Can you develop intelligence ?

Factual Questions
21

Nope. But I’m guessing you already knew that answer one second after your asked it. :slight_smile:

They feel they don’t have to because the statistical measures are flawed measurements in the first place. If you have a broken thermometer measuring temperatures, any subsequent statistical analysis (and conclusions) of the data are also broken. If you have a perfectly working thermometer but you measure the wrong things like measuring the temperature of hair or fingernails instead of under the tongue, the results are also broken. They can dismiss them like Stephen Jay Gould would.

These 2 sentences are contradictory to me. To me, the gold standard proof is to demonstrate a cognitive learning methodology to boost anyone’s IQ score to the 150 - 200 range.

Yes, cheerleader authors asserting that you can boost IQ scores of a person by +10 points is interesting but it doesn’t solve what the OP wants to know. In that case, you’ve just added a +10 relative to each person. (This is similar to the Flynn Effect which that book also mentions.)

I don’t think that type of improvement is fiercely disputed. What I’d really want to know is how to improve anyone to 150+. You take an average person that scores 100. You have him do 12 months of cognitive training (whatever cutting edge technique that might entail) and voila, he scores 150+ a year later. That learning methodology (if there is one) has not been demonstrated.

22

Sorry, I’ll try to do that.

23

Let’s continue the discussion in the future. But breifly, I am talking about intelligence, not statistics. And not throwing straw men out. Give me a definition of intelligence to work with. I don’t believe there is one that can be used to draw conclusions. Not conclusions about statistics, conclusions about intelligence. And I do know what a thermometer measures.

I’ve never seen any evidence that IQ scores could be boosted by 50 points, and I’ve no reason to discuss it, until somebody shows such evidence.

The statements you claim are contradictory, are not. I think through practise I could run a little faster. I don’t think I could reach a speed of 50mph. Are those contradictory statements?

24

No, because I am not familiar with the books in question, nor have I participated in a thread on this topic before. At least not that I recall.

that would be a statistical argument I’d want to see…

… because even that represents a pretty poor understanding of basic statistics. We have all seen thermometers where the tube dropped down relative to the scale printed on a backing card. Even if you didn’t know the tube dropped down, that would change the mean but not the distribution otherwise.

And then when people tried to repeat your experiment, that would be noted pretty quickly.

This is not really an argument against temperature as a useful measure, so why would it be an argument against another instrument?

Measure the “wrong” things? You canuse a thermometer to measure whatever temperature you like, even blindfolded without knowing what it is you are measuring. What makes something “right” or “wrong” to measure with a thermometer, and would you please extend that analogy in detail back to IQ tests as an instrument in a way that makes sense and is persuasive to scientists please.

And this part of your discussion makes no sense to me. You jsut argued that the instrument is no good, and now you are both arguing something about the results of using that instrument.

See the problem with that approach?

Especially since the scale is only accurate to about 140 or so, where you are 3 standard deviations from the mean. You know what that means too, right? Or s this why someone had trouble accepting that the distribution is normal? :slight_smile:

25

Nope. But your statements are not accurately characterizing the ideology espoused by all those “nurture trumps nature” books.

Let’s say you can run at 12 mph.
The world record holder in 100 meter dash can run 23 mph.

The ideologists say what separates you from the athlete is mostly environment and practice. (“We’re really all the same…”)

Ok, exactly which diet, exercises, and techniques will get TriPolar to 23 mph?

Oh, you’re not actually saying training will guarantee TriPolar will ever reach 23 mph. You’re also not saying what exactly what that optimal training and diet is because there are too many variables. You just meant he can go from 12 mph to 14 mph. Ok, that’s interesting, but that’s not the best proof of nurture overriding nature. You demonstrate how you can get virtually all non-amputees to 23 mph and you’ve proven your “practice-makes-perfect” case.

26

To clarify, I was acting the part of a Stephen Jay Gould. I’m already on board with the “instrument” and the measures.

True but accuracy of ~140 is not relevant in this case. A numerical score of 150+ exists and routinely achieved by test takers. The usability of scores between 140 - 200 can be argued as “fuzzy” or “meaningless” but the numerical score remains.

27

so instead of discussing something you can measure, and discuss with impartial statistics, you want to discuss something that is as well defined as a ghost in a cloud. Why would arguments about the ghost in the cloud be persuasive at all, let alone more persuasive than assessed statistical measures, which is what the OP asked about?

You don’t need one. Do you know the definition of temperature are it related to the weather or anything else we all commonly discuss the temperature of (cooking, health, etc.)?

Not knowing what an instrument measures or how is no barrier to using it effectively. You are just emotionally attached to the word “Intelligence” as it is commonly used in the name of the instrument. so what if we just changed the name of the instrument to something neutral, such as “asfadfadfads”? Would that help you if people said “asfadfadfads score” instead of “IQ score”?

Well where is anyone doing actual peer-review published research into IQ is anyone conflating the instrument itself with what you feel is intelligence? How did you make that leap? Is it possible that you can make the leap back somehow and save face?

OK, let’s talk about that then…

When the weather guy says the temperature is 75 degrees at your location, what does that mean exactly? What is that scientific shorthand for?

Ruminator seems to have already disabused you of this. I will only add that if the instrument turns out to not work the way one hopes (as is not unreasonable to expect in science) it is possible to tweak the instrument as opposed to infer something fallacious about the thing being measured.

IUW, if you are building an instrument that is meant to be independent of the environment, and you discover it is not so, you fix the instrument, not make conclusions about the environment.

More concretely, let’s look at weather and thermometers again. Suppose I concoct a homemade thermometer, and early tests show it matches with other thermometers indoors. Nw I take it outdoors to see if it matches what the weatherman reports.

Oh look, it does! very nice!

Oh but wait…when the wind blows, my instrument reports that the temperature swings wildly in a 30 degree range instantly back and forth.

Are we going to conclude the instrument needs tweaking because t doesn’t measure well what we want to measure, or are we going to conclude something about the weather? Both are good hypotheses, but when we test them, independently, what do you think we will find and conclude?

28

OK. I had a hunch. But I am not familiar with the position that you seem to e summarizing with a reference to Gould…can you or someone else give me the outline please?

Well, this is more evidence of statistical chicanery then - mathematically, there is no reason to expect a linear scale here, or one that is equally precise and meaningful everywhere.

it is probably common sense that distinguishing between individuals at the very low end of the scale in a meaningful way is difficult. It should be common sense that teh same might be true at the upper end too. But I suspect all of this is about the emotional attachment and values people attach to their scores (or those of their kids), and that attachment is probably monotonically increasing. It is not about the scores themselves or how the scores are derived. And that seem like an entirely different topic to me.

29

Here’s a short summary:

30

That’s a straw man. No one can run 50 mph. But there should be about 2,943,354 people with an IQ of 150 or greater, assuming a world population of 6.86 billion, a mean IQ of 100, and a standard deviation of 15.

31

not_alice and Ruminator,

I am not intersted in a discussion about IQ or statistics. If you want to discuss intelligence, let me know. You’re arguments don’t make any sense anymore. The OP did not mention IQ or statistics. I did not advocate a ‘practise makes perfect’ method. The question is whether someone can become more intelligent. I don’t see where either of you is addressing that question at all.

32

et tu Darth? If I can only run at 12mph now. And through the use of some method I can run 13mph, I have increased the speed I can run at. It is not in any way relevant how many other people can run at any speed. And it is not a straw man in any way. It directly addressed not_alice’s claim that I had made contradictory statements. Which in the case cited, I did not.

33

Of course he talked about statistics. What do you think the assessment tests s/he is administering are?

But OK - can someone become more intelligent? That is a quantitative question. It at the very least implies that you can measure the intelligence (regardless of what “intelligence means” of a person at two different times, and rank them somehow.

How do you propose to do that without statistics?
BTW, I am extremely interested to read you r explanation of what temperature is, since you asserted you knew. Let’s not drop that part of it, because it is relevant for the part that is coming soon when you say you know what intelligence is and I ask you to define it. I’d like to see you back up what you say with regarding a measure that is not controversial first, so I have a sense as to how well you might be able to describe the more controversial one. So to you, what is temperature measuring, as commonly used by everyone over the age of 8 or so?

34

But how fast you can run, and what your IQ score are are different. One is just an observation about you and the environment, and one is a score that is normed against the entire population. The latter is more akin to a “percentile” than an absolute value such as miles per hour.

You might as well be arguing that because your Toyota Camry can go 100 miles an hours, and when you drive it that way you pass a lot of cars, that it is capable of being driven in a NASCAR race. Nothing you can do to your Camry, short of ditching it and building a brand new car, is going to change its relative position among the entire population of cars regarding the measure of performance on the road.

Oh maybe you can tweak the engine settings, or use a different fuel or something like that, but even then it is a lot of effort for little gain. And in any case, when you do those things, you can measure exactly what it is that is changing, and why it changes the performance.

When you do so, you realize with the same effort you can do that to most if not all the other cars in the population too, so in a sense, you haven’t really changed the relative position on the population, you only achieved some inherent potential, while the others hold the same potential also.

So if the original measure was not actual performance, but potential performance, you have changed nothing. Your Camry still has the same potential performance after the tweak as it did before.

See the difference here? Good, can you apply the argument to people and running speeds for us?

35

The reason you cannot reach 50 mph is because it exceeds human capacity. This is not the reason that people cannot reach 150 IQ. 150 IQ does not exceed human capacity.

Therefore implying that being unable to ‘train’ someone to reach 150 IQ is similar to being unable to train someone to reach a 50 mph running speed in that neither provides a logical counterpoint to the idea that someone can be trained at a lower level (from 12 to 13 or from 100 to 105) is logically invalid, since the inability to ‘train’ someone up to those defferent levels are based on completely unrelated reasons - there simply is no relationship and meaningful insights can be drawn from such an irrational comparison.

36

Sorry, missed the edit window. That should say “no meaningful insights can be drawn from such an irrational comparison.”

37

I don’t know, and neither do you. So ask him. Not me.

By finding a definition for intelligence. And developing a test that measures it. I can measure how fast my car goes without statistics. I don’t need to know anything about any other car to do it.

[/QUOTE]

Please read some physics books for a start. They well tell you what the definition of temperature is. That’s one I use. What is yours? I didn’t say I know what intelligence is. You are implying that you do. So please tell me your definition. If it is just a statistical result, don’t bother. I’ll say the same thing. Tell me what you are measuring.

38

I don’t know what you are talking about. My statements were not contradictory. I said you can improve your measured intelligence through practise. I didn’t say how much. I didn’t say you couldn’t improve IQ from 100 to 150, or that you could. I said this:
‘I’ve never seen any evidence that IQ scores could be boosted by 50 points, and I’ve no reason to discuss it, until somebody shows such evidence.’

So when you have some evidence related to that I’ll discuss it with you. If you are going define an increase in numbers as an improvement, you only need simple math. The irrationality is that you are arguing with your imagination and not me.

39

TriPolar, let me make sure that I understand what you are asserting. Please let me know if these statements are accurate represenations of what you believe.

  1. You don’t believe that we have a good definination of what intelligence is.

  2. You believe that intelligence can be increased through some activities.

  3. You don’t believe that IQ tests measure intelligence well, in part because we do not have a good definition of intelligence.

If these statements are an accurate representation of your beliefs, is it not incongruous to be sure that intelligence can be increased without being able to define it while simultaneously being sure that it is impossible to measure intelligence without being able to define it?

You seem to be aruguing that the lack of understanding of intelligence serves as a barrier to others’ claims about intelligence, but your own assertations face no such hurdle.

40

Then why did you need the statement about not being able to run 50 mph? What was the point?

If your only claim is that people can run faster after exercising, then I agree with you completely.

ETA: The reason that there is no evidence of anyone improving their IQ from 100 to 150 is that it is impossible - not because humans cannot have 150 IQs, but because intelligence cannot be increased in that way.