Please post here anything else (not relating to Maxwell technical matters)
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By Half Life
#396632
I am a member of Mensa here in the USA. For those who may not know, Mensa is an international organization for people who test out in the top 2% of the population on a IQ test.

As a member I get codes for a free test from time to time -- this is a nice chance to get a properly done IQ test for free. There is no requirement or pressure to join Mensa if you do qualify... this is simply a chance to get an official IQ test done at no cost. Unfortunately, all the people I know personally are a bit intimidated by the idea for some reason, so I have nobody to give these codes to. Right now I have 2 codes which will both expire in a few months. If you are interested you can check the testing schedule for your area here. Let me know if you find a location/time that works for you and I will share one of my free test codes via PM (first come first serve).

In case there may be any concerns, let me clearly say I will have no knowledge of when/if you even take the test... let alone what score you might receive. This is 100% private and confidential.

FWIW, I would recommend against choosing the Culture fair battery test option -- this is the test that I took allowing me to qualify (because I wanted to eliminate any cultural advantages I might have in a standard IQ test). However, the illustrations in that test are of such poor quality that during testing I was significantly distracted -- I would expect anybody else who has a high standard for visuals (like all Maxell users) might be similarly distracted.
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By Thomas An.
#396673
There is romanticism around IQ tests, but somehow they do not truly measure intelligence (maybe some localized brain circuitry on abstract induction at best). They do however have an effect on altering the ego of the people that take the tests. Having visited many Mensa (Intertel, 999, and other) venues in the 90s I found the ideologies present were no different than the general public, but with the added dimension of a loud ego. A valid IQ test would select minds that compute reality from different starting vantage points but ultimately convergent to some general universal truths, which is not the case with Mensa (you are likely to find flat earthers and conspiracy theorists just as much as anywhere). The one thing IQ tests do reliably is creating a sense of entitlement and possibly feed some narcissism.

There is already discussion about the next step beyond.
https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volu ... tests-miss
User avatar
By Half Life
#396675
I can't deny the criticism of some parts of the culture surrounding the elite IQ organizations --for instance in Mensa some members like to refer to normal people as "muggles". I recently had to leave another conversation because some twit was seriously advocating a revival of social eugenics because "low IQ groups are parasites on society". So yeah, it is most definitely a mixed bag.

That's why I didn't suggest joining (it's up to the individual whether they find any value) -- all I am wanting to do is offer a code for a free IQ test. What you do with that information is up to you.

I did a quick scan (I'll fully read your link later), but I have already read quite alot of information on IQ (and more specifically the g factor) -- it is pretty clear that intelligence is one of the best understood aspects of psychology (as told by highly cited psychological researchers)... so if you want to say IQ testing is hogwash (for whatever reason) then you basically have to throw the science behind the whole profession into doubt. That said, the link you provided made no such claim -- they simply advocated adding information to IQ testing to refine for testing element's they feel are not adequately tested for. I've seen a similar thing when some Mensans complain that "EQ" is not related to IQ and this means (in thier estimation) that IQ testing by itself doesn't tell the whole story about a person's capabilities (and in a more general sense I definitely agree with that).

Bottom line: a well designed IQ test is a reasonably reliable measure of the g factor. A high g factor is positively correlated with almost every measure of good things in life -- health, longevity, career success, etc. Conversely, a low g factor is negatively correlated with the same. Most of the criticism I have found on the topic is based on the critics objections over the social ramifications (they might argue origins) of such a measure... but the science has held up very well over the years to many many studies and even multi-million dollar social engineering programs designed to debunk it (here in the US probably the most famous would be the "head start" program).

However, I'm not here to advocate one way or the other -- nor am I particularly interested in even having a discussion on this forum. I'm just trying to give away some codes before they expire... and I think of Maxwell users in general as a fairly smart bunch.
User avatar
By Half Life
#396676
Actually, after reading the link a bit more thoroughly it seems to me the type of test they are describing is much more potentially prone to error and bias confirmation of the test maker. "Correct thinking" (could you get a more Orwellian term?) is highly subjective -- for instance the idea that we can rationally make decisions based on available evidence is fraught with intellectual peril.

For instance: what constitutes "available evidence"? Are we talking about things that we have personally tested for and come to some conclusion, or is this allowing for second-hand information fed to us by "experts" and "institutions"?. If it is the later then you really don't "know" the evidence -- you are simply taking somebody's word for it. Given the very nature of science as a constantly destroyed and refined degree of informational precision it seems to me to be unwise to allow yourself to become intellectually calcified into a correct position because "somebody told you so". I think the proper stance of any science-based approach to decision making is a constant state of low-level scepticism... at least until you have tested for it yourself and come to your own conclusions.

Not to get too philosophical here but then we get into the area of "objective truth" -- as the postmodernists like to point out there is no objective truth, just an infinite number of interpretations. Which leads us all to be living in our own subjective realities. This is of course easily provable: for instance why has creation of things like facial recognition been more difficult than originally expected? The answer is because the computer did not know how to interpret the information -- our human brains have developed to discover "useful" interpretations of such things, but to an impartial outside observer our judgements were seemingly arbitrary and no more inherently valid than any other interpretation. Thus we had to "teach" the AI to be subjective in the same ways we are.

In addition, this type of test would be almost useless in real life -- for instance: while taking the test person A is calm and completely able to rationally process information due to being in a controlled environment. However person B is emotionally overwrought with anxiety (perhaps not even related to the test -- perhaps they were raped by somebody who looks like the proctor) and fails to rationally process information on the test to their full ability. Now, both people leave the test -- person A then proceeds to make a bunch of irrational decisions because they are in a chaotic environment where their emotions get the best of them. The test would show person A being the more rational one -- but in real-life that may not be borne out in any meaningful way. So, unless the test were done under highly-stressful situations there would be no way to know who would actually perform more rationally in real-life situations.

Finally, the sample questions given at the surface may seem like rational judgement questions -- however, if you dig a bit deeper you will clearly see they are testing for culture and educational level. This is one of the criticisms leveled at IQ tests already (which is reason the Culture fair batteries were invented). The samples given for the proposed test would only be much more prone to eliminating people from the "highly-rational" score due to environmental factors. Certainly not a valid outcome if you want to know somebody's potential.

A well constructed IQ test is measuring something much more low-level -- in grossly simplified terms you can think of it as measuring your brains "reflexes". I would argue that going above that level of diagnosis in testing is only going to deliver more subjective results. Now that is not to say the resulting test wouldn't possibly be more "useful" within the context of our society -- I am just saying that it would by necessity become much more subjective and therefore less universally valid.
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By Thomas An.
#396677
For instance: what constitutes "available evidence"? Are we talking about things that we have personally tested for and come to some conclusion, or is this allowing for second-hand information fed to us by "experts" and "institutions"?.
I agree that the person advocating for it often falls into the Orwellian thinking and makes examples that sounds like anyone with conspiracy theories is inherently irrational (where in reality a small fraction of conspiracies may actually be true regardless of currently accepted norms). However, the underlying premise relates more in the application of predicate logic and how often an individual engages it or is too lazy and falls for the same biases as most other people.

People who take IQ tests, and do well during the test, they get themselves in a "testing" mode. They are rational during the test because they know they are being tested, but turn off most their rationality circuits during daily life.

The idea behind the g-factor sounds plausible but there are problems. Academic success and job performance relate to conformity within structured environments ("do as yo are told" in an artificial setting while man made rules, where inductive reasoning can have some meaningful effect). But has little to no effect when it comes to computing universal truths. So for example you find two Mensa people arguing about God (one of them is religious and the other is an Atheist), they both took the same test, but one of them (doesn't matter which) could not extricate themselves from sophisms embeded in their thinking.

Another problem with the state of science in general is, say, if your doctor does blood tests and they come clean, 'science' tells you that you are healthy, but you know you feel sick. The problem with fields other than physics or chemistry, is that the scientific method needs control variables. It needs to isolate in order to monitor. This approach fails on complex systems with synergies. Psychology, and medicine are repeatedly wrong because of this; they try to isolate a compound, or a factor, and do some statistical modeling (and some p-hacking) to claim 'significance' of observation, but they miss the synergy effect (seemingly unimportant variables which on their own mean nothing, but whose effects are amplified in synergy to other variables). As humans we currently do not have tools to handle complex systems like that in a reliable way.
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By Mihai
#396679
Thomas An. wrote:
Sat Feb 24, 2018 6:05 pm
Academic success and job performance relate to conformity within structured environments ("do as yo are told" in an artificial setting while man made rules, where inductive reasoning can have some meaningful effect).
You're getting all post-modernist all of a sudden :mrgreen:

It is a fact as clear as there being a force which we call electromagnetism, that there is a quality known as intelligence which varies among people (and, the really controversial part, among races). The simple proof (one of many) is you will find no doctors or lawyers with an IQ in the 70s. Not even if they're called Vinny. It's also becoming more and more obvious as neuroscience progresses, that IQ is largely hereditary and schooling does very little to raise it. My theory is it actually does but over a very long period of time, many generations.

Those lawyers and doctors didn't become smart, because they went to law or medical school, they were smart before. Is it possible for someone with an IQ of say 85-90 to become a doctor? It's possible, but it will take them longer to get through their studies, and they will also be lower performing (won't remember as much, won't be able to handle as many patients per day etc.).

The whole question of IQ has gotten muddled I think because psychologists and mostly sociologists started to mix up IQ with all sorts of other "qualities" like EQ etc. under a confusing umbrella. A brilliant physicist will not have a less than 120 IQ, he may be a dick, he may be unhappy, or a sociopath, ie "have a low EQ", but this is not what IQ is supposed to measure.
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By Thomas An.
#396680
Mihai wrote:
Sun Feb 25, 2018 1:16 am
It is a fact as clear as there being a force which we call electromagnetism, that there is a quality known as intelligence which varies among people (and, the really controversial part, among races). The simple proof (one of many) is you will find no doctors or lawyers with an IQ in the 70s. Not even if they're called Vinny. It's also becoming more and more obvious as neuroscience progresses, that IQ is largely hereditary and schooling does very little to raise it. My theory is it actually does but over a very long period of time, many generations.
My doctor is dumb as a brick.
He can't tell the difference between symptom and root-cause, but he has excellent memory and can recite his medical knowledge. Also from my experience people who pursue post-grad education do well because they have excellent memory retrieval, but they often lack critical reasoning (they would do poorly in a discrete math problem). There is fascination around memory in popular culture. If someone wins a Jeopardy game they are perceived as "smart", but in reality they only have a large hard-drive but their CPU is iffy and they are weak at connecting dots (something to do the AC cortex?).

Now, I never questioned the concept of intelligence itself (and I agree it is genetic), but I severely doubt that current man-made IQ tests actually capture it. They capture "something", but I have seen way too many people with high IQ (on paper) acting irrationally or peddling bizarre ideas. There is something else going on.
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By Mihai
#396681
These tests aren't really as irrelevant as you suggest, and it's maybe difficult to accept that it tests something very distinct from personality traits. They test something pretty specific. I like to think of it as the "viscosity of the mind". They actually do capture and *predict* pretty well the quality we refer to as intelligence in a person. There may be better or worse IQ tests, and also I think a persons score is evaluated over a number of tests but the two main indicators for why these tests are very relevant is that they work universally for one, and secondly, there really isn't anything else in psychology which so accurately predicts so many things about a persons life, as their IQ. Type of work they do, income, life span, criminality, health...

It's too bad there is still all this nonsense and taboo feeling surrounding IQ because it will become one of the very necessary societal topics to discuss in the future, especially as AI and automation will gradually "take over" many jobs. The reality is that the lower the IQ, the less job opportunities that person will have, and the jobs now done by lets say the below 80 IQ population will be done mostly by robots. So what will these people do?
User avatar
By Thomas An.
#396682
Mihai wrote:
Sun Feb 25, 2018 4:16 am
These tests aren't really as irrelevant as you suggest, and it's maybe difficult to accept that it tests something very distinct from personality traits. They test something pretty specific. I like to think of it as the "viscosity of the mind". They actually do capture and *predict* pretty well the quality we refer to as intelligence in a person. There may be better or worse IQ tests, and also I think a persons score is evaluated over a number of tests but the two main indicators for why these tests are very relevant is that they work universally for one, and secondly, there really isn't anything else in psychology which so accurately predicts so many things about a persons life, as their IQ. Type of work they do, income, life span, criminality, health...

It's too bad there is still all this nonsense and taboo feeling surrounding IQ because it will become one of the very necessary societal topics to discuss in the future, especially as AI and automation will gradually "take over" many jobs. The reality is that the lower the IQ, the less job opportunities that person will have, and the jobs now done by lets say the below 80 IQ population will be done mostly by robots. So what will these people do?
You might be falling in the same scientific trap as mentioned earlier, by trying to isolate a single variable in a system as if it was not a synergy. Think of IQ tests as the equivalent of saying that a car engine has a high end Denso alternator, but the synergy of the engine does not yield a race car.

It is also easy to show high IQ measured people making rational mistakes. Dr Stanovich (as much as I disagree on some of his points) makes a compelling case on this very topic, which is something I have personally observed and been suspecting for years from experience and having been around both academics and Mensa people. (there are Mensa people who seriously argue flat earth and moon-landing conspiracies for crying out loud). Mensa people fall for most of these mental biases as anyone else.

Also the Mensa test is essentially a Raven's standard progressive matrices, which is a pattern inductive reasoning thing. Does not handle deduction, processing speed, fallacy detection, physical intuition, or proportionality. A lot of incorrect conclusions can be drawn by the brain merely on falsely assigning significance to events; even it has all the information it needs. You have high IQ people working at Monsanto, but they don't think the unknown variables of their products are significant enough to cause caution or concern.

If I was to frame this as a proposition, it would go like this: Not all people that do well on IQ tests are "wise", "Rational", "Sensible", or "Balanced-Smart", but people that are "wise", "Rational", "Sensible", or "Balanced-Smart" are VERY likely to do well on IQ tests.
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