Do you feel you are intelligent?

[bosatlbwi]

I used to think I was pretty intelligent. Now that I go to a fairly good school I realize that I'm really nothing special :/

 

[HomerJ]

Originally Posted by Gibonius

The head of my department send that exact same article out on the list serve at one point

It ended up getting printed out and put up on the wall in quite a few labs. It's also interesting, one of my friends from undergrad had nearly exactly the same SAT and GRE scores that I did, both of which correlate rather well to IQ. I think we both agreed that we were pretty evenly matched in intelligence (the chess board agreed as well). We both went to grad school, in different fields. There the differences came out. He was one of the hyper-motivated freaks, and ended up being a rock star. I was pretty content being an "average" PhD. Now that we're both done, he's busting his ass in some high powered postdoc position and feeling stupid all the time. I'm teaching and feeling like a genius.
I read a blurb a while ago about a major breakthrough that was reported in Science. The PI described how one of his grad students came down to his office with exciting news. The time was 11 at night.

 

[x26]

Originally Posted by iammatt

All I know is that with 80% of the people here claiming to be above average or better, we still have a concurrent thread in which people are unable to figure out how to split a cab fare.

...

 

[Piobaire]

Could someone graph this and overlay the Bell Curve of the general population's intelligence? It would make my day.

 

[cbh]

Originally Posted by rdawson808

I love that 44% of the respondents think they're in the top 5%. Hmmmm. Something about that doesn't jive in my head.

b

http://people.psych.cornell.edu/~dun...andunaware.pdf

As for myself, I know that I'm around the upper 25% in raw intelligence, but at present I'm jobless, and most of my life I've felt pretty stupid.

 

[tagutcow]

Originally Posted by Eason

Hard to say. I do stupid things more than most, but I have a lot of outliers. I'll submit that as "dynamic".

Strangely, "dynamic" is the exact word I'd use to describe myself, without having to speculate about how intelligent I'd be considered by objective metrics. I see tons of people who outgun me both in terms of book larnin' and pure intellectual horsepower who still seem to be unable to create anything new, to synthesize different ideas, or to look at old problems in new ways.

 

[L.R.]

I was accepted into Mensa, so that proves something.

I also decided to take an arts degree. That proves something else entirely.

 

[mktitsworth]

Originally Posted by cbh

http://people.psych.cornell.edu/~dun...andunaware.pdf

As for myself, I know that I'm around the upper 25% in raw intelligence, but at present I'm jobless, and most of my life I've felt pretty stupid.

I had a feeling that's what that paper was. Does it make me less intelligent if I learned about it from Cracked?

 

[yjeezle]

i think i'm logical but not above average intelligence (i know htere are smarter people than me).

i think that instead of asking about intelligence, it's better to ask about how driven you are.

 

[StephenHero]

My IQ is 100. This puts me in the bottom 15% of internet forum users.

 

[Don Carlos]

My IQ exceeds the threshold at which IQ still can be measured accurately. That's all I will say about this topic.

 

[HgaleK]

Originally Posted by Don Carlos

My IQ exceeds the threshold at which IQ still can be measured accurately. That's all I will say about this topic.

That's pretty wicked high. I've only known two people who've scored 170-180. That said, IQ tests are bullshit. First time I took one I scored just under 100, and the second, a couple weeks later, I made 142. There's a vocabulary section, and studying for the test raises your score, which indicates that you're dealing with crystalized intelligence, not fluid. Additionally, fluid intelligence isn't as fixed (lol) as previously believed. Working with Dual-N-Gage has been repeatedly shown to improve scores on exams designed to test fluid intelligence. Even if you don't study, most people do better on their second test simply because they understand the sorts of questions they're dealing with and how to approach them from the start.

 

[Blackhood]

Originally Posted by Eason

The IQ test was originally meant to diagnose autism, not intelligence, so I think IQ is a pretty meaningless benchmark ehre.

Correct, in fact it was the test that told me that I was borderline Autistic and severely Dyslexic and Dyspraxic. And very impatient when some woman spends an hour asking me stupid questions.

 

[mehhhh]

I made a 1030 on the old SAT when I was in the 7th grade. Took it as part of a Duke University project called the Talent Identification Program. Having said that, I only made a 1320 when I was a senior in highschool. I admittedly forgot to bring a calculator. I got into South Carolina despite graduating highschool a semester late. That shows the low number of ***** given by me during my highschool career.

My younger brother is kind of the opposite. A born intellectual, he scored an even 1100 when he took it in the 7th grade. Five years later he threw down a 1580 as a senior and got a full ride to school. He worked harder than me and was always better with the math stuff.

I voted myself 'above average' but would put people like my brother in the top 5%.

 

[Don Carlos]

Originally Posted by HgaleK

That's pretty wicked high. I've only known two people who've scored 170-180. That said, IQ tests are bullshit. First time I took one I scored just under 100, and the second, a couple weeks later, I made 142. There's a vocabulary section, and studying for the test raises your score, which indicates that you're dealing with crystalized intelligence, not fluid. Additionally, fluid intelligence isn't as fixed (lol) as previously believed. Working with Dual-N-Gage has been repeatedly shown to improve scores on exams designed to test fluid intelligence. Even if you don't study, most people do better on their second test simply because they understand the sorts of questions they're dealing with and how to approach them from the start.
A lot of IQ tests can be gamed and studied for, but that's not the point. You're not supposed to know what to expect on the test, or else it becomes meaningless. Your first score was likely to be close to your true score. A true test of fluid intelligence, by necessity, requires that you enter the test as an untainted, blank slate who is not prepared for what he'll encounter. Agreed about neuroplasticity, though. What's certainly coming to light in modern neuroscience is that IQ tests at young ages are predictive of basically nothing.