this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
59 points (88.3% liked)

Asklemmy

47985 readers
998 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
(page 2) 46 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] snek_boi@lemmy.ml 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

If you believe psychology and IQ are nonsense, here’s a comment I copied over from another thread:

IQ means intelligence quotient. A bunch of people take a test and they’re compared to each other. Your result is your intelligence quotient.

Its origins were noble, because it was designed to identify students who needed extra help in school. The creator of the test knew that people could change their results with good instruction.

However, that noble origin story was besmirched by what happened later. Eventually, IQ tests were used as a way to classify people in more brutal and rigid ways. The USA military used it as a cutoff for aspiring cadets. USA colleges use tests that effectively are IQ tests to let people in or not. The worst part is that bigots around the world injected pseudoscience into IQ and used it to decide who they think are worthy of life and who aren’t. It’s as awful as it sounds.

You may notice that helping struggling students sounds wonderful, and you may think that we should go back to that.

However, some people are deeply marked by the dark history of IQ. They have developed beliefs that protect them from the dangers of bigotry and IQ reductionism. They believe that tests aren’t useful at all to tell us something about anything. They believe IQ tests should be banished and never used.

Other people believe IQ tests are a snapshot of how a person answered the questions to a test in a given day. Take the same test days, months, or years after a great education, and the result will be higher. Additionally, these people notice that, in research, IQ scores are robustly associated with other things, such as quality of relationships, happiness, income, and other measures. They contend that learning about the world, about ourselves, and how to think critically and solve problems has massive domino effects in peoples’ lives. Once again, these people believe that a test result one day doesn’t doom you for life and doesn’t define you. A bad test result shows the gap that a good education would fill. These people know that a good education makes the mind curious, nimble, and open.

[–] within_epsilon@beehaw.org 2 points 3 days ago

As a maths person, I have scored high on IQ tests for years. There are plenty of topics I am not great at, but IQ tests typically focus maths topics like pattern recognition.

I like the acknowledgement of racism in IQ tests. There is a bias in the test for western maths education. Sadly, the results could be used for eugenics. Many great mathematicians I have met are neurodivergent, LGBTIA+, cis-women or other groups the eugenics crowd want culled.

My current politicical perpspective frames this as enforcement of heirarchy, legitimized "scientifically" by the IQ test. There are plenty of high IQ people, such as those in maths, that do not fit the eugenic vision. The heirarchy becomes self-fulfilling and "natural" by culling the non-comforming people. The "top" of the heirarchy must legitimize their position, so the bottom doesn't resist doing all the work for little personal benefit.

IQ tests measure something. Don't use that measurement to justify heirarchy. Eugenics is bad. A better future, built from the bottom, is possible. All power to all people.

[–] brewbart@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago

In my perspective IQ only has so many consequences, due to the limitations of the method. Nowadays we know to separate different forms of intelligence and also that transferring skills between those forms can have an impact on overall 'performance' . That being said, it can be a good indicator for stuff but as you point out, it's often misused as divider instead of an accelerator.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago

I don't know.

[–] Rin@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago
[–] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] twice_hatch@midwest.social 1 points 3 days ago

Instead of being bad at everything I'm good at a few things

[–] Kwakigra@beehaw.org 5 points 4 days ago

You get to impress the worst people in the world by giving them a number which generally indicates the quality of your education. Other than that, it's pretty useless.

[–] SteposVenzny@beehaw.org 4 points 4 days ago

I'm comfortably above average but comfortably below genius, not entirely sure whether that fits your personal definition of high so it felt worth clarifying.

In school, it meant that learning was something I could do with no actual effort. Without studying and without doing homework aside from what I did at my desk to pass the time before class started, I had as strong a grasp on the subject as the students who did and comfortable grades. Then when I started college, that passivity suddenly didn't work anymore and I had no idea how to cope with it. I never actually learned how to learn, formally speaking.

Emotionally speaking, that whole thing was awful. It sucked when it was easy because I was so bored, it sucked when it was hard because I was so frustrated. I actually failed out of high school due to low attendance at the very end, then tested into the local college without a diploma because I still knew the material even with the problematic attendance, then got suspended from college due to now-for-the-opposite-reason low attendance and never went back. There was also unrelated shit going on, to be clear, but this that I'm describing was not a small part of my overall psychological state.

As an adult, it doesn't mean much of anything. While it's a bit easier for me to learn things than it is for the average person, the ease with which I learn things doesn't matter anymore because it's largely happening without other people's direct involvement or on any kind of schedule. On the occasion there needs to be an actual work training lesson I attend, it's something that only happens for a day and enduring a single day of tedious education is so very achievable compared to it being my entire life.

The biggest impact these days is that it makes me hate Aaron Sorkin.

[–] ReakDuck@lemmy.ml -2 points 2 days ago

People with High IQ are dumb.

They lack intelligence in everything except what they love and are narzisstic about.

People with high IQ and high EQ and many others might be awesome, as you can pull out lots of social patterns, wisdoms, etc. But only for those who had good experiences in Life and are a bit older.

What am I? Idk. I think I have a high IQ because of various diagnoses, but lots of mental issues are blocking any motivation to understand Math as fast like other People in University. There are incredible fast learners, but I see in them no experience or memory of pain, suffering, etc. Like, its the "fun" that steers us to learn. Becoming distracted pretty fast like me is pain. Its like I have only a High IQ when the Moon shines perfectly.

I believe that I have a good amount of EQ, because I too often only think about lives of other people and even wasted money to help a broken new friend, just to see the money never again and him either. I suffer just from the imagination of a friend who suffered. I could be the smartest person by being the dumbest Person. Meaning that when I would only see the world centered around me like an egoist/narzissist, I would be happy, because I would lack the intelligence to simulate another World of another Person. I would only know what I need like a dumb Person. I would lack a lot of intelligences.

Having an High IQ without anything else, makes you a very dumb Person is my Opinion. I feel like the word "IQ" is wrongly labeled, because you dont really measure "Intelligence" by it.

[–] Aliveelectricwire@hexbear.net 4 points 4 days ago

It's like having all the correct opinions

[–] markovs_gun@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Depends on what you mean by "high." I have scored between 130-140 on IQ tests I've taken of various quality, which is considered high by most. Idk how it would be different from anyone else's experience of the world. I did extremely well in school and I work as a chemical engineer with a focus on machine learning implementations and capital expansion. I don't know if I would consider myself "smarter" than the average person, just better at certain types of tasks. I also grew up in a stable two parent upper middle class household that valued education and academic success, which is a huge leg up that can't be ignored.

[–] folaht@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago

My highest IQ I scored was 135, the lowest 115.
Do I get to part of it?
The IQ tests themselves are not great tools of measuring intelligence but it's the best we've got. And I'm glad people here realize that.

Well...I currently feel like I'm the dumbest one among friends. I've got ADD, so I lose concentration a lot and my friends don't seem to have that, while they have high IQ as well.

It's also good to see that you know that IQ is speed of measuring thoughts, because I don't think the current physicists have got it correct at all and fail even on a basic level of natural philosophy/science, but they certainly can whip up complex equations faster than either of us can.

[–] snek_boi@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago

I’m asking this partly because I saw someone else asking the same question but about low IQ.

[–] un_aristocrate@jlai.lu 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] snek_boi@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 days ago

Hahah! Living up to your aristocratic origins, I see.

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago

If I were smarter I could likely answer this question. I never tested for it but for anyone younger out there since its a general test and it normalizes for age I think the younger you take it the better for a high result but its good to do it while your still studying general things. So like in the US like the summer after two years of college as your courses are going to get to specialized at that point. Maybe after the first year or if you don't go to college just after high school.

[–] wolfpack86@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

My situation is I have an ability to recall a lot of really old information and some of it seemingly mundane. I can also synthesize all this together to make a good decision quickly.

This is basically what learning is, but it's a broader base I can pull from and the process is just faster.

I don't do well with forcing specific information to be cataloged. This means I wasn't a great student in classes where you needed to just remember things (eg history).

The other thing I've got going for me is being able to visually see things in my head. It might be memories, but it's also things for solving problems like this https://www.intelligencetest.com/questions/visualization/medium/3/8.html

[–] SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] snek_boi@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I find most people boring. Even people who are initially interesting can become boring once I spend a lot of time with them.

Most people also don't seem to realize just how royally fucked we are (USA). In this case I think ignorance would be bliss, since I can't do much to make things better.

[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

How old are you?

This reminds me of me, in my teens and early 20's.

I'm in my 40's now, a lot of that attitude is borne out of arrogance. Judging others by your ability,is neither fair or productive, it is also a recipe for continuous disappointment.

Being continually disappointed, will fuck up your mental health. After a certain point, the only person to compare against is your past self. Comparing to others is a excellent method for robbing yourself of any joy or fulfillment.

I mainly get annoyed, when others don't live up to their own potential; when they offload decisions onto me, that they are more than capable of on their own.

If you really are that smart, I recommend reading philosophy, I'm partial to the Stoic's, but there's a lot of good stuff out there.

[–] SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Judging others by your ability,is neither fair or productive, it is also a recipe for continuous disappointment.

I'm not so much judging them as bemoaning my own loneliness. To be fair, I've also done a good amount of judging, but that isn't what I'm referring to here.

I'm just talking about companionship. Stimulation. Someone to play board games with, or argue about whether water is wet with.

I had a real group of peers in college. I was surrounded by people smarter than me, and it was great. I actually had to work hard to win games against them, had to actually apply myself to avoid failing my classes, and they would actually debate like they knew what they were doing. I miss it.

[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 2 points 3 days ago

I understand. More than you realise.

Few people are interested in what I'm interested in, but companionship is not always about our interests.

Sometimes, you just need to be in the same place as others. Doing similar things. No conversion required.

Go find a local planting day, plant a tree or ten.

Most people don't want a debate, they want pleasant conversation.

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›