discussion about IQ tests

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The interesting thing is that I regularly talk with people who score high and I do so myself and as an example, (I believe you said you were a CPA), I was able to learn and score in the top 1% in accounting after spending roughly 30 hours on the coursework. I can also do equations in my head, quote a million different people and read at 1400 WPM, somehow I suspect that is connected with how well I score on IQ tests.

So do I, yet the bias seems to be toward the notion that men and women are mentally identical, which is clearly a load of nonsense.

Not entirely. It is an objective, empirical fact that testosterone, "the male hormone," does have effects on cognitive ability. IT is an objective, empirical fact that estrogen, "the female hormone," does have effects on cognitive ability.

The problem with using this to form generalizations, though, is just that: it's a generalization. If something that is generally true clearly doesn't apply to an individual, the individual must be taken at face value.

And they do.

Yet you have done nothing to validate this claim. I demonstrated pretty clearly above that sex hormones do have a substantial, measurable effect on brain function and brain development.

Your conclusion is not supported at all by your premises. Although it would be true to state that being historically deprived of access to male-dominated fields would partially explain the shortage of women working in those fields, what you are trying to do is conclude that this thereby negates every other possible factor, which it doesn't.

The fact of the matter is that you can't explain every disparity between men and women purely by virtue of persecution or discrimination. It's not that simple. Discrimination is a serious problem, but we are not going to do anything to alleviate that problem by destroying the credibility of our case with bull crap arguments that a toddler can see through.

We are limited by our biology, but we should not allow biology to dictate our lives, passions and aspirations to us. We shouldn't feel like we can't do well in athletics "because people with Aspergers Syndrome are uncoordinated, and people who are uncoordinated can't win games." It's disempowering, and that's the problem with it. It's the pure fatalism of the mindset that is socially destructive. A person who has Aspergers Syndrome might have challenges in athletics that neurotypicals don't, but your challenges and obstacles should not and must not be the story of your life.

Nature did not make the sexes equal, but we can. And should. My perspective on this issue is as simple as that, but everyone seems to want it to fit into some negative caricature they have in their heads. Hello, I am saying something original, here. I am contributing a new idea to the world. I have never heard anyone, anywhere, try the idea that "the sexes actually are inherently unequal; however, this is NOT an inherently good thing. and it's something we ought to try to fix." I have said something novel, robust, fresh. It's something we have a shortage of around here, amidst this stupid polemic.

I release it from my hand, saying, "be free!" and yet some ret*d clod with a shotgun and more rhetoric than sense comes to shoot it down, with this mindset that anyone who challenges one orthodoxy must be a rabid adherent of the other. Sheep! Useless sheep! Die! Die!

Last edited by WilliamWDelaney on 01 May 2012, 4:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

As a child, I was given a full day IQ test, sitting in a room with a test administrator (just the two of us) and doing things like solving puzzles. Well, that is what I remember of it, anyway. One asset I do not have is a fantastic memory. But I do link complex concepts very quickly, and that resulted in me scoring very highly and moving at the start of middle school into a gifted program.

Yes, I am a CPA, and while being smart does pretty much guarantee I'll always get a job, I actually lack many of the other highly valued skills in this field. I need to be part of a team so that my strengths can be best utilized, which is one of several reasons why having my own practice didn't turn out as nicely as I ideally would have liked.

One of my big weaknesses used to be needing to be the best and the brightest in the room, which caused me to drop my chemistry major the first I encountered academic frustration (had no experience with that, didn't know what to do with it) in favor of something where my snotty attitude thought I'd be easily the best. I've since learned that that logic is a fail - there are always factors at play one doesn't think of - so you may as well do what you love, instead of what you assume you will be good at. Not that I haven't enjoyed my profession - there are times I am totally energized by an issue I am working on - but I don't want my kids to make rash decisions when they encounter rare moments of frustration. Sorry, I digressed ....

The debates in this thread all hover around the nature/nurture controversy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture). If innate behavioral traits persist regardless of social influence, how should they influence civilization or individual identity?

Whoa, did I just wander onto the set of Gattaca?

Even if you collect data from Binet, Spearman, Goddard and other contributors, an objective definition of intelligence remains ever elusive. The g-factor helps, but psychologists are still relying on bad structuralist habits. When Alfred Binet first employed the concept of IQ to determine which French kids had special needs, he himself never thought that it should be used as an absolute measure.

Binet simply used I.Q. as a means to intuitively express a ratio of how old you act as opposed to how old you are. This measure was based entirely on the assumption that if you were a certain age, you could do certain things. For example, one can assume that all five year olds can draw a decent square. Thing is, Binet's assumptions were not culture sensitive. Five year olds in one culture who excel in one task will be recorded as having a higher I.Q. than five year olds in another culture performing the same task under the same test.

Even if perfect culture sensitivity was acquired, I.Q. tests would only gauge aptitude in ways that the test was designed to cover. Even then, the test results are so context-sensitive that I doubt they can lend themselves seamlessly to qualitative analysis. University admission offices also ask for SAT and ACT scores, plus essays and interviews. That suggests to me that I.Q. is still not comprehensive, and ultimately institutions still rely on "feeling you out".

Just an observation but claiming men are more intelligent than women, and then attacking any opposing arguments as 'illogical' 'gut reactions' 'emotional' 'unreasonable' makes it seems as though you are a bit more concerned about being right than contributing to a discussion.

I mean what exactly is the point that is trying to be made here?

Hmm, well, what should be done? Should one not reply to opposing arguments with relevant arguments?

i believe it takes courage to be bad or mediocre at something and do it anyway. or to work hard at it so that it becomes an accomplishment that came from hard work as opposed to a default talent.

i was in the gifted classes too, but i don't think it did me any good..

to my teachers and parents, it looked good for me to excel in science and maybe go on to become a paleontologist or somesuch. but no... i ended up almost flunking out of science classes (50% in high school chemistry) because the IQ tests didn't really measure how well i would do in reality. i don't memorise things easily and i have difficulty learning new procedures.

also, i had social difficulties. i had some strange ideas and i could not handle being treated as an outsider/freak by the boys in my science classes. i was severely mocked because some of my ideas were apparently weird (and some of it was just cutting-edge stuff but it came out of left-field to some students (and teachers)). many of the concepts i introduced were just too strange for that time in that context, and i could not handle the treatment i got.

i had some IQ tests done again as an adult as part of my assessment for AS. the tester was able to see that although i am supposedly intelligent according to the IQ tests, i struggle so utterly in other areas that it is somewhat irrelevant as a predictor of any success for me in both education and career.

I tend to prefer teams for economic work for the different perspectives. The thing I love about the market is that everyone more or less has the same info (less insider trading) yet, just about everyone has a difference of opinion.

I do agree with you that schools these days are more tailored to how girls develop rather than boys and I suspect this is why there are so many young boys being diagnosed with ADHD and such disorders. Furthermore, that the switch (at least here) from a school system with more male teachers to one that is heavily female dominated has lead to more boys getting the "problem pupil" label and a lack of discipline in the classroom.




I have the fun distinction of nearly failing math, despite being able to do a multi-period NPV calculation in my head. It was one of those cases where the teachers insisted I explain how I got the answer, whereas I felt that if its right then how I got there does not matter.

As I've matured I've come to the conclusion that one should pick a profession which is challenging and pays off well. No point in studying art if it means going broke, better to do engineering and have art as a hobby.

No just not assuming any disagreement with your opinions is illogical...would be a start. I mean you told me something that has been scientifically studied is 'silly' there are differences between a typical male and female brain, but there is a lot of variation in brains and as I said one could be physically male with a female brain...it's been proven. I cannot remember the name of the documentary and do not have an exact source at this time but can certainly dig it up. And none of your sources were peer reviewed that I could see, so they are no more valid then any other links people have posted and probably could not be used for a high level college paper.

I didn't call it silly because its not scientifically merited, I called it silly because the statistical impact of such an excessively small group would be minimal. I had no problem with your logic as it was sound.

On the notes on my sources, the Danish studies on the matter in terms of brain cells and neurons would both be valid in a college paper, the research is supported by other studies from amongst others the United States and Spain. The consensus is that men score on average 3 - 5 points higher than women.

The studies seem to indicate a correlation with height, where each inch represents 0.4 IQ points. Satoshi Kanazawa has authored and co-authored multiple papers on the subject, all peer reviewed. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the ... gent-women sums it up quite well, you can find the actual papers on google.

On google eh? because as lot of those peer reviewed articles cannot be found on google.......any article on google about the topic is not garanteed to be totally accurate, but even so nothing you posted proved men were more intelligent then women. So no you won't be able to convice anyone you are by default more intelligent then all the females here.

scholar.google.com

All it proved was that men on average using the one generally accepted method for IQ scored higher than women.

I haven't planned on convincing anyone that I'm by default more intelligent than all the females here, that seems to be what you "think" I'm saying so perhaps the problem is with your reading comprehension.

Yeah and they've found IQ does not accurately measure intelligence...I have taken psychology and the IQ test is really not held to that high of a regard anymore. And yes I had the impression that's what you were saying, if not sorry I misunderstood......but I fail to see how it had anything ot do with my reading comprehension or why it was nessisary to bring that into it. But since you did, keep in mind you did state 'men are smarter than women' which even someone with good reading skills could take as a blanket generalization.

And so google does have a good resource would you look at that, even so your links did not appear to be peer reveiwed articles from scientific studies, journals and such. But I am glad I know google has that thing, now I know where to do research since I'm not in college anymore.

I still find it hysterical that IQ somehow doesn't measure intelligence properly, yet I've never heard of a theoretical physicist with an IQ of 80. If it wasn't accurate to a degree, then you would see people who are obviously highly intelligent score poorly and people who are obviously less intelligent score well.

The IQ tests that I've taken tend to consist of a combination of verbal tests and logical problem solving. If a person is bad at logical problem solving, then it follows that they are lets say "less intelligent" when it comes to solving logical problems. If they score poorly verbally, it would indicate that they are "less intelligent" when it comes to language.

I suppose one could bring up emotional intelligence, but then emotional intelligence seems fairly straight forward, since psychopaths who more or less do not have emotions tend to be quite astute when it comes to emotional intelligence.

I figured the following argumentation and statistics made it clear that it was a matter of statistical averages, especially since I seem to remember pointing that out and clarifying it multiple times (hence the comment about reading comprehension).

The articles from Satoshi Kanazawa was from Psychology Today, and he does have multiple books out on the topic in addition to being published in other reputable publications.

The Danish studies referenced were by Helmut Nyborg at Aarhus University. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 690400385X The studies were brutally attacked but the panel found in favor of Helmut Nyborg rather than those who accused him of being among other things unscientific.

This article points out some of the physical differences in the brain between the genders. http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toan ... OANATJ.pdf



It's pretty nice, I also use wikipedia source links quite frequently since wikipedia isn't a good source but frequently links to good sources.

Uh-huh. http://sgerard.tumblr.com/post/22235551 ... ou-cowards

Wikipeida is very flawed anyone can makes changes to it.