vladimir wrote:

Jamie_Lambo wrote:i think someone needs to find an actual decent online IQ Test (im sure theres plenty about) and we should get all the members who give a shit to take the test and post their results and what country theyre from

The problem is also that IQ is not equal to nice, nor to success, but people often ignore that

exactly, you could have an IQ of 200+ but if your not street smart you could end up dead,
if you were stranded in the jungle and your not survival skills smart you could end up dead,
you could have in IQ of 200+ but it doesnt mean are guarenteed to have a lot of friends and get invited to cool parties...

what are the benefits of being smart? so you can spend half your life in school then spend the other half working 50 hours a week in some well paid job but not having any life to actualy benefit from it, and you dont really have a life at all

there are different levels of smart, people that come from slummy backgrounds to make something of themselves out of nothing, they might have an IQ of less than 100 but have 100,000s of dollars in the bank

in england we use the word Smart to describe something that is cool, or someome that is well dressed, to describe this kind of smart we would describe it as brainiest people, in england Smart is a more of a well rounded word to describe quite a number of different attributes

One of my students is studying at UCLA, majoring in physics. She was like this guy. I was about the only teacher who wasn't afraid of her

just did an online IQ and got 137, it was pretty easy though tbh, might try and find a harder one later

i think last time i tried a proper one im sure it was around 127

Jamie_Lambo wrote:just did an online IQ and got 137, it was pretty easy though tbh, might try and find a harder one later

i think last time i tried a proper one im sure it was around 127

I'm sure you're a very bright guy but it should be noted that 'proper' IQ tests can only be administered by a psychiatrist/psychologist or similar. Online tests are pretty close to scams and are biased toward, well, you - your demographic.

vladimir wrote:Are we good now?

Yes. Sorry I overanalyzed your post.

Language knowledge is a bit of a soft spot for me. I'm fluent in three nearly since birth and seem to be doing pretty OK in my fourth (Khmer). I learned how to read and write my mother tongue by chatting and reading online. I was around 6, none of my parents knew where or how I could pick it up efficiently. Even today people will ask me "so what part of the states are you from?", and when I tell them Europe they give me that frowned Donald Trump face. I went through a lot of effort to pick up English, especially to break out of the ordinary dialect associated with my origin, so whenever I feel or think that people put me down because of it I react... well, you see it. I get very upset since I'm really putting in an effort to be able to write this gibberish. It's one of those things that are very close to my heart and I take it very personally when I feel attacked on those grounds.

Again, my sincere apologies for fueliing up. I normally don't. I'm glad we didn't get to the imaginary fight between us that I had lined up in my head as some sort of mental preparation. The first 10 beers are on me when we finally meet. So let me ask you, when are you available?

Jamie_Lambo wrote:there are different levels of smart, people that come from slummy backgrounds to make something of themselves out of nothing, they might have an IQ of less than 100 but have 100,000s of dollars in the bank

This.

For some reason IQ has gained so much traction that people tend to forget the remaining aspects of life. Even though the measurement is tainted and doomed to fail, we still need to acknowledge the existence of EQ, SQ, PQ and finally, one which I unfortunately most likely would score very high in, AQ.

Human beings are much less black and white than the populist hivemind cares to admit, possibly because we are collectively suffering from some sort of inattention psychosis. Human beings are simply too complex to measure and categorize in these ways. Ask anyone who has carefully studied the DSM-IV or later.

However, I must allow some space for Carl Jung for his personality studies which enabled Myer-Briggs type indications. I personally believe that one thing which we actually can measure well, and matters more than any of the *Q tests, are MBTI tests. Unfortunately they have gone completely to the heads of HR departments all over the world and instead of learning to understand each other they are used to characterize people into profession. I object to that, although I do believe MBTI to be very efficient for helping us understand each other and why sometimes we collide.

To some this might sound that I'm bridging the conversation to horoscope level science. Fair enough, actually, each to their own. What I can attest to is that by carefully studying MBTI and portions of the research that lead to it, I have learned a lot about other humans but more importantly myself.

The test usually consists of less than 100 questions where the test subject grades his or her perception of him- or herself. The result then comes in the form of 4 characters. The first character determines whether the test subject is extroverted or introverted, E or I respectively. The second character determines whether the test subject is intuitive or sensing. The third character determines whether the test subject is thinking or sensing. The fourth determines whether the test subject is perceiving or judging.

What I like the most about MBTI is the fact that the result does not exclude one or another character in the same position. The character will depend on dominance. A test subject can thus be 49% intuitive and 51% sensing. What matters is the dominant function, which then opens an ocean of possible personalities which theoretically, or at least in my case, can help a person understand and develop his or her own persona.

For example, my dominant MBTI letters are INTJ. Theoretically, we have the rarest form of personality type (on the MBTI scale) and with this comes a lot of surrounding hype, bias and straight out nonsense. The more interesting aspect, to me, is the compability of *other* people with *other* letter combinations. Naturally, some personalities are completely incompatible, but people aware of others' differences can use that awareness to adapt to, as in my case as an INTJ, at least try to come off as less of an arrogant schmuck when, in my head, there is only rationality and logical thinking which naturally leads to confusion and incompability with emotion driven humans.

On a serious note: Human beings and psychology is fucking hard. Never fitting in made me try to understand as a way to cope with the world around me in my late teenage years. I often find myself in the position that I don't understand the counter party of a conversation but something that I have done has provoked him or her to shun me to the point that I can never be taken seriously even when I ask and try to understand about the conflict. The feeling of never fitting in is always carried with me like my laptop in my backpack. The constant black cloud hovering above me reminding me of the feeling that I not only don't fit into this world but perhaps I am not ready for it, or vice versa.

I lost traction of the point I was trying to make. I guess the highlight of my argument is that I find it difficult to understand humans. This difficulty to understand has most likely played a big role in making me seek out computers and other devices that I feel are driven by something that I can understand: logic. When my computer breaks it's certainly because of something that I did wrong, or some other explanation that I can point at. That gives me something to work with. Something that I can catch up on and perhaps fix. When my friends and girlfriends are crying in front of me expressing feelings that I can't identify I feel weak, disappointed, stupid, confused and, well, as a completely failed human being. Sometimes, the harder I try the more I fuck it up. I can't fix that. So I isolate and surround myself with work. I'm very good at inventing problems to solve to distract myself from people and things that I feel like I'm letting down because I don't understand them.

Sorry for the personal rant. Maybe I'll buy a diary.

Hey BOFH, I'll PM you, busy today, not sure about tomorrow, but beer always (except when babes are involved) takes priority, life is short.

I did an IQ test when I was around 12, it took the whole bloody day!

I asked the ' examiner', if the guys who set the test are so smart, why can't they make it shorter?

He just laughed and told my father to expect problems.

The Learning and Skills Council studied hundreds of personality profiles and other tools designed to categorize people. The MBTI was singled out as a particularly poor measure as results are next to impossible to reproduce; if you run the MBTI on the same person every day for a week (using differently phrased questions).... people come out different nearly every time.

The MBTI is a thoroughly unscientific tool. While I am completely of the opinion that you don't need training in a field to be good in it; I am also of the opinion that you need to read more than one book to deliver some expertise. A housewife who has read Jung doesn't qualify as an expert in psychometric profiling. Particularly when the Jungian profiles were discredited even while she was doing the original work.

The reason that the MBTI has gained so much traction is that people like the results. They like being about to explain what an INTJ is and they so rarely take the test that by the second time they take it - they've forgotten what they were the previous time around.

I do agree that it's a good conversation piece to get people thinking about communication styles but by and large the MBTI is not a good indicator of anything except a willingness to pay large sums of money for a quiz with as much accuracy as a newspaper horoscope.

I'm of the opinion that intelligence changes with time, and can be increased or decreased with the right stimuli or lack thereof, anyway.

vladimir wrote:I'm of the opinion that intelligence changes with time, and can be increased or decreased with the right stimuli or lack thereof, anyway.

I suspect that like physical strength or happiness that we are all born with a base level of intelligence that can be to some extent increased/decreased depending on circumstances. Some people will have a higher starting point and higher potential than others... people shouldn't read too much into it. Einstein's IQ wasn't off the scale and his contribution to humanity is a lasting one. There is also some truth in the idea that most people will rise to the level of their own incompetence...