[tomkin]

I hate to say this, but IQ tests are BMI tests for the brain, and about as accurate. If a coffee, bad sleep, or a dose of Ritalin can change the result – at its very nature – it is not a scientific method of measurement (the ability to retest and get the same result).

We could say it's a good read of a spectrum of mental capacity, but to suggest that IQ is capable of anything more is whack science.

[coldpie]

BMI is a perfectly valid first-order approximation of appropriate weight ranges for the 95% of the population who are not body builders.

[phaus]

Perhaps BMI isn't very accurate for slightly short people. It says I should weigh 115-149 lbs. I currently weigh 190 and when I manage to get down to 170, I look very athletic. The last time I weighed 149, I looked like I was starving.

It seems similarly unreasonable for most of my friends and family.

[tomkin]

My argument is that no one can claim BMI or IQ is a scientific form of measurement.

[JoeAltmaier]

My wife grew up in Los Alamos. There was an experiment where some physicists took an IQ test every Saturday for a year. Their scores ranged from Moron to Genius, depending on the day. We presume some bell curve where their 'true IQ' was measured. But take a test once on one day - the result is highly variable.

[Kenji]

Not to mention, there are groups like MENSA, of people who have a very high IQ, yet a lot of them are no more productive than the person of average intelligence. We are far away from having a good measure of intelligence.

[wslh]

My two cents: one of our employees is a member of Mensa and participates in a local branch organization. He always mentions how difficult is to reach consensus on basic organizational issues. No different that reaching consensus in a condominium.

Having said that, I think the measure of IQ and related variables such us working memory capacity is very interesting and gives a lot of information about how you can peroform in specific situations. The problem is when you try to infer the individual outcome in a complex environment with a few variables.

[iopq]

But on average, the higher IQ group is more productive than the general population.

[Dylan16807]

I agree with your first sentence but I don't think that argument really supports it. Performance-based testing is not inherently flawed. You just need multiple samples. Bad sleep and stimulants can screw up a lot of other measurements, too, like blood sugar and pressure.

[tomkin]

I agree that it's like blood sugar/pressure, but that's sort of my point. I think if you used blood pressure to judge some one's physical capabilities like you would use IQ to judge some one's mental capacity, you would run into unfair outcomes.

"some one with an IQ greater than 120 is definitely intelligent" == "some one with high blood pressure is definitely unable."

I'm fine with IQ so long as we're not using it as a scientific form of measurement...but we currently seem to.