Ed Sabatine writes:
RL: “To give you an example, take the Question: “How is a dog like a rabbit?” 100 years ago, someone would say, “Well, you use a dog to catch a rabbit.” Nowadays we consider that response to be idiotic or even retarded. Now we would say, “Rabbits and dogs are both mammals.” That is a more intelligent response, and that is an example of how we are getting smarter.”
Ed: Quite honestly, I think most of the IQ stuff falls in the witch doctor category. At the best its a misuse of nineteenth century testing to identify retarded children. I also flat out disagree with you on one important aspect. I think the use of electronic gadgetry is making the human race dumber, not smarter. The problem is that this is one of those things that is worth a blog post in itself.
However, in this specific example, I think “you use a dog to catch a rabbit” is a smarter answer than “they are both mammals.” Even though I have enough book learning that the answer that popped into my brain was “they are both mammals” (actually the answer that popped into my brain “was why is this question open ended” but then I thought of the categorial answer.”). Using a dog to catch a rabbit is practical knowledge that is useful and not obvious.
“Mammal” is an artificial category that people have invented to group some animals together, that is sometimes useful, sometimes misleading, and sometimes you remember it because that is what you were taught. The person who says “use a dog to catch a rabbit” is smarter. Most people in the sort of societies where they might actually take this test would say “both are mammals” and this percentage is increasing. As a species, we are getting dumber.
There is not the slightest bit of evidence that we are getting stupider with time, and there is quite a bit of evidence to the contrary, that we are actually getting smarter instead.
I do not think, “You use a dog to catch a rabbit is a smarter answer at all. That is something a primitive hunter gatherer might say or perhaps a Westerner living a very simple lifestyle. Saying that they are both mammals is a much more scientific and intelligent way to describe the relationship.
There is not one person who studies IQ seriously who thinks it is meaningless, at least that I am aware of. The IQ criticism that “IQ tests don’t measure real intelligence” was popular decades ago but in recent years it has fallen by the wayside.
The people who used to say that have all conceded that IQ measures real intelligence, but now they also say that IQ is mostly created by environment, not genes. I would like someone to show me a serious researcher who studies IQ who thinks the tests don’t measure intelligence or don’t measure much of anything. “A score on an IQ test measures your ability to take an IQ test and that is about it,” was the old line. This line is still extremely popular but only among laypeople, not experts. As usual, the laypeople are way behind the experts as the experts mostly abandoned that line a while ago.
So it boils down to who are you going to believe? Are you going to believe the experts who study and publish on IQ as part of their job and research interest or are you going to believe the laypeople who, as with most things, don’t really know what they are talking about compared to the experts.
Proof That IQ Measures Real Intelligence
IQ has a .7 correlation with brain size as measured on MRI. Think about it. Have you ever known anyone with a pretty high IQ? So did they seem stupid or what? I have met a lot of people with high IQ’s and every single one of them were smart as whips. I have not talked to many people with low IQ scores so I do not know what they are like.
However, I taught school. The Japanese were the best students, then the Whites, then the Mexicans, then the Blacks. Which happens to line up precisely with the IQ scores.
It has an excellent correlation with reaction time tests. It predicts grades in school, job performance, job status, income and all sorts of things better than any other factor. It has also been found that as IQ rises, people actually make fewer and fewer dumb mistakes. They have fewer accidents of all kinds. They have fewer health problems. They go to jail a lot less. They also live longer. As IQ rises, so does life expectancy.
Evidence That Flynn Rises Are Real Gains
The Flynn rise has also been accompanied by a increase in size and height of humans. That means our heads have gotten a lot bigger.
People are trying to figure out what accounts for the massive Flynn rise in visuospatial scores. The only thing that anyone can think of is that our increasingly technological society is just not a place for dummies. You have to be pretty smart to figure out how to use all these gadgets. Apparently using these gadgets all the time all through our lives is what accounts for the rise in visuospatial skills. There are also a lot of other things in a modern high-tech first world society that require a fair amount of brains to do. Bottom line is you have to be fairly smart to even functionally make your way around a modern high-tech First World country.
Increases in abstract thinking are well documented. Possibly the fact that we live in a such a science and knowledge based culture means that think more abstractly now than we did when cultures were similar.
Coming up with a solution for a problem that you have never encountered before is a great skill and there are major rises in this skill in Flynn gains.
One subtest that has shown good Flynn gains is Digit Span. Digit Span is a test of raw brain processing speed. And scores on this test of raw brain speed have gone up a lot in the last 50 years.
So Come up with Something Better
All of the people who say that IQ is bullshit need to come up with something better. If IQ is crap, why don’t these naysayers come up with a better test that measures intelligence more accurately than IQ tests?
