Thread:User talk:WaitingforGodot/IQ tests/reply (3)

See, I could be wrong, but i've never seen a definition of intelligence that wasn't "beauty esque, I know it when i see it". I often ask of people - you know a good salesman is clearly intelligent, cause they can size you up, then figure out what motivates you and sell directly to that motivation. That's not some easy thing. But you're never going to see anything like that on a test - cause how would you test for it. One of the most intelligent men I know of, would fail any IQ test, cause he left school at 16 (typical "mom died" or "dad was drunk" or whatever makes you be 'the man of the house') and took a job as a janitor for the school. It's a state job, so he kept it, and still has it at 50 or so. He doesn't read well, and has had very little "world experience", doen't know about Iraq or how far the sun is. But when you present a problem to him, you see his mind at work. When you do show him something (the one I did was how far the sun is from the Earth. and in a way that shocked me, he took that info and started talking about just how hot the sun must have to be, and then how do we survive that much intensity... from his own thinking, not with math or science, just thought), he can instantly use it in his world. This guy would not do well on any "IQ" test we've yet to devise.

Deaf people are another measure. Because of the nature of the language they use, English or any written language can be a serious puzzle for them. Their own vocab in sign are 1000-5000 words, cause signed languages aren't really built on new signs, but on how you use existing sings to fill new concepts. How are they going to rate well on a test.

Puzzle solving, another marker for intelligence, is a measure of how you take your existing knowledge gained by experience or "books/being told", and manipulate them to make novel experiences. But to do this, you have to have a set of world experiences that actually relate to what you are solving. in a very very very stereotypical example, a black kid who is asked "how can you survive and not jump a gang", who comes up with 100 workable ideas to do that is no less intelligent than the guy who can stack up to blocks and tie a string across them to make a sled - they just have different experiences. and right now, IQ tests don't test the black kid's (again, stereotypical of me just to overstate a point) prior knowledge, but they do test the privileged kid's.

And i'd not thought about practice, but you are right. You see the types of problems and get shown the answer once, you can use that to figure out others.