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What is Your IQ?

What is Your IQ?

  • Total voters
    50
  • Poll closed .
I seem to have the lowest IQ of everyone on the forum, except for the ones who were joking.
The AAMD- American Association on Mental Deficiency- set the IQ threshold for mental retardation at <85 in 1959. In 1973, the AAMD- which had by then renamed itself the AAMR (American Association on Mental Retardation)- changed the IQ threshold for retardation from <85 to <70. This was partly in response to various sociopolitical pressures.
I'm not denying there may be a couple of people on this forum with <80 IQs (although not any of the very regular posters, I don't believe).
But they aren't the ones who voted in this poll.

Out of the people who cast legitimate votes, my IQ is the lowest of everyone here.

That in itself points to the inefficacy of standard IQ tests in quantifying intellectual capacity, to me and to any other rational human being.
Either that, or else it points to the general dishonesty of nearly everyone, as has already been suggested in this thread.
I still think, as a third possibility, that some here may have taken something they thought was an IQ test, but which wasn't really.
 
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1069 said:
I seem to have the lowest IQ of everyone on the forum, except for the ones who were joking.
The AAMD- American Association on Mental Deficiency- set the IQ threshold for mental retardation at <85 in 1959. In 1973, the AAMD- which had by then renamed itself the AAMR (American Association on Mental Retardation)- changed the IQ threshold for retardation from <85 to <70. This was partly in response to various sociopolitical pressures.
I'm not denying there may be a couple of people on this forum with <80 IQs (although not any of the very regular posters, I don't believe).
But they aren't the ones who voted in this poll.

Out of the people who cast legitimate votes, my IQ is the lowest of everyone here.

That in itself points to the inefficacy of standard IQ tests in quantifying intellectual capacity, to me and to any other rational human being.
Either that, or else it points to the general dishonesty of nearly everyone, as has already been suggested in this thread.
I still think, as a third possibility, that some here may have taken something they thought was an IQ test, but which wasn't really.
Click to expand...

Or another possibility... that you are equating the ability to sound intelligent and/or make intelligent posts with intelligent thoughts as being the same as having a high IQ that involves spatial and linear thinking, among others.

My sister in law has a 109 IQ and she is really smart. She runs a firm that buys and sells property and land. She has good ideas and present them well. When it comes to, what I consider, higher level spatial thinking, she starts to get lost. Her interpretation skills, creativity and ability to hypothsize just aren't quite as sharp as people that I know have higher IQ's. Her sister is my wife. IQ 148. She gets all the thing that her sister doesn't. Just how it is. In fact, by s.i.l. sounds much smarter often, due to the fact that she has perfected the sound of cold rationalism to make up for other shortcomings.

All good. She is a nice person and does well. It is about being happy, nothing else. I often think that the people with higher IQ's are not as happy as those with lesser ones, since they seem to get more of the reality. They don't get fooled quite as often and see the world for what it is... in general.
 
Bodhisattva said:
Or another possibility... that you are equating the ability to sound intelligent and/or make intelligent posts with intelligent thoughts as being the same as having a high IQ that involves spatial and linear thinking, among others.

My sister in law has a 109 IQ and she is really smart. She runs a firm that buys and sells property and land. She has good ideas and present them well. When it comes to, what I consider, higher level spatial thinking, she starts to get lost. Her interpretation skills, creativity and ability to hypothsize just aren't quite as sharp as people that I know have higher IQ's. Her sister is my wife. IQ 148. She gets all the thing that her sister doesn't. Just how it is. In fact, by s.i.l. sounds much smarter often, due to the fact that she has perfected the sound of cold rationalism to make up for other shortcomings.

All good. She is a nice person and does well. It is about being happy, nothing else. I often think that the people with higher IQ's are not as happy as those with lesser ones, since they seem to get more of the reality. They don't get fooled quite as often and see the world for what it is... in general.
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I flatly do not believe that 33 out of the 36 people who voted in seriously this poll (excluding the <80ers, who have admitted they were joking) scored in the 95th percentile, and therefore are in the top 5% of the population, intelligence-wise.
I will not go so far as to assert that this deception is deliberate; it may be the result of honest error. But that's about as generous as I'm willing to be.
 
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1069 said:
I flatly do not believe that 33 out of the 36 people who voted in seriously this poll (excluding the <80ers, who have admitted they were joking) scored in the 95th percentile, and therefore are in the top 5% of the population, intelligence-wise.
I will not go so far as to assert that this deception is deliberate; it may be the result of honest error. But that's about as generous as I'm willing to be.
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I agree with that. The 130-140's are believable to me, I have known so many... I have only known three above 150 though, and they are top of their field in the US, not guys that sit around debating this BS even when bored. Motivation and career choice is a big one though, like the guy that supposedly has the highest IQ in the US and he is a truck driver. Though I think that there would be a high percentage of people that would visit sites like this that might have higher IQs, that number is abnormally high.

I know that my IQ, my wife's IQ and her sister's were all done by psychologists when we were young. Professional.

So what though... like I said, it is about being happy.
 
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Bodhisattva said:
I Though I think that there would be a high percentage of people that would visit sites like this that might have higher IQs, that number is abnormally high.

.
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It might just be expected that higher IQ persons would be on this site. I can express my political thinking here without offending the neighbors and friends who tend to dwell at either end of the spectrum. IMHO, if you are an extreme liberal, or extreme conservative, your IQ is most likely less than 80.;)
 
1069 said:
Out of the people who cast legitimate votes, my IQ is the lowest of everyone here.

That in itself points to the inefficacy of standard IQ tests in quantifying intellectual capacity, to me and to any other rational human being.
Click to expand...

Occam's razor
 
UtahBill said:
It might just be expected that higher IQ persons would be on this site. I can express my political thinking here without offending the neighbors and friends who tend to dwell at either end of the spectrum. IMHO, if you are an extreme liberal, or extreme conservative, your IQ is most likely less than 80.;)
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Yes... I would also add "balanced" to the list of things that life is all about.

Happy
Balanced
Aware
Kind
Compassionate
Just
Helpful
 
Well, <85 is functionally retarded. For all intents and purposes.
The AAMR only changed it to <70 for political reasons that were good, well-intentioned reasons in 1973 but that it's better not to discuss now; they no longer really apply to the present-day situation.
A person with an IQ <80 would be... difficult to communicate with in this context, to say the least.
Yes, we've had a few; perhaps 3 or 4 during my tenure on this forum.
But in all honesty... heh. Well, you don't see a lot of "mentally retarded forums" on the internet, do you? There are some forums for parents of mentally retarded children, but the mentally retarded themselves- even the high-functioning, educable mentally retarded- don't tend to express themselves real well when it comes to the written word. Nor do they tend to understand written political commentary very well. Nor do they tend to understand the subtleties of social interactions on an internet forum.

But as few people as there are in the world with an IQ <80... that's about how few people there are with an IQ over 120. Yes, privileged white people are more likely to be on the higher end of the scale, while underprivileged minorities are more likely to be on the lower end of it. That's because the test is classist and racist, like much else in our society.
Collectively, this forum is certainly more than clever enough to keep me entertained, but nothing about it screams "Genius".
At least not to me.
I never would've guessed, in all these years, that I was participating in a forum populated almost exclusively by the finest minds in the country, if not the entire world.

I still don't believe it.
And the defensiveness I'm sensing makes me lean away from "honest mistake" and towards "deliberate deception".
 
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An IQ test taken online doesn't mean squat. I'm not overly inclined to put much stock in the real ones administered by licensed psychiatrists either. I recall being asked questions that had nothing to do with my capabilities for learning so much as they revolved around what I had been exposed to up until that point. They did have puzzles and what not and I'm sure those legitimately do give you a clue as to who is and who isn't adept at doing puzzles.

But I recall other crap like, "How far is it apx from one side of the country to the other?" Now as a 10 year old I knew that because I had family on both coasts and flew tons. But what if I didn't? They also had a host of vocabulary stuff if I recall and I don't see how that has much to do with intelligence. I think you can be incredibly wise and have a crap vocab, especially when you're 10.

Anyway I was never told my IQ. My mother kept it secret. What I was told is that my brother, who we thought was retarded, had the highest IQ of all 4 of us. He was tested when he was failing out of school and my mother was fighting a special needs placement.

When I was told he was a genius I thought, "No freaking way!" Now, as an adult I completely see it. My brother is brilliant.

I don't think anyone should get overly caught up on a test. I have taken the online ones but I know it's possible to get better and better at them. So I don't think it's a valid measurement at all. You have to sit with a dr. who times you and makes you nervous. And even then, in that circumstance, I wouldn't call it meaningless but I wouldn't let the results define me.
 
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1069 said:
Well, <85 is functionally retarded. For all intents and purposes.
The AAMR only changed it to <70 for political reasons that were good, well-intentioned reasons in 1973 but that it's better not to discuss now; they no longer really apply to the present-day situation.
A person with an IQ <80 would be... difficult to communicate with in this context, to say the least.
Yes, we've had a few; perhaps 3 or 4 during my tenure on this forum.
But in all honesty... heh. Well, you don't see a lot of "mentally retarded forums" on the internet, do you? There are some forums for parents of mentally retarded children, but the mentally retarded themselves- even the high-functioning, educable mentally retarded- don't tend to express themselves real well when it comes to the written word. Nor do they tend to understand written political commentary very well. Nor do they tend to understand the subtleties of social interactions on an internet forum.

But as few people as there are in the world with an IQ <80... that's about how few people there are with an IQ over 120. Yes, privileged white people are more likely to be on the higher end of the scale, while underprivileged minorities are more likely to be on the lower end of it. That's because the test is classist and racist, like much else in our society.
Collectively, this forum is certainly more than clever enough to keep me entertained, but nothing about it screams "Genius".
At least not to me.
I never would've guessed, in all these years, that I was participating in a forum populated almost exclusively by the finest minds in the country, if not the entire world.

I still don't believe it.

And the defensiveness I'm sensing makes me lean away from "honest mistake" and towards "deliberate deception".
Click to expand...

The only people overly concerned with being a genius are people like scucca, whom you seem to revere, and yourself... you play the turn around liberal card in classic fashion though. Whining about others being defensive in trying to justify their IQ's in hopes of actually putting them on the defensive, while you continually try to undermine the test conditions and the test itself, so that you can feel some sense of worth.


Racist test... sure. It has to do with spatial and linear aspects, something that people of color can grasp easily enough. ;)
 
All I know is that IQ doesn't mean ****. :cool:
 
Bodhisattva said:
The only people overly concerned with being a genius are people like scucca, whom you seem to revere, and yourself... you play the turn around liberal card in classic fashion though. Whining about others being defensive in trying to justify their IQ's in hopes of actually putting them on the defensive, while you continually try to undermine the test conditions and the test itself, so that you can feel some sense of worth.


Racist test... sure. It has to do with spatial and linear aspects, something that people of color can grasp easily enough. ;)
Click to expand...

The fact that more than half of all black people tested in the US before 1973 scored under 85, causing the AAMR to actually lower the threshold of mental retardation to <70 so that opponents of the civil rights movement could not use this to withhold equal rights from blacks, and that today black people score significantly higher than they did thirty years ago (although their median score is still not on par with that of whites), and that research by reputable, nationally renowned authorities in the field have proven that there is no physiological, biological, or genetic difference in intelligence between the races... the difference in test scores is caused by cultural and environmental factors.
In fact, the overall average Black-White IQ gap has been reduced by one third over the last 30 years (although the median IQ difference between black and white adults is still 17 points).
The test is racist. The end.
It's also classist and anglocentric/ nationalistic/ xenophobic, as the poor of all races and also first-generation immigrants of nearly all ethnicities score significantly lower than middle-class whites.

If the test wasn't racist, the IQ/ race gap wouldn't have begun closing since the end of Jim Crow/ the beginning of civil rights.
It's not like black people were troglodytes who just suddenly and miraculously began to evolve 30 years ago, and that this miracle just happened to coincide with our decision to make racial discrimination, segregation, and general abuse illegal.
It's only been one and a half (or possibly two) generations since the civil rights movement. Black people haven't had time to change. The reason they suddenly score so much higher on IQ tests is that society has changed, and the reason they still don't score on par with whites is that society still hasn't changed enough.
 
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1069 said:
The fact that more than half of all black people tested in the US before 1973 scored under 85, causing the AAMR to actually lower the threshold of mental retardation to <70 so that opponents of the civil rights movement could not use this to withhold equal rights from blacks, and that today black people score significantly higher than they did thirty years ago (although their median score is still not on par with that of whites), and that research by reputable, nationally renowned authorities in the field have proven that there is no physiological, biological, or genetic difference in intelligence between the races...
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OK

the difference in test scores is caused by cultural and environmental factors.
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Completely contradicting your Racist hypothesis. ;)

In fact, the overall average Black-White IQ gap has been reduced by one third over the last 30 years (although the median IQ difference between black and white adults is still 17 points).
Click to expand...

Further disproving your racist theory...

The test is racist. The end.
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Think again.

It's also classist and anglocentric/ nationalistic/ xenophobic, as the poor of all races and also first-generation immigrants of nearly all ethnicities score significantly lower than middle-class whites.

If the test wasn't racist, the IQ/ race gap wouldn't have begun closing since the end of Jim Crow/ the beginning of civil rights.
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What the hell? :lol:

According to you, they were. 30 years ago saw the graduation of some of the first black students to attend white schools, recieving the same education, negating any social and racial bias of the test. Kids graduate, scores go up. More kids graduate, more scores go up. See?


It's not like black people were troglodytes who just suddenly and miraculously began to evolve 30 years ago, and that this miracle just happened to coincide with our decision to make racial discrimination, segregation, and general abuse illegal.
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It is about the level of education and social status that they were recieving and nothing more. Why does eveything have to be an agenda of oppression and hate with you?


It's only been one and a half (or possibly two) generations since the civil rights movement. Black people haven't had time to change. The reason they suddenly score so much higher on IQ tests is that society has changed, and the reason they still don't score on par with whites is that society still hasn't changed enough.
Click to expand...

Black people havn't had time to change? WTF? Are you saying that they are racially inferior? That is like saying the white settlers to N. Am. didn't have time to change lifestyles and learn new methods of agricaulture in one year or face death, but they did, so they must be superior?

Wrap that duress induced IQ of yours around some perspective and you will begin to see **** in a whole new way. ;)
 
Kids graduate, scores go up. More kids graduate, more scores go up. See?
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No, I don't see.
IQ tests are supposed to measure intellectual capacity.
They have nothing to do with education.
If they did, they wouldn't be administered to small children, who have none to speak of.
 
1069 said:
No, I don't see.
IQ tests are supposed to measure intellectual capacity.
They have nothing to do with education.
If they did, they wouldn't be administered to small children, who have none to speak of.
Click to expand...

Care to tackle the disparity in scores on other tests such as the SAT?
 
Originally Posted by 1069
No, I don't see.
IQ tests are supposed to measure intellectual capacity.
They have nothing to do with education.
If they did, they wouldn't be administered to small children, who have none to speak of.
Click to expand...

I see education of some as a permeation of awareness among the intertwined many, especially when the many are seeking it. IQ is not completely innate. It takes innate capabilities to be able to understand concepts, but many ways of understanding can also be taught. Reading to your children increases thinking and cognitive skills.. etc.
 
Bodhisattva said:
I see education of some as a permeation of awareness among the intertwined many, especially when the many are seeking it. IQ is not completely innate. It takes innate capabilities to be able to understand concepts, but many ways of understanding can also be taught. Reading to your children increases thinking and cognitive skills.. etc.
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Yep. My husband and I played Blokus and Set with our kids all the time because those two games were highly touted as cognitive boosting games. With time the kids were actually better at the SET card game than we were. It was sort of disturbing.
 
Bodhisattva said:
I see education of some as a permeation of awareness among the intertwined many, especially when the many are seeking it. IQ is not completely innate. It takes innate capabilities to be able to understand concepts, but many ways of understanding can also be taught. Reading to your children increases thinking and cognitive skills.. etc.
Click to expand...

I also think that after a bit, encouraging them to read and just talking candidly about the book with them boosts other, more important abilities, than IQ. Intuition and empathy for others come to mind, off hand.
 
1069 said:
I never would've guessed, in all these years, that I was participating in a forum populated almost exclusively by the finest minds in the country, if not the entire world.
Click to expand...

An IQ of 130, two standard deviations above normal, occurs in approximately 2.2% of the population. In the United States alone, that's close to six million individuals; in the world, one hundred and thirty million.

An IQ of 140 to 150, the category most popular on this poll, ranges anywhere from one in two hundred to one in two thousand. Just counting Americans... that's between one hundred fifty thousand and one and a half million people. How many people chose that answer on our poll? Twelve, so far.

Worth noting, that is the highest that most standardized IQ tests are capable of reliably measuring. There's a good chance that at least one of those twelve is actually underestimating themselves.

An IQ of 164, as I scored (at least) at twelve, occurs in one out of every one hundred thousand individuals. Means there are 2,999 other Americans out there with the intellectual potential I once had, which forces me to wonder how many of them lived up to that potential, and how many were neglected, stifled, and then discarded by our society as I was.

I have to take extra medication on days when I think about that too much. Out of every one hundred dollars spent on Special Education in the United States, children like me get three ****ing cents.

Take the entire world's population, and statistically, there should be some two hundred and fifty thousand honestly qualified to give the highest answer on this poll. It doesn't strain the credibility too much to believe that we might have accidentally gathered three of them, even if we have our doubts about the specific individuals concerned.
 
Korimyr the Rat said:
It doesn't strain the credibility too much to believe that we might have accidentally gathered three of them, even if we have our doubts about the specific individuals concerned.
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OH COME ON! Yes it most certainly does strain the credibility. In fact given that one of our resident genius types is Shuamort it practically blows a cannon through any flimsy net of credibility that may have been in place.
 
talloulou said:
OH COME ON! Yes it most certainly does strain the credibility. In fact given that one of our resident genius types is Shuamort it practically blows a cannon through any flimsy net of credibility that may have been in place.
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As I said, the numbers say that it is considerably less unlikely than the names might. (No offense intended.)
 
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