Why IQ Tests Are Stupid

Why IQ Tests Are Stupid – Second Thought

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Second Thought is a channel devoted to the things in life worth thinking about! Science, history, politics, religion...basically everything you're not supposed to talk about at the dinner table. Welcome!

[TheGoblinoid]

I love how people see IQ the same way DragonBall characters see power levels and they don't realize how stupid they look.

[SaudiHaramco]

Your IQ basically tells you how good you are at taking IQ-tests. Even the professional ones are flawed because you can train for them. (yes you can train for them.)

[razzle_dazzle]

Another important point is that group averages tell you nothing about any particular person you might meet. You still have to treat everyone as individuals until you can make an informed judgement.

[MaximusWild]

I purposefully failed every question and it said my iq was 85

[DistractedDingo]

Ha! My IQ is 508!

Although, there may or may not be a “negative” in front of that, but that’s beside the point.

[ShadowDaPk]

Dunning - Kruger effect all over the comments section.

[RealLifeWrld]

_"People who boast about their IQ are lossers."_
*- Stephen William Hawking (1942 - 2018)*

[TheYambino]

Some things that this video did not talk about.

IQ tests are supposed to be scaled based on the _age_ of the one taking them, this is how IQ is supposed to stay more or less constant throughout one's life. (for reference, IQ is calculated by taking your Mental age and dividing it by you Physical age and then multiplying that by 100. So if you are 15 but the test shows you were correctly answering questions that people at age 20 tended to answer correctly then you would have an IQ of 133. 100 is the "average" because if your Physical and Mental age are 1 to 1, then the equation would spit out 100).

If you are just taking some random test online that claims to measure IQ, then you're not taking a real IQ test and it will not measure accurately. This is much easier to calculate in children to adolescence and even young adulthood because we know a lot about what functions the brain is still learning, and can create IQ tests towards those age groups to see what they have grasped and what the tasks the brain is still developing.

So why take an IQ test? Originally and professionally it is used for helping to diagnose medical disorders, more specifically some mental and brain disorders. Obviously, this _could_ help diagnose a disease earlier on, potentially helping to find treatment earlier rather than later. But obviously, IQ tests are *NOT* the only thing that weighs that decision.

If you are taking an IQ test outside of a medical environment then you're taking an IQ test for the wrong reason. It is also important to have only taken an IQ test in a medical environment because the doctors prescribing these tests _know_ how to target a test toward an age-group.

While there _is_ still debate on the effectiveness of these tests, they have and are used to help diagnose disorders and have helped do so.

[ratking]

I have a friend who got a 90 on an iq test and I remember thinking that, “yeah, he’s not smart.” Seconds later, I dispelled my gut reaction. He isn’t dumb, just not smart in the way society taught me was right. He’s comedically smart, though his jokes may not be conventionally smart, they’ll still make you laugh. And I think everyone is like that. Everyone is smart in some way. I think you only have the right to say someone is stupid when they’re bad at absolutely everything, which most people are not.

[srksii]

Adam said it best: Only thing that IQ tests shows are how good are you in doing IQ tests

[camdamcool]

I can agree... when I was 14 I paid to take a Mensa IQ test that took 3 hours to complete. My IQ score was 155, however I am autistic and have severe social anxiety, and struggle with foreign languages greatly. I am very strong with mathematics and science, and general logic problems, but incredibly incompetent in many areas.

[tgpoppins]

My teachers thought I was retarded (in the medical sense) when I was a kid because I struggled to read and write; I took multiple professional IQ tests and they showed me to be above average, this lead to other tests and it turned out I was severely dyslexic; I was then able to get help to largely overcome this and now I'm doing well.

IQ tests aren't innately stupid, they can be very useful and in some cases life changing; I understand the importance of discussing how we use them, but acting like negative uses are inherent with the tests themselves is just dishonest and unhelpful.

[Arcaryon]

It took me a long time to understand why people were so obsessed with IQ because upon looking into this idea at a very young age I couldn't figure it out - I knew how these tests worked, I knew about IQs and EQs and all these tests people took to determine a number for their worth and only after once again investing some time in understanding the method later in my life I finally came to the same conclusion I always come to if something doesn't add up logically - people are incredibly uneducated about many things in live and buy into the most outrages lies all the time, to misunderstand tests like these is childplay with all of the scientific fetishism of these numbers going arround. If I had never done my research, I wouldn't know anything about these tests in particular.
I workout to an obsessive degree and was very insecure about myself for quite a while growing uo as many people are so naturally, I was very curious about this kind of "objective measurement" of something so comparable until I started to question it. If these tests feel like logic puzzles, look like logic puzzles and work like logic puzzles - then what makes them so special? I scored well with multiple of them without any kind of training but as I figured that all of these tests had repeating patterns that are incredibly similar to a degree where a basic mathematical education could probably double your score in many of these sections, it started to feel more and more like a compeltley overhyped idea that had long lost its original meaning and I can't help but feel a little bit proud about my 14 year old me because even back than the whole deal seemed off. I hope more people come to the same conclusion I did because as long as people will try to rate themselves like that without actually understanding what they are doing, misconceptions about these kinds of things will unfortunately prevail with a widespread second rate media attention giving a spotlight to what ultimatley ends up being a test that measures your ability to take a test. If you go through any comment section about this topic, you will l realise that they are really a medical tool, not a "job interview measurement".

[HomoAesteticus]

My hot take: The reason IQ scores actually don't matter that much, and the reason why actually intelligent people don't usually preface their contributions to humanity by claiming to be super sMaRt, is because social intelligence is also a part of.. well.. intelligence.
A social species is what we are, and we also do reason rationally about our surroundings. Can we all just agree that, at the very least, being a smart, wise and good person has little to to with analytical skills?
Now, for all of you big brain people out there, yes having a good acuity is a naturally usefull resource, but purely percieving without understanding is also an empty shell. Read, listen and learn stuff bois and grills

[SandlotRider]

To get smarter you need to:






That's right.

[croftyprojects]

The research done for the bell curve wasn't based on 'racist science'; it was conducted in an unbiased, scientific way (the methodology is publically available). Just because some people don't like the results of a study, that doesn't mean the study isn't accurate or usable.

[johnzapata]

Damn. This one went way past IQs and told everyone to just love each other. This is what we need, y’all.

[SpaceCat]

my IQ on one website is about 80, on the other 142,
thats the point i knew IQ is dumb

[mylesiswhite]

Somebody didn't get a high iq test

[mr.t]

My iq is over 900 because i watched rick and morty