Actually, 50% of people are less intelligent than the median. 99% of people could be smarter than average with just 1 extra stupid dumbfuck. In today’s day and age, there are a few prominent contenders for that position.
IQ test results follow a normal distribution by design (i.e. they are calibrated so 50% of the people are on each side of 100, and most people land on the middle of the range).
If we are talking about intelligence in general, it’s a very fuzzy social construct that encompasses a wide range of innate and learned skills, so we will never be able to boil it down to an objective number.
And that’s why IQ tests are fucking useless. They test a few key areas of what we consider intelligence - pattern recognition and continuation, logic - but entirely fail at the actual intelligence. You can be amazing at recognising patterns in a standardized test and utterly fail at recognising patterns in real life.
Not to mention emotional/social intelligence, which is a much larger aspect of our entire life, is not part of the test, nor is general knowledge. You could be super up to date on historical events, recite entire presentations about specific topics, write amazing poems, and still score an IQ that puts you firmly between a rock and a slightly rotten orange.
it should also be noted that modern “IQ” tests are much more detailed than just identifying patterns, it includes stuff like testing how well you can recount numbers forwards and backwards and whatnot.
You get scores for multiple different areas of cognition, like verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing Speed.
For example i test highly in everything but working memory, where i got a hilariously low score of 80 which rather reflects how i feel when i forget food in the microwave oven…
WTF does that have to do with intelligence? That’s just memorization.
As someone with zero short term (working) memory, I’d fail that part, yet people are always astounded at what I remember (and I work with crazy complex systems).
What a crock.
(I typically test just over 100 on IQ tests - not a brag, just more to show how useless they are).
WTF does that have to do with intelligence? That’s just memorization.
“IQ” is best summarized in the fewest possible words as basically “a measure of how quickly people learn”. Thus it is an important aspect - one of many aspects - of IQ (which, by the way, has very limited scope in what it is attempting to measure).
People think IQ = smart, or IQ = intelligence[1], but really it’s really not. I went on a rant about this in a separate comment, using my own life as an example (I have a high IQ, which has helped me in ways, but is largely useless for my success and happiness in life)/
WTF does that have to do with intelligence? That’s just memorization.
Well, first of all “intelligence” is an incredibly broad concept which is better described as “cognition”, and second: Yes that’s precisely the point, these days they test multiple things so the result is actually fairly useful.
I’m not sure how testing your ability to memorize things is supposed to be crock? Are you saying that memorization isn’t useful, that it doesn’t affect your ability to do mental tasks?
Because i’d certainly disagree with that claim. Having a poor working memory suck big fat donkey balls, it makes life incredibly annoying and basic tasks can be extremely difficult because i literally just fucking forget to do them. Without my phone to write reminders on and set alarms i would need daily assistence just to function at a level that most people take completely for granted.
And since IQ is a statistical measurement, about 65% of people are within 1 standard deviation of average, and hence are identical under casual observation. So, for all practical purposes, most of the people you meet are average, and the rest are split between above and below.
Which is why most comedians aren’t known for being mathematically inclined.
In a quota that uses integers and puts 100 as the average, a lot of people will be exactly average. Therefore it is incorrect to say that 50% is below average. It’s probably somewhere between 48% and 49%.
50% of the people is more stupid than average
Actually, 50% of people are less intelligent than the median. 99% of people could be smarter than average with just 1 extra stupid dumbfuck. In today’s day and age, there are a few prominent contenders for that position.
IQ test results follow a normal distribution by design (i.e. they are calibrated so 50% of the people are on each side of 100, and most people land on the middle of the range).
If we are talking about intelligence in general, it’s a very fuzzy social construct that encompasses a wide range of innate and learned skills, so we will never be able to boil it down to an objective number.
And that’s why IQ tests are fucking useless. They test a few key areas of what we consider intelligence - pattern recognition and continuation, logic - but entirely fail at the actual intelligence. You can be amazing at recognising patterns in a standardized test and utterly fail at recognising patterns in real life.
Not to mention emotional/social intelligence, which is a much larger aspect of our entire life, is not part of the test, nor is general knowledge. You could be super up to date on historical events, recite entire presentations about specific topics, write amazing poems, and still score an IQ that puts you firmly between a rock and a slightly rotten orange.
They aren’t ‘useless’. There’s a reason despite it’s flaws that it is still used today: It is a very good predictor of academic outcome.
That said, way too many assume it can do far more than it’s supposed to.
it should also be noted that modern “IQ” tests are much more detailed than just identifying patterns, it includes stuff like testing how well you can recount numbers forwards and backwards and whatnot.
You get scores for multiple different areas of cognition, like verbal comprehension, perceptual reasoning, working memory, and processing Speed.
For example i test highly in everything but working memory, where i got a hilariously low score of 80 which rather reflects how i feel when i forget food in the microwave oven…
Recount numbers forward and backwards?
WTF does that have to do with intelligence? That’s just memorization.
As someone with zero short term (working) memory, I’d fail that part, yet people are always astounded at what I remember (and I work with crazy complex systems).
What a crock.
(I typically test just over 100 on IQ tests - not a brag, just more to show how useless they are).
“IQ” is best summarized in the fewest possible words as basically “a measure of how quickly people learn”. Thus it is an important aspect - one of many aspects - of IQ (which, by the way, has very limited scope in what it is attempting to measure).
People think IQ = smart, or IQ = intelligence[1], but really it’s really not. I went on a rant about this in a separate comment, using my own life as an example (I have a high IQ, which has helped me in ways, but is largely useless for my success and happiness in life)/
It’s right there in the name! ↩︎
Well, first of all “intelligence” is an incredibly broad concept which is better described as “cognition”, and second: Yes that’s precisely the point, these days they test multiple things so the result is actually fairly useful.
I’m not sure how testing your ability to memorize things is supposed to be crock? Are you saying that memorization isn’t useful, that it doesn’t affect your ability to do mental tasks?
Because i’d certainly disagree with that claim. Having a poor working memory suck big fat donkey balls, it makes life incredibly annoying and basic tasks can be extremely difficult because i literally just fucking forget to do them. Without my phone to write reminders on and set alarms i would need daily assistence just to function at a level that most people take completely for granted.
And since IQ is a statistical measurement, about 65% of people are within 1 standard deviation of average, and hence are identical under casual observation. So, for all practical purposes, most of the people you meet are average, and the rest are split between above and below.
Which is why most comedians aren’t known for being mathematically inclined.
In a quota that uses integers and puts 100 as the average, a lot of people will be exactly average. Therefore it is incorrect to say that 50% is below average. It’s probably somewhere between 48% and 49%.
If you require scores to be integers, this is true. If you allow for decimals, probably nobody is exactly average. :)
More of less?