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Dmytry comments on Does anyone know any kid geniuses? - Less Wrong Discussion

9 Post author: Solvent 28 March 2012 12:03PM

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Comment author: Dmytry 31 March 2012 07:39:24AM *  1 point [-]

Yea. The IQ test is pretty much designed with attempt to ignore ability to learn; it does not test person's ability to e.g. build searchable databases of huge volumes of information, through the life.

Ultimately: the geniuses are within top 1% or better on many categories, not just IQ test, and while someone with high IQ is much more likely to be a genius than average, the odds of high IQ person being a genius in the pre-IQ-test sense of the word are still very low, in the one in thousands level.

Furthermore, all tests like that suffer from a sort of over-fitting at the extreme high range. When it is pretty close to 100, you have people who are more intelligent solve the test better; when it is past 150 or so, the extra ability is gained via factors not so related to intelligence. E.g. with the progressive matrices and other means of testing where the correct answer is highly subjective, at the normal range, the gains are realisable by seeing fairly obvious patterns but at high range gains may be only realisable by mental similarity to the test maker. Intelligence can not predict which one of the alternatives the test maker favoured, but similar intelligence with similar cultural exposure can. It may well be that past the intelligence level of test makers (considering the time factor), the IQ test stops working. After all, for all the questions on IQ test, someone with not very extraordinary abilities must know an answer. And the answers are not computer-generated so far.

Imagine people with IQ of 80 having to make IQ test, as an intuition pump. It is kind of obvious that the test wouldn't work terribly well past 100 or so. You can't test for genius level intelligence; all you can do is let genius convince you with some real accomplishments, but even this can fail.