How smart are we at Subsim?

[CCIP]

yup, I don't believe it much either. Neither this test no IQ in general that is.

Mine used to be 146. I'm on painkiller medication now so it's probably about half that

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Graf Paper

I'd argue that the true measure of high intelligence are the people who are smart enough to be happy with their lives, no matter how great or small.

Which makes me one of the least intelligent people alive. I've observed that the happiest people seem to be smart enough to make of themselves what they want to be, or un-smart (I won't use any derogatory terms) enough to not know the difference. In either case, I've always envied both.

Originally Posted by longam

The best IQ test out there http://www.orlandosentinel.com/featu...dp-classifieds

I got 89%...missed two.

[AVGWarhawk]

My IQ results said I should be a Forest Ranger

[flakmonkey]

124

Yup i think im the dumbest one here, i`ll just get my dunce hat and sit quietly in the corner

[CCIP]

I strongly disagree withthat idea. Many of the world's greatest people were profoundly miserable, virtually always for reasons beyond their control. In fact I find genius and unhappiness follow each other, often neccesarily.

[bradclark1]

They said I was off the scale but wouldn't say the high scale or the low scale.

[jumpy]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Which makes me one of the least intelligent people alive. I've observed that the happiest people seem to be smart enough to make of themselves what they want to be, or un-smart (I won't use any derogatory terms) enough to not know the difference. In either case, I've always envied both.

Agreed, either you have a super brain you can bend towards success in anything you choose to do, or you're as thick as two short planks so the mysteries and injustices of life are beyond your understanding.
I think many people fall in-between these two; they are self aware enough to be dissatisfied with their lot but give in to accepting that that's just the way life works. In a sense, the more self aware you become the more susceptible you are to the misery of your own situation and that of others around you, yet having no real influence to change this.
Like those with an unshakeable faith - for them life is not fraught with questions and trepidation - they (in effect) abdicate such fundamental questions to some higher belief system and in doing so free themselves from having to confront, on a daily basis, the questions we all ask but have no answers for.

Then again, I've always believed there are two kinds of intelligence: those with common sense and those without.
I consider both myself and my other half to be of above average intelligence. However, she is useless with anything practical, despite the letters after her name suggesting otherwise.
Academia does not necessarily lend itself to real world practicality. Let me give you an example: a couple of years ago she killed the engine on her motorbike (lack of oil and the thing seized solid) so a few months later with this in mind, she checked the oil level on her car and, finding it below the maximum mark (about half way), proceeded to glug a full bottle of oil into the car. It never occurred to her that practically filling the engine full to the top (of the rocker cover) was as bad as leaving the sump to run dry. :rotfl:
Unlike her, I never had the determination to complete university, preferring less noble pursuits than that of knowledge; the comparative level of our debt reflects this - she owes the student loans people and others almost 15k, whilst I owe my bank 5k.

Perhaps my most damning failure of my own admission, in retrospect, is not using my ability to its fullest extent. For as long as I've been aware, I've had no clear direction to focus my will, no goal or destination to achieve other than those required of daily living.
And here I come to the real separator in life; many people are smart and many people are not quite so, and whilst intelligence alone can take you a long ways off, the benefits in the long term of dedication, determination and a clear goal cannot be underestimated. Without the drive to motivate action, intelligence or the lack thereof has no focus and as a result achieves very little of its potential.

As ever with my school reports, so it is with much of my adult life: Could do better if he applied himself more.

[StdDev]

IQ tests.. bah... dont believe in em.. just like Astrology.
Mainly because I'm a Taurus and were sceptical!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by jumpy

I consider both myself and my other half to be of above average intelligence.

Well, in the past weeks I repeatedly stumbled over German and international essays and articles saying that people of the Western civilisation seem to become more dumb, and their mind's ability getting lulled for reasons of modern lifystyle; and I read of an american intelligence reasearcher saying that he found the population's mean IQ to be falling, which leads him to conclude that our civilisation's intelligence developement is beyond it's climax and somewehre in in the second half of the 20th century has entered the phase of decline; I see pseudo-rationalism distoring logic and reason in the spreading of creatisonsim not only in america, but Eastern europe, Turkey and parts of the muslim world as well, as well as in the German Protestant's latest call that believing and scientific reasearch shall be equal to each other, but that belief may criticise and lead science, while science and reason shall have no word in criticising belief (so obviousy equality is when the one is more equal than the other); and I read of German schoolkids saying that Helmut Kohl was the last head of state of the GDR, and the Berlin wall being raised by america, while an american female author just released a book on the american population becomin dumber, and when being asked why she wrote it she described how she sat in a bar and two guys were talking , and the one said "This is like Pearl Harbour", and the other asked "What is Pearl Harbour?", and the first said "The vietnamese started to drop bombs in a harbour, and that is how the Vietnam war started" - it was then when she decided to write her book.

So, when you say "above average", you compare yourself to a standard, in this case the population'S mean IQ. and if that mean IQ is falling all by itself, and if you two can mange to keep your own, you will become brighter all by itself without needing to do anything about it!

Good deal, or what!?

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by CCIP

I strongly disagree withthat idea. Many of the world's greatest people were profoundly miserable, virtually always for reasons beyond their control. In fact I find genius and unhappiness follow each other, often neccesarily.

Reminds me of this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

IQ, the last proper test I remember was when I was 16, came out at 142. I think.
I know I was one less than my brother

[jumpy]

lol nice one Sky, I'd not thought of that, hehe.

I definitely agree with the principals set out by some of those researchers though - wallow in filth for long enough and you'll eventually end up smelling of ****.

All of this dumbing down with fashion, vanity and all of the other junk we get spoon-fed by the media these days is certainly driving us down from where we stand today. A friend of mine has a teenage daughter who's main interest in life seemed to be the emulation of facile and selfish celebrities, "yer, innit? 'cause like, iss wot gets yer respek an' stuff... like nuffink is sik wivout bling innit bruvah."

Makes me cringe to be honest.

In the mean time, the rest of us can sit back and let the and let the collective smarts disappear down the proverbial drain hole. After all, in the country of the blind even the one eyed man is king!

[NeonSamurai]

Originally Posted by d@rk51d3

Let me guess, 85 right.:p

Heh nope

But that test is still hopelessly useless, its way to short, wasn't timed, and would be wildly inaccurate. There is also much debate in psychology as to the validity of IQ tests for testing intelligence (for one thing its eurocentric, another is tends to test what you know more then how smart you are).

Originally Posted by Graf Paper

I can remember its exact name..Stanford-something...I think.

that would be the stanford binet IQ test

Originally Posted by Skybird

Exactly. And of the "official" IQ tests scientist would conduct, or psychologists, it is not much different. As long as there are so many different understandings of what intelligence is, and IQ tests get constructed with this diversity of understanding, and different weighing of theoretical sub-constructs, IQ scores make little sense.

Actualy depending on the test there can be radical differences from that online one, even the standford binet IQ test which is the one that online test is based on, is still very different (much longer, multiple sections, sections are timed, other types of questions etc). Otherwise I agree with you


As for my IQ, well to be honest I don't know what it is. I did a whole whack of intelligence/ability testing as a child, but my mother always refused to tell me what scores I got other then it was very high. I would defiantly agree that very smart people tend to be unhappier then ""normal"" people, and that people that "suffer" from forms of mental retardation tend to be the happiest people of all from my experience. Guess you could chalk it up to the old expression "ignorance is bliss".

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by NeonSamurai

Actualy depending on the test there can be radical differences from that online one, even the standford binet IQ test which is the one that online test is based on, is still very different (much longer, multiple sections, sections are timed, other types of questions etc). Otherwise I agree with you

The huge differences you refer to can be seen with academic IQ tests as well. I did three such "official" tests at university, all three were different ones, becausue we gained points that we need to collect by participating in experiments in order to be allowed for exams. The tests' results varied by over 20 points, with number-heavy questions seeing me scoring the weakest, and three-dimensional things and abstract thinking questions scoring top. Considering that the usual IQ test results that you see in practice vary between let's say 95 and 120 (that online thing scores so many 130s, 140s and 150s that it is hilarious), a variance that high as 20 points is extremely much. However, i am no single case with that spread.

we all have different strengths and weaknesses. A single test alone does not say anything on these, and a single IQ value is as useful as answering the question for a safe code number sequence with a reply like "all numbers summed up: 457". The same problem you have with personality inventories. Since these base on even tighter theoretical constuctions, I wuld say the problem with these is even greater. but I admit I am not up to date concerning personality inventories developed over the past 10-15 years. That matter also never interested me much - too hypothetic and theoretic.

[GlobalExplorer]

Originally Posted by NeonSamurai

that would be the stanford binet IQ test

also sometimes called the stanford "bidet"

[NeonSamurai]

If the test is using the standard IQ measurement scale, then a 20 point variance is gigantic. Were they the same test type though (eg were they all stanford binet)? I also suspect that the tests you did were experimental (and failed) or not applied correctly as that variance should not happen.

I also agree that the results people are getting from that online test are really funny, especially when you factor most of the world is around the 100 mark (100 is dead center average) and only some where around 0.1% would be scoring near 140 (I forget the exact % but here is the curve if you want to see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IQ_curve.svg) that that online test is spitting out so many super high iq values completely proves my original point.

Personally I'm not a fan of the stanford binet test, though it may make for a decent representation of intelligence in the western educated world, it fails miserably with anyone not educated very well in the west.

Personality tests are another subject all together. I do think Eysenk's 2F test can be somewhat useful (though limiting as its only 2 factors, I don't think personality can be boiled down to a sum of 2 factors), the 5F OCEAN test seems reasonable as well in principle. I would however stand by the MMPI v2 (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) test. That one has been proven time and time again as an effective diagnostic tool (for the western world anyhow). But as for the first 2 I mentioned, it is based to a great deal on theory.