[Falconoffury]

I have a high IQ mostly because I have taken a variety of tests a large number of times. If you get good at the types of questions they ask, you can generally break the system.

I love how your age affects the outcome. My IQ has gone up over the years because of this fact.

My favorite questions are where they try to get you adding percentages to get a percentage of a number when you have to take the percentages out individually. 3% and 3% again on the same number is not the same as 6% a single time.

[seldom_seen]

The times I've taken the test:

47
58
32

I can carry heavy loads though, and work all day in the sun.

[0mar]

Lotta e-penis posturing goin on here

Mines probably between 115 and 125. I haven't been tested in a long time (+7 years, last time I got tested was sophmore year in highschool).

[BlisteredWhippet]

Conventional IQ is practically prehistoric. Wasn't it foisted on us during McCarthy's 50s?

I think this is a more interesting model for "intelligence":

multiple intelligences

(If you really want to blow your mind, click the "download" link (pdf) to the First Earth Battalion Field Manual link on the right.)

[The_Toecutter]

As a child, I have scored at both extremes of the bell curve, depending on the test taken. They are quite culturally biased. Many of them, like the Stanford Binet, were developed to determine mental retardation as opposed to measure a general level of 'intelligence'.

I haven't taken such a test in years and don't intend to ever again. Given my current level of education and field of study, I'd probably guess such a number to be somewhere over 120, but that may not really be the case. For one thing, the probability of so many high IQ people existing on this site is staggeringly low, and the odds would be well against me being such an individual if sheer probability were the only factor considered.

[Doly]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('The_Toecutter', 'F')or one thing, the probability of so many high IQ people existing on this site is staggeringly low, and the odds would be well against me being such an individual if sheer probability were the only factor considered.

[perdition79]

My IQ is 157. That doesn't mean much, because I'm still an idiot.

Now that we've figured out we all have large-displacement brainpans around here, can we officially call this forum a thinktank?

[The_Toecutter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')ctually, no. There seem to be quite a lot of people with University education in the site. There was another poll with that question recently. My understanding is that people that have gone to University have a higher average IQ, somewhere around 130. (Like I said, IQ correlates with academic ability more than anything else.) That would match roughly what we got here.

[BlisteredWhippet]

In other words, you can't tell shit from shine-ola with this measure.

I think human brains are perceptually limited. Our capabilities are determined more by what we allow ourselves to perceive. In terms of the mind, in this 3-dimensional universe we live in, the parameters of what we're capable of is vast yet finite. When someone talks about the virtues of having an "open mind" he is not talking about the capability to group similar symbols together or perform differential calculations- he is talking about the mental flexibility to appreciate and understand, empathize and synthesize innumerable varieties of experience, only a tiny sliver of which are represented in these tests.

These tests are artifacts of the intellectual values of a culture that clearly favors the modes of simple accumulation, categorization, and abstraction- a culture which regards simplemindedness in a particular direction the very height of efficiency and value.

If we taught mathematical and propositional logic to grade-school kids we would create the conditions for a cultural sea-change that might actually have a chance at survival. The modern professional adult is a synthesis of banality and overspecialization. A generation with open minds would threaten the whole house of cards.

IQ tests should be shredded. No one should be proud of their enumerization in this mythical scale. No one should be proud of the fact that it lurches into the 21st century, dragging the pretensions and gross ignorance of a generation of swine with it.

[The_Toecutter]

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[KhanCEO]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aaron', 'I')Q Tests... lol

What a silly kind of posturing exercise that is.

It's almost embarrassing in it's inherent ineptitude.

148ish

[Tyler_JC]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ElijahJones', '
')How could you make an IQ test better? That is a good question.

[0mar]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ElijahJones', 'I') also wanted to mention that if our results are a random sample of the folks who are on Peakoil.com, then it might mean that the issue of peak oil is not something the average person readily gets. notice our distribution has an average in the mid to upper 130's. That thirty points above the mean of about 100 for the general population means peak oil is very hard for them to understand. As a percentage of the population IQ's in the 130's are less than five percent.

[The_Toecutter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'V')ery, very few people have an IQ of 145 or more and yet, we are supposed to believe that there are 27 such people on this board alone?

[perdition79]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ElijahJones', 'T')hat means, we have our work cut out for us. In fact it probably means that making a difference will require building trust politically and then doing the right thing on the people's behalf rather than trying to educate them completely on peak oil. Materials handed out need to be bear bones, not too complicated. Try getting into EROEI and supply chain modeling with your average American and forget it. Tell them oil is running out because half of it is gone in 150 years and the other half will be gone in the next seventy-five and now you are talking on their level.

[The_Toecutter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')or instance if we used a culturally biased test, or just said screw it and started asking people how many Snickers bars they consume in a year.