File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_1999/anarchy-list.9912, message 838


From: OOTSONATI-AT-aol.com
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 22:14:44 EST
Subject: Re: (no subject)


In a message dated 12/24/99 3:59:20 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
vespass-AT-toast.net writes:

<< Uh, oots, I gotta disagree.  First, IQ is essentially meaningless.  It's 
 supposed to judge a combination of accumulated knowledge and reasoning 
 power, but accumulated knowledge is vague (I certainly know much more about 
 physics than Isaac Newton - actual math excepted - but my IQ on a 
 standardized test would surely be lower than his) and reasoning power is 
 poorly measured using (again standardized) assumptions of a finite variety, 
 and a person interested in doing well could familiarize themselves with 
 those types of questions.  Does that really mean that person is 
 smarter?  And then, the whole idea of "smartness" is just silly.  There's 
 nothing physically preventing me from understanding as much of the world as 
 Richard Feynman did, it would simply require more of my time, but there's 
 nothing he could know that I can't know and the same goes for anyone with a 
 remotely functioning higher brain. >>

I think I might have worded that wrong. True you can know what Newton or 
Einstein knew, but you can't combine the IQ of several to reach a higher IQ. 
A problem that would require an IQ of 300, could not be solved by 2 people 
with IQs of 150. That is what I meant by acumulative.

As for the purpose of IQ, from what I understand it is pretty useless for 
someone already finished with school or even well into their  education. It 
only determines what you are capable of learning, not what you actually know. 

I agree about how the insecure, over rate the tool. My psychology prof. told 
our class that he always has graduate students wanting him to give them IQ 
tests, after they graduate. He said he can hardly get it through to them that 
it won't do them any more good than they have already done.

Peace
OOT

   

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