Words of Wisdom From the Sage #3 - IQ Tests, Intelligence, Public Beliefs
(CC0) The Sage - photo by Fabrizio Chiagano, minor modifications by Larry Neal Gowdy
IQ Is Not Intelligence
To the small crowd of young academicians, Sage asked the question: "If a math test has five questions, then, how many correct answers can there be?"
The academicians all answered 'five'.
Sage asked: "Then, what would your school grade be if you got all five questions correct?"
The academicians all answered 'one-hundred'.
Sage asked: "Then, what would your school grade be if you only got two answers correct?"
The academicians all answered 'forty'.
Sage say: "Then all of you can count to five, as well as count percentages. Now, answer me this: if a test has 100 questions, then what is the maximum score if you get all of the answers correct?"
The academicians all answered 'one-hundred'.
Sage say: "That is correct. Now, some tests give scores that relate to a person's mental age. The tall monkeys call the tests 'IQ tests', which is supposed to infer 'intelligence quotient' tests. Instead of having a simple score of one to one-hundred, the IQ tests are evaluated as IQ equaling one's mental age divided by chronological age, and then multiplied by one-hundred. The tests generally evaluate whether a person's intelligence is mete with their age. As an example, most two-year-old children can figure-out how to open and close a necklace. If a two-year-old is able to open and close a necklace, then his mental ability is normal for two-year-olds, and thus, two years old for mental, divided by two years old of age, equals 1. Multiplying the one by one-hundred equals one-hundred, which is the average score for everyone who takes the IQ test.
But now if a one-year old is able to open and close a necklace, then his mental age is two, and his chronological age is one. Two divided by one equals two. Two times one-hundred equals two-hundred. IQ tests were originally designed for one purpose, that of determining if a monkey is dumber than other monkeys. However, sometimes young children are able to do what teenagers and adults cannot yet do, and when that happens, the child can score much higher than what other monkeys his age can score. But, since we monkeys tend to get more mentally lazy as we age, then our IQ scores would drop at older ages. A hundred year-old monkey might no longer be able to figure-out how to open and close a necklace, which would then result in the monkey having a .01 IQ. And, so, to make the scores appear to be more uniform, IQ scores are manipulated with standard deviations, which generally means that the average scores amongst many monkeys at specific ages will result in a 100 IQ. If most all monkeys at a similar age score similarly on IQ tests, then the score becomes the norm, regardless of whether the monkey is smart or dumb. And, so, as is obvious, an IQ score by itself means nothing aside from its relevance to what is normal for normal monkeys at the same age.
Using the standard deviations, even if a monkey were a zillion times smarter than everyone else, still the monkey can only get an IQ score up to the IQ test's maximum score of around 165."
(CC0) Conform - photo by Michael Jerrard, minor modifications by Larry Neal Gowdy
An academician named Conform piped-in: "But the monkey William Sidis had a 250 to 300 IQ! It's proven to be true! Too, everyone says the same thing, and it was actually written in a book!"
Sage rubbed the bone of his nose so as to help relieve some of the stress. "And what if everyone were telling you to paint your nose red, your cheeks blue, and your hair yellow and green..." Sage paused as he grinned and looked at Conform: "Okay, maybe that's a bad example; too obvious. Okay, so let's begin at the beginning. The myth of the tall monkey William Sidis was first written by an author whose job was to invent stories for newspapers. The author's previous books were fiction, not non-fiction. The author was pretty good at writing stories, but just because someone writes something, it doesn't make it true fact. Now, it is confirmed that the 250-300 IQ claim for the Sidis monkey was the author's purposeful twisting of what another monkey had said. All of the book's so-called facts about monkey Sidis are verifiably incorrect. Not only is there no actual documented IQ score to be found for William, even his own father said that IQ tests are silly and useless. William's father was a braggart who endlessly bragged about how smart and wonderful and majestic he was for having monkey-trained William to read and write at a younger than average age, but there, if William's IQ had indeed been above average, then his father would have bragged about it; loudly and long!! You'd have to be pretty lame of brain to not recognize the connection."
Conform was confused as he asked: "Then what IQ score would prove a person to be the smartest person on earth?"
Sage say: "It is a mistake to believe in the myth that IQ scores can be a measure of superior intelligence. The IQ tests cannot evaluate an intelligence that is greater than the designer's intelligence. If the IQ test designer is stupid, then the designer cannot know what is smart, and the designer cannot ask questions that require smart answers. It's like the Lewis Terman monkey who didn't know that the sense of aesthetics is a mental process, which means that all IQ tests designed by Lewis Terman cannot evaluate an intelligence that is aware of the mental processing within aesthetics. And so, even if a monkey scored the highest score on a monkey-brains test, it doesn't mean he's smarter than all other monkeys, it just means that he is at least as smart as the IQ test's designer.
Too, if you removed the multiple choice answers from IQ tests, the average scores would then plummet. Most monkeys can't think for themselves, so they have to be given the answers to questions, which in itself is stupid and proves the test designers to be stupid. And too, the questions on IQ tests are lame, most all of which can be memorized from reading books and stuff, but, if the questions actually required thinking, then the average monkey would get zero answers correct, which, according to the IQ scoring method, would still give the average monkey an IQ score of 100."
Seeing the academicians' blank faces, Sage added: "Okay, here's an example, and an extraordinarily easy one: what is time? Someone just tell me what time is."
Seeing the academicians' blank faces begin to exhibit fear, Sage continued: "The monkey William didn't know what time is either. He wrote a book in which he claimed to be able to mathematically reverse the laws of thermodynamics into the past time, but, he didn't even know what time is, nor what future time is, nor what past time is. Time cannot be reversed, period, and smart monkeys know the reasons why. It's obvious; the William monkey was not any smarter than any of you here."
The academicians' faces changed expressions to exhibit humor and satisfaction that the academicians were as smart as William Sidis because he wasn't any smarter than any other monkey.
Conform asked: "But how could anyone know what time is?"
Sage say: "Be conscious, think about what's going on around you, and stop believing in the hallucination that book words are true."
Conform: "How do we do that?"
Sage shook his head: "And there you go; you just proved that you can't do it because you're asking how to do it. If you can't do it on your own, then you'll always be a dumb monkey."
Conform wasn't happy: "Then what are we doing here? Why don't we leave?"
Sage chuckled: "See? Even when you've been told to think for yourself, still you ask how to think for yourself, and you ask for advice of how to not take advice. Don't you see the problem there?"
Conform and the other academicians were silent in their confusion.
Sage looked at the academicians' blank faces while recognizing that they had never been told anything about life: "Look, wisdom comes from hindsight, of learning through firsthand experience. The problem with hindsight, though, is that it doesn't happen until after you've made a mistake, and then it's already too late, you've already done something stupid, okay? My job isn't to circus-train you to recite memorized words like what the tall monkeys do in their schools, but rather it's to point at stuff while warning you to be careful and to not make the worst mistakes.
All things in the universe exist in cycles, including people. Terrible twos, fearsome fives, then the horrible teenage years beginning at about 14, then the settling-down at 21, then the search for meaning at around 28, the 50 year old crazies at around 48 to 50, and around every seven years people change their goals, values, and interests. Now, by the time you get old, you'll look back on life and remember all of the really dumb stupid things you did, and you'll wish you could have been smart enough to have done better. Now, imagine yourself at a hundred years old, and you finally realized that you wasted your entire life slaving at a job and hoarding worthless junk. Old folks will tell you that it's a real bummer, and a lot of the old people die with deep regrets.
Now, your now knowing that your interests will change every seven years or so, you'll now be able to better plan your life with the goal of appreciating your youthful choices. It has to be done on your own, else you'll end life being disgusted with yourself for having been a circus monkey who simply performed tricks for the public. My job isn't to tell you to do this and do that, but rather my job is to merely drop a few hints so that you'll have something to think about, and, to hopefully choose wise choices.
If you don't want to think on your own, then fine, no problem, it's okay, but just remember, the only person who will ever care about what you decide, and the only person to blame for your choices, will be yourself."
After a sizable pause of reflection, Conform submerged himself into the hot spring, where he washed-off the silly paint...