High IQ problems without high IQ

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the late scientist William Shockley had a "parlor game" neurological efficiency tester that he would take to parties and test various people with, it consisted of a brain wave monitor and a flashing light and a timer, and the testee would be the electrodes taped to his or her skull and stare at a flashing light while the machine whirred in the background. the more closely the output signal [brainwave reaction] followed the input [flashing light] the brighter [intentional quasi pun] the testee was deemed to be [or at least more neurologically efficient], and in his case the smartest person he tested was a beautician who spoke 12 languages fluently.

I agree very much. I've been given three professionally administered IQ tests, and a lot of it was based on your education and ability to take tests, which is not really a true measure of how well you can manage yourself in the real world. I've taken the Stanford-Binet twice, once as a child, once in college, and the WAIS-IV recently, when I was diagnosed with autism. The Stanford-Binet scored me well above average. It was mostly written learning and visual puzzles, which are my strengths.

For the WAIS-IV, I scored squarely in the average range. The WAIS-IV was a lot more varied and comprehensive, I think. It required me to remember strings of numbers and work out math problems given to me verbally, find abstract symbols, and encode strings of numbers into letters, as well as the more traditional written and visual portion. I did really well in some parts (visual, written) and really badly in others (verbal/spoken, processing speed), so it all balanced out to average. So the uptake is, I can do great coding a website or finding typos in a document, but then have to have someone repeat themselves several times when telling me how to get to a bar three blocks away.

Try not to sweat the IQ stuff. It's an imperfect tool to try to see where a person's strengths and weaknesses are. Studies have already shown that many IQ tests are culturally biased or skewed toward certain types of learning and thinking. Many people on the spectrum have excellent skills in some areas, and really struggle in others (like me). Also, remember that there are people with very high IQs who ultimately did not have a successful life, like Bobby Fisher. There are successful people who did not finish college.

I think it's important to focus on our strengths, and compensate for our weaknesses. I believe that we all have something we can excel at. It doesn't have to be "academic" -- could be being a fantastic cake baker, motorcycle mechanic, docent at a museum, artist, parent.

Maybe that's why they are online rather than offered as real tests. At any rate, there's no single, agreed-upon definition of intelligence, so it's kind of meaningless to say that anything does or does not seem to test intelligence without explaining what you mean by intelligence. Maybe the tests don't test what you think of as intelligence, but they do test what someone else thinks of as intelligence.

As an example, cultural awareness and dry recall are tested on the Wechsler IQ test, which is accepted as a standard of intelligence by some people in (and outside of) psychology.


Not necessarily. If a person has a good memory, for example, that person is going to have a good memory regardless of schooling, albeit perhaps a bit less practiced, yet there are people who have endured years of memorizing facts in school and improved their memories very little. Clearly there is something to memory beyond schooling, and it is therefore at least possibly inborn and therefore at least possibly an aspect of intelligence (if one accepts that intelligence ought to be defined in terms of inborn traits).


Again, this question is not really answerable unless you specify what the forms of intelligence are.