In that case, we have different and conflicting understandings of
what intelligence is, and you ignored everything I said about it after
the sentence you quoted. What I said was:
People's success rate in dealing with concrete problems is
dependent on far, far more than intelligence. If you judge
intelligence solely on success rates in dealing with concrete
problems, then your estimation of intelligence will have no
relation to what intelligence actually is.

Unfortunately for me and my arguement, I do not have a good
definition of intelligence to throw back at you. The best I can
come up with is "the ability to discover meaningful connections
between seemingly unconnected pieces of information", but that
is not rigorous or clear. Another definition of intelligence which
might be more useful in this context is "the ability to reason
logically". That definition is terribly incomplete, though. Clearly,
intelligence has to do with the ability to learn and to process
information using reasoning. But that isn't a definition.

If you judge intelligence based only on success rate, then for you,
intelligence isn't distinguishable from experience, luck, or having
the right connections.

You are not talking about intelligence here. You are talking about
a whole slew of abilities, inabilities, physical and mental conditions,
environmental and situational circumstances, and calling the result
"intelligence". You are equating the whole multitude of factors that
go into human decisionmaking with "intelligence".

I agree that IQ is affected by environmental factors. More
specifically, intelligence is affected by environmental factors, and
scores on IQ tests are affected by environmental factors. Some
environmental factors have their effects during brain growth; some
the year before an IQ test is taken; some the hour before the test,
some during the test. Lots of different environmental factors, of
many different kinds, that have many different effects.

I disagree that my intelligence is not coded in my genes. It is.
It does not come from environmental factors. Environmental factors
can only support or detract from what is coded in my genes.

Different IQ tests measure different things. An ideal IQ test would
measure a person's ability to reason, apart from his knowledge about
the world, his knowledge about IQ tests, his dislike for tests, or the
pain in his back. Ideal IQ tests do not exist. Better IQ tests than
currently exist will be developed. They will not be perfect either.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

__________________
http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"The other planets?
Well, they just happen to be there, but the point of rockets is to explore them!"
-- Kai Yeves

When I said that intelligence is not in one's genes, I did not mean that genes had no effect on intelligence. I meant that it doesn't all come from one's genes. I hope you realise this.

The way you say that "environmental factors can only support or detract from what is coded in my genes" sounds excessively dismissive to me. I think that the environment, in various ways ranging from intrauterin factors to education, can and does affect intelligence decisively, however you choose to define "intelligence". It most certainly does affect IQ scores decisively.

Why not discuss the reality of IQ testing, instead of well-meaning ideals?

__________________
"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

That is what they're designed to do, based on studies that have been done on how to tell which questions are the most or the least "g-loaded", which is an expression for how dependent a question is on mental ability rather than prior knowledge and such (based on the use of g to mean "general intelligence"). Then you can spot what the questions with the highest g-loads have in common and which questions or types of questions have the lowest g-loads, eliminate the latter, and make a test consisting of the former, resulting in a highly g-loaded test. The result: tests with the highest g-loading, rather than the ones with questions that would supposedly favor the more successful people, are the most predictive of other successful behaviors in life. And the differences between test scores that some people say are due to bias (low g-load) not only don't go away on highly g-loaded tests, but even are sometimes larger than on the less g-loaded ones. These observations indicate that g itself, rather than other supposed advantages aside from g, is the primary determiner.

There's another option you skipped: that they measure one's ability to make decisions and reach conclusions. This is independent of most knowledge, but can be contributed to both by your biological starting point and by the logical skills you practice in life. To the extent that such decision-making is a learnable skill, I don't know of any way to separate the learning & practice from the biology. But that is what intelligence tests measure, and can be and has been separated from other areas of general knowledge/education.

You were using intelligence when you learned that skill. Less intelligence would have meant less ability to learn the skill.

I kind of get that ... however why hide it, why tip toe around it? I mean some people are not that good in sports ... but there are still sports. We still can talk about how good someone is at a sport ... we even nit pick about professional atheletes.

Well all I want to discuss is what can we predict about a person from their intellegence?

Also the other thing I wanted to point out and was really where I wanted to go with the thread before I was banned for starting this thread ... was that I strongly believe that many of the chemicals we eat through processed food and chemicals that are put in the soil that our veggies grow in and those given to the animals we eat and those we breathe in poluted air ... I think that they lower IQ and create some mental disorders. In addition all of the medicines we take from the instant we are born until now ... it is crazy.

What population?

115 is not very smart so that is 66 % Like I said ... others may think 50 % and I am OK with that. I mean ... before I get banned again over this.

I am breaking the world up in 2 smart and lets get rid of the term dumb ... but lets say "not smart" however smart infers that you are better than the norm. so I am using the 80 / 20 rule to say that 20 % are smart and 80 % are not smart.

But that is just my opinion.

I am sure this happens all of the time. My question is basically how could we go about getting data to correlate IQ and things that society looks at in a negative way.

Also why should we tip toe around this subject.

I am not an expert. I would leave that to the experts. It seems that there are pretty good IQ tests.

I realize that some smart people will fail these tests ... but that would be all taken into account in the correlations.

Would this data not be interesting for anyone? You would be able to somewhat predict what you will do in the future.

Finally a good answer ... from who else but my buddy neverfly.
This was sort of what I was looking for when I asked this question.
Regardless of your IQ bad choices can be made. I like that.
Also in my other thread "should dumb people vote" there was a great point:
Voting is not about picking the best candidate but about people having the right to have a say about who is going to lead you .... or something to that extent.

I mean you dont have to be smart to be successful. My question was about things that society deems wrong.

Like joining a gang ...

like I grew up in a strange place and a strange time .... looking back even did bad stuff ... but the smart ones fixed it and didnt get caught and the not so smart ones couldnt handle things ... either got caught ... or did really bad things ... or in some way were way worse off ... now I am not sure about IQ on these but they just seemed not to smart.

I also know a few under achievers ....

actually a correlation that I noticed ... and I am not sure if facts back it up ...but children of successful people seem to rebel against being successful. I think the people that do the best are ones that come from some sort of disorder that makes them tough and work hard and have dreams and NEED to escape from where they are at. Many people that had an easy childhood seem to take life easy.

I dont mean dumb ... i just mean not smart. Bad choice of words ... sorry dont mean to insult you.

I am just very intersted in the differences of smart and not smart people.

no dumb people dont but I did ... I am not 100% sure why?

Is this a compliment? Does that mean that you think I fall into the smart end of the smart / not smart continuum?

In any case ... This is a leap of logic. I was just asking questions about traits we cant link to intellegence and how important is intellegence in our society. If asking a question about this makes me an ego elitist ... then I think your logic is faulty.

And Marx was clearly proven wrong!!!

Workers are not producing any more than they are getting paid.

And the entrepenuer(sp? ) is the risk taker, the visionary, the motivator. How could this be worthless?

Didnt that one guy that won the nobel prize do lsd on a regular basis?
Then after winning he retired and became a full time surfer ?

I mean back in the day all of the smart people did drugs. Personally while I dont promote drugs I think some drugs increase creative awareness and imagination. If there were no drugs there would be no good music.

Francis Crick

http://www.mayanmajix.com/art1699.html
Nobel Prize genius Crick was high on LSD
when he discovered the secret of life

In fact when LSD was fist discovered ... it was slated for many positive uses ... until the military got their hands on it.

Wow ... I really like this post ...
EQ is certainly a problem for some in life and I would say almost by definition more correlated that IQ to the items above.

Great post!