Are you insecure about your intelligence?

[Cavernio]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

K, so I agree largely with what you've said, which is largely a point I've been trying to make. Yes, if a smart person fails because they can't concentrate for whatever reason, it invalidates the measure. How often to do you think someone performs at full potential all the time though? How can you say that g measures general cognitive ability when you say yourself that there are things can cause g to not be measures of general cognitive ability?

Of course g exists, I don't think I ever said it didn't. I think I started with saying **** g, not g doesn't exist. But to say that g measures general cognitive ability, that's the issue I have. If I've said otherwise I'm taking it back.

Until we correct for things like motivation and concentration for measurements of intelligence, I simply can't say that g measures intelligence.

As to ECT's correlating to g, or even being used as a factor in a formula for g, that's all fine, but what you've quoted, in my eyes, doesn't really change anything I've said. It's neat that they thought of comparing reaction time and movement time, and how we could potentially try to figure out if a person was motivated by performing an fMRI while they're doing the tasks, the paragraph is specifically vague about ECT's. It never says that once measuring controls for things like motivation, and then factoring them out of, say that the results are still correlated to g, much less strongly correlated.

[Reincarnate]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

There are always sources of error in any experiment you perform -- not just a g calculation. It doesn't detract from the nature of what you're testing after you take conflicting variables into account.

Why do you have a problem with g being a measure of general cognitive ability when it's defined as a large variance-explaining entity resultant from a variegated set of cognitive tasks?

You think intelligence needs to factor in motivation and concentration? I don't think that's a very good definition. Intelligence is the ability to quickly gather new information and perform complex tasks. There are certainly sources of error that may conflict with the data-gathering or the performance processes, but that doesn't mean the actual intelligence factor is any less valid. It doesn't make sense to say "Well, I scored low on this test because I didn't really try." Okay, so try. Besides, with so many people and so many trials, g has predictive power and you can be sure that not everyone "was having an off day" when testing. Plenty of people try, and plenty may not perform at capacity. Even so, we see predictive power in g. Things like motivation and concentration are just noise that get filtered out as you increase N. For tough questions, for instance, even if you give someone as much time as they want to solve a problem, if they can't figure it out, they can't figure it out.

Again, it's like saying "Well, to predict the top speed of this car by the type of engine+wheels present, we need to take into account the grogginess levels of the driver and his willingness to accelerate to maximum speed." Those factors don't have any bearing on the actual speed potential of the car, and so it doesn't make sense to say "Until we account for grogginess and willingness, we can't say the type of engine+wheels measures the capable speeds of the car."

Besides, if I am groggy and feeling like poop when taking a highly g-loaded test, I'm going to feel groggy and poopy when performing any other task g is supposed to predict, too. If you get marked with a g level of a particular threshold, that means you're scoring at a level that has been the result of multiple trials in the population such that concentration and motivation have already been shelled out through high N alone. In other words, if you're performing tests and feeling groggy in doing so, obviously you would expect your value to not be indicative of your potential. The solution to that is to actually try.

But if you're not motivated/concentrated when you're testing, that doesn't mean you're not intelligent. It doesn't mean you're necessarily intelligent, either. But you're not testing yourself properly if you're not taking it seriously.

[Reach]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

Well I ended up with 134. Some of those questions just stopped me in my tracks. Specifically the > ones.

Would really like to know how they are done eventually.

134 is a very good score. It would qualify you for mensa and puts you above 99% of the population in general reasoning.

There are usually a couple of ways to solve each of the questions, but many of the > ones with the boxes with 4 squares are solved by solving the remainder in each lane and combining them into one and canceling out/combining where logically necessary.

Some of them are more complicated though. The test is much harder than IQtest.dk, because it's designed to measure much higher IQs accurately. IQtest.dk is simply not designed to measure IQs over 130 (it runs into serious ceiling effect, or inability to make statistically significant differentiation between people of different ability).

Until we correct for things like motivation and concentration for measurements of intelligence, I simply can't say that g measures intelligence.

I'm not convinced this is a valid argument.


You could also say, for example, that until we correct for things like motivation and concentration for measurements of running speed, I simply can't say that a sprinting event on a track measures running speed.

It doesn't make any sense. Of course we accept that some major correlate of running speed, i.e. a sprinting event, measures how fast you can run. We also accept that some people run faster than others. We don't even need to think about it. We also intuitively know that your speed in a sprinting event is highly correlated with your speed in other events, and your 'general' fitness, or 'g'Fit (which in turn, is a wide reaching predictor of your running speed in any event!).

What then, is the big deal with it comes to IQ tests? It's the exact same thing...

For tough questions, for instance, even if you give someone as much time as they want to solve a problem, if they can't figure it out, they can't figure it out.

This is essentially the essence of high range tests like the Titan test, and as much as I'm not convinced it beats or even matches standard psychometric measures of intelligence in terms of validity, it does have very high correlation with standard IQ tests...

It's just backed up too much by data. Beyond a point, studies have shown there is a near zero correlation between time spent and score on extremely high difficulty questions, because a person of insufficient intellect will *never* solve it given even an indefinite amount of time (or they will solve it incorrectly).

This is a huge punch to the nuts for the 'concentration' hypothesis, since I would hypothesize that if concentration and motivation were serious factors to consider when measuring intelligence, dumber people would be able to solve hard questions correctly given enough time and there would be a strong correlation between time spent and score on difficult tests.

It also makes sense intuitively. Take someone with MR for example; we never expect them to start doing higher level maths, even if they were very motivated and tried their hardest. They simply don't have the capacity to do so. Likewise, why expect someone of average intelligence to be able to perform way above their level if they simply concentrate harder and are more motivated? They too, do not have the capacity.

(For the record, I do think concentration and motivation matter, just not nearly as much as Cavernio does).

(Also, anecdotally, when attempting the Titan test, I found I could either solve the question relatively quickly or was hopelessly lost indefinitely, fumbling around in the dark taking stabs at probably incorrect solutions).

[Reincarnate]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

I feel like most of the bashing against intelligence metrics are done out of emotional appeal.

[Reincarnate]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

just took iqtest.dk again -- got "over 145" again (slightly unfair since I took this test in the past already), but here are the answers in screenshot form if anyone is curious. Question 39 is lmfao so much harder than the rest to figure out (there's one super-obvious fact that is actually useless, and only once you find the next relevant observation does the final step unravel to the answer). 34 is also tough (imo).

[Dorby]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

I'm very secure with my intelligence. I never feel the need to try and feel smart or "prove" that I know more than someone... That's just arrogant and tacky. I have had people envious of my ability to learn things quickly, such as a song on guitar, and feel the need to insult me and try to demean me to make up for their insecurities.

This is not a contest... this is simply life. I have a personal grudge against insecurites in general... I feel no one should be insecure about themselves. We are all human and shouldn't feel any less. Accept yourself for who you are, and be happy with it.

[MoopToThePowerOfQ]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

I'm going into 3rd year engineering and do math in my spare time. Gotta push them intellectual limits y'all if yous wants to gets somewhere.

[Cavernio]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

"Things like motivation and concentration are just noise that get filtered out as you increase N"

No. If the test systematically measures concentration or motivation, this will not happen. That's my point, that they are systematically being included in the measurements of it. They are confounding variables, not random ones.

What you say makes sense if everyone, over a period of time could be found to possess the same level of concentration and motivation to do things. That's just not true though. Furthermore, I don't even know how we could get a decent measure of concentration without having intelligence worm its way into it. To me a great measure of concentration would be something like reaction time, but that's clearly not what a lot of people think because someone decided to load it into a factor called 'intelligence', and so people choose to think of it as a measure of intelligence.

I'm not sure what to answer to Reach's post yet

[Reincarnate]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

Nobody's denying that motivation/concentration don't play SOME role in your performance. They obviously do. It just doesn't matter as much as you think it does, and the data supports this.

[Cavernio]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

You're taking a floor effect, and then saying that because variables like concentration and motivation don't matter at such a level, that they do not matter for the test. I disagree.
To look at the opposite end of the spectrum, someone highly intelligent but low in motivation could score the same as someone who is unintelligent.

In regards to the running and racing thing, the difference is clear: one obviously is a very, very strong measure of the other. I mean, by definition, speed is how fast you go. Yet by definition, up until 100 years ago, intelligence wasn't measured by any hard and fast test, and even now, the definition of intelligence still isn't IQ.

[Cavernio]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

Show me a study that measures motivation and concentration and some measure of intelligence, measure how well the intelligence score correlates to various other factors that we like to compare them to, like grades and job performance, and then factor out the variability measured by motivation and concentration from the intelligence score and then compare it again to grades and job performance. If the correlations before and after removing the connections to motivation and concentrations are close, I will agree with you. Preferably some sort of meta-analysis showing this.

Otherwise you don't have the data.

edit: I forget my schooling, a regular old MANOVA would be just fine. I also honestly would like to read some sort of study that tests something like that. I don't have access to a university's journal databases anymore, stupid lack of free information, *grumble*.

[Reincarnate]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

Define intelligence

EDIT: OK, here's one super obvious fact off the top of my head. People who retake the SAT multiple times tend to not see much gain in their scores past three attempts or so (the following quote says two, but I'm being conservative here as someone who used to be a mod at a very well-known college admissions forum and have seen more score progressions than I can shake my cock at):

"The vast majority of students take the SAT once or twice, and the College Board does not recommend that students take the SAT more than twice. There is no evidence to support the idea that taking the SAT more than twice results in significant score gains."

We can argue that the SAT is more affected by concentration and motivation than the iqtest.dk test because it's timed. The reason WHY it's timed is because the questions are arguably much easier, and so we can show that a lack of concentration may lead to a shittier score, and more focus leads to a stronger score.

But we find that even past three attempts, your scores aren't going to experience much flux. Unless you have some sort of systematic concentration problem, you're going to have good days and bad days -- and this is true for most people. The variance of these errors cancel each other out as you increase N and you approach an "expected value" which tells you, on average, what value can be predicted. You say someone of high intelligence but low in motivation could score the same as someone who is unintelligent. The point is that *this empirically doesn't happen that often*. Someone who is decently smart will be able to answer a huge chunk of, say, the iqtest.dk questions without much mental effort at all. Even if they're having an off day, they aren't going to suddenly start bombing their answers such that they drop multiple deciles.

[who_cares973]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

lack of motivation doesnt mean you lack the knowledge to answer questions right it just means the person isnt going to try on the questions they arent sure about.

im too tired to write down what i think about this right now but i'll come back when i wake up from my sleep

[~kitty~]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

Personally, I find it annoying when generally not very intelligent people call themselves smart.
I don't want to call myself smart because I've been surrounded by idiots and I have little to compare with. I have a generally large bank of knowledge, and I understand some of it, however the parts I fail to understand I seek to find out. I don't know if that has much to do with intelligence though rather than tactical knowledge gain.
Using a large variety of vocabulary is associated with intelligence or is seen as trying too hard, depending on if you use the words effectively or not. I am not sure of the validity of this, but it may hold some truth.
For people like me, I think it's best to not care about if someone's smarter than you, or if someone's not as smart as you. It's better to just be happy with whatever you can gain with what you have.

[Cavernio]

Re: Are you insecure about your intelligence?

For a person, concentration and motivation obviously vary, but a person can still have an average motivation or concentration that may not vary much. Do we have any idea how much variation in the population there is for motivation and concentration though?

This whole discussion about concentration is just weird. In my mind concentration seems an important part of intelligence, so I was hesitant to even start talking about it in relation to intelligence until reincarnate said that it wasn't.