Why Dumb People Have High IQs | INFJ Forum

Why Dumb People Have High IQs

TheLastMohican

TheLastMohican

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http://www.newscientist.com/article...ls-why-a-high-iq-doesnt-mean-youre-smart.html

"A high IQ is like height in a basketball player," says David Perkins, who studies thinking and reasoning skills at Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It is very important, all other things being equal. But all other things aren't equal. There's a lot more to being a good basketball player than being tall, and there's a lot more to being a good thinker than having a high IQ."
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The problem with IQ tests is that while they are effective at assessing our deliberative skills, which involve reason and the use of working memory, they are unable to assess our inclination to use them when the situation demands. This is a crucial distinction: as Daniel Kahneman at Princeton University puts it, intelligence is about brain power whereas rational thinking is about control. "Some people who are intellectually able do not bother to engage very much in analytical thinking and are inclined to rely on their intuitions," explains Evans. "Other people will check out their gut feeling and reason it through and make sure they have a justification for what they're doing."
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Read the whole three page article; it's worth it.


Do you think your IQ is representative of the quality of your everyday reasoning? If not, do you think it is too low, or too high? Do you have any noteworthy examples of supposedly intelligent people acting foolishly, or vice versa?
 
This was the exact thought that was going through my mind the other day. I ran across a comment by a guy claiming he had a genius IQ, but I found his point of view to be very irrational.

This also coincides with a discussion I had with arby on how INFJs tend to cast judgment in emotive issues before considering all the facts carefully and reasonably. As such, tact may be more than simply being respectful to your fellow human beings, it may also be the control that gives a person reign over their intellectual abilities.
 
TheLastMohican said:
Do you think your IQ is representative of the quality of your everyday reasoning?
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Not in the least.

TheLastMohican said:
If not, do you think it is too low, or too high?
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I think my IQ score is far higher than my everyday reasoning capacities.

TheLastMohican said:
Do you have any noteworthy examples of supposedly intelligent people acting foolishly, or vice versa?
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I am a walking example of this. I am a classic absent minded professor type. I have an amazing ability to be smart when I need to be, which I have attributed to intuition, luck, serendipity, and divine providence over the years. I'm not nearly as smart as I am in the right place at the right time with the right guess.
 
IQ is nothing more than a measure of pattern recognition and skill at taking tests. When someone develops these abilities, it simply means that they're good at these specific tasks, because the IQ test cannot engage other measures of intelligence.

More often than not, people who have high IQ scores are actually lacking in other areas of intelligence (like myself).

I think the best analogy for IQ is not the height of a basketball player, but instead trying to assign an overall athletic rating to someone based on their maximum bench press. If someone trains exclusively for bench press, then sure they're likely to have an amazing rating on such a test, even though they would have pathetic scores if long distance running, dash, sit ups, agility test, stretching, and body fat percentage, were also measured. And even if all of these things were taken into consideration, they still don't accurately portray how an individual's physicality functions in real world situations.
 
*The angry mob leaves the people with low IQs alone, and goes after those with high IQs.* Someone's gotta pay here ... with blood!

Low IQ, high IQ who cares. It can't even be measured to what extent a person is motivated by the test. Some people are very smart in real life, but no abstract test could ever captivate their mind fully.

Also, our formal data processing abilities are different than our real life data processing abilities. Who's to say that a person who is good in math and speaks 17 languages... is really smart?? A simple carpenter could be considered smarter.

Why care so much about who's smarter anyway?

I have above average IQ score and below average life skills in many important areas. Currently working on these poor areas. Our brains are extremely flexible - you can train yourself almost anything, if you put enough will to it. It's also very important to be able to make it interesting for yourself. If you enjoy it, you can become effective much faster. :)

I think the main reason most city-born people have lower coping skills with simple everyday activities is that they were not motivated to develop. We traditionally view the abilities of a carpenter as "inferior", so we wouldn't be inspired to learn that. What if you imagine that's the most important skill to learn? I believe in human adaptability.
 
Smart vs. Wise

This is right up the same alley as the thread I started about being Smart vs. Wise. There is more than one type of intelligence. There are many ways to learn and solve problems. IQ tests are a limited measuring tool.

http://forum.infjs.com/showthread.php?t=4734
 
intelligence |inˈtelijəns|
noun
1 the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
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I think that the IQ can measure the first part.

But it can't measure the second part.

For example The IQ can measure your capacity for picking up certain intellectually oriented skills. To give an analogy the IQ can measure your ability to aquire musical skill and info, but it doesn't make you Mozart. It can't measure your ability to apply that info.

yeeeeah I hate IQ tests
:m067:
 
intelligence |inˈtelijəns|
noun
1 the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
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Lucifer said:
I think that the IQ can measure the first part.
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It doesn't even measure the first part. Because real life is not a problem to solve. There's no statement. There's no task. No time limits. No prize if-you-do-that. No boundaries, no definitions. You ask the questions, you answer them. You set the measurements, the time-frames, the goals. You create your own IQ tests, and you master them.

Any type of testing already has too much definition in itself, given to you as a narrow here-and-now problem to be solved. So you can solve such problems with great speed and accuracy, and still not being able to even determine the problems that should be solved in reality.

Tests, not only IQ tests, exams, textbooks etc. focus us on a very limited narrow-minded way of thinking. This way we actually learn to always avoid the full picture, to consider only the facts that are offered to us by someone else. I won't mind if the sky has a complex hard-to-define-precisely color - my book says it's blue, so it's blue! So I look at this grayish-blueish-whiteish-yellowish stuff above me, and I think to myself: yep, it's blue. Our heads are so full of such abstract nonsense. ^^ We are walking blind-folded with fantastic language constructions that never existed.

My point is: this way you can't even acquire the relevant knowledge in reality. It's not just a problem of how to apply it.
 
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The giveaway that IQ testing is pseudoscience is that they never specify uncertainty ranges with the result. They also give vague or simplistic definitions of what IQ is actually measuring.
 
I feel somewhat unintelligent for asking this but on the question in that article " Jack is looking at Anne, and Anne is looking at George; Jack is married, George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? Choose between yes, no or cannot be determined.

The answer to this question is apparently yes can someone here say in what way you can view that question to get a yes answer. I fear I might be looking at it from too concrete a position.
 
Do you think your IQ is representative of the quality of your everyday reasoning?- No, IQ is a horrible system, and reasoning is far more complex than that.

If not, do you think it is too low, or too high? It is invalid.

Do you have any noteworthy examples of supposedly intelligent people acting foolishly, or vice versa? No,
 
Do you have any noteworthy examples of supposedly intelligent people acting foolishly?

Ah ha! Story of my life. I've grown up around people with high IQ who have no common sense. It's a rule as far as I'm concerned.
 
I think my ability to reason is quite good, but no, I don't always want to use it because I don't always have to.

I wouldn't necessarily say that my I.Q. is higher than it actually should be either, because if you count my musical aptitude, then it's probably about right.

Your article said something about using the skills when they are demanded, and I think I'm capable of doing so.
 
Honey said:
I feel somewhat unintelligent for asking this but on the question in that article " Jack is looking at Anne, and Anne is looking at George; Jack is married, George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? Choose between yes, no or cannot be determined.

The answer to this question is apparently yes can someone here say in what way you can view that question to get a yes answer. I fear I might be looking at it from too concrete a position.
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It would seem that the answer cannot be determined, since Anne's marital status is unknown, but the trick is that hers does not matter. If Anne is married, then she is the married person looking at an unmarried person (George). If she is unmarried, then Jack is the married person looking at an unmarried person. Either way, the answer is "yes."
 
IMO, intelligence is too subjective to be test measured. The ones who make the test pass it best. And the way we define intelligence is culture specific. I doubt intelligence exists as it is popularly defined.
 
I have a really low IQ I must be a genius.
 
The history of intelligence testing is interesting. They tested immigrants who didn't speak English in English and gave them a low score because they didn't understand. Promiscuous women were considered "feebleminded".
 
TheLastMohican said:
It would seem that the answer cannot be determined, since Anne's marital status is unknown, but the trick is that hers does not matter. If Anne is married, then she is the married person looking at an unmarried person (George). If she is unmarried, then Jack is the married person looking at an unmarried person. Either way, the answer is "yes."
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Thanks for that. It is not even a "trick" question after all, it seems so straightforward now [after the fact].
 
Everybody know I has a genius, regardless of my super high IQ
 
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