Do smart people have high IQ?

[johnnyyukon]

Yes.

But smart people can be dumb in areas of common sense, lack wisdom, are self-destructive, addicts, have poor social skills, etc.

(I realize there's all kinds of intelligences, social, kinesthetic, etc. But I'm thinking book smart smart, when you say that).

 

[Poki]

Someone that can't dance probably won't be better at dancing than someone with natural dancing ability, even with infinite effort. However, if someone who can naturally dance does nothing with their ability, then they'll go nowhere and if the one that can't dance works the system, puts in the effort, looks the part, and doesn't give up, then eventually they may go somewhere in the field of dancing. It's not that the person that can't dance is better, it's that there was more to succeeding than knowing how to dance and they leaned on those other things. The same can be said if someone had naturally dancing ability and wasted none of it, but then went nowhere. They had the ability, but lacked opportunity, got pushed out for being too good, or weren't as good at dealing with BS.

What do you mean by smart? I think anyone can be well-read and experienced at what they are doing, thus making them not stupid at it and seemingly better than someone with a stronger natural ability that hasn't been at it very long, but I don't think someone with a lower IQ can necessarily be smarter than someone with a higher IQ (in that form of intelligence).

Smart is not intelligent for me. They are independent of each other when ranked. If I would rank someone as smart I wouldnt look at intelligence I would look at knowledge. I honestly dont think very highly of intelligence being as big a deal as people make it out to be, this is coming from someone with a very high intelligence. Maybe my idea of intelligence is skewed because of that, people who have a good intelligence I dont see alot of intelligence in yet I still see them as smart. I really dont know. I generally score in the 150-160 range on every test I have taken. My view of intelligence may be skewed.

 

[Andy]

thats to open ended and dependent on the person, mood etc. and has alot of different right/wrong answers that also get into degrees of right/wrong. I am sure every personality type would respond differently based on what they value. Its like these IQ tests where they show you peoples faces, they screw me up big time because the faces shift right in front of my eyes, like those pictures where depending on where/what you focus on things it creates a different picture. People and faces do that to me. Like I can see multiple sides of things. Really screws me up on those tests and I dont know what they are looking for.

What I mean degrees of right wrong. you can be nice or you can bitch and threaten. Both get you what you want, values dictate degree of right wrong to the point where even if the person accomplished it others will still deny due to path the person went..

The fact that it is too open ended is part of my point. I was trying to indicate the limits of IQ tests. What they test is ultimately very specialised and rather limited. So many of them are looking for the right answer, not a right answer. As such, they rather dismiss creativity.

I'll give an example of something that might actually appear in an IQ test. What comes next in this squence of numbers 2, 4, 8...

I could say 16, assuming that it doubles each time. Or I could say 14, as in 2+2=4, 4+4=8, 8+6=14, by assuming that the difference between each term goes up by 2 at each term. There is absolutely no way of distinguishing between the two answer with the information that is available. I'd also except the answer 6, because that's the last point in the cross on a typical square number key board, i.e

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9

I'll give bonus points to anyone who can come up with another answer and explanation!

 

[Mane]

Intelligence as manifested in life is predominantly about the use of cognitive tools.

This can include empathy and the ability to speculate and reconstruct yourself to identify with the feelings of another, this can include the ways you map out information, the dimensions in which you are capable and willing to turn th around to view the information map from different perspectives, the scope and abstraction level of the patterns your mind is able to form & recognize. This can a more meta layer of self awareness, such as the patience and will power to self examine why you think & feel what you do and where it puts you in the mental maps of others while detaching yourself from the distractions of righteousness, and it can include logic and rhetoric, and math and linguistic capacities and so much more. Perhaps most valuable (If i am somewhat biased), it includes this: a meta level of understanding of this very mind space, the tool belt which your mind yields, their construction, formulation and value.

From this perspective, to say that intelligence about capacity would be to assume we even have cognitive tools at our disposal that can reach the upper limit of anyone's capacity, maximize the human potential.
and I believe we have very strong evidence against this from the research of James Flynn, who has tracked the increase in IQ results & multiple intelligence tests down to an increase in 3 basic mental tools: Seeking classification, using logic on abstractions & taking the hypothetical seriously. Those are cognitive 3 tools that continue to improve over time at a steady rate without any visible cognitive capacity suffering as a result, which to me suggest that this trend does not obey the redistribution effects of a limited resource pool (Moving points from capacity A to capacity B), and that we are not getting any decrease in return or hitting any walls, meaning there is no visible scarcity effect in the ability to grow. Most importantly, common sense dictates that we should not be as ridiculously arrogant as to assume that our society has fulfilled the human potential better then all possible human societies.

Much like cultural analysis at the face of rapid technological change, IQ tests are never going to be able to fully catch up to all the mental tools we make, at least not until we get close to the capacity. But they can do exactly what they already do - make a focus test on our ability to use recognizable tools.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

As far as I can tell, an IQ test basically amounts to a working memory test. Working memory is very helpful for doing various mental procedures more quickly and accurately. It is not to be disregarded, and in a very generalized sense, a high IQ probably correlates with what I'd consider intelligence. However, I don't think IQ has anything to do with curiosity and open-mindedness. I don't really think it has to do with critical or lateral thinking, and I don't think it says anything about a person's ability to overcome cognitive bias.

 

[Poki]

The fact that it is too open ended is part of my point. I was trying to indicate the limits of IQ tests. What they test is ultimately very specialised and rather limited. So many of them are looking for the right answer, not a right answer. As such, they rather dismiss creativity.

I'll give an example of something that might actually appear in an IQ test. What comes next in this squence of numbers 2, 4, 8...

I could say 16, assuming that it doubles each time. Or I could say 14, as in 2+2=4, 4+4=8, 8+6=14, by assuming that the difference between each term goes up by 2 at each term. There is absolutely no way of distinguishing between the two answer with the information that is available. I'd also except the answer 6, because that's the last point in the cross on a typical square number key board, i.e

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9

I'll give bonus points to anyone who can come up with another answer and explanation!

Normally it doesnt stop at such a short sequence.

 

[Poki]

As far as I can tell, an IQ test basically amounts to a working memory test. Working memory is very helpful for doing various mental procedures more quickly and accurately. It is not to be disregarded, and in a very generalized sense, a high IQ probably correlates with what I'd consider intelligence. However, I don't think IQ has anything to do with curiosity and open-mindedness. I don't really think it has to do with critical or lateral thinking, and I don't think it says anything about a person's ability to overcome cognitive bias.

A person with a higher IQ is more likely to pick up concepts/understanding quicker, even that which they do not have any previous knowledge. A smart person may be smart by virtue of studying, an intelligent person will pick it up with almost no studying.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

A person with a higher IQ is more likely to pick up concepts/understanding quicker,

Only of a sort. I'd say this applies to things like math, languages, programming, music theory, etc... Those things were working memory is very useful.

If for some reason a person with a high IQ has gotten it into their head that the moon landing was hoaxed, good luck talking some sense into them. If anything, a person with a higher IQ is harder to dissuade from false convictions. Nothing about an IQ tests whether or not you ask questions, particularly of yourself, whether or not your are open to sources of information, whether or not you pursue real research on your questions, whether or not you can disassociate ideas you've been conditioned to associate or include premises you've been conditioned to automatically exclude. Not only does the nature of what IQ tests for simply not relate to that much, the fact of it being timed and of questions typically seeking an exact right answer might honestly test against one's ability to do those things.

There's also a difference between so-called fluid intelligence and crystalized intelligence, which correlate but aren't quite the same thing and which some IQ tests may only test for one of (there was an IQ test posted on this forum a while back that almost certainly only tested fluid intelligence). And stranger still, these things, if I recall, also correlate with long-term memory way less than you'd think.

 

[Mane]

I suppose it's a bit like asking "Do healthy people have low cholesterol"?
They often do, but so can people with cancer, neurological disorders, low bone density or dysfunctional immune systems or horrible skin conditions, while others might not do as well in avoiding unhealthy foods but will have other healthy habits they do maintain or simply be lucky in the genetic makeup. People with low cholesterol might be healthier on average because it's a good indicator for certain aspect of health and it doesn't seem to draw away from a limited pool of "health points" (The opposite is true - different systems contribute to each other), but you'll have many exceptions.