Kasz216 said:
Even the valid uses of proffesional ones... aren't that valid. Except for conning people into joining Mensa. I swear the real point of Mensa is just to show that no matter how high your IQ is, you can still have either low self esteem or little common sense. |
While your complaints against IQ tests are generally accurate I feel I should clarify this one point. An individually done, well maintained, and properly adminstered IQ test does have a couple of very good uses. Those uses revolve exclusively around learning how to help children in school perform better. If you use one of the better tests (Weschler comes to mind amongst others) and adminster it properly you can easily minimize cultural and gender bias and find out if the child in question could stand to have a little more help learning or needs a faster pace to learn effectively.
There is a branch off of IQ tests that may or may not still carry that label despite the relative inaccuracy. When dealing with brain damage you will often give what are essentially IQ tests to see which areas of the brain have suffered the most damage and are in need of rehabilitation. This helps predict the level of disfunction a person can expect after severe head trauma and allow them to get the right type of help to prevent it from being an issue.
I completely agree on the Mensa thing as well. A bigger group of arrogant jack-asses I have never had the misfortune to meet. The dumbest people I ever met were in Mensa.
If you are going to try and call someone out you might want to actually have a clue as to what you are talking about before you start shooting your mouth off. First and foremost, having an IQ higher than Einstein doesn't really mean anything on its own. My claim that I am taller than Einstein is just as important as someone claiming they have a higher IQ than Einstein.
Secondly, Einsteins IQ would be much lower today. Every year they have to reset the standard score and this causes older peoples IQs to drop because the younger people always have a higher score than the previous generation at the same age.
Finally, there have been plenty of people through-out histort who have had a higher IQ than Einstein. While you are dealing with a very low pecentage of people, it will still be in the thousands for the number of people alive today that have a higher IQ absolutely, and probably the millions for people who have a higher IQ relatively. His high IQ had absolutely nothing to do with his scientific genious.
