Why do people make irrelevant comments about IQ?

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It seems to me that smart people avoid debates about relative intelligence(s) that include self reference in favour of using their brains and hoping people can appreciate the results. Complex thinking is fun, but arguing is mostly rhetoric. I think that Feynman compared science to sex - sure there are practical results, but that's not why we do it. At the other end of the scale, Dunning-Kruger cases will go on about their smarts all day, with no clue about the impression they create. I won't dismiss a claim to intelligence, but I won't believe it before seeing it working.

In other words:

“Actions speak louder than words.”

I guess my biggest issue with IQ is that it can be summed up like this: the score is not going to be accurate (this is a scientific impossibility). IQ scores are estimates. So, you're on a slippery slope from the start. Based on studies I've done, the score can be off by as much as like 40 points sometimes. With that kind of inaccuracy, I ultimately ask the question, why bother with IQ? The effects of the inaccuracy: people taking the score too seriously, and thus on the one hand you have people who are going to score low (and underestimate themselves, leading to poor self-esteem), and people who're going to score too high (and overestimate themselves, leading to narcissism). The solution: take any given IQ score with a grain of salt and do some research. People always will get a range if they take more than one test -- and ideally, shouldn't they take more than one, if they are on a quest to learn more about "their IQ"? The official tests do have more robust statistics on their side than "indie" tests, but they have limitations as well, in particular the biases presented by their particular questions (proctored tests have quite a few knowledge-dependent questions in particular with regards to vocabulary) -- and going against them they also have this marketing scheme which asserts how scientific and valid they are for the sake of sales. Personally I made a hobby out of some IQ tests, and took a lot of them (over 100), and worked on designing some myself...but they were basically all different and were all untimed ("HRTs") with theoretical scores (usually correlated with some testees who took a supervised test and then extrapolated from there), so the results weren't invalidated by taking more of them insomuch as I got a better idea of what I can do with more time and effort (and a bit of practice). I tried to just take the scores as estimates from the start and then gradually over time just became interested in solving items as a hobby. This gave me a lot of insight into tests in general. It's unlikely I'll ever take a supervised IQ test because I don't like taking tests in that environment. One reason I took the untimed variety in the first place was because I do tend to have some anxiety and would prefer to sit at home. People who aren't super-knowledgeable about IQ tests etc will often be quick to jump to conclusions and say "well you can't know your IQ without an official test" but this goes back to the notion that people are somehow "copyrighting" IQ and having a monopoly on it, which I don't think is a good thing and I don't support it. There should be many ways to figure out how smart a person is, and any IQ score should be a very rough estimate. If anyone isn't happy with a score they get due to it seeming too low, they have the right to question it and to think outside the box regarding how the test might be failing them (rather than vice versa), whether it means turning their back on all tests and finding things they're good at which are not "IQ"-related, or whether it means seeking out alternative tests. Similarly, it's every high-scorer's responsibility to question the statistic and think to themselves "can this really be right? Is it really that simple -- I'm smarter than precisely xxx.xxx% of the population and this test certifies it? What other evidence do I have that this could be correct or incorrect?". Okay, I think that's all I really want to say on the subject.

In Florida, benefits to be on the program I work with, are determined by IQ. If you test over 69, you are not eligible.

Because IQ tests often are treated as definitive measures of a fuzzy concept, and they are used by professionals to undervalue us, and used by "high-iq" jerks to brag about something that (while it doesn't mean nothing) is not the be-all-end-all that it's treated as.

Has anyone else ever noticed the humblebragging that happens in those convos? "IQ doesn't matter. Trust me, I only scored a perfect 1600 on my SATs and have an IQ of 178, but I'm depressed and working at Starbucks and all my normie friends call me a dummy ahaha :^)" no wonder people have to take some of that crowd down a notch...

In the (paraphrased) words of the late Stephen Hawking, "I have no idea what my IQ is and people who brag about their IQs are losers."

Something that has bugged me over time is when people don't differentiate between ratio and deviation IQ (I always talk in deviation IQ by default because that's standard for adults and generally would presume sd15 because it's more common on tests e.g. the WAIS; I think ratio IQ should be noted when it's present and otherwise deviation should be assumed). Childhood scores are often ratio scores (but deviation tests can be given, such as WISC), adult scores are always deviation (usually SD set at 15 or 16). Here are some examples of differences in scores (statistical approximation of percentile score with a little bit of rounding, comparing ratio and sd15 scores according to this chart http://www.miyaguchi.4sigma.org/BloodyH ... tioiq.html):

RIQ 130: 1 in 25 (DIQ 126)
DIQ 130: 1 in 45 (RIQ 135)

RIQ 140: 1 in 80 (DIQ 134)
DIQ 140: 1 in 260 (RIQ 150)

RIQ 150: 1 in 260 (DIQ 140)
DIQ 150: 1 in 2,330 (RIQ 164)

RIQ 160: 1 in 1,125 (DIQ 147)
DIQ 160: 1 in 31,560 (RIQ 183)

RIQ 170: 1 in 5,443 (DIQ 153)
DIQ 170: 1 in 652,598 (RIQ 200)

I think some people actually thrive on this discrepancy when announcing their IQs. I've seen lots of "estimates" of people's scores online (in particular of famous people), which are presumably intermixing deviation and ratio IQs, as if they were the same thing. The exponentiation here is huge. There are so many rumors online about celebrity IQs as well, which have little or no basis in fact.

Given all of this, it's hard to even know which way is up in the world of IQ "measurement" (claims). If you meet someone who claims a really high IQ that was measured as a child, there's a good chance you're looking at ratio IQ, which can be significantly lower when converted to a deviation IQ.

That's not even going into why the separate scores themselves (ratio or deviation) are independently suspect.

My Problem with IQ tests is most of them only measure a small area of intelligence when in reality intelligence as a top is much broader. And alot of them rely on prior knowledge. Intelligence is the ability to learn. Most IQ tests are about Academic Intelligence. I Wrote an essay on this once. Most people who score well on IQ tests struggle with other types of intelligence Social intelligence Emotional intelligence etc. That's the problem. Being truely intelligent would be being above average in all of these categories. That's what my problem is. I might score high on IQ tests that are based on that. But what of the others. That's the problem, I've had with it.

I see all scored tests of aptitude/ability (IQ or otherwise) as being very suspect. Here is a good and simple philosophy to help account for their shortcomings:

1) A low score isn't necessarily reliable, and can show limitations of the test (as well as missing the testee's other strengths), and can result in harmful misjudgment and underestimation of a person

2) A high score can be weighted too heavily and show an idealized measurement (taking the test too seriously based on a "good run" by the testee) and should be seen instead as showing "potential", rather than an objective quality/value appraisal of someone's ability

The thing to remember is that there are always more tests that you can do on someone (some virtual and some real-world), and ultimately even the "smartest" person in the world is going to fall short in many ways. We are all human.

When I was in 7th grade, one of my main teachers called me "the laziest person he had ever met". He ended up being fired within the next couple years. The school district I attended was rated highly and from an affluent town. I came close to failing the 7th grade, but later went on to earn my Master's degree.

It's easy to misjudge people (kids maybe most especially, being subject to the biases of onlooking adults who would sometimes rather cover up their own flaws on a less conscious level, or take the lazy/easy way out and blame the kids). Just a thought.

Those comments that you mentioned definitely sound like the sort of thing I might say about IQ! I think for me it is mainly because IQ scores do nothing to tell us about a person's character. And for me, good character means a lot more than someone's intellectual and academic abilities.

Sure, someone might be the smartest person in the room, but is that someone a moral person? How does he/she treat other people? Does he/she put other people before him/herself? Is that someone a sensitive person, as in sensitive to the needs of others, sensitive to the many pressing concerns that are a part of being human and living life?

Is that person also in tune with the emotional side of life, which I think is just as important as the intellectual/logical side?

To a lesser extent, I think my concerns about IQ might also come from my agreement with you that IQ doesn't necessarily predict success. There are many folks with average IQs (and probably below average too) who are much more successful than many folks with high IQs in all areas of life.

Of course, it's also possible that those kinds of comments about IQ might just be something that folks like me who know they don't have extraordinary IQs say!

I ultimately have the concerns I do with IQ partly because I've gone on to study it thoroughly...and realized that the results are very relative and not that objective. People feel there's a huge difference between an IQ 30 or 40 points apart, when in reality, you can find one person getting scores this far apart on different tests (so the difference is often theoretical in nature). So one might then ask the question, which tests matter most/are the most accurate? People look for that "definitive" test that measures *the* IQ that is specific to them (fallacious thinking).

People like to exalt the psychologist proctored tests for various reasons, discounting other tests -- *generally* in favor of saying the other tests will give inaccurately high readings. In some cases it is true. However, the opposite can also be found. Anecdotally I know one guy who has a WAIS (which is probably the most referenced and trusted psychologist test) score of 175; but I've followed this guy's scores on a lot of unofficial tests we've both taken, and he seems to average more like 160 (similar to my average). I know another guy with a WAIS score of 165 and that is more or less in the ballpark of his other scores on high range tests. Both of these guys seem at a similar level of intelligence (from what I can tell). I've heard that psychologist tests are not always scored objectively. It depends on the person administering the test.

There is definitely some correlation and correspondence across tests even which are not considered official. People go to great effort to make the statistics as accurate as is possible, and to that end IQ tests in general are at least giving similar readings (with a margin of variability). But that margin of variability is enough for the whole thing to come toppling down on itself and reveal biases inherent to tests (all tests, not just the "unofficial" ones). The proctored tests are actually some of the most biased.

The self-image of someone who believes they have an IQ of 90 versus that of someone who believes their IQ to be 120 is quite significant, and that's the margin of error you're looking at with tests. This is the difference between someone potentially thinking they're below average, and thinking they're superior. I see the way it affects self-esteem and causes unhealthy comparisons and value assessments between people, and the margin of error that makes those comparisons invalid. It's one thing if it's like measuring height, but it's just not. People are good at different things. IQ tests are just one thing and even then they're often quite different from each other. Again, the big and reputable test companies want to make their tests sound appealing and to stay on top, like they mean something equivalent to a gold standard of measuring someone's intellectual worth -- so they go out of their way to correlate the tests with real-world success. The correlation is there and the studies are valid, but there are also many reasons to not bother with them. Correlation is just correlation, it's not causation, and the statistics are too limited to truly mean anything for everyone in the world. There are just too many unknowns and this should be shown to be a limited vision.

They say it becomes harder and harder to discriminate accurate scores the higher you go, and that's true. Even beyond something like say 130, you're dealing with a lot of extrapolation and fuzzy stats. I think people tend to have an estimable *theoretical* (not objective/factual) range which you can learn about with some effort, which is of course culturally dependent on some level, but that's it -- and that's a far cry from a specific objective number (IQ) that we all have inside ourselves that's unchanging and just waiting to be measured by that "scientific" test. Realistically, the IQ could possibly change (there's no scientific evidence behind why it would always be the same). Taking a lot of semi-reputable and unofficial tests (without taking anything psychologist-administered) has nevertheless exposed me to the chance to study others' scores, test stats, etc. to find that they can be contradictory and variegated.

I think IQ tests by psychologists can be helpful for spotting disability. If someone is scoring really low, then you have some insight into what their deficits are, and can then better figure out how to help them. At the same time, they may be smarter than the test shows. The issue of measuring in the positive and upper range...you ultimately end up developing a hierarchy for people based on what is overall, most likely a culturally biased and subjective test (which is very unfortunate). I don't think it's completely right, I've seen a lot of egos getting blown out of proportion due to high test scores, causing psychological imbalances in the person (and I've seen people with low self-esteem as well due to test scores). It even took me a while to see in myself that getting high scores on IQ tests doesn't make you a genius or anything like that (not really), just like getting low scores doesn't necessarily make you stupid. It can show strengths/weaknesses, gifts/deficits, but generally your actual abilities will reveal more about you than some scores will. Anyway, I feel like I'm repeating myself here, but I can hardly begin to illustrate the degree to which people have misconstrued this idea of IQ in the modern world...thanks for listening.