[geeks] Mensa

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Aaron Finley wrote:
> As someone with a tested IQ of over 150 (way back in elementary
> school, so I imagine I've lost a bunch of that now), I find the 130
> cutoff for Mensa to be extremely pedestrian.

That depends.  It used to be said that average IQ was 100.

However, in the 20th Century Americans and English started scoring averages of
nearly 130, so obviously the test wasn't so much a measure of IQ as it was
literacy, language comprehension, and personal experience.

It's actually quite hard to know if IQ tests even mean anything.

For example, some of them stress the time it takes you to complete a problem.

I think that's complete bullshit.

The guy who does a problem in 5 minute is smarter than the guy who takes 5
days?  By what measure?  Maybe the guy who takes 5 days did a far better job.

Which one is smarter?

More importantly, if you are paying for the work they do, which one do you want?

> Just kidding. Really, I find the concept of a high IQ club to
> offensive. I'd rather join the Sons of the American Revolution if I
> was looking for a club.

The problem I have with IQ tests is the same I have with things like SAT: they
favor people who are good at taking tests, which isn't necessarily people who
are smart.

A lot of very smart people test poorly.

It's pretty much proven that people with a photo memory can "study" for IQ and
other tests and do very well, so what does that mean?

Intelligence is a measure of how much you can regurgitate?

Something else to consider is that IQ tests, even if they ask questions about
things like spatial reasoning, really do not test only them..  Mostly they
test the ability to take tests, language comprehension, and discrete
computation.  It's probably impossible to create a test that actually measures
purely a particular skill.

I've had classes on cognitive psychology, and those three skills happen to be
the three that the human brain is very poor at, so if you are bad at one of
them but a genius at spatial computation, mathematics, etc... your IQ test
will appear low.

The brain's primary abilities are motor control, pattern recognition, learing,
feedback systems, sensory analysis, etc.  IQ tests don't test any of that.

A guild master metal worker is a genius, but how do you test it?


-- 
shannon           | We have nothing to prove.
                  |        -- Alan Dawkins