Update

iq.md

@@ -14,9 +14,9 @@ Please wear a hard hat when reading this page.
 
 *See also https://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient.*
 
-IQ (intelligence quotient) is a non-perfect but [still kind of useful](good_enough.md) measure of one's intelligence, it is a numeric score one gets on a standardized test that tries to estimate his intellectual ability at different tasks ([logic](logic.md), [memory](memory.md), language skills, spatial skills, ...) and express them with a single [number](number.md). The tests are standardized and the scoring is usually tuned so that the value 100 means average intelligence -- anything above means smarter than average, anything below dumber than average. IQ is a quite controversial topic because it shows intellectual differences between [races](race.md) and sexes and clashes with [political correctness](political_correctness.md), there is also a great debate about "what intelligence even is" (i.e. what the test should measure, what weight should be given to different areas of intelligence), if it is even reasonable to simplify "intelligence" down to a single number, how much of a cultural bias there is (do we really measure pure intellectual capacity or just familiarity with some concepts of our western culture?) and the accuracy of the tests is also highly debated (which can be an issue if we e.g. start using IQ tests to determine who should get higher education and who shouldn't) -- nevertheless it's unquestionable that IQ DOES correlate with intellectual abilities, IQ tests are a tool that really does something, the debates mostly revolve around how useful the tool is, how it should be used, what conclusions can we make with it and so on. Basically only people with the lowest IQ say that IQ is completely useless. The testing of IQ was developed only during 20th century, so we don't know IQs of old geniuses -- if you read somewhere (including this article) that Newton's IQ was 200, it's just someone's wild guess.
+IQ (intelligence quotient) is a non-perfect but [still somewhat useful](good_enough.md) measure of intelligence, it is a numeric score one gets on a standardized test which tries to estimate intellectual abilities at different tasks ([logic](logic.md), [memory](memory.md), language skills, spatial skills, ...) and expresses them as a single [number](number.md): the IQ score. The tests have been standardized and scoring is typically tuned so that the value 100 presents average intelligence -- anything above means smarter than average, anything below dumber than average. Needless to say IQ became quite a controversial subject because it shows intellectual differences between [races](race.md) and sexes and clashes with [political correctness](political_correctness.md); there is also the great debate about "what intelligence even is" (i.e. what the test should measure, what weight should be given to different areas of intelligence), if it is even reasonable to simplify "intelligence" down to a single numeric value, how much of a [cultural](culture.md) bias there is (do we really measure pure intellectual capacity or just familiarity with concepts of our western culture?) and the accuracy of the tests themselves also gets questioned and debated very frequently (which obviously plays a role if we, say, want to use the tests to choose who should get higher education) -- nonetheless it cannot be questioned that IQ DOES correlate with intellectual abilities to some degree, IQ tests are a tool that really does something, the debate mostly just revolves around how useful and ethical the tool is, how to use it correctly, what conclusions can be drawn from the scores etc. Basically only people with the lowest IQ claim that IQ is completely useless. The testing of IQ was developed only during 20th century, so we don't know IQs of old geniuses -- if you read somewhere (including this article) that Newton's IQ was 200, it's just someone's wild guess.
 
-Although it's important to distinguish between IQ and intelligence, many times we can use the terms interchangeably, and we will be doing so in this article, only making the distinction where it matters.
+Although it's important to distinguish between IQ and intelligence, in common talk we can usually use the terms interchangeably, and we will be doing so in this article, only treating the distinction accordingly where it matters.
 
 IQ follows the normal [probability](probability.md) distribution, i.e. it is modeled by the [bell curve](bell_curve.md) that says how many people of the total population will fall into any given range of IQ score. Though this has been challenged too, one of the basic laws of human stupidity says that the probability that someone is stupid is independent of any other of his characteristics (education, profession, race, sanity, ...). There are various IQ scales, almost all use the Gaussian (bell) curve that's centered at 100 (i.e. 100 is supposed to mean the average intelligence) and have [standard deviation](standard_deviation.md) 15 (but other have been used as well) -- this is what we'll implicitly suppose in the article from now. This means that about 2/3rds of people will fall in the range 85 to 115 but no more than 1% will have IQ higher than 145 or lower than 55. Sometimes you may also encounter so called **percentile** which says what percentage of population is below your IQ.
 
@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ The following are **average IQ values for various selected countries**, accordin
 
 **Is IQ a useful measure and if so, how important is the score?** Firstly if you are insecure about your own IQ then just stop that shit -- you know yourself, you know if you're good at math or writing or whatever else you try to do, do you need a piece of paper patting you on the back or something? That's completely pointless, the only thing worth of discussion is IQ as some standardized tool of estimating intellectual abilities of other people on a bigger scale, e.g. as some kind of filter in education (with small groups you can really just interview the people and see if they're dumb or not, that's also more reliable than IQ tests). In this of course the question of the validity of IQ is a controversial one, discussed over and over. Modern "inclusive" society dismisses IQ as basically useless because it points out differences between [races](race.md) etc., some rightist are on the other hand obsessed with IQ too much as it creates a natural hierarchy assigning each man his rank among others. True significance of IQ as a measure seems to be somewhere in between the two extremes here. As it's always noted about IQ, we have to remember the term "intelligence" itself is fuzzy, there doesn't and cannot exist any universal definition of it, so we have trouble even grasping what we're measuring and however we define intelligence, it usually ends up hardly even correlating with "success" or "achievements" or anything similar, so firstly let's see IQ just as what it literally is: a score in some kind of game. Furthermore intelligence is extremely complex and multidimensional (there is spatial and visual intelligence, long and short term memory, language skills, social and emotional intelligence etc.), capturing all this with a single number is inevitably a simplification, the score is just a projected shadow of the intelligence with light cast from certain angle. IQ score definitely does say a lot about some specific kind of "mathematical" intelligence, though even if designed to be so, even in this narrow sense it isn't anywhere near a perfect measure -- though a minority, some mathematicians do score low on IQ tests (Richard Feynman, physics Nobel Prize laureate had famously a relatively low score of 125). It's perhaps good to keep the "IQ tests as a game" mindset -- intelligent people will be probably good at it but some won't, performance can be increased by training, there will be narrowly focused autists who excel at the game but are extremely dumb at everything else etc. Having IQ score predict what we normally understand to be "intelligence" is like having height, weight and age predict how good of a soldier someone will be -- there will be some good correlations, but not nearly perfect ones. Some general IQ range will be necessary for certain tasks such as [programming](programming.md), but rather than +5 on an IQ score things such as education and personality traits will play much more important roles in actually achieving something or creating something good; for example curiosity and determination, the habit of thinking about everything in depth, nonconformity, a skeptical mind, all these are much more important than being a human calculator -- remember, the cheapest calculator will beat the smartest man in multiplying numbers, would you say it is more intelligent?
 
-{ Also consider this: even if you're average, or even a bit below average, you're still [homo](gay.md) sapiens and even if you only finished elementary school you received education that common people in middle ages could only dream of, so as long as you're not a [feminist](feminism.md) or [capitalist](capitalism.md) you'll always be the absolute top organism in intelligence, a member of by far the absolutely most intelligent species that ever appeared on [Earth](earth.md), your intelligence highly surpasses great majority of living organisms. If you are able to read this, you already possess the great genius, you mastered language and are among the top 0.1%, there's no need to compare yourself to others and aim to be in 0.01% instead of 0.02%. Rather think about what good to do with the gift of reason you've been given. ~drummyfish }
+{ Also consider this: even if you're average, or even a bit below average, you're still [homo](gay.md) sapiens and even if you only finished elementary school you received education that common people in middle ages could only dream of, so as long as you're not a [feminist](feminism.md) or [capitalist](capitalism.md) you'll always be the absolute top organism in intelligence, a member of by far the absolutely most intelligent species that ever walked this [Earth](earth.md), your intelligence exceedingly surpasses the majority of living organisms. You being able to read this means you already possess the shining genius required to master the complex skill of language and by that you make your way up to the top 0.1%, there's no need for comparison with others and aiming to get in 0.01% instead of 0.02%. Rather give thought to what good you want to do with the gift of reason you've been given. ~drummyfish }
 
 { It's still more and more complicated the more you think of it, even for example success in mathematics may sometimes depend less on pure math skills and more on non-mathematical kind of intelligence, e.g. that of observation skills and communication -- that's what academia is about. Yes, you need some creativity, but the ability to quickly understand ideas of others may sometimes be superior, an idea you "steal" from someone else is as useful as idea you came up with yourself, you need to catch many ideas of others and connect them together; on the other hand struggling with communication is sometimes simply like not speaking a common language at all. Thinking back I for one have always been quite retarded at understanding what others wanted to say, even simple things, so in classes I frequently wouldn't understand what was being taught while others understood, but it wasn't because I wouldn't understand the concept itself, I rather didn't understand the way the teacher explained it because (I think) I think differently about things. When we were given tasks to solve on our own, I usually beat my classmates because that was only about creative intelligence, not communication, and in this I think I was better than most of my peers. I didn't go for PhD later on while some of my classmates did -- TBH I don't think it's because they were necessarily more intelligent in general (many of them for sure were), but because they felt better in this world of communication, sharing papers, talking to others, understanding their ideas and collaborating, they had the "better mix" of intelligence for today's academic world -- this I always had problems with, so it contributed to my decision to not go there. This is just to show that this world is quite complex. ~drummyfish }