Who's the brightest of B3D?

[London Geezer]

Physics is, still to this day, based too much on "opinions", as much as scientists try to keep it objective. (Of course i'm not talking about the whole field, just many aspects).

Physics tries to "give the simplest explanation to problems". That doesn't necessarily means it is the correct solution. It is just the simplest model one can use to explain one event.

For example, even today in some cases it is "easier" to use models where the Sun and the other planets revolve around Earth, although we know that is not correct. Or we think we know it is not correct, simply because we have been educated by the fact that the Sun is the centre of the Solar System. Because it was the simples solution to the problem thereofre it was taken as standard centuries ago (after much suffering for some people)

 

[pcchen]

I'd assume that it is possible to use just a hexadecimal system and be perfectly happy with it... the principles would still be the same, just the description would be different. Essentially what we are doing is just using norms to describe what we see/experience and set "standards" for the same so we can understand each other... the standards can be different - like many languages we have... but what is being described is still one and the same.

I think some basic math principles are very likely to be universal. For example, natural numbers (positive integers) are pretty natural, along with the ideas of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. There are different ways to axiomatize integers but they don't make big difference in most cases.

The story is very different regarding to real numbers. However, I don't think the universe is based on real numbers, so it is not a very big problem, IMHO.

 

[rabidrabbit]

Imagine an intelligent species that could not see or feel, only hear.
Would such species have developed any numerical system at all.

 

[sytaylor]

One serious question:

Is it possible to score 0? And if it is, would that really mean that the person is utterly stupid?

Considering brocoli has an IQ of 10 no... (I presume thats for being able to follow the sun, neglect bad nutrients etc).

 

[London Geezer]

One serious question:

Is it possible to score 0? And if it is, would that really mean that the person is utterly stupid?

Considering brocoli has an IQ of 10 no... (I presume thats for being able to follow the sun, neglect bad nutrients etc).

I think it's a bit higher than that! I mean if a broccoli can do the test itself, it's one clever broccoli!!

 

[sytaylor]

This is interesting because these comment are analogous to those concerning the Flynn Effect. I'd be tempted to say that if the IQ test is properly made, such as the Mensa one Fred mentioned or the ones which will make you look like a total idiot such as the Hoeflin tests or TFG, are pretty accurate in gauging ones capabilities in abstract, low-level thinking which has some loose/casual connection to intelligence. Which is reflected in the near static IQ of an individual over the age of 10 or culture free tests.

Getting better from practicing on IQ tests is curious though. I'd think one could make a case that if intelligence is defined as your ability to absorb and integrate concepts, which is dependant on the plasticity/neurological capacity of an individual - Kinda like the dynamics behind habituation, sensitization, conditioning to stimulii by either chemical or structural means and the biological bounds on them - that intelligence has an upperbound described by the volume of (non)myelinated matter in the brain and subsequently the possible connections/integrative ability. Under this theoretical bound would then be your actual level of ability based on the molecular biology underling the stimulii-formed connections by the methods I mentioned earlier. So, it would like be influenced by many things in nonlinear (I say that too much) and complex ways - which explains the Flynn Effect to a large degree - but the problem is that I attribute the limit to genetics which means some asshole can accuse me of being a racist vis-a-vis that whole Bell Curve controversy which has been stigmatised forever. This is a cool topic and there are alot of ways to approach it, although I don't think this thread is up for such a debate anymore.

These things are designed to flatter, the 100 is supposed to be a composite average of all humans, and the chances of everyone getting at least 130 just because they're online is pretty low. This is marketing, nothing more, lets move on..

Flynn Effect would seem to say it's pretty high, what's it upto nowadays, like 120-130?

The Problem is the tests themselves and not the people doing them. The tests need to measure our ability to adapt to a new challenge and overcome it.. but there are only so many sound logic puzzles. Also of note, for every logic puzzle to be tested, there needs to be a person who knows and can work the answer. The idea behind IQ is a good one, but the scale is flawed.

Through repetition and cogonative knowledge gain throughout generations the human race is supposedley getting "smarter", and as such the test of an individuals raw problem solving power is comprimised. We need aliens to devise puzzles for which we have no concept beyond that which they give us. That would be a true test.

 

[Tim Murray]

Is it possible to score 0? And if it is, would that really mean that the person is utterly stupid?

In that case, the person could just pull a "George Costanza" and answer the total opposite of his gut reflex every time, rendering him a PERFECT IQ SPECIMINE!

Kinda like this guy?

(I read that a month before I took the SAT. It helped, in a totally insane sort of way. )

 

[Thowllly]

Hey, Rabidrabbit, you didn't include my score of 144 on that list you posted on the second page...

Anyway, I tried the Danish test too, I got:
15:138
16:140
24:160

 

[rabidrabbit]

Sorry Thwolly, I edited it to include your score.

 

[Thowllly]

Sorry Thwolly, I edited it to include your score.

Don't say sorry, I was only half serious (I should have included a crying emoticon or something), I just felt a litttle left out since you had included everybody else

 

[Vince]

The Problem is the tests themselves and not the people doing them. The tests need to measure our ability to adapt to a new challenge and overcome it.. but there are only so many sound logic puzzles. Also of note, for every logic puzzle to be tested, there needs to be a person who knows and can work the answer. The idea behind IQ is a good one, but the scale is flawed.

Two things:

(1) There are basically an unlimited number of permutations on many spatial-termporal reasoning problems which you'll find on serious IQ tests, unlike this one which is pretty horrid. You can take any 3D geometric figure and manipulate it in nearly anyway, from color and pattern alteration to different ways of presenting it in 3 or 2 dimensions, the list is really endless.

(2) I disagree with a human creating the test being a limit to the test itself. Think about Poincare's method of visualizing problems like turbulance; we know the underlying dynamics but there isn't a single person alive that can visualize the behavor of the solutions in it's state space.

Through repetition and cogonative knowledge gain throughout generations the human race is supposedley getting "smarter", and as such the test of an individuals raw problem solving power is comprimised. We need aliens to devise puzzles for which we have no concept beyond that which they give us. That would be a true test.

Needless to say, I disagree. I don't think any of us can make a statement as to where the increase in cognative abilities stem from; it's just as likely as there is an indirect genetic cause due to the introduction of the C-Section, or that nutrition gains have caused it, or that if your brain is a connectionist system, that education and todays information based world is causing a rapid rise in the strength and abilities of many of the brain's different cortical areas.

Also, assuming the laws of physics are consistent throught the universe (which we must assume) what puzzle will an alien devise which we can't that tests the ability of a human to aquire and integrate information which is ultimatly limited by physics, which in turn is bounded by mathmatics?

 

[PC-Engine]

Does the periodic table of elements account for all elements existing in the universe? There is more to physics than what we know now or future.

 

[London Geezer]

Does the periodic table of elements account for all elements existing in the universe? There is more to physics than what we know now or future.

I believe it includes the elements "we know of"... And i think it would be hard to find atoms that are bigger than the ones we have created in laboratory and are very unstable by nature. And if they did exist, they would be so unstable that by the time we lay our eyes on them, they would have broken down into simpler atoms...

 

[PC-Engine]

That's exactly my point. We know very little. Trying to predict what aliens would know base on what we know is futile. There is not a point when there's nothing left to know about physics.

 

[London Geezer]

Yes we do, and now that String Theory is becoming bigger and bigger, if it turns out to be the "true" way to explain the universe (What is Truth anyway? <--- That needs its own thread) it seems we haven't even really understood how things work so far, which is saying something...

I mean, if it turns out that the universe is much different from what we thought it is, it's unarguable that for an "ignorant" race we have achieved a lot... We might be ignorant by nature, but that would prove we are much more ignorant than we thought we are... :?

 

[jvd]

THe first time I took it I got a 82

The second time i took it I got 180 . That was just doing abcd deal.

Third time i took it i got a 133 .


I'm a word warrior .

 

[OpenGL guy]

I was curious and answered "a" for all the questions. Came up with 83, if I recall correctly. My big gripe with the test is that time doesn't factor in, when it pretty obviously should: Fast thinking can be as important as correct thinking. Of course, fast and correct is preferred

There was an old Garfield comic where Garfield says, "Odie, if you had one more IQ point, you'd be a rock."