IQ Tests

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A couple of years ago, after friends had me watch "A Beautiful Mind", I again went looking for data in high IQ folk.

On one site I found a person who qualified his difficulty with the pattern recognition portion of these tests. He wrote of a question he has missed. It was one of those "Which of the following does not belong with the others" questions.

He had seen immediately that the names of all the items _except for one began with the same letter. But that pattern, although real, was not the one tested for. The test author,s mind was not sufficiently stochastic it seems.

I wonder then just how relevant such tests are for those of us outside the norms. I personally dismiss them as irrelevant.

As stated earlier, the whole concept of IQ tests were a form of Eugenics. I've read some things on the creators, and it's kind of chilling. Also the earlier tests had a lot based on cultural knowledge--for example there may be questions that an American would know easily, but recent immigrants to the country would have no idea of. These poor souls scored very low on the test, and were branded as "stupid". (Questions involved things like the New York Yankees and Babe Ruth--not something likely to be on the front of the mind of many non-English speaking citizens at the time).

I took one from a book the other day and stated the odd one out based on the number of syllables in each word (none made any sense). It turned out that they were all anagrams which needed to be worked out then you choose the odd one out

As I recall IQ tests measure four things, I flunked at least two, and scored high overall. Not only did I lose faith in tests, but in the people who took them.

What it was designed for was a normal curve, 80-120, for the world has no use for people outside that.

Overall scores have been going up one point a decade for a hundred years, are people getting smarter?

Taking the other side, the Vikings had an IQ of 2 ?

I never made any money off of my overall IQ, but spaceial relationships, repairing machines, has been great.

Anyone over 120 should have a second series of tests, perhaps they cheated.

I am a truely tolerant person, unless you cross me, and I have tried to understand as Professionals with an overall IQ of 110 tried to describe savants, geniuses, and other people with partial scores three times theirs.

All I could gather is, with the help of the drug companies, they are seeking a cure.

Their is some unfairness in life. Really. The musical types, do band together. Math, Mechanics, Physics, do not have an easy life, making music, having people clap and throw money, getting groupies who will do anything, having their own phamacutical industry, getting recording contracts, gold records, for two minutes and thirteen seconds of work. Becoming world famous at seventeen for coming up with Sh La La, Do Wop Do Ditty Ba, does not happen in our fields.

A Nobel pays well because they know no one will learn your name in the first place, much less remember it. It is not a lot in the world, but is more than anyone in the sciences will ever see.

The greatest Doctor of High Energy Physics I know, is now running a bead store, and finally making some real money.

I have always wanted to open a remote place where people could genius for room and board. They will have to do something useful like pick fruit, but the rest of the time they would have food and shelter, and a peaceful place to sit, rock, and ponder. Who knows, one might come up with a better way to pick fruit.

I do know that if we stick to Math, Physics, Mechanics, we will starve, and people will hate us. Throw in the aspie thing, and they will beat us up, but farm laborers get respect.