Comment by hirvi74

I fear your great comment is only feeding into my confirmation bias because your opinion is exactly what I was hoping to read lol.

I do believe the test are not useless, and I agree with Taleb that IQ might be more accurate at the lower extremes i.e. less than 70. In other words, the test cannot measure intelligence, but is pretty good at finding a lack thereof.

However, the further along the bell curve one traverses, the more the test falls apart.

The only reason I was administered a test was for ADHD diagnostic purposes. Sure, the conclusion was that I had ADHD, but the psychologist was confident in my diagnosis prior to the test, so the test was more of a formality.

> The only actual practical, measurable use an IQ test to improve lives to date was an application in the 1980s on intake for fighter pilots, and it resulted in many less fighter pilots dying from crashes during training.

This is so fascinating.

Tangent:

I was listening to a podcast about what it means to be a genius, how it's measured, what it means, etc.. There was a section about Lewis Terman's research on gifted children/adults. He followed and studied the lives over 1500 gifted children over the course of his entire life. Out of all the gifted children, none of them became anything noteworthy -- doctors, lawyers, etc..

However, two boys that were apart of the same school system that were not studied because they were not gifted eventually went on to each win a Nobel Peace prize -- separately and in different fields.

I will not claim that Terman's research proves anything, one way or another, but I did find it rather interesting.