Given that IQ is a measurement of intelligence, and there is no way to measure a number that is that high, all 4 apply. If you are still confused about the meaning of the verb “measure”, here it is:
to ascertain the extent, dimensions, quantity, capacity, etc., of, especially by comparison with a standard
Agreed: You can’t create an accurate IQ test for that.
Disagreed: You can’t generate an estimate IQ that high. Estimates can be made, but their accuracy can’t be verified. Estimates are, by definition, an approximation. An estimated IQ that high is not automatically invalid, as long as it’s expressed as an estimate, the statement can still be true.
Disagreed: None of the IQ tests developed provide any method to generate an IQ that high. Some IQ tests can be adjusted upward based on a child’s age. I’m not claiming it’s accurate. I’m claiming it exists.
Disagreed: You can’t have an IQ that high. Saying a person can’t get an IQ score that high is not the same thing as saying they can’t get an IQ that high. You can be born with an intelligence level beyond what is statistically probable. Whether it can be measured may be another story. But it can still happen. William Sidis is my cite for that—his estimated IQ was 250-300. If you read enough about developmental psychology, you’ll probably agree that Sidis not only qualifies as a person having abilities consistent with what an person with an IQ of > 220 should have, but that he had such great abilities that by using him as an example I am doing something more along the lines of killing an ant with a nuke. You can claim that because it’s improbable, it can’t happen, but that’s would be an appeal to probability (or a reverse of that appeal, if you want to be really technical.)
Since IQ scores are calculated to conform to a normal distribution, your IQ is in exact correspondence with your percentile ranking in the general population. If f(x) is the CDF of the Normal(100,15) distribution, and your percentile ranking is p, then your “true IQ” is precisely the value of x such that f(x)=p. Since there are only roughly 7 billion people alive, the smartest person on Earth is ranked above 99.99999998578% of other people, which corresponds to an IQ of 195. If we include all people that have ever lived (I believe the number is roughly 100 billion), the smartest would have an IQ of 201.
William Sidis’s IQ of 250-300 is using a different scale, which is no longer used: it claims that his intellectual age, as a child at the time he took the exam (if in fact he did, there is some doubt about this) was 2.5 to 3 times his physical age. This isn’t really a meaningful assessment of how smart he was as an adult, nor does it have any relationship to the modern system of IQ scores (on a normal curve, such a score is 1 in 10^23, which I think we all agree is ridiculous).
I suppose that if you mean that it is possible to make an invalid extrapolation based on age adjustment, then you are right, it is indeed possible, if meaningless. It is not, however, how IQ is measured (by comparing how well you did vs other people who took the same test).
Disagreed: You can’t have an IQ that high. Saying a person can’t get an IQ score that high is not the same thing as saying they can’t get an IQ that high.
It is exactly the same thing, because IQ is not intelligence, it’s one (not very accurate) way to measure it. Thus there is no such thing as person’s IQ, only person’s IQ score. Just because IQ is commonly confused with intelligence, does not mean it is the same thing.
You can estimate someone’s IQ testing skills from one or more of their IQ test scores, and this skill is indeed a property of (your model of) the individual, not of a piece of paper with the number on it, and this skill is correlated with other measures of intelligence. This skill can conceivably be shorted to “person’s IQ”. However, there is no standard procedure of calculating anything like that (should it be the average? mode? geometric mean? maximum? minimum? any of those have merits, depending on your model of how the hypothetical innate IQ testing skill is translated into IQ test scores).
William Sidis is my cite for that—his estimated IQ was 250-300
Funny that you bring him up. Says Wikipedia:
never before have I found a topic so satiated with lies, myths, half-truths, exaggerations, and other forms of misinformation as is in the history behind William Sidis
I suppose that if you mean that it is possible to make an invalid extrapolation based on age adjustment, then you are right, it is indeed possible, if meaningless.
It is possible, and they’ve done it. Whether it is meaningless is outside the scope of our particular debate as, if I remember correctly, we started arguing after Gwern said that claiming an IQ of 220+ is proof that a person is “either a lying or from the future”.
So, this supports my point that such a claim is not proof that a person is lying. I’ll just disregard the “from the future” comment for now. ;)
It is not, however, how IQ is measured (by comparing how well you did vs other people who took the same test).
Not sure if you’re saying “IQ test scores aren’t generated based on how you compare.” or, within the context of the previous sentence “IQ tests are not scored using age adjustment.”
For the former, you’re partly right and partly wrong. The ratio tests were scored using a bell curve. If your IQ was relatively close to normal, you’d get a score that would tell you how you compare to average. If your IQ was super high like 160, it was likely to be inaccurate, because those people are rare.
As for age adjustments—of course they make age adjustments. Otherwise, how would they test children of different ages on the same test? If a child of the age of 3 gets the same questions right as children who are 10 years old, do you give the ten year olds a toddler’s score or do you give the toddler a score closer to that of a ten year old? It would be inappropriate to imply that the ten year olds and the toddler have the same amount of intelligence.
I imagine this is fairly meaningful at least when it concerns testing average children of different ages, since it’s not too difficult to find lots of children to make the test more accurate with. When it comes to testing child prodigies, the exact score (say “exactly 223” or something) would be meaningless, but the fact that, say, a 7 year old got a perfect score on an IQ test suitable for adults, we’ll say, that would be very meaningful—though their score should be taken as more of a ballpark figure than an exact measurement.
Saying a person can’t get an IQ score that high is not the same thing as saying they can’t get an IQ that high.
It is exactly the same thing, because IQ is not intelligence, it’s one (not very accurate) way to measure it. Thus there is no such thing as person’s IQ, only person’s IQ score. Just because IQ is commonly confused with intelligence, does not mean it is the same thing.
It depends on how you use the word in the sentence. You make a distinction between IQ and intelligence which is good, but I am making a different distinction. Even if I haven’t measured the number of degrees Fahrenheit in a particular igloo near the North pole, that does not mean it has no temperature or that it’s temperature does not correspond to a specific number of degrees Fahrenheit. This is more like the debate “If a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound?”—my answer is yes because I’m using a definition that involves physics, disrupted air waves and decibels. Just because you didn’t measure the number of decibels doesn’t mean they weren’t there.
the point
Anyway, your point is “it’s physically impossible to measure an IQ score that high” but that does nothing to refute my point that “this claim is not proof the person is a liar.”
Note that it is physically impossible to measure IQ > 200:
It’s not clear whether you’re saying:
You can’t create an accurate IQ test for that.
You can’t generate an estimate IQ that high.
None of the IQ tests developed provide any method to generate an IQ that high.
You can’t have an IQ that high.
Given that IQ is a measurement of intelligence, and there is no way to measure a number that is that high, all 4 apply. If you are still confused about the meaning of the verb “measure”, here it is:
Agreed: You can’t create an accurate IQ test for that.
Disagreed: You can’t generate an estimate IQ that high. Estimates can be made, but their accuracy can’t be verified. Estimates are, by definition, an approximation. An estimated IQ that high is not automatically invalid, as long as it’s expressed as an estimate, the statement can still be true.
Disagreed: None of the IQ tests developed provide any method to generate an IQ that high. Some IQ tests can be adjusted upward based on a child’s age. I’m not claiming it’s accurate. I’m claiming it exists.
Disagreed: You can’t have an IQ that high. Saying a person can’t get an IQ score that high is not the same thing as saying they can’t get an IQ that high. You can be born with an intelligence level beyond what is statistically probable. Whether it can be measured may be another story. But it can still happen. William Sidis is my cite for that—his estimated IQ was 250-300. If you read enough about developmental psychology, you’ll probably agree that Sidis not only qualifies as a person having abilities consistent with what an person with an IQ of > 220 should have, but that he had such great abilities that by using him as an example I am doing something more along the lines of killing an ant with a nuke. You can claim that because it’s improbable, it can’t happen, but that’s would be an appeal to probability (or a reverse of that appeal, if you want to be really technical.)
Since IQ scores are calculated to conform to a normal distribution, your IQ is in exact correspondence with your percentile ranking in the general population. If f(x) is the CDF of the Normal(100,15) distribution, and your percentile ranking is p, then your “true IQ” is precisely the value of x such that f(x)=p. Since there are only roughly 7 billion people alive, the smartest person on Earth is ranked above 99.99999998578% of other people, which corresponds to an IQ of 195. If we include all people that have ever lived (I believe the number is roughly 100 billion), the smartest would have an IQ of 201.
William Sidis’s IQ of 250-300 is using a different scale, which is no longer used: it claims that his intellectual age, as a child at the time he took the exam (if in fact he did, there is some doubt about this) was 2.5 to 3 times his physical age. This isn’t really a meaningful assessment of how smart he was as an adult, nor does it have any relationship to the modern system of IQ scores (on a normal curve, such a score is 1 in 10^23, which I think we all agree is ridiculous).
I suppose that if you mean that it is possible to make an invalid extrapolation based on age adjustment, then you are right, it is indeed possible, if meaningless. It is not, however, how IQ is measured (by comparing how well you did vs other people who took the same test).
It is exactly the same thing, because IQ is not intelligence, it’s one (not very accurate) way to measure it. Thus there is no such thing as person’s IQ, only person’s IQ score. Just because IQ is commonly confused with intelligence, does not mean it is the same thing.
You can estimate someone’s IQ testing skills from one or more of their IQ test scores, and this skill is indeed a property of (your model of) the individual, not of a piece of paper with the number on it, and this skill is correlated with other measures of intelligence. This skill can conceivably be shorted to “person’s IQ”. However, there is no standard procedure of calculating anything like that (should it be the average? mode? geometric mean? maximum? minimum? any of those have merits, depending on your model of how the hypothetical innate IQ testing skill is translated into IQ test scores).
Funny that you bring him up. Says Wikipedia:
It is possible, and they’ve done it. Whether it is meaningless is outside the scope of our particular debate as, if I remember correctly, we started arguing after Gwern said that claiming an IQ of 220+ is proof that a person is “either a lying or from the future”.
So, this supports my point that such a claim is not proof that a person is lying. I’ll just disregard the “from the future” comment for now. ;)
Not sure if you’re saying “IQ test scores aren’t generated based on how you compare.” or, within the context of the previous sentence “IQ tests are not scored using age adjustment.”
For the former, you’re partly right and partly wrong. The ratio tests were scored using a bell curve. If your IQ was relatively close to normal, you’d get a score that would tell you how you compare to average. If your IQ was super high like 160, it was likely to be inaccurate, because those people are rare.
As for age adjustments—of course they make age adjustments. Otherwise, how would they test children of different ages on the same test? If a child of the age of 3 gets the same questions right as children who are 10 years old, do you give the ten year olds a toddler’s score or do you give the toddler a score closer to that of a ten year old? It would be inappropriate to imply that the ten year olds and the toddler have the same amount of intelligence.
I imagine this is fairly meaningful at least when it concerns testing average children of different ages, since it’s not too difficult to find lots of children to make the test more accurate with. When it comes to testing child prodigies, the exact score (say “exactly 223” or something) would be meaningless, but the fact that, say, a 7 year old got a perfect score on an IQ test suitable for adults, we’ll say, that would be very meaningful—though their score should be taken as more of a ballpark figure than an exact measurement.
It depends on how you use the word in the sentence. You make a distinction between IQ and intelligence which is good, but I am making a different distinction. Even if I haven’t measured the number of degrees Fahrenheit in a particular igloo near the North pole, that does not mean it has no temperature or that it’s temperature does not correspond to a specific number of degrees Fahrenheit. This is more like the debate “If a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound?”—my answer is yes because I’m using a definition that involves physics, disrupted air waves and decibels. Just because you didn’t measure the number of decibels doesn’t mean they weren’t there.
the point
Anyway, your point is “it’s physically impossible to measure an IQ score that high” but that does nothing to refute my point that “this claim is not proof the person is a liar.”
It’s a red herring.
Maybe I should verify my info on him then.