What are the limits of intelligence?

[RingoKid]

always knew IQ tests were culturally biased...

Gene tests prove that we are all the same under the skin By Mark Henderson

Racists' central argument and theories linking intelligence to ethnic origin have been destroyed
THE popular notion that skin colour can indicate physical or mental differences between groups of people has been demolished by a new analysis of the human genome, which declares race to be a biologically meaningless concept.

Every human being shares more than 99.9 per cent of their DNA with everybody else, and the tiny variations that remain differ more within ethnic groups than between them, a major review of the evidence says.

 

[babsyco]

My last one, I wasn't saying that IQ tests aren't weak in their upper ranges, merely that there is no reason to asume that evidence that is derived from its more accurate lower ranges would not apply to its more ambiguous high ranges, that evidence being the lack of result bands that would indicate genetic influence on intelligence. You said that that argument doen't bear on the EXTREMELY high ranges, but I think the fact that it bears on the lower ranges indicates that it would if the tests were more accurate. Forgive me for going on, I've only just joined so all this discussion is new to me and I haven't had time to check out many other threads.

thanks, babsyco.

 

[babsyco]

My last one, I wasn't saying that IQ tests aren't weak in their upper ranges, merely that there is no reason to asume that evidence that is derived from its more accurate lower ranges would not apply to its more ambiguous high ranges, that evidence being the lack of result bands that would indicate genetic influence on intelligence. You said that that argument doen't bear on the EXTREMELY high ranges, but I think the fact that it bears on the lower ranges indicates that it would if the tests were more accurate. Forgive me for going on, I've only just joined so all this discussion is new to me and I haven't had time to check out many other threads. And what was that message about Polynesians, Ringokid (laughs)? where did that come from?

thanks, babsyco.

 

[selfAdjoint]

You said that that argument doen't bear on the EXTREMELY high ranges, but I think the fact that it bears on the lower ranges indicates that it would if the tests were more accurate.

babsyco, I don't see how you can make that assumption; it seems to me to be assuming what you want to prove: that the extreme IQ has the same causality as more moderately elevated IQ. I made the suggestion that they are causally different - it was just a suggestion, I admit - but it doesn't refute that suggestion to say "No they're not".

 

[babsyco]

What I meant was, why would genetic causality only bear on high range on IQ, as opposed to IQ in general? Is likely there a few mutations that increase peoples IQ (hence effecting the higher ranges) but none that decrease it, or none that effect it in the mid ranges? I think that it's not a case of 'if genes bear on extremely high IQ', but 'if they bear on IQ'-period. My assumption not that all IQ has the same cause, but that if genes are a factor they would be a factor across the whole spectrum. Maybe a lot of High range IQ is caused by genes- hell, maybe all of it is- but if so why not low or middle range as well? (I know I said my last one, but I couldn't resist).

Thanks, Babsyco.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Of course we could make up models where all IQ is affected by the same genes or where some genes affected some IQ and other genes affected other IQ.

It is a fact the juvenile g-loaded IQ is less hereditary than adult g-loaded IQ. This would be strange if the same genes affected both. I CONJECTURE that extreme g-loaded IQ is inherited differently from normal g-loaded IQ, either juvenile or adult. This accounts for the "man from Mars" impressions that some Ashkenazi Jews (e.g. Feymann, Erdos, von Neumann) have made on their normally high IQ contemporaries.

 

[kouga]

Does it even matter

In all likely hood humans will never reach their limit of intelligence (if there is one) before they are wiped out for whatever reason.

so u believe that there is no limit to a human brain to comprhend or to process information and store it for later use? or are u implying that mankind will destroy itself in the next century??

 

[Dovekie]

There is not limit to intelligence, but there is always the barrier of "not knowing what we don't know", but people still discover new things by accidents. So, I'm supposing there is no real limitation to what we can inherit intellectually.

 

[Evil]

A quote I remember:

"Life is strange", said Jeremy.

"Compared to what?", said the spider.

where did the quote come from?

 

[Chrono]

Let's see if I can make some sense here.

There isn't any limit to intelligence, at least as far as we know. The probably with memory, which plays a huge part in intelligence, is that it is hard to retrieve information. We can learn and memorize anything, but remembering is the hard part.

 

[Rothiemurchus]

There are objective measures of intelligence:
how quickly you can get a task done
how complicated a task can you manage
how many people can do the same tasks as you can

and subjective measures of intelligence - criteria that society defines as positive:
does the activity in your brain cause behaviour that makes you happy
does it make other people happy
does it enable you to survive
does it help others to survive
is it creative
is it unusual in some way that society says is positive