this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
38 points (88.0% liked)

Asklemmy

47919 readers
744 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
top 37 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 minutes ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

What do you mean with "IQ"?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

I don't know, every time I drink that much I forget.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

Too highbrow, gtfo smarty smart man.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 hours ago

Why are you asking us? You're the expert.

nyuk nyuk nyuk

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

Less likely to lose sanity points when confronting the mythos

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

If you’re using IQ as a measure of intelligence, you probably already know.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 hours ago

They didn't ask about intelligence, they asked about IQ.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 hours ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Only if you're naïve about IQ and worship it like God. Here is wikipedia's second paragraph on IQ:

Scores from intelligence tests are estimates of intelligence. Unlike, for example, distance and mass, a concrete measure of intelligence cannot be achieved given the abstract nature of the concept of "intelligence". IQ scores have been shown to be associated with such factors as nutrition, parental socioeconomic status, morbidity and mortality, parental social status, and perinatal environment. While the heritability of IQ has been investigated for nearly a century, there is still debate about the significance of heritability estimates and the mechanisms of inheritance. Current best estimates for heritability range from 40 to 60% of the variance between individuals in IQ being explained by genetics.

None of that stands out to me as particularly controversial, certainly not pseudoscience. Emphasis on second sentence -- it's not a concrete measure of intelligence.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

Great response.

The assertion that IQ is pseudoscience, is denying reality. While not an exact measure, it correlates with a lot of other measures of flourishing.

But higher IQ doesn't necessarily mean happier, or better in any way.

I know some extremely (academically) intelligent people. Some are arrogant pricks, others are really pleasant, others still are really awkward and difficult to talk to outside their specific interests.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 hours ago

ChatGDT said I had a 135 IQ, does that mean I’m also a pseudoscientist?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

All psychology is.

Not saying it isn’t useful before a psych major jumps on me. But the entire field is basically explaining how to cope with a society that is hostile to human nature.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

The entire field isn't therapy.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago)

There was a guy on youtube once who uploaded a video talking about this who has the channel name "crazydumbsick".

Unfortunately I can't seem to find the video as it looks like he regularly deletes content, and it currently only goes back about a month on his channel at present.

Take everything below with a block of salt because this is from memory, and it was a few years back where I watched his video once, so I could be misremembering one or more things here.

If I recall correctly he has Schizophrenia, Crohns, and an IQ of ~45, hence his channel name. He talked a lot about how hard it was to live, particularly pertaining to his IQ. He said that he has a hard time with remembering things and therefore most of his meals are made from pre-made microwaveable packages as he is capable of operating the microwave without too much difficulty, and he found it generally easy to follow the instructional lists on the packaging.

He made note that operating any kind of machine much beyond a microwave or TV remote was largely beyond him, except his computer and camera which he had recently figured out well enough to be able to record and upload content - but outside of those actions, he really had no idea how to use them.

I believe he also said that due to one or more of his conditions, he could not drive, which largely compounded the difficulties of his life.

He talked about how finding work for someone in his situation is basically impossible and just as impossible to hold onto for very long. I believe he talked about a couple jobs he had been fired from and why, and while I don't recall the specifics, I believe he had talked about how he was not even entirely certain why he had been fired. I think he said that he had done some things incorrectly, and at the time, had some vague concept of them being incorrect, but despite this, he was unsure why he had gone ahead and done them anyway.

Overall, he seemed very sad in the video; he was terribly aware of how hard it is to live life being himself, and knew that there were basically no solutions to it.

Having said all of that, he continued to upload videos and there were some good events and some bad events. I believe at one or more times he discussed having tried to take his own life. Other times he seemed fairly upbeat and was trying to better himself - trying to read through a textbook on auto work for example.

Anyway, I think the original video I spoke about is one of the better videos I've seen uploaded to the internet. It was somewhat sad, but it was highly enlightening and certainly one of the most honest videos I've ever seen someone upload.

[–] [email protected] 93 points 9 hours ago (4 children)

You get to lead the most powerful nation in the world

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago

"Must be at least this rich to ride"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago

I read that as lead, not lead.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

I can never not ~~get~~ hear him say that word when I read it. And he somehow made it sound dirty.

Edit: I should really pay attention to what stroke laden nonsense spell check has “helped” me write.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

I can't can to.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Low IQ is a type of singling people out who are not what society wants people to be. A form of subtle eugenics, make the "dumb" people not be able to do things because a "test" says there IQ is low, for instance someone who speaks another language could mis understand the "test" and people think there idiots when in fact they just wasn't good at English. This also goes for people who are absolutely horrible at English reading and comprehension of "tests" when they could be brilliant in other aspects of life.

So remember there is no way to "test" how smart or dumb someone is.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Unless you're saying other metrics on people are also somehow eugenics like height, weight, or speed, IQ is not eugenics. Eugenics is the belief that one's genes affects one's life, and certain genes will lead to a better life in expectation. (This is in fact a true belief, since there are some genes which are known to cause horrible painful short lives.)

IQ is just a measure of how well you do on an IQ test, which is known to correlate (maybe causally, maybe not) with various things such as income.

How do you know there is no way to test how smart or dumb somebody is? Even if IQ tests aren't to your standard, you can't be sure there isn't another test possible.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

You would first need to define intelligence before you can measure it. We're still nowhere near any kind of agreement on that first step.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

IQ is, at most, a notion of intelligence. Or it is simply a number. Regardless, it has correlations with other things, and that's what's interesting. Asking whether it is or is not "intelligence" is merely semantics.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (4 children)

You're always playing catchup when in a conversation with others; they're racing ahead on the topic, already knowing both sides of the discussion and throwing their own spin on it, and you're just sitting there staring at them mouth-agape as you try to process what is being said in realtime, but can't quite grasp even the base concepts nor the terminology of what they're talking about because their shop talk is so far removed from the baseline that it's practically a whole subject in itself.

The smart thing to do is to just interject quickly with simple questions to highlight your supposed ignorance, and get some quick definitions to keep you at least somewhat up-to-date in the conversation.

But you don't... either too ashamed of your own ignorance to draw attention to it, or rejecting it outright instead of facing the humiliation and telling yourself that you're not that interested in the topic anyway.

That's how it feels to me, anyhow

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

This is simply a symptom of not being experienced in or knowledgeable in the topic of the conversation.

Not being knowledgeable, or not being smart, is unrelated to IQ. Knowing a great deal about a topic or field is not the same as having a high IQ.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

For what it's worth, I'm very familiar with that feeling too, despite excelling academically and a high score on IQ tests. Ignorance is not a lack of intelligence, it's more likely a lack of experience. And every culture, job and hobby will have their own terminology and assumed knowledge, so not even the Einsteins could pretend to already know it all.

I listen to music all the time, I've composed amateur music myself, and enjoy occasionally reading wikipedia for trivia of music theory, but if two musicians start talking about basic stuff like major and minor chords I'm already out of my depth. Do I do the smart thing and ask them to explain? Or do I just nod until they talk about something I know, or tell myself I don't actually care about music theory?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

I also apparently have high IQ according to online tests and my mind still glazes over conversations even when it's a topic that I'm supposedly an expert on. I know all the words. If you were then down and I read them, I'll be able to make perfect sense of them. But a real time conversation? Forget it.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 hours ago

Honestly, that’s a nuanced take on the nature of conversation. I’m sure you’ve got a good head, you’re just not a nerd like them.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 hours ago

I bet it’s fucking awesome.

Some idiot says “this is how things work” (and explains things in a way that aren’t true at all)

And then I’d be like “yeah that’s good enough for me.”

And I’d watch sports and not be worrying all the time.

As it is, I unfortunately see through most bullshit and realize im surrounded by people who don’t.

I am the scientist at the beginning of every disaster movie. Ignored until it is too late. Then blamed.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 hours ago

In my experience, people are generally unaware of current events and history. They don't understand basic math. They are very poor at critical reasoning and don't comprehend things like evidence or facts, so they're easily convinced by hunches or baseless claims prominent people make.