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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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God that video annoyed me so much. You aren't supposed to practice for an IQ test. If you practice, whatever result you get is basically invalid as the test presumes you are approaching the problems for the first time. It wouldn't annoy me if it wasn't Veritasium, but he presents himself as a science educator and should know better.
I thought it was funny how at the end of the video he said something about Stephen Hawking and only losers brag about their IQ. After we just watched a 30 minute video about his high IQ. That he practiced for.
Funny, not surprising. If you've watched him long enough you get that he is a narcissistic snake.
Oh yeah, funny as in weird not funny as in haha.
I figured he specifically practiced to show that his high IQ score is not indicative of what his actual intelligence is. Like he intentionally inflated it with studying because otherwise whatever score he did get would be a brag, but after studying any score can be attributed (at least in part) to the studying (and motivation and all the other stuff) so isn't really a brag about his intelligence, but a brag about the fact that he studied. Which isn't really a brag at all.
He didn't brag about his IQ. At least I didn't take it that way. For an example of where I felt like Derek wasn't being humble see the bet he made with the physicist about the propeller car moving straight against the wind. I don't think he was being overly boastful or anything, I'm just saying something more like that would be something like bragging. Like saying "I challenged Mark Rober to take an IQ test but he refused so I must be smarter." He doesn't even mention his score until very late in the video and they don't focus on it for long.
Frankly, it was much lower than I expected. As a PhD Physicist who leads a very successful career in science education, I expected him to score at least 140, and would not have been surprised to see 150.
Do you always reduce everything you read to a false dichotomy or do you simply like being abrasive?
Nothing about that comment was pretentious. I'm surrounded at work by people with estimated IQ greater than 140, and undoubtedly a few north of 150 (think top academic institutions in the world). That estimation is based on GRE scores and the prestige of the institution.
If anything it makes me doubt those estimations. I can't remember what Derek said his SATs were but I was also surprised because I felt they were low for someone like him. All this just further drives home the idea that IQ does not correlate with success, maybe even in science communication.
But apparently making an observation is seen as pretentious and boastful to you.
A generous interpretation could be that it's a bad metric because you can train for it
Very generous and wrong. Any psychiatrist would tell you to not practice, and a when not practiced it's a very useful metric. We couldn't make as strong hypotheses about the effect environmental lead had on earlier generations without IQ tests. We couldn't measure the very interesting trend upwards in IQ scores over time regardless of lead, which implies anything from a structural problem with the test to a real improvement in intelligence in the general population since the test's invention. We couldn't quantify the genetic or environmental influences on intelligence without IQ either.
It's like saying a psychiatric test for depression is bad because you can practice to know the answers a depressed person would give.
Here I took part of the point being that you can practice, and to some extent you may be unwittingly doing so. That's part of the upward trend. That's part of having to localized the test for a culture. We're to some extent practicing just due to the world immediately around us.
Should you or your kid intentionally practice? Probably not, but I took practicing and mentioning that to be part of the larger point that the test can be predictive for some things, but isn't destiny.
not to double reply to you but the issue here isn’t training versus not training for the test; the issue is that psychiatrist and psychologist can’t rotely sort out what influences “training” and other activities actually had on the results of the test versus what a theoretical, “pure” test result would’ve been. frankly i’d imagine different psychologist in different context would want to control for this in a variety of ways. maybe in one experiment, telling the population not to train is the best way to get at the data you want. but for the most part? no. absolutely not. the claim that telling people to not train or study for an IQ test somehow is a be all end all control for wanton influences & noise in IQ results is total bunk. think about this. what even qualifies as studying for an IQ test? is the teenage boy incidentally studying for his ACT’s at the same time as a population IQ test, who consequently scored higher than the median average for his age range, cheating or invalid in his results? most people and psychology studies would likely say no, not really. this demonstrates some of the fundamental flaws in IQ and g-factor that psychologists have to recognize while working with them. there’s truly no real way to sort out what is “cheating/invalidating” on an IQ test versus what data is potentially legitimate. because objectively speaking, what IQ measures is incredibly subjective. on top of all that, either way, it’s impossible and impractical to try and control for every single thing people do in their daily lives.
EDIT: stray “a” removed
the video annoys you because you’re not the target audience. you clearly already see validity in IQ as a metric and have use cases for it. most STEM people (veritasium’s audience writ large) do not traditionally view IQ favorably, and at worst consider it a worthless bunk metric. the video isn’t intended to say “hey! here’s how psychiatrist and psychologist view and use IQ in statistical analysis and their work (bc remember, STEM people know about this legitimate use in these fields, they just typically discount or look down upon it due to IQ’s reputation),” it’s intended to say “hey! i know you don’t think IQ is real/valid, but here is a video essay exploring the concept through a very STEM lense.” of course he talks about taking the test and studying for it. he talks about taking the test blind too. he’s a fucking engineer, physicist, and doctor. the exact kind of person to recognize what tools like IQ metrics actually are, and that there is no single one way to measure, use, or quantify this data that’s more “correct” than others, when divorced from context. veritasium demonstrated a very thorough understanding of the actual concepts and theoretical principles that underlie IQ, and I thought his video was a very fresh perspective. it certainly demonstrated a mastery of the concept that i believe is absent from someone who might hold the opinions you’re espousing here (genuinely don’t mean to come off as rude here sorry for having autism energy)
It feels silly to frame it like that. You could consider a general education as practice for an IQ test.
The way I see it, IQ is a proxy for this concept of generalized intelligence with the test also measuring more specific measures of intelligence like working memory and visual processing. It's certainly fine, even good, to practice the underlying mechanisms of intelligence, such as learning memorization techniques and practicing to improve your working memory and thus become more intelligent. It's not good for the validity of the test to practice the specific questions and sections they put on the test to artificially inflate your score while leaving your underlying intelligence unchanged. Veritasium did the latter, not the former in his video.
But if you get more generally intelligent from practicing... Then what? Because education makes you score higher. Do you believe it is 100% genetics?
To some extent you probably get more generally intelligent from practicing IQ tests in the same way you might get more generally intelligent from stretching your mind in any way. However, the increase in IQ score you achieve after practicing for the IQ test is (just guesstimating because there's obviously no studies on this) >90% due to learning the patterns of IQ tests and <10% due to increased general intelligence as a result of studying.
To answer as to why IQ is helpful, it's useful for making conclusions about how different factors influence intelligence. It's more difficult to prevent lead from poisoning people's brains when you can't conclusively say how much it's poisoning. Supposing all the people with low IQ scores due to lead poisoning practiced for the test to make themselves feel better with a higher score, their studying would muddy the stats and make for weaker arguments on the side of those wishing to ban excessive lead. IQ is also relevant to certain diagnoses, such as for the diagnosis of ADHD where a deficiency in working memory and processing speed but not elsewhere supports a diagnosis.
In terms of whether IQ / intelligence is 100% genetic, obviously not, I don't think I said anything that could even suggest that. I'm not an expert so I'd appeal to this link for specific answers. Just skimming it seems to suggest anywhere from 50% to 80% heritability of IQ, although heritability as a concept is kinda unintuitive and hard to apply to everyday things.
I've watched this a while ago, but I stopped following Veritasium after that.
Note: Video link to Veritasium: A Story of YouTube Propaganda.
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