Average Intelligence

[pchinvegas]

Yall are scaring me now, I ain't no window licker ! I think there needs to be a nice mix of intelligence and common sense.

 

[SifuPhil]

Now you have me pondering this list. Am I in it?

Yes and no.

If not where do I fit?

In whatever space is small enough (or large enough) to contain you.

Have any of you had your IQ rated?

Yes.

Am I being helpful yet?

My wife claims she had it rated as a child and it was like 120 (if memory serves me) and we both seem to be equally "smart" though in different ways. Both our daughters are intelectual in a wide range of areas (whew, I did not kill as many brain cells as first thought!) and their husbands are equal to them, again in different ways.

The standard IQ test, at least as it was presented "back in the day", later became quite controversial because it was claimed that it was sexist, racist, prejudiced and all sorts of other no-no's. That means that if I took my early IQ scores as gospel they would only have been valid among the group that I tested with, at that time and place. As soon as I left the testing room those results would have been at least partially invalid.

Supposedly the tests have been altered to eliminate such sticking points, but the standard IQ test is hardly worth even considering unless you undergo a battery of other tests to ascertain results.

People will say that your IQ doesn't change much throughout your life, but again that depends upon what is considered as fair testing. If I were to take a modern-day test (which I have) the results should be in the same ball-park as my earlier test - and they were. So if I've taken the new and improved test and have the same score, what was so wrong about the earlier tests?

Methinks something art rotten in the state of educational-testing Denmark.

I guess my tangent point is that heredity does play the biggest part on average in how intelligent one is. There are also "fliers" on each side of the bell curve however from genetic mutations.

I agree that it's hereditary, even though there is still much debate on this point. I was always hoping for my boys that I was just a carrier, like Typhoid Mary - I didn't exhibit any signs of intelligence but could still pass it on to them. Luckily this is how it turned out.

All across human intelligence the average of all averages is well, average (100). BTW, if that makes no sense then one of us is below average.

Standard deviation for modern IQ tests is I believe 15, the operating theory being that 95% of the population will fall within two standard deviations of 100, i.e. 70-130. We have to remember that with all the variations of IQ testing methodology we are still being compared mainly to each other.

... which fact rankles with someone like me, who is without peer.

 

[SifuPhil]

Yall are scaring me now, I ain't no window licker ! I think there needs to be a nice mix of intelligence and common sense.

But what is "common sense" besides being an application of intelligence?

Folk wisdom likes to say that some folk don't have "the common sense God gave 'em". I don't think this is right; just watch a newborn baby. That little bundle of living, breathing liverwurst isn't exactly making a grand showing of "common sense". Even when that liverwurst begins to age - one, two, even three years - you'll see a decided LACK of anything remotely resembling sense, whether common or uncommon.

If common sense were God-given, then Brian Kunin wouldn't have stuck that dime up his nose in second grade and as a result be taken to the emergency room.

No, I think that common sense is just what you do with the intelligence that you do have. A less-intelligent person has less to work with so to speak, so it will appear that they lack a certain degree of common sense. That's to be expected, which is why a civilized society doesn't beat the mentally deficient. But when an intelligent person walks in front of a bus while texting on their "smart" phone, there is a prime example of NOT applying their intelligence.

The old saying, "If you're so smart how come you ain't rich?", is appropriate in many circumstances as well, my own included. I should hold the legal rights to that phrase, because I would be a rich man from the royalties generated every time someone asks me that.