Don't try to grade intelligence, the effort will be an utter flop!

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 18, 2021 at 10:06am

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Permalink Reply by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on September 19, 2021 at 1:03pm

Hmmm!

Who told you Hawkins occupies the first position in the list of intelligent people?

All intelligence measurements are lopsided and you cannot measure intelligence perfectly and grade people accordingly.

Moreover, the definition of intelligence varies from person to person, depending on the perception of each person. There are cultural and regional differences too.

Then there are general and specific intelligences.

All psychologists now believe that there is a generalized intelligence factor, g, that relates to abstract thinking and that includes the abilities to acquire knowledge, to reason abstractly, to adapt to novel situations, and to benefit from instruction and experience (1,2). People with higher general intelligence learn faster.

But I find a loophole here too. If you want to learn faster, you should have some prior knowledge about something. Scientists are considered as very intelligent people. But we take years and years of research work to learn something because there is no prior knowledge and most of the time, we will be the very first people to enter a field to find out something and tell the world about it! It is so frustrating to spend years and years on learning something …. for the first time.

So are scientists really intelligent? Maybe because they are usually highly qualified, can creatively connect things using their intelligence and solve the problems the world faces and try to learn new things. But not that intelligent because they take a very long time to understand and learn unknown things, failing several times during the process. That is the irony.

Moreover, not all scientists have a very high IQ. But still they can solve problems and learn new things intelligently. Strange!

The brain processes underlying intelligence are not completely understood, but current research has focused on four potential factors: brain size, sensory ability, speed and efficiency of neural transmission, and working memory capacity.

There are loopholes here too. Because bigger brains don’t mean higher intelligence.

Craniometry - is pseudoscience too. The scientific measurement of skulls and thinking that as male brains are bigger than female ones, they are more intelligent and better at science.

Neanderthals too had skulls which were the same size and sometimes larger than modern humans but a large portion of their brain was solely designated to processing images from their huge eyes. They were doomed by vision-centered brains. Their cognitive abilities were very low when compared to humans. They would not be as smart as modern humans (Humans: Large prefrontal Cortex (forehead), Neanderthals: Small prefrontal cortex but had a large occipital lobe for seeing in low light). The Prefrontal Cortex controls orchestration of thoughts , planning, complex cognitive behavior, personality expression, decision making, and moderating social behavior. Also a larger portion of their brain was used to regulate their stronger body, not to think.

Recent research says bigger brains don't make you smart.

There is an "ideal" brain circuit size suited to carrying out particular tasks. Researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK found recently that increasing the size of neural circuits in the brain can boost learning performance. However, this increased connectivity also has the potential to impede learning, according to scientists.

The study, published in the journal PNAS, looked at how neural circuits can use additional connectivity to achieve faster and more precise learning. It showed that adding apparently "redundant" neurons -- cells that make the brain work -- and synaptic connections that enable information to flow from one neuron to another, to a network is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand an increase in connectivity can make a task easier to learn.

On the other hand, due to inherent noise in signal-carrying connections, increased connectivity will eventually hinder both learning and task performance once a circuit exceeds a certain size.

Adding 'spare' or redundant connections to brain circuits can, in fact, boost learning performance. However, it was also found that if each new pathway adds 'noise' to the signal it transmits, the overall gain in learning performance will eventually be lost as a circuit increases in size (3).

So?!

Intelligence has both genetic and environmental causes, and these have been systematically studied through a large number of twin and adoption studies (4,5). These studies have found that between 40% and 80% of the variability in IQ is due to genetics, meaning that overall genetics plays a bigger role than does the environment in creating IQ differences among individuals.

But, we see that very innocent parents giving birth to very intelligent children and very intelligent parents giving birth to idiots.

With so many flaws with intelligence measurements and even definitions, you cannot have any correct assessment whatsoever.

The IQ test is just a brief assessment of one trait. It doesn't say anything about a person's past or future potential! It is only used to match a person to an intervention. Each person has numerous opportunities to demonstrate their intellectual prowess. A single test score certainly has no impact on a person's chances of success in life (6).

Intelligence is defined by different people differently. One person's intelligence may not be intelligence to others. We use the word intelligent to describe people who are able to acquire useful knowledge, and who can solve consequential problems using some combination of logic, intuition, creativity, experience, and wisdom. These terms that are used to describe an intelligent person are themselves vague. Moreover, learning opportunities, cultural differences, familial differences, and personality differences in conscientiousness and openness to learning do have effect on all these aspects.Therefore, a correct definition is not always possible (6).

The problem of intellectual diagnosis can in no way be successfully dealt with until we have exact knowledge of the general nature of intelligence itself. The value of IQ tests is determined more by what they correlate with than what they measure. A person's IQ has nothing to do with his/her ability to think critically. It's a person's ability to think critically that is the true display of his/her intelligence, not what one can recite from memory as in an IQ test! IQ tests are outdated and fail to measure many other factors regarding intelligence (6).

Not all fields require the same talent. A scientist requires a different talent ( like numerical reasoning based on information gathered systematically) from that of an artist or a writer ( reasoning based only on his/her day to day personal experiences). A business person might require a different talent altogether ( reasoning based on psychology of the people around him) from the ones possessed by scientists, artists and writers! Again a sports person's talent is completely different! The way one uses his or her brain power or muscle or body power defines the talent of that person.

The IQ tests should not be used as the only measure that defines people's fate or future. Language and other cultural barriers cause intelligence tests to produce underestimates of intelligence. No psychological or academic test measures anything to the same degree in all children. It is true that well-designed tests of abstract reasoning reduce the need to have specific content knowledge. However, the process of engaging in abstract reasoning is itself learned and very much influenced by culture (6).

Many people who do these IQ tests very well fall on the way side during life's journey without reaching the heights their IQs would have taken them to. And several others with low IQs reach unimaginable heights.

Some examples : Richard Feynman , the brain behind Manhattan Project. A Nobel Laureate and distinguished physicist. Guess his IQ? It's 125. That's pretty low for a person who is likely to be a Nobel Winner. They are generally 140+! Richard Feynman had great interest in the field of maths and physics from a tender age. If it wasn't for passion, we would have never known a person like him.

Heard of William James Sidis? He lived from 1898 to 1944 and is reputed to have had a “ratio IQ” between 250 and 300. No doubt that he had an extremely fast aptitude for learning anything. By his 20s, he was able to speak in over 40 languages, and claimed to be able to learn one in a day. He invented his own language, called Vendergood, which was a mishmash of Ancient Greek, Latin, and about 8 other European languages. J. R. R. Tolkien did the very same thing with Elvish, and spoke at least 30 languages. But we don’t think of Tolkien as having an IQ above 250, and yet he wrote a lot more than Sidis, and Tolkien’s literature is popular. Sidis invented a rotary calendar that would always be accurate even to the leap year. But why is that important? We already have working calendars. With a 300 IQ, it’s a shame he didn’t invent the time machine or a real lightsaber. He squandered his natural talents on the trivial. Einstein reached the heights of his greatness with “only” a 186. What could Sir Isaac Newton have done with a 300? Perhaps the phrase should be, “Cogito, ergo sum. Facio, ergo recordaremur.” “I think, therefore I am. I do, therefore I will be remembered.” (6,7)

For more than a century our intelligence quotient (IQ) has been used to measure how clever people are and Mensa, the society for the intellectual elite, has even used the test to weed out sub-par applicants.

But now the scale has been dismissed as a "myth" by scientists who found that our intelligence can only be predicted by combining results from at least three tests of our mental agility.

Different circuits within the brain are used for different thought processes, the researchers showed, meaning separate tests of short-term memory, reasoning and verbal skills are needed to measure someone's overall intelligence.

According to the scientists who conducted research in this field, when you come to the most complex known object, the human brain, the idea that there is only one measure of intelligence has to be wrong. We can all think of people that have poor reasoning and brilliant memories, or fantastic language skills but aren't so good at reasoning, and so on. Now once and for all we can say there is not a single measure such as IQ which captures all the intelligence that you see in people (6).

So with so many flaws in intelligence measurements, how can you decide and grade people? There is no number one , two or three. There are a few intelligent people and there are a few unintelligent ones in the world. That’s all! Don’t try to grade them, the effort will be an utter flop.

Footnotes:

1. http://Mainstream science on intelligence: An editorial with 52 signatories, history and bibliography. Intelligence, 24(1), 13–23.
2. Our research program validating the triarchic theory of successful intelligence: Reply to Gottfredson. Intelligence, 31(4), 399–413.
3. Get this right: Brains are not differentiated into pink and blue ones
4. http://Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard, T. J., Jr., Boykin, A. W., Brody, N., Ceci, S. J.,…Urbina, S. (1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. American Psychologist, 51(2), 77–101.
5. http://Plomin, R. (2003). General cognitive ability. In R. Plomin, J. C. DeFries, I. W. Craig, & P. McGuffin (Eds.), Behavioral genetics in the postgenomic era (pp. 183–201). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
6. Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined
7. http:// http://listverse.com/2013/05/19/8-reasons-the-iq-is-meaningless/