Race and IQs

[Edwardo Piet]

I personally hate IQ tests and only ever score average on them because I get really distracted figuring out how each question is flawed. I mean asking what the odd one out is? There are so many ways to answer that question.

You remind me of me.

It can only ever be a glimpse of certain abilities.

Indeed.

Intelligence is far too broad to be measured using a single test because the whole point of intelligence is to be able to adapt to and generalise over new environments, problems and situations.

Indeed.

Something that cannot be captured by an IQ test. This is why the more you do them the better you get at doing them.

Indeed.

I think the creator of the IQ test must have had a mildly above average pseudo intellect

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I think IQ tests measure a form of intelligence. There are others though.

I think intelligence is just the capacity to understand stuff. But in the broadest possible way. And there are many ways to understand things and many types of different things that can be understood (stuff that IQ tests don't even measure).

I don't think IQ tests are about understanding stuff I think they're about noticing calculating, concentrating on and remembering stuff. It's not even a measure of left-brained thinking as the left brain does more than what IQ tests measure. And then there's still the whole right brain to account for.

Indeed, people who are unintelligent will be unable to notice and spot or calculate certain things because they're unintelligent. But being unintelligent is merely one way to fail to spot that stuff. Many people who are highly intelligent could also fail to spot that stuff. Many highly intelligent people struggle with concentrating, they're daydreamers, they're scatterbrained, they don't have amazing memories or brains like calculators. But they understand deep concepts that many other people don't. IQ tests don't seem to measure depth of understanding... just speed, calculation, concentration and astuteness. Having a brain like a mathematician is different to being smart. Computers are awesome at math and computers don't understand anything at all. You could also teach a parrot a bunch of facts and it would parrot them back to you. Neither memory nor calculation are sufficient indicators of intelligence. Some people are great at calculating and remembering stuff within their very limited scope of conceptualization.

Here's a great quote on the matter. This is the way I see it:

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." - Arthur Schopenhauer

IQ not only only measures the targets that the average person can see... it only measures part of some of the targets that the average person can see.