Best way to test my intelligence?

Factual Questions
41

The problem is that there’s a lot of different things that you could call “intelligent” and, likely, you’re going to be dumb at some of them. For example:

  1. Able to memorize a lot of stuff
  2. Able to produce novel ideas
  3. Able to chop big problems up into smaller, easier problems
  4. Able to control oneself and not succumb to various biases, fallacies, shallow desires, etc.
  5. Able to manipulate and ingratiate yourself with others

IQ tests, for example, might largely be testing 2 and 3. And anyone who is good at both of those things would be called “intelligent”, regardless that they’re pretty crap at the other three categories.

Effectively, the issue is that it’s so hard to be above average across all metrics that just being at a high level on more than one is already quite spectacular. Nicola Tesla would be horrible at 4 and 5 and, averaging in this scores with 2 and 3, he goes from being a genius to being ordinary.

4, you can basically test yourself. If you wanted to gain a hundred pounds or lose a hundred pounds, could you? If news from every TV channel, streaming service, video, and visual medium started producing content of the quality of The History Channel, could you switch to text news or would you consume the least-bad visual variant that was available? If your spouse left you, could you quickly recover and move on with your life? Were you able to resist drugs and alcohol, despite all social pressure?

5, you can try cold calling people to sell them a time share. The more money you make doing that, the better you are at that style of intellect.

Most likely, testing everything, you’re average. So the smart answer is: Test yourself on your strong points and if you’ve got enough on those to lord yourself over others, then you should be satisfied that you’re intelligent. If you can’t but you’re also not in a home for the mentally disabled, haven’t been wiped out by vegas, and haven’t fallen for any scam emails, then you’re probably fairly average across the board.

42

Most police shows are pretty stupid. CHicago PD has at least learned to cover the back door when going to catch a suspect, and I see L&O is slowly learning this also. Next is wearing gloves at crime scenes. The FBI shows seem to ignore the bureaucracy infighting problems brought to light by the 9-11 commission. Also, maybe it’s being in Canada, but police hauling out their weapon whenever they fell like it seems a bit to macho.

Not to mention finding (and getting accurate facial rec) from surveillance video from various sources without leaving the office. Plus, how does the FBI know what banks someone uses when they find a suspect out of the blue? Nobody has out-of-state licenses or plates? How do you narrow down the right “John MacDonald” on a country-wide DMV license database?

They also tend to look for pattern recognition skillls. Not just cow-horse-chicken, but those ones where a series of divided squares has, say, embedded solid and empty triangles and circles with “what’s the next one in this sequence…” that’s probably a more accurate measure of perception and reasoning than math or vocabulary, but again measures only one thing. Also, having a few examples to practice on, to understand exactly what the “trick” is to the questions, certainly does help.

One example I recall mentioned about cultural bias, was a question about the circumference length of a picket fence minus gates being asked of youngsters who grew up in a place where nobody had yards or fences.

43

Psychologists are aware of this. That is why different tests are designed to measure different things, and some tests are designed to measure multiple things. The latent trait that represents the common part to all of these tests is referred to as g.

If you want to know about someone’s emotional perception, creativity, or musical ability, then use tests that measure those things. If you think those are important parts of intelligence, then incorporate the results of those tests into your overall intelligence score.

None of these things are gotchas.

The problem with intelligence tests is inappropriate use of the results, not (necessarily) the tests themselves, and definitely not the concept of intelligence in the first place.

44

Yes. What @Cardigan indirectly pointed out is that a couple decades ago it became fashionable to relabel “emotional/social sense” as “emotional intelligence”. And creativity as “creative intelligence”, and musical aptitude as “musical intelligence”.

Each was a misapplication of the traditional meaning of the word “intelligence” to attempt to get some reflected glory attached to useful aptitudes that US culture, the US economy, and the US educational establishment put on a lower rung than plain old “intellectual intelligence”. You know, smartness, ingenuity, & book learning skills. The stuff middle managers want to see.

None of which is to say those other things aren’t useful human attributes nor that reliable repeatable aptitude assessments of them are valueless. Far from it. A more complete understanding of multi-faceted human nature and human capabilities both collectively and individually can only be good.

But using terms originally designed to obfuscate or push an agenda is not the path to actual communication and understanding.

45

I was 25, there were a couple in their 50s, and one old geezer who looked older than I am now. Most of the group was in their 30s or maybe early 40s. We all got along together fine. First meeting I went to about half of the people were in one room chatting, and the other half were in the next room watching Deep Throat. :smiley: Other meetings included the annual clothing-optional pool party at one couple’s house, and the time a guy who was more or less in charge of several local or semi-local cemetaries gave us a behind-the-scenes tour, including lighting off the furnace used for cremations. Most meetings, though, were at someone’s house and we just sat around talking.

46

Yes, but I was never told the number, and my mother (who was told) doesn’t remember exactly what it was.

For instance, one IQ test consists of asking the subject to draw a picture of a person, with the test then being scored based on how much detail is included, and which kinds of details. It’s probably possible, at current tech levels, to train an AI to score such a test, but it’s not something you can reduce to a multiple-choice scantron.

Of course, given that there are a variety of tests that all seem to measure the same fundamental thing, if you really want a good measure, then you do all of those tests, and combine the results of them in some way (average, or weighted average, or median, or average-after-discarding-outliers, or whatever).

47

I vaguely recall some test in elementary school were we were not told the results.
Averaging several tests sounds like a good idea.

48

So Picasso was a moron?

49

No, he did some nice stuff until he found out that people would pay Big Bucks for strange stuff.

50

Picasso’s cubist paintings include a lot of details. Those details are portrayed in a very unusual way, but they’re there. In fact, part of what makes cubism is the inclusion of more detail than is usual.

51

Off-topic but, realistically, I suspect that the success of modernist forms of art are related to the fall of the patronage system. During the time of Leonardo and Michaelangelo, the lead artist could manage a small troupe of professionals to work on a single painting for several years. Ergo, you could produce high detail, high quality paintings. These days, an artist needs to crank out as many copies of something at-least mildly decorative as fast as they can - all by themselves - just to try and achieve some minimal level of quality of life.

Impressionism was already working in the direction of art for the masses - where you need to produce enough product in a factory production style to be able to earn a living. Picasso might have been smart enough to consciously develop his technique to allow for a good quantity of output.

52

They say humor is lost on some people… :smiley:

Yes, Picasso was a trained artist, which sort of points to the point that it results in much better “break the rules” output if someone knows the rules for making a good piece artwork first. (or literature… James Joyce?)

53

I’m still hoping to learn more about our OP and his motivations for asking than about the rest of our biographies / experiences as given upthread.

Here’s hoping.

54

Honestly, it’s a mixture of curiosity and ego at this point. I’m around people who are pretty bright (and at least one who thinks he is) and I was curious where I stacked up against them.

55

There’s no single thing or time for intelligence. It’s like asking who’s the fastest? Even in th Olympics, the answer is usually different for each race, and different depending on whether it’s 100m, 500m, or a marathon. Even comparing each one’s personal best can’t tell you the result today. The differences are only apparent when they are cosistently obvious. It’s only when I compete against an Olympian that it’s obvious who’s faster (in any category).

And what’s the saying about genius being 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration?

The proof is in the pudding.

56

How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?

57

I am too smart to fall for your trick questions. I can see right through you, like a poorly knit sweater.

58

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

– Pablo Picasso

59

That reminds me of an old joke about pilots: Q: How do you kmow if there’s a pilot at a party? A: Just wait. They’ll tell you.

Memorization isn’t really correlated with intelligence. The ‘absent-minded professor’ is a trope for a reason. The ability to memorize things is more of a learned trick (memory palaces, etc) that some people develop and some don’t.

I’m not sure succumbing to fallacies and such is reduced by intelligence. Rather, highly intelligent people are more able to rationalize their way to beliefs they want to have. There are a lot of professors out there with incredibly stupid ideas outside of their specialty, and a lot of crank theories put forward by MDs.

I think the real difference is that smart people generally go to college, where at least they learn what a proper research result looks like which might give them some armor against bogus ‘science’. But there are a lot of smart people in universities who study absolute bullshit and take it seriously.

I’m not sure about novel ideas. Is creativity strongly correlated to intelligence? It seems to me that there are intelligent people who will dive down deep into the minutae of complex subjects because they are linear thinkers, while the creative types with lateral thinking ability could never stay focused that long. Creativity seems to me to be more a state of mind that some people can achieve regularly and others not at all, or only rarely.

60

Or, they’re people who are intelligent in one way and dumb in another way, balancing out overall.

Newton was a genius and an idiot. Michael Jackson was, likewise, a genius and an idiot.

The idea that there’s a thing as “intelligent” is false. It’s like saying that lions are the strongest life form because they have such large teeth and wild hair, but ignoring that fish can survive extended drowning, bunnies can outbreed any predator, humans can destroy any of those, and bacteria can take out humans.

There might be a few of us who aren’t - adding in everything - average but it’d be foolhardy to assume that you’re that exception. Even Newton was just average.