It isn’t obvious to you that off-the-cuff responses reveal underlying biases and assumptions equally as well—if not more so—as deeply-thought-out ones?
The very fact that “10 times as smart” is intelligible as merely “a lot more” requires certain underlying assumptions about the available space of intelligence, and that addresses the very fundamental assumptions of his writing.
It isn’t obvious to you that off-the-cuff responses reveal underlying biases and assumptions equally as well—if not more so—as deeply-thought-out ones?
Declaring that “10 times as smart” must be a reference to IQ points and then proceeding to attempt to back that interpretation up despite the absurdity reveals something a whole lot more significant than a simple reference to “10 times as smart”.
Declaring that “10 times as smart” must be a reference to IQ points
I did nothing of the sort.
IQ is a standard measure of “smartness”.
then proceeding to attempt to back up the rather absurd judgement reveal something a whole lot more significant than a simple reference to “10 times as smart”.
Would you care to make a complete thought out of this?
I will go out on a limb and assert that this man has a higher-than-average IQ. However, for his statement to be true he would have to be what some call “profoundly mentally retarded”. That is, someone with an IQ below 25. To my knowledge, there have been an exceedingly small number of individuals in the range of 10x that IQ score—amongst them the highest IQ yet recorded.
which suggests that you believed that “ten times as smart” must map to “ten times the IQ score.” To go back to the thermometer reading issue you responded to earlier, yes, a thermometer reading corresponds directly to a scalar quantity, but ordinary thermometer readings aren’t in Kelvin, and neither do IQ tests measure from zero intelligence at zero IQ. Even if we assume that intelligence is a quantity that progresses linearly along the IQ scale (unlikely,) mapping “ten times as smart as IQ 25” to “IQ 250″ would be rather like mapping “ten times as hot as the reading of 12 degrees C on this thermometer” to “120 degrees C.”
mapping “ten times as smart as IQ 25” to “IQ 250″ would be rather like mapping “ten times as hot as the reading of 12 degrees C on this thermometer” to “120 degrees C.”
Or, for that matter, mapping “ten times as hot as a 6” to a 60.
which suggests that you believed that “ten times as smart” must map to “ten times the IQ score.”
To the extent that IQ is the only quantified form of intelligence yet known, yes, that’s absolutely true.
, but ordinary thermometer readings aren’t in Kelvin,
Celsius is Kelvin + a number. Fahrenheit is Kelvin + a number + ratio conversion. This is a total non-starter for your position.
and neither do IQ tests measure from zero intelligence at zero IQ.
0 IQ however does have an intelligible meaning. This again is a total non-starter. Nothing in the observable universe exists at 0K. We “measure” above 0K. No intelligent being actually has 0 IQ. We “measure” above 0 IQ.
Kelvin is quantified temperature relative to absolute zero. IQ is quantified intelligence relative to zero where the units are adjusted to fit the current history of measurements.
mapping “ten times as smart as IQ 25” to “IQ 250″ would be rather like mapping “ten times as hot as the reading of 12 degrees C on this thermometer” to “120 degrees C.”
No, it would be exactly like asserting that 120K is 10x the temperature of 12K.
If you’d read the link that I originally gave, you’ll note that the “profoundly mentally retarded” goes from zero to twenty-five.
Zero, in this case, means without intellect at all.
An IQ of 0 corresponds to 6.66 standard deviations below the mean. It’s functionally unmeasurable (when a person is too stupid to take even the tests specially calibrated for people with exceptionally low intelligence, their IQ is too low to quantify,) but an IQ of 0 does not correspond to “zero intellect.” “Profound mental retardation” has no defined lower limit, only an upper one. You can also check the link you provided yourself, and you will find that it does not actually make any mention of a lower limit of zero, it defines profound mental retardation as being “<= 20-25”
An IQ of 100 does not correspond to 100 Intelligence Units, where an entity with zero Intelligence Units has no intelligence, it is simply the defined average of the population, and IQ tests are re-normed to have an average of 100 when the average intelligence changes. IQ points are meant to define where a person falls on the normal curve of human intelligence, not quantify intelligence on an absolute scale.
You can also check the link you provided yourself, and you will find that it does not actually make any mention of a lower limit of zero, it defines profound mental retardation as being “<= 20-25”
Of course it does. That conforms to the same standard.
but an IQ of 0 does not correspond to “zero intellect.” “Profound mental retardation” has no defined lower limit, only an upper one.
Do me a favor. Find an instance of a person with a zero or a negative IQ score. Then this will be meaningful.
An IQ of 0 corresponds to 6.66 standard deviations below the mean. It’s functionally unmeasurable
Yup.
An IQ of 100 does not correspond to 100 Intelligence Units, where an entity with zero Intelligence Units has no intelligence, it is simply the defined average of the population, and IQ tests are re-normed to have an average of 100 when the average intelligence changes.
What exactly makes you believe these are mutually exclusive statements? That the quantification itself is adjusted speaks to the rule-standard, not to invalidity of the notion of the absolute-zero.
IQ points are meant to define where a person falls on the normal curve of human intelligence, not quantify intelligence on an absolute scale.
Again; what exactly gives you the notion that these are mutually exclusive?
The two are not mutually exclusive; if we knew the relationship between the null point for intelligence and the human average, we could norm the test so that average was defined as 100 and 0 was defined as no intelligence, but we don’t, and if we did that then we would no longer have a definitional standard deviation of 15.
A less misleading way to express IQ scores would be to norm them to 0, to make it clear that they represent deviation above and below the mean and exist without reference to the null point for intelligence.
Do me a favor. Find an instance of a person with a zero or a negative IQ score. Then this will be meaningful.
Such an individual would be rarer than one in twenty billion, as would an individual with IQ over 200.
Such an individual would be rarer than one in twenty billion, as would an individual with IQ over 200.
Multiple such individuals (of the latter category) are on record. I linked originally to a woman with an IQ of 230.
Why, then, have no 0 or negative individuals ever been recorded, if it is purely a question of how far one deviates from the 100 mark?
but we don’t, and if we did that then we would no longer have a definitional standard deviation of 15.
That’s absurd. We would always need a metric standard;; a ‘measuring stick’ against which to determine the units of quantification. That quantification is where the definition of 100 +/- one standard deviation comes from, and why it is useful. This is tiresome: 100 is average, and 0 is non-intelligent, and we do still need the definitional standard of the standard deviation. For the same reason that we also have a specific object that masses one newton. It’s how the quantification is defined.
Or are you going to argue that because we use a class of observations (with error estimates) for mass, that means that an object with zero mass doesn’t have no mass?
0 IQ “means” “no intelligence”. A quotient is a term of quantification. Having a quotient score of zero means said object is quantified at zero.
That’s a way of saying “none”. IQ == 0 “means” “non-intelligent.” They’re synonymous expressions!
Multiple such individuals (of the latter category) are on record. I linked originally to a woman with an IQ of 230.
Such scores have been issued, but are widely regarded as nonsense, and Marilyn Vos Savant’s 200+ score is no longer given credence in the record books. The old formula (mental age divided by chronological age x 100) allowed for a number of individuals with scores over 200, and did not allow for negative scores, but it was flawed in many ways and has been discarded, and no individual has received a score over 200 from a proper application of the IQ test since then.
This is tiresome: 100 is average, and 0 is non-intelligent, and we do still need the definitional standard of the standard deviation. For the same reason that we also have a specific object that masses one newton. It’s how the quantification is defined.
Show me where such a definition is laid out.
Deviation measurements and absolute measurements both serve their purposes, but we don’t have any absolute measurements for intelligence. The IQ test is not and was never intended to be an absolute measurement of intelligence in the way that newtons are a measurement of force. Comparing IQ to temperature, it’s like defining the average particle kinetic energy in a vessel to be 100, with one standard deviation in kinetic energy being 15, without knowing what the temperature inside the vessel is.
It isn’t obvious to you that this a fairly off the cuff response, and that “10 times” is used in a slightly colloqial way to mean “a lot more”?
It isn’t obvious to you that off-the-cuff responses reveal underlying biases and assumptions equally as well—if not more so—as deeply-thought-out ones?
The very fact that “10 times as smart” is intelligible as merely “a lot more” requires certain underlying assumptions about the available space of intelligence, and that addresses the very fundamental assumptions of his writing.
Declaring that “10 times as smart” must be a reference to IQ points and then proceeding to attempt to back that interpretation up despite the absurdity reveals something a whole lot more significant than a simple reference to “10 times as smart”.
I did nothing of the sort.
IQ is a standard measure of “smartness”.
Would you care to make a complete thought out of this?
What you said was
which suggests that you believed that “ten times as smart” must map to “ten times the IQ score.” To go back to the thermometer reading issue you responded to earlier, yes, a thermometer reading corresponds directly to a scalar quantity, but ordinary thermometer readings aren’t in Kelvin, and neither do IQ tests measure from zero intelligence at zero IQ. Even if we assume that intelligence is a quantity that progresses linearly along the IQ scale (unlikely,) mapping “ten times as smart as IQ 25” to “IQ 250″ would be rather like mapping “ten times as hot as the reading of 12 degrees C on this thermometer” to “120 degrees C.”
Or, for that matter, mapping “ten times as hot as a 6” to a 60.
To the extent that IQ is the only quantified form of intelligence yet known, yes, that’s absolutely true.
Celsius is Kelvin + a number. Fahrenheit is Kelvin + a number + ratio conversion. This is a total non-starter for your position.
0 IQ however does have an intelligible meaning. This again is a total non-starter. Nothing in the observable universe exists at 0K. We “measure” above 0K. No intelligent being actually has 0 IQ. We “measure” above 0 IQ.
Kelvin is quantified temperature relative to absolute zero. IQ is quantified intelligence relative to zero where the units are adjusted to fit the current history of measurements.
No, it would be exactly like asserting that 120K is 10x the temperature of 12K.
If you’d read the link that I originally gave, you’ll note that the “profoundly mentally retarded” goes from zero to twenty-five.
Zero, in this case, means without intellect at all.
An IQ of 0 corresponds to 6.66 standard deviations below the mean. It’s functionally unmeasurable (when a person is too stupid to take even the tests specially calibrated for people with exceptionally low intelligence, their IQ is too low to quantify,) but an IQ of 0 does not correspond to “zero intellect.” “Profound mental retardation” has no defined lower limit, only an upper one. You can also check the link you provided yourself, and you will find that it does not actually make any mention of a lower limit of zero, it defines profound mental retardation as being “<= 20-25”
An IQ of 100 does not correspond to 100 Intelligence Units, where an entity with zero Intelligence Units has no intelligence, it is simply the defined average of the population, and IQ tests are re-normed to have an average of 100 when the average intelligence changes. IQ points are meant to define where a person falls on the normal curve of human intelligence, not quantify intelligence on an absolute scale.
I suppose that would have to be “Dead and all matter in a state of maximum entropy”.
Of course it does. That conforms to the same standard.
Do me a favor. Find an instance of a person with a zero or a negative IQ score. Then this will be meaningful.
Yup.
What exactly makes you believe these are mutually exclusive statements? That the quantification itself is adjusted speaks to the rule-standard, not to invalidity of the notion of the absolute-zero.
Again; what exactly gives you the notion that these are mutually exclusive?
The two are not mutually exclusive; if we knew the relationship between the null point for intelligence and the human average, we could norm the test so that average was defined as 100 and 0 was defined as no intelligence, but we don’t, and if we did that then we would no longer have a definitional standard deviation of 15.
A less misleading way to express IQ scores would be to norm them to 0, to make it clear that they represent deviation above and below the mean and exist without reference to the null point for intelligence.
Such an individual would be rarer than one in twenty billion, as would an individual with IQ over 200.
Multiple such individuals (of the latter category) are on record. I linked originally to a woman with an IQ of 230.
Why, then, have no 0 or negative individuals ever been recorded, if it is purely a question of how far one deviates from the 100 mark?
That’s absurd. We would always need a metric standard;; a ‘measuring stick’ against which to determine the units of quantification. That quantification is where the definition of 100 +/- one standard deviation comes from, and why it is useful. This is tiresome: 100 is average, and 0 is non-intelligent, and we do still need the definitional standard of the standard deviation. For the same reason that we also have a specific object that masses one newton. It’s how the quantification is defined.
Or are you going to argue that because we use a class of observations (with error estimates) for mass, that means that an object with zero mass doesn’t have no mass?
0 IQ “means” “no intelligence”. A quotient is a term of quantification. Having a quotient score of zero means said object is quantified at zero.
That’s a way of saying “none”. IQ == 0 “means” “non-intelligent.” They’re synonymous expressions!
Such scores have been issued, but are widely regarded as nonsense, and Marilyn Vos Savant’s 200+ score is no longer given credence in the record books. The old formula (mental age divided by chronological age x 100) allowed for a number of individuals with scores over 200, and did not allow for negative scores, but it was flawed in many ways and has been discarded, and no individual has received a score over 200 from a proper application of the IQ test since then.
Show me where such a definition is laid out.
Deviation measurements and absolute measurements both serve their purposes, but we don’t have any absolute measurements for intelligence. The IQ test is not and was never intended to be an absolute measurement of intelligence in the way that newtons are a measurement of force. Comparing IQ to temperature, it’s like defining the average particle kinetic energy in a vessel to be 100, with one standard deviation in kinetic energy being 15, without knowing what the temperature inside the vessel is.
There was a missing “s” at the end of “reveal”, apart from that it was correctly formed (if inelegant) as stated.
Alright, then, a few questions.
At what point did I assert that it “10 times as smart” must be a reference to IQ, as opposed to using IQ to illustrate the point made?
What exactly is so absurd about even that?
gand IQ are correlated, especially at the lower numbers of IQ.What exactly is this thing that is being revealed by this “absurdity”?