(08-02-2020, 06:52 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: So the context is all about what you don't know. When I ask how many people are smarter than you, I am not asking who has learned something different than you. Imagine you're in a room with 100 people and you're all given a series of questions and no one there has an advantage of pre-existing knowledge with which to answer the question. There are materials there that will help  you learn some information that is repeatable, some information needs to be applied, and there will be some deductions that need to be made. If you're being honest with yourself, out of a room of 100 people, how many there do you think would be smarter than you? 1? 5? 10? 

Of course your last point is true. I have often said that intelligence alone is not worth anything. To that end, I definitely don't tout myself as any kind of example. My wife does far greater good than I have at this point in our lives, so I don't think IQ has any stand-alone merit. Often when discussing this, people tend to mistake crystallized intelligence for fluid intelligence. IQ is an attempt to predict the former, not the later. 

Some people subscribe to the idea that IQ measures a general intelligence, also known as the G factor. People who believe that think that people with a high G factor are good at learning anything they want. Others subscribe to a multiple intelligences theory. In this theory, they think there are multiple different areas of intelligence such as linguistic or musical ability. I am not as big a fan of multiple intelligences, because it seems to be trying to build it's theory around an idea, not data.

The fact that you say you can't say without knowing who is in the room shows you have a higher IQ. I think it was in reference to having 100 people and using the IQ %. Statistically there my be 1 person in a room with a higher IQ, but that still doesn't make you smarter than the other people in the room.

I definitely think IQ measures general intelligence. I know that I can learn anything if I want to apply myself. I can read, watch, or repeat something and learn/figure out how to do it myself. It has been very helpful in life to be able to learn how to do stuff that most people pay other people to do and generally I do it well. There are things that you do need some skills to do that are beyond IQ though. Sports, arts, linguistics, etc that you need some physical skills that can only be learned to a certain point. Having a higher IQ will help you be advanced, but to master those you need more than being smart.

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