Have you ever taken an IQ test?

[Harv]

Myself - Answer to OP question: NO.

My thought on IQ.

Spoiler :

There is no reason for me to do it. The only reason I might do it is if it was part of a battery of tests if I wanted to get a more formal diagnosis for a condition such as ASD.

A certain country is obsessed with IQ tests. Their universities do not directly test IQ, but a lot of them run tests such as SAT. I believe they are obsessed with Q because the culture has a fixed mentality as opposed to a growth mentality. (They consider aptitude to be deterministic.)

I agree with the comment that a number over 120 is meaningless. It means approximately top 10%. If we went metric and expressed it as a percentile score as opposed a number to be read as a percentage, then we would care a lot less. Top 10%. Top 1%. Top 0.1%. By the time we get to top 0.01%, then we have achieved a number smaller than the inverse of the sample size. How do we make predictions based on this?

I agree with the comment above that it is about ego. (and hierarchy) I will add that the comment is expressed intelligently and avoids the more crass indicators of hierarchy, which might be indicated in centimeters if we went metric.

I do not quite agree with the comment that trying to boil down general intelligence to a single number is silly. It based on the idea that an individual who does well on one test is likely to do well on other tests. Similarly in school we might have observed that grades in unrelated school subjects were often correlated. If I reference the old-school Intelligence score, 3 to 18 based on three six-sided dice - If we rolled 3 more dice to achieve a total from 6 to 36, then we are more likely to achieve a high total if we started with a good base total.

AQ presented as an analogy to IQ.

Spoiler :

Another analogy I can think of is athleticism. We can start with expressing AQ as the quotient of the apparent athletic age of an individual to the chronological age, valid up to a chronological age of 16 years, at which point, we will use an athletic test for adults, scaled with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15. So if I was 10 years old and played sports at the level of an 8 year old, then my AQ would be 80. For adults, it would be better to use a percentile score, and 80 would translate to about 10% and that would mean 90% of the general adult population his more generally athleti

I went to school with somebody who became a major league baseball player. He was very athletic and good at a lot of sports. Obviously he would have a very high AQ. Most likely, he would do better than I at any sport you can name. If we do not know the sport, it is more likely he would pick it up more quickly than I. Later in life, I informally took up powerlifting and participated in a single formal powerlifting meet. If he took up powerlifting, it is likely he would achieve a better score. I also (casually) took up weightlifting and participated in a few formal weightlifting meets. It is likely that if he took up weightlifting, he would get a better score.

Near the end of my career at that gym, a high school girl joined the weightlifting club. It was explained to me that she is a genetic freak. She passed my numbers while still making newbie gains. This is a counterexample to the concept of AQ I was describing above. The story I obtained was that she was doing well enough in cross-country running, but was at a disadvantage for being short. She seemed to do well at strength stuff, so was sent over to the weightlifting club. I have no idea if she will make the Olympics or move in a different direction.

That brings up another question. What percentage of the general student population has high enough AQ or potential to achieve something spectacular, such as being in the Olympics? I believe this number is about 5%, maybe 10%. This circles all the way back to the comment that any number above 120 is meaningless. (added - and requires more specific testing)

The other reason I used AQ as an analogy is I just expressed a very high percentage of he general population having the general potential to achieve something spectacular. However actually achieving it requires a lot of work, much more work than the actual potential.

Now it comes down to work ethic.

 

[Kyriakos]

IQ isn't a measurement of how well you will do. One of the most intelligent people ever is said to be Sidis, and afaik his work isn't important in any field.
If you aren't practicing taking those tests, your score might (if it differs enough from the average) present notably higher or lower complexity in how you experience things.
It would imo be very difficult to argue that a higher score means nothing, or that it is bad.

Clearly for any success in a field, you need to study, regardless of whether you are more intelligent than average or not. It would take a while for you to get to the limit of your ability in the first place.

 

[Birdjaguar]

This is from a WaPo article on lead poisoning in the Roman Empire. But it might help to explain the Tea Party and MAGA movements we have seen in the past two decades.

During the peak era of leaded gasoline in the United States — from the late 1960s to the early 1980s — lead pollution was so heavy that the average level for a child was about 15 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. Such levels corresponded to a decline in IQ of nine points, the study noted.

The level of lead pollution ingested by children in the United States has dropped markedly since stringent restrictions were introduced in the 1970s and ’80s on its use in things like gasoline and paint. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the level of airborne lead in the United States declined by 98 percent between 1980 and 2014.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/01/08/roman-empire-lead-pollution-iq-study/

 

[Gori the Grey]

The level of lead pollution ingested by children in the United States has dropped markedly since stringent restrictions were introduced in the 1970s and ’80s on its use in things like gasoline and paint. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the level of airborne lead in the United States declined by 98 percent between 1980 and 2014.

And did IQ scores bounce back?

 

[Birdjaguar]

And did IQ scores bounce back?

idk; are millennials less stupid that the late boomers?

 

[Gori the Grey]

There's this:

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3922608-american-iqs-rose-30-points-in-the-last-century-now-they-may-be-falling/

but it doesn't acknowledge the 9 point drop due to lead. It has us going up and up through the 20th century.

 

[Birdjaguar]

There's this:

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3922608-american-iqs-rose-30-points-in-the-last-century-now-they-may-be-falling/

but it doesn't acknowledge the 9 point drop due to lead. It has us going up and up through the 20th century.

That is a great link. I wonder though when (at what age) most IQ tests are given. If it is under, say, 24, then the effects of lead on the brain may not show. Lead pollution impact may take longer to show up. Also, which kids get IQ tests may be important. If poor, inner city kids get tested less, the effects might not show. But without any actual confirmation or study results, I will just assume that Trump and MAGA all suffer from cognitive decline because of lead....

 

[Kyriakos]

I think that if Aesop was writing his fables now, he would title it "the ox and the grapes" ^^