Is IQ even remotely a good way to measure intelligence?

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Really, let's finally make this a thread.

I am going to go with: "Not really good". I think that if the difference between two IQ sis very large, like 50, then it is likely that the higher IQ person is more intelligent than the other.

a) My IQ is around 140, which is larger than average and larger than Feynman's (read later). But I have done things remarkably stupid during my life. And I am so far spending 9 years in college.

b) You can practice for IQ tests, verbal, non-verbal, the questions have a ring to them and you can practice with similar questions to improve your skill at solving them. If IQ tests grade skill rather than inherent intelligence, then aren't they just the equivalent of cross word puzzles or sudoku and the such? And basically just an entertaining thing to do rather than a test?

c) Richard Feynman got 125 IQ. Take a look to his life, the guy was a complete genius. Not only in scientific, and math skills, but also a social genius.

d) If IQ tests grade some intelligence, do they even grade the correct sort of intelligence? I used to think that the concept of emotional intelligence was BS. But when I finally understood why I flunked at college, I started to take it more seriously. Is higher IQ correlated with better success? Or is there more to it? What about creative geniuses? What about ability to transmit ideas and convince others? Who is smarter? Steve Jobs or Nicola Tesla?

They say that size of the brain is correlated with higher requirements for social skills among animals. Social skills turn out to be some of the most complicated things our brains do.


e) How about defining intelligence as that thing that humans can do but computers cannot do easily? This is the definition of intelligence used at the field of artificial intelligence. If we go by that, I am sad to tell you that a computer could solve IQ tests rather easily.

It's not a perfect measure of intelligence obviously but I think in general people with higher intelligence score better on IQ tests than people with lower intelligence.

I can't really answer, because I have no idea what "intelligence" is. I can tell you that IQ is partially genetic, and that IQ is correlated with Good Things Happening. That's just about the extent of what anyone can tell you about IQ.

If anything, I think that the concept of IQ is the beginning (and hopefully not the end) of a deconstruction of the word "intelligence". Eventually, the word "intelligence" might be considered to be a silly word like "ability". Ability to do what?

I also want to make another point which I feel is extremely important, because it is something that I have figured out in my life by going through some tough times. The point is this: there are about a million limiting factors which you will bump up against long before you bump up against the limiting factor of your IQ.

In fact, I personally think that very few people ever bump up against the limiting factor of their IQ.

If you are going to compare yourself to someone with a higher IQ than you as a way of explaining your relative lack of success, ask yourself these questions: Do you put in the same amount of work that they do? Do you enjoy the subject as much as they do? Do you spend your spare time thinking about the subject as much as they do? Do you recover from failure as fast as they do? I believe that these are much more important factors. Richard Feynman is a good example of this.

I found this: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arc ... -iq/22260/

Perhaps the real good question to make is whether or not there is such thing as an innate intelligence level.

IQ tests define intelligence in certain ways. If you accept the definitions, they have various degrees of reliability and validity.

Some people have argued that additional variables should be included - in addition to the usual verbal, analytical, and abstract abilities.

I really don't take them seriously as a measure of "intelligence".

There are multiple and different kinds of intelligence and I believe very few could be accurately shown on such tests, due to a number of factors but not the least, because the IQ test was only designed to test children in order to ascertain which ones needed help academically. It was not designed to test one's overall "intelligence", simply ones academic cognitive abilities and skills compared to ones age.

It does not consider the difference between performance IQ and verbal IQ and how that will impact if you have a markedly uneven profile of ablities. Nor does it consider how their scores much even out to an average over the different categories such as spatial, mathematical or linguistic. This is not even mentioning creative, artistic or social ablities, which among others, which are not even measured. It heavily favours those who think in patterns, concepts or with a lot of logic, which may or may not, have practical real world applications.

Nor does it account for the way in which one thinks, which could possibly be just as important. Often through history, the human race has been moved forward by those who think in a different way, not just necessary because they were intelligent.

Last but not least, ones IQ is not a guarantee of success, most people expect it to be. It will not necessarily guarantee you success in life, at work, or even at school, especially if you have other conditions that will affect your ablity to communicate and function.

IQ tests are very good predictors on how one might do on future IQ tests.

ruveyn

It was meant to predict success in school -- and that, it does (minus social aspects), as nominalist says. It should be called Academic Potential Quotient or some other, fitter name. I think the first half of "IQ" makes it appear as something it isn't, and never should have been thought to be.

The IQ test is a good measure of a limited type of intelligence, as it occurs in western cultures. There are other types of intelligence, as we aspies should know better than the general population, since we tend to do well on IQ tests but fare poorly on social matters that NT people understand as naturally as breathing.
I score a 'mere' 120, and I frequently have to depend on people whom I work with (for example) to explain social situations, even though they are not nearly as good as me at math, medical terminology, physiology, logic, or whatever. It is not unusual for me to offend people without meaning to, sometimes egregiously, sometimes within minutes of meeting them, and sometimes *because* I am smarter/better educated than them (for example, when a traveler didn't understand the difference between 'idiosyncratic,' which was the word I used to describe the rule she was following, and 'idiotic,' which is what she thought I meant. I didn't even understand why she was mad at me until someone else explained it to me).