Searching "comments":
| # | Comment | Survey |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Have you searched the internet far and wide? I think there are some sources that will ship to Canada. I'm not sure what your laws are like but I doubt that anything would come of it. There are a few sites selling cigarrettes for about $20 a carton, shipping would add a few dollars though. | How much do you spend for a pack of cigarettes? |
| 2 | You forgot plastic surgery | What makes a beautiful person beautiful? |
| 3 | It depends on what you want to define as "intelligence". The straight-forward answer is YES, intelligence tests absolutely predict how "smart" someone is. People who score high on IQ tests are better problem solvers and are more intellectually able. That being said, there are other characteristics a person might posess that wouldn't be directly measured by the IQ test but which still would be useful... long-term memory, musical abillity, artistic abillity, inter-personal skills, etc. People who think that the tests aren't measuring anything significant or substantive are foolish and need to see the research correlating IQ at age 10 with levels of success later in life. Smart people go farther in life AND do better on IQ tests... both for the same reason-- they are smart and good at figuring things out and solving problems. | Do you think IQ tests are a true measure of intelligence? |
| 4 | Well, actually, if you'll give me a minute I can find the research... I'm happy to post this as well because I think it specifically addresses Iseult's claims as well, which are bogus. The study I was thinking of specifically, is that starting in 1921, Lewis M Terman set out to investigate the common notion that genius-level intelligence is related to social and personal mal-adjustment, physical weakness, and mental instability. 1500 kids, californian, 8-12 y/o, IQ over 140. Average IQ 150, 80 kids with IQ's over 170. (To put this into perspective a standard deviation on an iq test is 15 or 16 points, mean=100, so these kids were over THREE standard deviations above average, putting them at 99.7%ile, the kids over 170 were 4.66 SD's above... or literally <1 per hundred thousand.) In 1926, the students were better adjusted, taller, stronger, and healthier than average children, fewer illnesses, fewer accidents. Not surprisingly, they performed exceptionally well in school. Terman died in 56, the study lives on to this day with the living kids. In 1955, when average income was 5,000, the average income for the group was 33,000. (Thats a TOTAL mind-fudge!). Two thirds were college graduates... many doctors, lawyers, scientists, professors, executives, etc. 2200 journal articles had been written by them, 92 books, 235 patents, and 38 novels. One individual was an oscar winning movie director, one was a famous science fiction writer. The group was split into three sub-groups based on level of success. Attempts were made to determine what most seperated the lowest group from the top. The top group was more likely to demomnstrate "prudene and forethought, will power, perserverence, and the desire to excel." (achievement need). Adult top groups showed only THREE personality differences... more goal-oriented, more perserverance, greater self-confidence. Winner in 1997 followed up on this, as did Brody, 1997 and Sternberg 1997 looking at broader ranges, and they all insist that intelligence is apparently NECESSARY for success in *any* field. That is to say that although there were many high-IQ people who were unsuccesful, there were no low-IQ people who were particularly succesful at anything. Now isn't that dreary? Sorry Forest Gump... (And yes, if you are picking it up, I do actively resent stupidity, sorry. I know it's mean.) Among intelligent people personality factors already listed, especially achievement need, seems to be the critical determinant of who will and will not be succesful. Even more dreary, apparently even the high-scorers with the least desirable personality characteristics in the original study all did significantly better than average. You can look at it and come to your own conclusions. This page here is fairly critical of the study so it might appeal to you more but it is a fair account of both sides of the issue still. http://www.geocities.com/ultrahiiq/Terman_Summary.html Succesful isn't necessarily a great word to use, but, essentially, any measure of success you can possible imagine other than things that are really extraneous are going to positively correlate with IQ. Even social skills, emotional intelligence, etc., positively correlates with IQ. ATHLETIC SUCCESS positively correlates with IQ (now isn't that mind-boggling?). Even height positively correlates with IQ. Yes, it is true that IQ positively correlates with bad vision. Might relate to damage caused to the eyes by reading, some have suggested. I don't think we should constrain people in life on the basis of what their IQ is, but we should be realistic in saying that someone with an IQ of say, 120, might make a better lock-pick than a Ph.D. The reality is that the intellect, which is a primarily heritable characteristic according to twin studies (Correlation= .85 among identicals seperated at birth! That's HUGE!), is the predominate determinant of success in our current society, and will be unless we some-day regress to a point where physical strength plays the major role. I like to think about it this way. Picture a ghetto. In that ghetto imagine a gang. Now imagine the leader of that gang, the most-bad-ass-mother-fudgeer-on-the-front-lines who always manages to dodge the cops and not get his ass SHOT, bi-atch. Chances are he has a significantly higher IQ than the other gang members. | Do you think IQ tests are a true measure of intelligence? |
| 5 | Actually, I take back the social skills correlation. I'd really have to think a little more about this before I can say anything worthwhile. http://print.ditd.org/floater=107.html | Do you think IQ tests are a true measure of intelligence? |
| 6 | We'll, it would generally be stupid to make predictions for groups of individuals who are out-side the spectrum of the sample group, but in this particular case it's clear that the findings extrapolate. If really smart people are REALLY succesful and there is a trend line in that group showing that the smarter they are the more succesful they are, and if REALLY stupid people are really unsuccesful (and that's A-Priori), it's simple enough to fill in the intermediary information. There has been research on these specific groups as well but the study I referenced had a $20,000,000 grant backing it (in 1921!!!!) so it is the only one that has followed a large group of people throughout their life-times. In retrospect they WAAAAAYYYYY over sampled the higher IQ ranges (the study had about 100 times the statistical power that it really needed) and they might as well have just selected a normal cross-section with some intentional over-sampling of the edges of the bell-curve. Essentially though, in this case it isn't going to do any harm to extrapolate that the generalized trend of More IQ=More Success isn't just anomalous to the edges. Like I said, there are studies specifically addressing this but I don't have the time to research it right now. | Do you think IQ tests are a true measure of intelligence? |
| 7 | The original IQ tests were done when the children were between 8 and 10. They were all public school students. You can never KNOW that there is a causal relationship without doing a controlled study, but you can't exactly randomly assign people to the MIddle and High IQ groups, you know? It's pretty clear to me-- more intellect CAUSES more success. I think you must know this is true as well. There are other factors playing into it, sure. The way I see it though, you can spend your life doing what most social scientists do, which is try to itemize these other factors, or you can call a spade a spade and say that even if we could somehow control for all other factors IQ would almost certainly show a significant correlation with most standard measures of success, like "income". You raise a good point though, that's why I told Zang to come to his own conclusions. | Do you think IQ tests are a true measure of intelligence? |
| 8 | Absolutely true. Great point Zang. It's a bad idea to make assumptions outside of the data you have. | Do you think IQ tests are a true measure of intelligence? |
| 9 | Oh, I understand. No, researchers wouldn't do that for a reliable measure like this. You do that on unreliable measures because it is possible that the data point was corrupt. IQ tests aren't prone to corruption like that... there's no way someone with a 100 IQ is going to accidentally score 160 on a test. So, yes, you raise a good point but it isn't reliable here. Incidentally, I'm sitting in stats class right now and I decided to get to the heart of this. I got out the US NEWS DATASET that they use to rank colleges (I love having the inside line) and I did some complex statistical analysis (well, the computer did), to answer one simple question-- What factors MOST influence a college's graduation rate? And they are... in no particular order... Whether the college is public or private... In state tuition... AND... SAT SCORES OF ACCEPTED STUDENTS!! Haha! % of students who were in top 10% of high school class had ABSOLUTELY NO BEARING on graduation rates (p>.4) For sat we have a correlation of 6.2% change in graduation rate for each 100 point change in SAT score. p<.0001. So the critical determinant of whether a school will graduate a lot of students is how well they did on the SAT... I know MSGMAN is thinking "correlation is not causation", but I just did a multiple regression on the other major variables in this analysis which CONTROLLED FOR %ile rank in high school class... in fact, the data set controlled for 4 other variables (TOP 10%, public/private,Alumni donations, in state tuition). Anything that MSG can imagine was possible confounding I've got data on and I'd be happy to rule it out by doing some more analysis... though it's pretty straight forward-- SAT IS A BETTER PREDICTOR OF GRADUATION RATES AT A SCHOOL THAN HIGH SCHOOL SUCCESS OF ACCEPTED STUDENTS. And SAT was a pretty good predictor. Standard error .008. (keep in mind we are talking about SAT-score units vs. percent graduation rates so it's a little cooky until you standardize it, but it is still low.) There is still a lot of variation that is unaccounted for by the SAT data but I will remark that it is interesting that average SAT has a significant effect on graduation rates but % of students who did well in HS does not... interesting, no? That APTITUDE test of basic intelligence has done it again. (For MSG-- on the SAT data, which was the most significant predictor by far n=590, t=7, and of course therefore p<.000001 :). | Do you think IQ tests are a true measure of intelligence? |
| 10 | Also, I just read your post again and you are saying that these IQ test skills are skills that people "taught themselves" (which has truth to do it, definitely, they are tests of "concept mastery" and the reality is that you can teach people new concepts with some considerable coaxing.) Consider this though-- taking your hypothesis for granted, what motivated them to teach themselves? Seperated at birth identical twins show correlations of .85 on intelligence (It's dangerous to call a trait "genetic" or non-genetic, but if ever there were a case where we could say that something is genetic, this is it. It is much more heritable than say, PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS such as motivation, goal-oriented behavior, etc.)... So the question becomes, if IQ is more heritable than any identified personality characteristic, how can we attribute the scores on IQ tests to differences in personality? They are more heritable than the personality characteristics, therefore this intermediate step you are proposing is only possible if you can identify some sort of personality characteristic that has a heritability of .85, or about 4 times the heritability (as measured by seperated twin studies) of any currently known personality characteristic... Any ideas what that might be? Unless you can propose what this elusive personality characteristic is with a correlation coefficient that is unprecedented in the history of psychology, we've ruled out the possibility that a personality characteristic is playing a determinative role in IQ tests. I'm CERTAIN that personality characteristics, heritable or otherwise, are playing some role in the scores people get on the test, but the are relatively small compared to the effect of (genetically transmitted) basic innate intelligence on the test scores. Isn't it simpler just to accept that we can shape a rudimentary concept of generalized cognitive ability, which results on high scores on IQ tests and also success in life by some measures-- and to accept that these IQ test scores are not a result of personality characteristics due to their being many times more heritable than any known personality characteristic? Is this concept perfect? No. But the more resolution you want in terms of describing someone's abillities, the more complicated the measure has to be. A single number is simple, maybe overly simple, but still. And the IQ test has been designed so that scores on it are good predictors of generalized cognitive abillities as measured by other tests, and interviews, etc. And now let's hypothesise that some non-personality, psychological characteristic other than IQ exists which is affecting these IQ scores... doesn't that characteristic BECOME a part of "G" by definition? Let's call this abillity something like "Internal and never socialized desire to think about things..." Isn't this "high cognitive need" which is having such a profound effect on IQ scores but isn't manifesting itself in the external personality characteristics of the individual essentially "G". I never said G had to do with the structure of the brain-- no one has any idea... maybe it is a result of a genetic pre-disposition to have excessive neuro-cognitive activity surrounding external stimuli, which over time results in a lot of thinking, and thus the learning of numerous concepts, and an improvement in concept mastery skills, and then good scores on IQ tests... all of this happening before age 8. Isn't THAT "G"? Who ever said it was something structural or whatever? And fudge, maybe all of these psychological events ARE ANALOGOUS to structural differences... I mean, essentially they must be on some level... mind is matter. I hate to say it MSG, but I've got you on this one. Yes, the scores are corrupted to a significant extent by motivational factors, but even accounting for this corruption there is statistical and practical significance to the correlation between IQ measured early and say, income later in life. There are numerous other factors which will have a significant impact on the degree of success a person experiences, and to simplify life success to the regression line for a single numerical score on a single test is nuts. However, even when every other factor imaginable is regressed along with it, you are going to see the major influence on income being that IQ score, with honorable mentions for motivational concerns, desirable personality characteristics, and physical characteristics. | Do you think IQ tests are a true measure of intelligence? |
