I took an IQ test here. No big, and, in a development which should surprise no-one, I did quite well.
However, I don't think IQ tests measure anything other than how good you are at IQ tests. (Anyone who scores below 126 and wants to join The International High IQ Society anyway, I'm happy to give you my answers, by the way, for I surely do think that high IQ societies are lame, and would find it cool to subvert the system.)
But you look at the kind of questions they ask. Why do I rate well? Because my vocabulary is large, my spatial recognition skills are good (with the exception of the tesseract questions, at which I suck), and I'm good at algebra. And I know what to look for.
This question appears in pretty much every IQ test ever:
What is the next number in this sequence? 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21...
They take it to a varying level of the sequence, of course, but you see, to anyone who's done enough Maths, the instant reaction is "Oh, that's the Fibonacci sequence, wherein you add the two previous numbers together to get the next number". And voila, correct answer. Easy for me, since I learnt the Fibonacci sequence many years ago, when my father assigned me "write a program which calculates the Fibonacci sequence" as a project as he was (attempting) teaching me to program.
Other questions, where you have "if A is worth x and B is worth Y then what's C worth?" you just work out what they have in common, represent those as variables, and reduce it with some very simple algebra. You do that enough times while learning algebra in high school, it's automatic. Anyone who's learnt to do it can get that right on an IQ test, but you could get someone far more intelligent than I am who didn't do so much algebra in high school, or who just doesn't think in terms of algebra for such questions, and they don't get the answer.
It's silly. Not quite as silly as groups like MENSA and the International High IQ Society, both of which I can mock quite comfortably on the grounds that I could join either if I wished. But not only do I think intelligence levels are a poor basis for selecting the people you keep company with - even if it's a factor, because let's face it, too wide a disparity doesn't work for either of you - because you may not share interests, at all, there's the undeniable fact that a lot of intelligent people are prats, and when you deal with people who are so hung up about their intelligence they have to join select clubs just so they can be snooty about it, you're probably looking at a damn high prat percentage.
Which would, of course, be why I've never joined an IQ-based society of any kind, because I have a feeling I'd end up committing mass murder, and giggling with "I had to do it! I had to! They all just had to die!" all the way to prison as the nice men from the tactical response group carried me off, which totally wouldn't endear me to any jury at all, and then I'd spend the rest of my life in jail, and that would be boring.
So, no.
However, I don't think IQ tests measure anything other than how good you are at IQ tests. (Anyone who scores below 126 and wants to join The International High IQ Society anyway, I'm happy to give you my answers, by the way, for I surely do think that high IQ societies are lame, and would find it cool to subvert the system.)
But you look at the kind of questions they ask. Why do I rate well? Because my vocabulary is large, my spatial recognition skills are good (with the exception of the tesseract questions, at which I suck), and I'm good at algebra. And I know what to look for.
This question appears in pretty much every IQ test ever:
What is the next number in this sequence? 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21...
They take it to a varying level of the sequence, of course, but you see, to anyone who's done enough Maths, the instant reaction is "Oh, that's the Fibonacci sequence, wherein you add the two previous numbers together to get the next number". And voila, correct answer. Easy for me, since I learnt the Fibonacci sequence many years ago, when my father assigned me "write a program which calculates the Fibonacci sequence" as a project as he was (attempting) teaching me to program.
Other questions, where you have "if A is worth x and B is worth Y then what's C worth?" you just work out what they have in common, represent those as variables, and reduce it with some very simple algebra. You do that enough times while learning algebra in high school, it's automatic. Anyone who's learnt to do it can get that right on an IQ test, but you could get someone far more intelligent than I am who didn't do so much algebra in high school, or who just doesn't think in terms of algebra for such questions, and they don't get the answer.
It's silly. Not quite as silly as groups like MENSA and the International High IQ Society, both of which I can mock quite comfortably on the grounds that I could join either if I wished. But not only do I think intelligence levels are a poor basis for selecting the people you keep company with - even if it's a factor, because let's face it, too wide a disparity doesn't work for either of you - because you may not share interests, at all, there's the undeniable fact that a lot of intelligent people are prats, and when you deal with people who are so hung up about their intelligence they have to join select clubs just so they can be snooty about it, you're probably looking at a damn high prat percentage.
Which would, of course, be why I've never joined an IQ-based society of any kind, because I have a feeling I'd end up committing mass murder, and giggling with "I had to do it! I had to! They all just had to die!" all the way to prison as the nice men from the tactical response group carried me off, which totally wouldn't endear me to any jury at all, and then I'd spend the rest of my life in jail, and that would be boring.
So, no.
posted by Sami at
1:33:00 AM
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