[Geckomlis]

Originally posted by Karibu:
I once did one IQ test which were supposed to be similar to Mensa test. It gave me IQ of 148, which I find amusing. I went there through one discussion board and half of them got over 130. Quite intelligent people or the test was utterly false. Which would be right?

Consider this: it is assumed that if you count all people's IQ and count average of them, you get 100. I believe that in the discussion forum I found this, has propable higher average intelligence than 100, but only 5%...10% of people's go into 130 points and they were not THAT great thinkers. At least most of them weren't.

Dispositional Aspects of Intelligence
http://learnweb.harvard.edu/alps/thi...s/Plymouth.htm

Student lawyers are among the most intelligent of students in the psychometric sense. They are able dedicated learners who have passed the hurdles of earlier education with excellent records. Moreover, good reasoning in terms of claims and evidence is central to their enterprise. Lawyers�student or professional�need to consider not only the side of the case they are committed to defending but the other side of the case, if only to anticipate the arguments of the opposition. One would suppose, then, that student lawyers would tend to reason well about everyday public issues, certainly considering both sides of the case with some care.

However, this does not seem to be the case. A number of years ago, we conducted a series of studies examining people�s everyday reasoning about a range of issues, including questions such as "Would a nuclear disarmament treaty reduce the likelihood of world war?" and "Would a bottle deposit law in the state of Massachusetts reduce litter?" As a strong trend, people�s reasoning on these issues proved very one-sided (Perkins, 1985; Perkins, Allen, & Hafner, 1983). Most people would adopt one or the other stance and say hardly anything about what reasoning might apply on the other side. One sample consisted of student lawyers from a well-known university. The student lawyers paid no more attention to the other side of the case than other participants. Moreover, the series of studies revealed a provocative pattern in the relationship between IQ, which was also measured, and attention to the other side of the case. The correlation between the two was zero. People with higher IQs were no more likely to attend to the other side of the case than people with lower IQs, although people with higher IQs did tend to offer more elaborate justifications of their preferred side of the case (Perkins, Farady, & Bushey, 1991).

Thinking about the other side of the case is a perfect example of a good reasoning practice. It is a move one would ordinarily count as part of intelligent behavior. Why, then, do student lawyers with high IQs and training in reasoning that includes anticipating the arguments of the opposition prove to be as subject to confirmation bias or myside bias, as it has been called, than anyone else? To ask such a question is to raise fundamental issues about conceptions of intelligence, classic and modern.

-Gecko