Have you ever wondered what intelligence really means? Who’s really smart, and who’s just implying they are? Well, if you did, you were not the first, and certainly not the last to do so. Scientists from all around the world have been trying to define intelligence for hundreds of years now, and there’s still many different points of view and theories about it. To give you more insight into the topic, I’d like you to watch the following video:
Questions:
1. Have you ever taken the IQ test? If so, were you satisfied with it, or did you predict the outcome right? If not, would you like to do it one day?
2. Did you
know that IQ tests were strictly linked to eugenics science that was used by
Nazis during the 1930s and early 1940s? Do you agree with the statement that
people can be isolated from society or even killed just because of poor
performance in such test?
3. What is
your opinion on intelligence? Do you agree with any theory covered in
Thoughty2’s video? For example, do you think being good at school means you’re
intelligent, or it’s rather a matter of being self-sufficient and solving
problems in real life?
Comments
1. No I haven't taken it previously but now I think that it might actually be quite fun and I'm really curious what the results will be, so maybe I'll try to take it at some point.
2. Actually no, that's something I didn't know about before. And I would 100% disagree with that statement. I don't think people should be isolated from society(not even talking about being killed) just because of performing poorly in a test. Isn't it a pure form of discrimination? For me, the only reason people can be isolated from society against their will is if staying in the society is dangerous(either for that person or people around it).
3. I actually had a discussion recently with my friends about what being intelligent really means. I've never believed that being intelligent and performing well in classes had anything in common. To be honest some of my classmates with the highest grades were really incapable of solving problems outside school programs. Being smart does not always mean being intelligent. For me, intelligence is not about naming every single river on the planet or solving the hardest maths problems and more about a combination of different skills. Like, analytical thinking, ingenuity, open mind, adaptiveness to new information/circumstances, and many many others that work as a combination. I hope I managed to describe it well enought😅
Answering the third question, I think that intelligence has nothing to do with good grades in school. (Not that I contradict myself, statistically educated people are smarter and know more about the world, that’s why I think their vote might be more important, but of course it doesn’t always work like this. It is the only idea to evaluate the worth of the vote in some way. But of course it would be unfair as I said, it is just statistically and we can not judge everyone just by statistics). Of course education helps, but there are many intelligent people who did not have a chance to study or even go to the high school and there are so many extremly stupid people with PhD. In my opinion getting good grades in school has nothing to do with intelligence. There is a difference between thinking, understanding and interpreting the reality, which I would call intelligence and just ability to remember things, which school is mostly all about. There are many people who think that they are intelligent because they can tell you some facts from the history of Poland. They use some smart sounding phrases or names and dates of battles. But when you ask them about the meaning, why it happend or what they think about it, they do not know anything except the facts they remembered from the lessons. And this is what I would call intelligence - the curiosity to know more, to learn, to have an opinion, to interpret some situations, to be able to talk about it. Not to remember facts from a school book to pass the test. I had so many friends who were extremely intelligent. You could talk with them for hours about history, about politics, about the world and life. And they had such bad grades because they didn’t remember in which chapter of a book a specific character did something or what was the name of the sister's brother’s child’s friend’s dad’s mother… In my opinion every intelligent person should educate themselves and I would say that every intelligent person aspires to do it as it will just develop them and give more knowledge to think about, however I’m not saying that you can’t be intelligent without an education. Intelligence is a way of thinking and understanding, and education just helps you develop it as it gives you more opportunities to use your intelligence.
I totally agree that our school system sadly is based on cramming for exams and forgetting about all this knowledge moments after. And we're all forced to think one way, any creativity or different point of view is being punished and killed. I was a tutor in an art school for kids aged between 4 and 15, and I've resigned because my boss couldn't understand that kids need freedom for creativity, instead of being forced to copy hyper-realism and artworks that the tutors created. It's really sad, because if we only allowed children and young people to be independent and think in their own way, we would probably have more intelligent and conscious society.
1. Have you ever taken the IQ test? If so, were you satisfied with it, or did you predict the outcome right? If not, would you like to do it one day?
Yes, I took it once, when I was 14. I don’t remember the exact result, but it wasn’t bad. Today I made few IQ tests online, but I think they made mostly for entertainment, and their results are not true. If you want to do the online test, keep your attention. Sometimes these tests are just a scam.
2. Did you know that IQ tests were strictly linked to eugenics science that was used by Nazis during the 1930s and early 1940s? Do you agree with the statement that people can be isolated from society or even killed just because of poor performance in such a test?
I have read materials about eugenics. I was shocked, that the Nazis wasn’t first using eugenics on a great scale. That “science” was very popular also in the USA when a lot of emigrants came. Emigrants and black people, unfortunately, lived in bad conditions and had no opportunity to get a good education because they were paid less than the Americans and had to work harder. So they were more susceptible to diseases and won’t well educated. But for some reason, eugenics scientists thought, that other nations and rases have “bad blood”, therefore they get sick more often and they not as intellectual as Americans. It’s hard to believe, but there were family exhibitions. Families could volunteer to struggle with other families, to decide which one has more “clean blood”.
Of course, I don’t think that someone should be killed for whatever reason and isolation from society is acceptable only for dangerous people like rapists or killers, but definitely not for someone with bad intellectual test results. Many of genius was born in an average family.
3. What is your opinion on intelligence? Do you agree with any theory covered in Thoughty2’s video? For example, do you think being good at school means you’re intelligent, or it’s rather a matter of being self-sufficient and solving problems in real life?
If you have good degrees at school it’s not mean you’re intelligent. Of course, there are some clever people, who learn more easily than others. But if you are not that type of person, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid. In my opinion, intelligence is something similar to a physical condition. You can train your brain to improve your intelligence. Of course, it has no sense if you can’t use those skills in real life.
Thoughty2 actually mentioned that in the video, about the eugenics in the USA. But I guess it took even more terrifying turn later, as it probably took less lives in the States that in Europe, especially Nazi Germany and the countries they later occupied.
Absolutely agree on the grades vs intelligence. Of course some intelligent people will do great at school, but I remember this story about Bill Gates (I think it was told by his sister? in one of the documentaries about him) being absolutely terrible at school - which he later dropped out of at the age of 16 - but instead he read tons of books really fast and gained his opinions and knowledge about things he really cared about. So I think it's really not measurable by grades at school, where everyone is being treated equally, even if not everyone has the same intelligence level or skill level.
2. No, I haven't heard about this curiosity. However, when it comes to killing weaker units to create a race of superhumans with above-average skills, of course I vote negatively for them. Society is structured in such a way that each person will find their place in it. Not everyone has to be a scientist.`
3. I think that initially you need to distinguish between wisdom and intelligence. Wisdom is acquired and intelligence is innate. In the context of grades at school, we usually deal with wisdom, because the information we are held accountable for is passed on to us in books. We don't have to invent a new thread.
I think that taking a test in your young years is even less relevant, as you can improve in many skills and perform better in an IQ test as time goes by. :)
Totally agreed! Everyone is equally needed (exluding dangerous individuals, who should be treated in psychiatric hospital / put in prison) for the development of the society. If everybody would be a PhD in some though subject, who would be working as dustmen, shop assistants etc.?
Well said! The knowledge you acquire isn't the same thing with intelligence or predispositions you're born with. And it's possible to have worse grades sometimes despite being intelligent.
I have tried several times but never completed it because there too much questions and I don't enough patience to answer all those questions.
2. Did you know that IQ tests were strictly linked to eugenics science that was used by Nazis during the 1930s and early 1940s? Do you agree with the statement that people can be isolated from society or even killed just because of poor performance in such test?
No I have never heard about that, I have never expected that I could read something like that and that it was in real life.
I think this statement is just ridiculous and absolutely unexpectable. I don't think that people should be isolated because of poor performance in such test.
As for me generally the idea of IQ test is totally wrong, you can't say that someone is not intellectual enough based on this test.
3. What is your opinion on intelligence? Do you agree with any theory covered in Thoughty2’s video? For example, do you think being good at school means you’re intelligent, or it’s rather a matter of being self-sufficient and solving problems in real life?
Good grades don't mean you're smart. With the current facilities where you can buy everything, you can easily get good grades.
I think being intelligent means having self-reliance and problem-solving skills.
It doesn't matter how much you know or how much information you have in your head. I think the ability to solve any problem is more important. School, university is just a tools to gain the skills.
That's why I never really took IQ tests very seriously, either. It sounds too easy to be effective and truly establish your intelligence. If we don't even know the true and only definition of intelligence, how can we measure it by a few excercises and questions?
Exactly. You can memorize a lot of things, but memory isn't the same as consciousness and intelligence. For example, my grandmother, who's 91 right now, is getting slowly dementive, but she is sure that solving crossword puzzles for the last 30 years makes her brain still conscious. It doesn't, as she memorized a lot of answers and they're repetitive, but she's not really good at focusing on new information or conversations.