[Natalia]

According to online tests, I have an average IQ and a high EQ, this seems about right.

[Frank V]

-------

I'm not quite sure whether this is on topic or not!

I once got an e-mail from a woman who said that she was very autistic, that her measured IQ was 258, but it was probably more than that because she spent the first ten minutes of the test playing with her pencil.

:)

I find it interesting that you bring this up, Bill, and I would say that it's definitely on-topic. I myself am also a still fairly recently -- i.e. in 2009 -- officially diagnosed "high-functioning autistic". Now, I don't know whether the following is absolutely true, but several people have espoused the idea -- and I share this conviction -- that once you start examining the demographic of people with an IQ score over 140, the percentage of autistic people among them is far greater than among the "average IQ" scores.

Now, autism research did not start until the late 1940s -- by Leo Kanner in the USA, who worked exclusively with children, and by Hans Asperger in Austria, who primarily worked with adolescents and young adults. Of course, this was the late 1940s, and even though Austria had maintained a neutral stance during World War II and although Hans Asperger himself stood up for the rights of autistic people in the face of how the Nazi ideology considered anyone with a neurological or psychological condition as "defective" and "inferior", the Anglo-Saxon medical world refused to acknowledge Hans Asperger's research for decades because Asperger was German-speaking. Therefore it wasn't until 1981 that his work was revisited again, by British researcher Lorna Wing.

Keeping in mind this very late onset of autism research, many (if not most) of the people from all over the course of history whom we consider to have been geniuses exhibited personality traits that would place them on the autism spectrum -- autism is after all only a syndrome to a much wider range of conditions which all share a similar underlying neurology. A few examples...


Albert Einstein was caught once holding a seminar (including chalk notes on the blackboard) before an empty auditorium, because he was scheduled to hold the seminar on that day and on that particular time, even though nobody showed up. He also refused to wear socks.



Nikola Tesla never got married, and it is unknown whether he actually had any romantic relationships during his life. He was also known for his obsession with personal hygiene, he detested jewelry and he loathed people with overweight.

(Note: As a very young boy, I too detested jewelry, and I could simply not understand why people wore it. I found it grotesque and ugly. I therefore also hated it when my mother made me wear a ring, a bracelet, a golden watch and a golden chain around my neck as a little boy on Sundays. If her intent had been to render me completely inactive -- not playing with my toys, not reading a book or doing anything but sit there with a sad look on my face -- then by draping me with jewelry, she would certainly have attained that goal! However, my mother was not the kind to let anyone stand in the way of her will -- least of all a little boy -- so I'm afraid I was forced to endure her silly whim for quite a few years.)



Ludwig von Beethoven wrote several masterpieces still after he had already turned deaf.



Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was already composing music by the age of five.



Isaac Newton used so-called sock puppets to promote his theories. He wrote several letters to his colleagues which corroborated his theories while signing them off with false identities. He may as such have been the first officially acknowledged troll, notwithstanding the fact that he had a much better grasp on physics than any of his colleagues, and that even today in the post-Einstein era, for everyday usage, Newton's laws of physics still apply.



Many other people who were considered revolutionary in one way or another were posthumously diagnosed as having been autistic, based upon their talents and their social interaction: Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, et al. Personally, I'm quite convinced that people like the late Robin Williams and Jim Carrey also qualify as being on the autism spectrum, and there are plenty of other people whom I can identify as such -- it takes one to know one -- but that doesn't mean that I will be walking up to them and telling them they're autistic if they haven't been wondering about that yet themselves, or if they have no problem functioning well in society. Why bother anyone with a label?


The above all said, my mother's elder sister was never officially diagnosed as autistic, but in hindsight, she must have been. Yet, she was medically described as "having the intelligence of a two-year old", and she could not even tend to herself. She needed help in everything, including getting dressed and going to the rest room. At the same time however, she remembered every name in every household of the village where she had grown up, and she knew how many children each of those households had, etc.

Of course, some very unpleasant people of history (and even in our present-day society) have also been found to show autistic traits. Adolf Hitler for instance was posthumously found to have been autistic, but he was of course also a psychopath and a clinical narcissist. Bill Gates has never officially been diagnosed as autistic, but there is at least one video on YouTube of an earlier interview with him where he is rocking back and forth on his chair in excitement -- this is called "stimming", from "self-stimulation" -- while explaining his vision to the interviewer.

The autism spectrum comprises of many seemingly different conditions -- some of which are not considered negative -- among which dyslexia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia), AD(H)D (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_deficit_hyperactivity_disorder), an eidetic memory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory), OCD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_disorder) ("obsessive-compulsive disorder", not to be confused with OCPD ("obsessive-compulsive personality disorder")), and synesthesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia). There also appears to be a statistical link of prevalence between certain other conditions and an autism spectrum neurology, such as borderline personality disorder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder) and bipolar disorder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder).

Of the above list, I am a high-functioning autistic -- a condition commonly also referred to as Asperger's Syndrome, although that diagnosis has now been omitted from the DSM-5 -- with a mild form of dyslexia, an eidetic memory, a very strong and complexly layered synesthesia and a fair amount of OCD. My brother has several of the same traits, but has not officially been diagnosed with any of them. His eldest son however was officially diagnosed with ADHD first and with high-functioning autism later. His daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia. All three of his children are highly intelligent.

Several scientists have already espoused the theory that an autism spectrum neurology might be the next step of the human genome on the evolutionary ladder. Personally, I think that autism spectrum people have always been around, but that they were simply not recognized as such (due to there not having been any research yet until the 1940s). So people simply came up with other monikers for such people, e.g. "eccentric", "wild", "crazy", et al.

The fact however remains -- and this is illustrated by what I wrote higher up about my aunt -- that an IQ score doesn't really tell us much about a person's abilities. My aunt had a phenomenal memory, but it only pertained to the memories from her own childhood, and she was absolutely helpless with everything else. There are other autistics like her, who might be slightly less helpless, but who can solve a complex math problem in seconds or -- like Dustin Hoffman's character in "Rain Man" -- recite an entire phone directory. Others might be highly intelligent but never get noticed because their personality has been damaged by the fact that autistic people often attract bullies -- something I can personally testify of -- or that their ego is just not big enough to want to appear in the spotlights of society.

In a way, it's like that question of who is the best guitarist in the world. We all know who the fretboard wizards of our time are -- people like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani have been named, but just as many would swear that Jimi Hendrix was still the greatest of them all (even though that's a matter of taste) -- but for all we know, the best guitarist in the world could be some anonymous kid plucking away at an old, beat-up guitar, somewhere in Africa.

As others have already said, an IQ test is just a measure of how one compares in a particular set of tests against the average performance (among a specific target population) of someone of the same age category. It is by no means a qualifier for someone's abilities, and certainly not for someone's value as a member of the human species.

Alas, we are living in times where mainstream society takes those results very seriously and indoctrinates us with the idea that we have to perform well in a certain area in order to be of value to society. We live in a world where arrogance is considered a quality -- think of marketeers and politicians -- and where narcissists are put up on a pedestal, exactly where they want to be. Just think about every major world leader of the past five decades, and especially the US American presidents of said timespan.

Everyone has value. Everyone deserves respect, from the moment they are born until the moment they part from their mortal life. And if everyone in society were to heed that, then perhaps we wouldn't be seeing so much war, so much inequality, so much suffering, so much crime.


Namaste. :-)

[GloriousPoetry]

Scanner,
Funny thing.....Mensa in Spanish means dumb.....

[Carmody]

Note that Stephen hawking is the lowest on that numbered totem pole. yet the most well known and considered the most scientifically accessible, for the 'general' public. In the same way that sports fanaticism is more common than science fanaticism. A bell curve issue.

Something that the intelligent tend to run into as a problem. The differences being great enough that ostracization can be near total, to the point of destruction of the intelligent individual. Or the intelligent can be seen as a tool, a lever, a thing that can be manipulated through fear, suppression, violence, and so on. Since it can feel like the one against all (for the given intelligent person), the one can develop a paranoid complex or at the least, a care in what they say about what they understand. This is why you see feints and soft touches from them, when talking about aspects of a greater reality..all due to threats against their person from either the public or the given oligarchy.



“When you combine extreme optimism and extreme pessimism, they always get you to the same point, which is there’s no point in doing anything, or there’s no need to do anything,”

--Peter Thiel

~~~~~~~~~~~
Meaning, extreme pessimism is unwarranted, and is derogatory, degenerative, and kills all advancement by cancelling out optimism. Forcibly so.

You see extreme pessimism injected into discussion as a form of control, control of outcome, control of outcome due to internal fears of the pessimistic that some of their precious held points of reality, their idea of reality anchors..could possibly be shattered.

So it is a physiological issue..that is presented by the threatened, emotionally threatened people.. that has nothing to do with science.


It's the Bill O'Reilly factor, the standing up and yelling louder at the other guy, so as to suppress intelligent discussion of the new potential - to hold onto what is considered to be known reality, to suppress the new, as the new is an unknown and wrapped in fears and darkness.

The savage knife of fearful dogma and circular logic locks and limits...stabbing fitfully at intelligent exploration, to create deeper feelings of safety via curbing limits into ends, boxes, and walls. So many fall into the trap of projected certainty, and the trap of those who proffer it.

This is the psychology employed on forums and the internet by the ignorant, the incapable, the illiterate and most importantly..utilized by the implanted shill. The shill is added in as a designed and directed control of the given emergent argument.

Only one system known to humanity is capable of gaining benefit in such a scenario.... and that is any given system that employs forms and aspects of oligarchy.


Avalon, as a forum, a closed forum...it works, it functions....due to having doors closed against emergent shills, shills who might hide in clothes other than their true shape.

Like a blood-brain barrier, one that allows discussion to exist, in an arena that is largely closed to the shilling and fear injection of oligarchy or combative emotionalized ignorance.

Which is, in effect, why I'm here. I can inject subtle aspects of knowing into plain English, with no complex scientific overlay... as that is not required to understand concepts. Importantly, it never will be if we want to move society and humanity forward, as a whole. Eg, I've been speaking of the wave-particle duality being an illusion, and how they are actually only one aspect of an emergent reality. Two potentials, one moment, and thus..... one past (one history) as viewed from the singular moment that comes from the two potentials. The next moment has more potentials, thus the unfolding into a complexity of seeming thermodynamic randomness is assured. But... only when viewed from the singular moment of the now. It seems they are getting it. They are getting warm (in this given 'public sense') It is also responsible for and connected to field splitting, voltage differential and electromagnetics or polarization/alignment/etc.

Quantum physics just got less complicated

http://phys.org/news/2014-12-quantum-physics-complicated.html

[ulli]

Interesting thread, and lots of intelligent contributions.
And I love being in the company of intelligent people who have something to say.
This is what Avalon is about.

Something interesting happened to me after I discovered my IQ level in Spacial Ability was really high.
Spacial ability is the ability to see lines and shapes, with precision. Also logical sequences.

I found out where my main talents resided and it encouraged me to go into construction, even though I have no training in engineering nor architecture. My training was in fine arts.

So the accusation about IQ being ego building is a bit unfair, as ego is connected to self esteem,
without which one can't really function very well.

But I also believe that someone with a really low IQ has something unique to offer,
if they receive the encouragement and confirmation that they are of value to the world of humanity.
Every human being is unique, and has some capacity which no one else shares.
And at the same time the idea of testing someone for their processing skills or speeds has value, in certain circumstances.

[Skyhaven]

I wonder if people who like to answer or have fun with IQ-test questions score significantly higher. I personally experience internal resistance if I am going through such a test, which most of time overrides my logic/pattern recognition capabilities, and then I just chuck it.

When I am doing something fun with those capabilities then there's no resistance at all, and then I am capable of a lot more.

[Roisin]

-------

I'm not quite sure whether this is on topic or not!

I once got an e-mail from a woman who said that she was very autistic, that her measured IQ was 258, but it was probably more than that because she spent the first ten minutes of the test playing with her pencil.

:)

I find it interesting that you bring this up, Bill, and I would say that it's definitely on-topic. I myself am also a still fairly recently -- i.e. in 2009 -- officially diagnosed "high-functioning autistic". Now, I don't know whether the following is absolutely true, but several people have espoused the idea -- and I share this conviction -- that once you start examining the demographic of people with an IQ score over 140, the percentage of autistic people among them is far greater than among the "average IQ" scores.

Now, autism research did not start until the late 1940s -- by Leo Kanner in the USA, who worked exclusively with children, and by Hans Asperger in Austria, who primarily worked with adolescents and young adults. Of course, this was the late 1940s, and even though Austria had maintained a neutral stance during World War II and although Hans Asperger himself stood up for the rights of autistic people in the face of how the Nazi ideology considered anyone with a neurological or psychological condition as "defective" and "inferior", the Anglo-Saxon medical world refused to acknowledge Hans Asperger's research for decades because Asperger was German-speaking. Therefore it wasn't until 1981 that his work was revisited again, by British researcher Lorna Wing.

Keeping in mind this very late onset of autism research, many (if not most) of the people from all over the course of history whom we consider to have been geniuses exhibited personality traits that would place them on the autism spectrum -- autism is after all only a syndrome to a much wider range of conditions which all share a similar underlying neurology. A few examples...


Albert Einstein was caught once holding a seminar (including chalk notes on the blackboard) before an empty auditorium, because he was scheduled to hold the seminar on that day and on that particular time, even though nobody showed up. He also refused to wear socks.



Nikola Tesla never got married, and it is unknown whether he actually had any romantic relationships during his life. He was also known for his obsession with personal hygiene, he detested jewelry and he loathed people with overweight.

(Note: As a very young boy, I too detested jewelry, and I could simply not understand why people wore it. I found it grotesque and ugly. I therefore also hated it when my mother made me wear a ring, a bracelet, a golden watch and a golden chain around my neck as a little boy on Sundays. If her intent had been to render me completely inactive -- not playing with my toys, not reading a book or doing anything but sit there with a sad look on my face -- then by draping me with jewelry, she would certainly have attained that goal! However, my mother was not the kind to let anyone stand in the way of her will -- least of all a little boy -- so I'm afraid I was forced to endure her silly whim for quite a few years.)



Ludwig von Beethoven wrote several masterpieces still after he had already turned deaf.



Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was already composing music by the age of five.



Isaac Newton used so-called sock puppets to promote his theories. He wrote several letters to his colleagues which corroborated his theories while signing them off with false identities. He may as such have been the first officially acknowledged troll, notwithstanding the fact that he had a much better grasp on physics than any of his colleagues, and that even today in the post-Einstein era, for everyday usage, Newton's laws of physics still apply.



Many other people who were considered revolutionary in one way or another were posthumously diagnosed as having been autistic, based upon their talents and their social interaction: Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, et al. Personally, I'm quite convinced that people like the late Robin Williams and Jim Carrey also qualify as being on the autism spectrum, and there are plenty of other people whom I can identify as such -- it takes one to know one -- but that doesn't mean that I will be walking up to them and telling them they're autistic if they haven't been wondering about that yet themselves, or if they have no problem functioning well in society. Why bother anyone with a label?


The above all said, my mother's elder sister was never officially diagnosed as autistic, but in hindsight, she must have been. Yet, she was medically described as "having the intelligence of a two-year old", and she could not even tend to herself. She needed help in everything, including getting dressed and going to the rest room. At the same time however, she remembered every name in every household of the village where she had grown up, and she knew how many children each of those households had, etc.

Of course, some very unpleasant people of history (and even in our present-day society) have also been found to show autistic traits. Adolf Hitler for instance was posthumously found to have been autistic, but he was of course also a psychopath and a clinical narcissist. Bill Gates has never officially been diagnosed as autistic, but there is at least one video on YouTube of an earlier interview with him where he is rocking back and forth on his chair in excitement -- this is called "stimming", from "self-stimulation" -- while explaining his vision to the interviewer.

The autism spectrum comprises of many seemingly different conditions -- some of which are not considered negative -- among which dyslexia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexia), AD(H)D (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_deficit_hyperactivity_disorder), an eidetic memory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory), OCD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_disorder) ("obsessive-compulsive disorder", not to be confused with OCPD ("obsessive-compulsive personality disorder")), and synesthesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia). There also appears to be a statistical link of prevalence between certain other conditions and an autism spectrum neurology, such as borderline personality disorder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderline_personality_disorder) and bipolar disorder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder).

Of the above list, I am a high-functioning autistic -- a condition commonly also referred to as Asperger's Syndrome, although that diagnosis has now been omitted from the DSM-5 -- with a mild form of dyslexia, an eidetic memory, a very strong and complexly layered synesthesia and a fair amount of OCD. My brother has several of the same traits, but has not officially been diagnosed with any of them. His eldest son however was officially diagnosed with ADHD first and with high-functioning autism later. His daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia. All three of his children are highly intelligent.

Several scientists have already espoused the theory that an autism spectrum neurology might be the next step of the human genome on the evolutionary ladder. Personally, I think that autism spectrum people have always been around, but that they were simply not recognized as such (due to there not having been any research yet until the 1940s). So people simply came up with other monikers for such people, e.g. "eccentric", "wild", "crazy", et al.

The fact however remains -- and this is illustrated by what I wrote higher up about my aunt -- that an IQ score doesn't really tell us much about a person's abilities. My aunt had a phenomenal memory, but it only pertained to the memories from her own childhood, and she was absolutely helpless with everything else. There are other autistics like her, who might be slightly less helpless, but who can solve a complex math problem in seconds or -- like Dustin Hoffman's character in "Rain Man" -- recite an entire phone directory. Others might be highly intelligent but never get noticed because their personality has been damaged by the fact that autistic people often attract bullies -- something I can personally testify of -- or that their ego is just not big enough to want to appear in the spotlights of society.

In a way, it's like that question of who is the best guitarist in the world. We all know who the fretboard wizards of our time are -- people like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani have been named, but just as many would swear that Jimi Hendrix was still the greatest of them all (even though that's a matter of taste) -- but for all we know, the best guitarist in the world could be some anonymous kid plucking away at an old, beat-up guitar, somewhere in Africa.

As others have already said, an IQ test is just a measure of how one compares in a particular set of tests against the average performance (among a specific target population) of someone of the same age category. It is by no means a qualifier for someone's abilities, and certainly not for someone's value as a member of the human species.

Alas, we are living in times where mainstream society takes those results very seriously and indoctrinates us with the idea that we have to perform well in a certain area in order to be of value to society. We live in a world where arrogance is considered a quality -- think of marketeers and politicians -- and where narcissists are put up on a pedestal, exactly where they want to be. Just think about every major world leader of the past five decades, and especially the US American presidents of said timespan.

Everyone has value. Everyone deserves respect, from the moment they are born until the moment they part from their mortal life. And if everyone in society were to heed that, then perhaps we wouldn't be seeing so much war, so much inequality, so much suffering, so much crime.


Namaste. :-)

That I am nearly deaf, I'm absolutely sure that it contributed immensely towards my own psychic development though a genetic neurological predisposition may have already existed because I have normal hearing relatives who are also ones to get psychic impressions of things too. My grandfather, for example, who rose to become the chief of the what was the 3rd largest police dept. in the country was known to be very psychic. Having those kinds of abilities definitely gives one an edge if one is working for the police dept. and it no doubt contributed to his rise in the ranks to the top position there.

But in my case, being born deaf definitely added to what ever genetic abilities were already there... that resulted in an enhancement of my psychic abilities. There's no question about that as I would never have done so well in school without having such abilities like that. I could talk about any number of inexplicable psychic incidents that happened during my school and university years that resulted in my getting top marks on my tests but as I have no proof and evidence to back up any claims on that, there's no point in me extrapolating on them.

Unfortunately, current IQ tests do not measure things like Psychic Cognition which, in my view, is just another dimension of human intelligence. And, like anything else, the more you use and exercise those abilities that you DO have, the more you improve those abilities and skills that lie in that area.

[Maia Gabrial]

I think it has to do with the software in people's brains. Some people have some pretty good software that allows them to access more information out there.

[Frank V]

I think it has to do with the software in people's brains. Some people have some pretty good software that allows them to access more information out there.

It's a combination of software and hardware, actually. The software being the spirit/soul -- its nature and its knowledge -- and the hardware being the neurons and synapses. Without those, the code won't run -- or at least, not in this machine we call "the human body". :-)

[Roisin]

Yes, well.... Western Medicine took the mechanistic route wrt to pathology and the human body but I find Eastern Medicine's POV on that so much more intriguing.

As for outside agencies making adjustments on the human brain of any given individual after conception and in the years to follow, that's something I can relate to on a personal experiential level. That there are so many "experiencers" who have related the same kind of thing happening to them too, is something that I was glad to find out about as it has lent some validity to my own experiences too.

[Violet]

Good questions in here. Thank you for highlighting this, Illie.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this, if so an in-advance-sorry for reiteration:

There's a problem with IQ-testing when it comes to its usefulness or uselessness (choose) in multicultural educational environments. And sadly, little considerations are made as to differences in ethnicity and how it can play a role. The easiest conclusion I've seen drawn so far is that some ethnicities just happen to be smarter and others are just dumber.

But how do, from an antropological point of view, kids with different backgrounds perceive reality, process it in their minds and interact about it with people from yet other backgrounds? How do those receptive parties interpret that message and has it ever been checked if the sender's intention matched receptor's interpretation? In numbers, and what did these statistics confirm, show, or falsify.

What does it do to a gifted foreign child when in a Western paradigm the IQ-test indiscriminately states his inferiority, and what more when the teacher believes in the infallibilty of the test?

I've not visited all cultures of the world but I have seen a few very different cultures in action. It made me think of intelligence and its (documented) importance around the world. Obviously, if you live in Europe, intelligence is very important. And humour here is often founded on the lack of it. Belgian humour, however, is way not so sharp as the English one :)

It's very interesting to stick to humour as an element and travel to - say - Egypt. I don't like Egyptian humour, it's pretty...slapstick, but they seem to think it's very funny and enjoyable. So, does that mean that Egyptians lack the intelligence altogether to be able to stand next to it, assess a basic level of desired intelligence and then fire it back at someone who doesn't have it, in a joke? Or do they, and lower down in Africa, just think other things are more important? Like, surviving in the desert, which generally doesn't require much angle calculating.

How about the Indians in the Brasilian forests? I recently saw some of their pattern designs which are geometrical jewels. And those complex drawings are used to decorate a body, or a face. Now, we would think that doing this, with no (financial) gain on a very regular basis is...Well, what's the point of such activities anyway? That doesn't look like intelligent behaviour, on first sight, based on our local standards. We can't know. Unless we learn their language, and they can tell us about it, but that's a difficult task or so it appears from the writings of Strauss-Levy who spent a lot of time with them.

So, yes, by all means, do define, what is intelligence based upon your current geographical location?

[Frank V]

I just wanted to comment on this tiny little tidbit...


Belgian humour, however, is way not so sharp as the English one :)


Hmm... I'm not exactly a nationalist but I think you're giving us way too little credit there, compatriot. Of course, I don't know what part of the country you're from, but I am Flemish, and we do have some really refined humor here in Flemish culture, which doesn't always serve so as to make fun of the less intelligent. :-)

For instance, there are many jokes in Dutch -- albeit that the actual Dutch people (i.e. from the Netherlands) might not find them amusing per se -- where linguistics and/or cultural background come into play, and which cannot even be translated to English. The same is true for certain expressions, sayings, et al. I think all of that is indeed very folklore-based and thus specific to the people from a specific culture. It's a bit unfair to compare the intelligence and humor found in one language or culture to those of other languages and cultures, in my opinion.

That said, my favorite kind of humor is the absurd one, but also the kind where clever puns come into play. If I have to name my favorite comedy movies, I would list the two Airplane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplane!) movies with Leslie Nielsen at the top, and behind that, the Hot Shots! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Shots!) movies with Charlie Sheen. As for comedy television series, I very much enjoyed Allo Allo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Allo_%27Allo!). All of them are comedy spoofs, albeit that the original series upon which the latter was based -- i.e. the excellent British war drama series Secret Army (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Army_%28TV_series%29), about the Belgian resistance during World War II -- is probably less known to anyone outside of Belgium or the UK.

Culture does indeed play a huge role, not just in humor, but also in what is regarded as intelligence. For instance, a friend of mine brought to my attention only a few days ago that Hollywood is considering a live action remake of the Japanese manga Ghost In The Shell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_%28film%29) which will feature my favorite actress, Scarlett Johansson (:p). Now, I have not seen the original anime version of that movie, but I have seen its sequel, and I found the dialogs between some of the characters incredibly hard to comprehend because it's a Japanese science-fiction story and it heavily leans on Japanese culture and oriental philosophy. So from that perspective, I was actually a pretty dumb spectator.

Intelligence is so much more than just a score on an allegedly international but predominantly western-influenced test. And perhaps we should say that wisdom is far more important than intelligence on account of understanding life. Intelligence is what helps you through life, but wisdom is an understanding of the art of life, and wisdom transcends culture. But then we're treading onto the subject of philosophy, and in the words of the young lady in the video below, that's a walk on slippery rocks.


tDl3bdE3YQA




- "Surely there must be something we can do?"
- "There is nothing we can do, and stop calling me Shirley."

[araucaria]

From what little I know about IQ testing, it is no more than the bottom rung of an endless ladder. A set of unconnected questions with straight answers is merely a sampling of what you “know”, the range of your canned data in stock, your potential to do well on a quiz show. You are a storage device of a given capacity with or without empty storage space for any kind of data. Nothing much to do with intelligence, yet. But we haven’t defined intelligence yet.

The next level up would be reconstruction: the ability to connect your miscellaneous data. Can you put your jigsaw pieces together to build up a big picture? And next, a forensic component: can you put your clues together to build up a dual picture of crime and coverup, distinguishing correctly between deliberately misleading and accidentally pointing to truth (or the reverse)?

The next level up would be construction: the ability to rearrange elements. Instead of being beholden to following a puzzle maker, you see the puzzle pieces as being somewhat interchangeable (like meccano): can you engineer them into something useful? Or like Lego: can you engineer a set for a square building into say a pyramid?

Concrete examples: the swimming baths at Roubaix France converted into a museum: https://www.google.fr/search?q=la+piscine+lille+mus%C3%A9e&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=IkyuVOLAFtbvao_vgMAL&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=939&bih=631
Or, combining reconstruction and construction, how to turn a mysteriously built pyramid into a constructible one: http://kiosque.leditiondusoir.fr/data/386/reader/reader.html#preferred/1/package/386/pub/387/page/7

There are others: turning a disused church into a restaurant, a monastery into a luxury hotel. The point being that the project at hand involves converting a prison planet into somewhere nice to live. This is not easy because, in the terms of the above analogies, what we have is the equivalent of something I remember from childhood with several elder siblings: a toy cupboard full of bits of this and bits of that and bits of the other. To make anything out of this, you need to reach a further level, you need to get creative.

Hence the next level up would be creation: the ability to redesign elements or design new ones. This is where intelligence testing is blown completely out of the water. How can you test my intelligence when what it actually is is my potential to rustle up something out of whatever is to hand? If you want to see how clever I am, I can’t tell you yet: let’s see what I can do – better still, why don’t you give me a hand. In other words, it is not about knowing, it is about learning, and learning is about learning how to learn. And teaching is the sharing of that experience. Here is something I posted earlier:


You know the adage: give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. This ‘knowing’ system has set up a fishmonger’s store, and is running out of fish. The learning process generates freedom, for the man who knows how to fend for himself no longer needs his knowing supplier. On the contrary, he becomes a knowing supplier, and more than that, he can become a teacher, and still more than that, he can become a teacher of teachers. Because there is a third level: teach a man how to learn, the effect is exponential. Learning is not onlyexponential in the data it produces, the process itself is exponential. Take Dolores Cannon, who recently died: her passing is in one sense no great loss because she leaves behind her generations of students and teachers to carry on her work. It is all about empowerment. Compare this with someone like Courtney Brown, who has reached something of a dead end with his Farsight Institute, by working only with the best but failing to incorporate the teaching/learning process. This is ultimately knowledge without understanding, because the teaching/learning process is about discovering not only what we know but also how we know it (epistemology), and even how we understand epistemology (meta-epistemology), etc.

[Observer1964]

Scanner,
Funny thing.....Mensa in Spanish means dumb.....
Haha... I happen to think it is dumb to think you're smarter than others

[Carmody]

Think of it as a line, a relay line, a holding line, a guide line, on a path. A path that feels like it is going up a mountain, but all is dressed in fog.

We are each holding on to different parts of the same line. we are each at different parts in our individual journey, Yet... on the same line.

One could say that someone is similar in intelligence to this one, or lesser, or greater....but in effect..it is all the same...simply a condition of occupying a given moment in a complimentary path.

[Opal]

Hi everyone :)

In reference to Terence Tao, I know and work in the same hospital as his very intelligent father - Billy Tao.
He is a Paediatrician who worked on with a Biomedical Engineer and invented the now famous 'S.I.D.S cot' which has saved countless of babies and premature babies lives around the world.
He is also currently on the verge of curing 'Nut Allergy' which again will save the suffering and possible deaths of countless of children world wide.

This family is very 'Unique'. All 3 of his sons are brilliant mathematicians each having high IQ's.

To meet his father, you would not begin to think that he is such an intelligent person, he is a very nice and has this incredible calmness about him, but you can tell, his mind is always thinking, thinking, even if you are having one of those quick conversations about 'the weather' :) lol
As far as I know all of the family, his wife and his 3 sons are all like him, very quiet but humble and brilliant!! Lovely man, lovely family.

Opal

[Bill Ryan]

Bumping this interesting thread with an equally interesting video. This is by the Veritasium (https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium/videos) channel (Derek Muller), which focuses mainly on all and any aspects of math and science. Muller has a PhD, and is self-evidently very bright indeed. Anyone who's watched his videos would confirm this.

I saw the video title, and assumed with good reason that his IQ would come out at round 150-160. But apparently it was measured (on three different areas/parameters) as 143, 132, and 118. That's BS. :ROFL:

I took an IQ Test to Find Out what it Actually Measures


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkKPsLxgpuY

[Jim_Duyer]

Bumping this interesting thread with an equally interesting video. This is by the Veritasium (https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium/videos) channel (Derek Muller), which focuses mainly on all and any aspects of math and science. Muller has a PhD, and is self-evidently very bright indeed. Anyone who's watched his videos would confirm this.

I saw the video title, and assumed with good reason that his IQ would come out at round 150-160. But apparently it was measured (on three different areas/parameters) as 143, 132, and 118. That's BS. :ROFL:

I took an IQ Test to Find Out what it Actually Measures


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkKPsLxgpuY

Yes Bill, it is bullsh*t. I had one that came out 143 but they got me up at 3:30 in the morning to
get ready and then I took it at 5 AM. I'm not even awake at that time. Others were different,
but all varied.