• Due to ongoing issues caused by Search, it has been temporarily disabled
  • Please excuse the mess, we're moving the furniture and restructuring the forum categories
  • You may need to edit your signatures.

    When we moved to Xenfora some of the signature options didn't come over. In the old software signatures were limited by a character limit, on Xenfora there are more options and there is a character number and number of lines limit. I've set maximum number of lines to 4 and unlimited characters.

Declining IQ of college grads

Brainster said:
I don't see any disconnect there at all. IQ measures the ability of a human to learn, and ChatGPT is apparently quite a learner. Indeed it is a little reassuring to hear that ChatGPT's IQ is only 155; lots of people (numerically, not as a percentage of course) have a higher IQ than that.
Click to expand...
No, only one in ten thousand, and I don't think there is a validated IQ test that can measure such a score.
 
Brainster said:
I don't see any disconnect there at all. IQ measures the ability of a human to learn, and ChatGPT is apparently quite a learner. Indeed it is a little reassuring to hear that ChatGPT's IQ is only 155; lots of people (numerically, not as a percentage of course) have a higher IQ than that.
Click to expand...
My wife administers IQ tests. She says it's not so much the ability to learn as how far along you are in practical abstract problem solving compared to your peers. You might learn very well, like a Border Collie, But don't function without direction, and you would test poorly.
 
Darat said:
Since when has that been the claim? IQ is meant to provide a figure about an innate "power" g that an individual has. IQ proponents work hard to ignore the likes of improving IQ scores as more children are given better basic education.

ETA: As I noted that was when ChatGPT was tested in 2023, it's got way better since then.
Click to expand...
The whole way that g started getting noticed was in the positive correlation of test results of school children across various subjects. That is, it was a measure of their ability to learn. Unless you'd care to argue that it is a measure of what you have actually learned, in which case you're arguing that one in 10,000 people have learned as much as ChatGPT.
 
Brainster said:
Or something like 800,000 people.
Click to expand...
According to the z-tables for an IQ score of 155 where the ±sd of scores is 15, it says one in ten thousand in a normal distribution. But it might be difficult to 'norm' a test for an extreme of almost ±4sd from the mean. With height you can jut use a tape measure. An abstract concept such as IQ you'd need to design a test that tests for that level assuming everybody with 160 on WAIS has the same cognitive abilities as each other.
 
My understanding of IQ is it's a measure of intelligence relative to the rest of a peer group, where 100 is normal. Thus a 12 year old child with an IQ of 135 won't necessarily maintain that score as his/her age advances though university.

Does anyone have further information on this?
 
Blue Mountain said:
My understanding of IQ is it's a measure of intelligence relative to the rest of a peer group, where 100 is normal. Thus a 12 year old child with an IQ of 135 won't necessarily maintain that score as his/her age advances though university.

Does anyone have further information on this?
Click to expand...
Obviously individuals may vary more, but IQ for larger groups seems to remain stable over time until old age starts to work its wonders. Again if you think of this as capability to learn something new, it makes sense that it would not vary much.
 
Blue Mountain said:
My understanding of IQ is it's a measure of intelligence relative to the rest of a peer group, where 100 is normal. Thus a 12 year old child with an IQ of 135 won't necessarily maintain that score as his/her age advances though university.

Does anyone have further information on this?
Click to expand...
As I recall it is age-adjusted (weighted) for under-12's after which age everyone is treated as being in the same age group, so it should remain constant.

You see all these regular silly stories in the newspapers about four-year-olds being 'brighter' than Clive Sinclair because their age-adjusted IQ's are similar, when really they are no cleverer.
 
Brainster said:
Obviously individuals may vary more, but
IQ for larger groups seems to remain stable over time until old age starts to work its wonders. Again if you think of this as capability to learn something new, it makes sense that it would not vary much.
Click to expand...
Based on the amount and type of education for that large group, a 30 percent rise in 30 years just as formal education was standardising and increasing in that large group... In other words IQ/g seems to be very much er... correlated in a large population when the educational curriculums supports the type of puzzles and questions found in IQ tests. Almost as if g is something that can be taught and isn't an innate property of a person...
 
Blue Mountain said:
My understanding of IQ is it's a measure of intelligence relative to the rest of a peer group, where 100 is normal. Thus a 12 year old child with an IQ of 135 won't necessarily maintain that score as his/her age advances though university.

Does anyone have further information on this?
Click to expand...
Which would be strange if the IQ tests were testing for an innate "g". Then it shouldn't matter what age an IQ test is taken - that "g" should remain a constant.
 
Darat said:
What 800,000 people?
Click to expand...
Assuming Vixen's estimate of 1 in 10,000 people having an IQ higher than 155 is correct, then with 8 billion people on Earth, we would expect there to be 800,000 people with a higher IQ than ChatGPT (as of 2023 to save you the quibble).
 
Darat said:
Based on the amount and type of education for that large group, a 30 percent rise in 30 years just as formal education was standardising and increasing in that large group... In other words IQ/g seems to be very much er... correlated in a large population when the educational curriculums supports the type of puzzles and questions found in IQ tests. Almost as if g is something that can be taught and isn't an innate property of a person...
Click to expand...
Please explain to us how ChatGPT only had an IQ of 155 then. Are you saying that there are hundreds of thousands of people who knew more than ChatGPT in 2023? I find that very difficult to believe, as ChatGPT knows vast amounts of detail on such a wide variety of topics that no human could possibly even learn in the course of a lifetime, let alone retain and use.
 
Brainster said:
Assuming Vixen's estimate of 1 in 10,000 people having an IQ higher than 155 is correct, then with 8 billion people on Earth, we would expect there to be 800,000 people with a higher IQ than ChatGPT (as of 2023 to save you the quibble).
Click to expand...
How is that relevant to the existence of "g"?
 
Brainster said:
Please explain to us how ChatGPT only had an IQ of 155 then. Are you saying that there are hundreds of thousands of people who knew more than ChatGPT in 2023? I find that very difficult to believe, as ChatGPT knows vast amounts of detail on such a wide variety of topics that no human could possibly even learn in the course of a lifetime, let alone retain and use.
Click to expand...
The proponents of IQ hold that IQ measures an innate human power "g", it is not meant to be a measure of what you know.
 
Weird discussion, just little reminder. ChatGPT and co are Fake Intelligence. They are just interpolating generators. There is good chance their training data contained most of variants of IQ tests, so generating correct answer should pretty easy.
 
Brainster said:
Assuming Vixen's estimate of 1 in 10,000 people having an IQ higher than 155 is correct, then with 8 billion people on Earth, we would expect there to be 800,000 people with a higher IQ than ChatGPT (as of 2023 to save you the quibble).
Click to expand...
Oh right. Good thinking. Problem with the normal distribution curve is that at each extreme tail end, there are larger numbers of individuals than the Gaussian equation would predict (being theoretical). For example, a large bulge at the far left end (no doubt due to genetic influences or environmental effects), and likewise at the other right hand side of the curve not to mention males seeming to outnumber females at either extreme. So, yeah, 800,000 worldwide at any time minimum but probably more than we'd expect from the mathematical model.
 
Brainster said:
Please explain to us how ChatGPT only had an IQ of 155 then. Are you saying that there are hundreds of thousands of people who knew more than ChatGPT in 2023? I find that very difficult to believe, as ChatGPT knows vast amounts of detail on such a wide variety of topics that no human could possibly even learn in the course of a lifetime, let alone retain and use.
Click to expand...
I think the guy in Scientific American who ran the test was simply adapting ChatGPT's 'verbal' capabilities to what he or she was guessing consisted of IQ.
 
Klimax said:
Weird discussion, just little reminder. ChatGPT and co are Fake Intelligence.
They are just interpolating generators. There is good chance their training data contained most of variants of IQ tests, so generating correct answer should pretty easy.
Click to expand...
A couple of generations ago that was indeed the case, they have now progressed beyond that.
 
Vixen said:
Oh right. Good thinking. Problem with the normal distribution curve is that at each extreme tail end, there are larger numbers of individuals than the Gaussian equation would predict (being theoretical). For example, a large bulge at the far left end (no doubt due to genetic influences or environmental effects), and likewise at the other right hand side of the curve not to mention males seeming to outnumber females at either extreme. So, yeah, 800,000 worldwide at any time minimum but probably more than we'd expect from the mathematical model.
Click to expand...
The absolute number doesn't really matter; the point is that I am reassured to hear that ChatGPT does not have the highest IQ in the world and that there are at least some number of people that have a higher IQ.
 
Darat said:
The proponents of IQ hold that IQ measures an innate human power "g", it is not meant to be a measure of what you know.
Click to expand...
The innate human power it measures is the ability to learn something new or more complex. What else could it be?
 
Brainster said:
The innate human power it measures is the ability to learn something new or more complex. What else could it be?
Click to expand...

g is supposed to refer to cognitive ability. This can be verbal or spatial. In children, it helps educators identity those with the ability to succeed academically (good at passing exams within a time limit). But as we have seen further upthread, whilst this used to be the case (in the UK) now it is more based on whether you have completed the coursework successfully (i.e., exam results are not approximated to a normal distribution but towards attaining a particular pass mark). This means 100% of a class can pass the exam in theory, whereas under the old system, it was set at 50% set up to 'fail'. I think this is what the OP is complaining about re 'falling IQ's', now everybody is passing.
 
Just stopping by to drop in a memorable quote from a prominent NZer (can't remember who), who said: "Every time a person emigrates from New Zealand to Australia, the average IQ of both countries rises a little bit".

(Needs a moment to understand correctly......)
 
Someone should post a list of things that are known to lower IQ:

1. Inadequate nutrition;
2. Air pollution (particularly lead levels);
3. Poor schooling;
4. Air pollution (carbon dioxide levels).

None of those things could be happening anywhere, so clearly nothing to see.
 
Vixen said:
Hans Eysenck et al consider g to be 80% nature and 20% nurture.
Click to expand...

Eysenck has been dead for nearly thirty years. He was a racist crank.

A selection of brief excerpts from his wikipedia entry:

During his life, Eysenck's claims about IQ scores and race, first published in 1971, were a significant source of controversy. Eysenck claimed that IQ scores were influenced by genetic differences between racial groups. Eysenck's beliefs on race have been discredited by subsequent research, and are no longer accepted as part of mainstream science.
Click to expand...

Eysenck believed that empirical evidence supported parapsychology and astrology.
Click to expand...

Psychologist Donald R. Peterson noted in letters written in 1995 and published in 2005 that years earlier he had stopped trusting Eysenck's work after he tried to replicate a study done in Eysenck's lab and concluded that the results of the original study must have been "either concocted or cooked".
Click to expand...
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Eysenck
 
Last edited:
junkshop said:
Eysenck has been dead for nearly thirty years. He was a racist crank.

A brief excerpt from his wikipedia entry:



Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Eysenck
Click to expand...

He was quite influential nonetheless. Francis Galton is credited as the pioneer of the Nature ~vs~ Nurture issue (although, of course, Plato had gone there before), plus Burt and Jensen. Cyril Burt was discredited as forging some results. However, Galton's method of twin studies does show a strong correlation of hereditary traits (such as in height) but environment has a strong effect, too. Whilst eugenics has caused a lot of controversy especially as Nazi Germany seized on it and twisted it, in falsification of its warped ideology, as far as g is concerned it is generally accepted to be part inherited part environmental - the debate is, how much; hence the twin studies of twins brought up apart from birth and compared with each other. 80-20 is the general finding.
 
Vixen said:
He was quite influential nonetheless. Francis Galton is credited as the pioneer of the Nature ~vs~ Nurture issue (although, of course, Plato had gone there before), plus Burt and Jensen. Cyril Burt was discredited as forging some results. However, Galton's method of twin studies does show a strong correlation of hereditary traits (such as in height) but environment has a strong effect, too. Whilst eugenics has caused a lot of controversy especially as Nazi Germany seized on it and twisted it, in falsification of its warped ideology, as far as g is concerned it is generally accepted to be part inherited part environmental - the debate is, how much; hence the twin studies of twins brought up apart from birth and compared with each other. 80-20 is the general finding.
Click to expand...

There is a weird ballsiness in atempting to defend eugenics. I don't think it is a good idea, though. Are you going to do phrenology next?
 
junkshop said:
There is a weird ballsiness in atempting to defend eugenics. I don't think it is a good idea, though. Are you going to do phrenology next?
Click to expand...

I certainly do not advocate eugenics, I am merely providing the academic establishment's stance. When I did Psychology as a degree we had the topic of intelligence testing and its history as a key part of personality theory. In that scientific field, the nature/nurture issue is a salient one and is nothing at all to do with 'woke' versus traditional science. Let's face it, even today, if you want a scholarship to a top public school, you will be expected to pass an entrance exam and that entrance exam is geared to select the top 20% or so of so-called 'academic ability'. This is factual, not my personal opinion.
 
Vixen said:
I certainly do not advocate eugenics, I am merely providing the academic establishment's stance. When I did Psychology as a degree we had the topic of intelligence testing and its history as a key part of personality theory. In that scientific field, the nature/nurture issue is a salient one and is nothing at all to do with 'woke' versus traditional science. Let's face it, even today, if you want a scholarship to a top public school, you will be expected to pass an entrance exam and that entrance exam is geared to select the top 20% or so of so-called 'academic ability'. This is factual, not my personal opinion.
Click to expand...

When did you study psychology? I only ask because it would appear that your view of what constitutes 'the academic establishment's stance' is a little outdated. From the same wikipedia page I previously cited:
...In 2019 the psychiatrist Anthony Pelosi, writing for the Journal of Health Psychology, described Eysenck's work as unsafe. Pelosi described some of Eysenck's work as leading to "one of the worst scientific scandals of all time" with "what must be the most astonishing series of findings ever published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature" and "effect sizes that have never otherwise been encountered in biomedical research." Pelosi cited 23 "serious criticisms" of Eysenck's work that had been published independently by multiple authors between 1991 and 1997, noting that these had never been investigated "by any appropriate authority" at that time. The reportedly fraudulent papers covered the links between personality and cancer. Grossarth and Eysenck claimed the existence of a "cancer prone personality" were supposed to have a risk of dying of cancer 121 times greater than controls, when exposed to the carcinogen physical factor tobacco smoking. Bosely (2019): The "heart disease-prone personality" exposed to physical risk factors is asserted to have 27 times the risk of dying of heart disease as controls. Pelosi concluded "I honestly believe, having read it so carefully and tried to find alternative interpretations, that this is fraudulent work." ...
Click to expand...

...Pelosi's writing prompted additional analysis from other academics and journalists. Citing Pelosi, psychologist David F. Marks wrote an open letter (also published in the Journal of Health Psychology) calling for the retraction or correction of 61 additional papers by Eysenck. In 2019, 26 of Eysenck's papers (all coauthored with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek) were "considered unsafe" by an enquiry on behalf of King's College London. It concluded that these publications describing experimental or observational studies were unsafe. It decided that the editors of the 11 journals in which these studies appeared should be informed of their decision...
Click to expand...

Now I'm no expert in this area (hence using wikipedia for my research), but I get the impression that the academic establishment has largely thrown his work in the bin.

ETA: It happens to all of us - when I was studying my minor in sound recording it was all DAT this, MiniDisc that & ZipDisc the other. ProTools was the future, man... nah, they're all dead. Time moves inexorably on, relentlessly grinding our dreams of the future beneath it's unbearably banal and inevitable wheels. What was fact becomes folly. What was hope becomes the dream of an idiot. What was established becomes horrendous. Especially when it's eugencs, because that is very horrendous.

You may not think that you are advocating eugenics, but you are defending the ideas and theories of a eugenicist.

This is functionally the same thing. It may not be deliberate. I hope and assume it isn't.

ETA 2: I noticed your little straw dollies. They have been added to the list. One day I may do something with them, if I can be arsed.
 
Last edited:
junkshop said:
There is a weird ballsiness in atempting to defend eugenics. I don't think it is a good idea, though. Are you going to do phrenology next?
Click to expand...
If you chose the mother of your children you engaged in eugenics.
 
Trausti said:
We'll, lots of folks do. And people tend to be highly selective of who will be the father/mother of their children.

Click to expand...
And the relevancy of this is what?

Seriously, dude I've seen your troll game on other threads, and kudos to you: you can disrupt and annoy. Well done.

But this, here? This is some weak ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ sauce.

.
 
Brainster said:
The innate human power it measures is the ability to learn something new or more complex. What else could it be?
Click to expand...
According to the advocates of IQ testing and g is an innate ability, one that education should not be able to alter. Of course this is nonsense.
 
Darat said:
That would depend on what criteria you used.
Click to expand...
I read somewhere*, some years ago, that an introvert marries the first woman who'll sleep with him and an extravert marries the first woman who won't. Does that count as criteria?

* one of John Winton's Bodger books, iirc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom