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Oct. 3rd, 2006 01:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grinninfooleOne of the people on my friends list posted a long piece about the US army and the trouble its running into as the war in Iraq saps resources and drives recruitment numbers into the toilet. Part of the entry discussed the falling scores on the army's placement test for new recruits and turned to discussing IQ tests for a bit. That inspired me to share the following:
I took an IQ test in third grade, and I did well, and I found it to be an irritatingly stupid test. In fact, it's the first time I remember dealing with a grownup and thinking that they (the test administrator) was an idiot. One question, that I recall finding so bizarrely stupid that I still recall it to this day, went something like this:
A man is walking in the woods. He sees someone hanging upside down from a tree. He calls the police and they come and arrest the person. Who did he see?
The answer that they wanted was 'a criminal'. I considered that answer, but I rejected it, for two reasons: first, how does this man walking the woods know that the man in the tree is a criminal, just from looking at him? Second, why is the man in tree hanging from it upside down?
Considering the matter, it was clear to me that the man in the tree had to a) obviously dangerous and b) comfortable hanging upside for prolonged periods. I knew that bats liked to hang upside down, so from there I made the logical leap that person hanging from the tree must be a vampire. I was told that this was the wrong answer.
I demanded to know what the right answer was, and the irritating woman wouldn't tell me. The question kept bothering me, and I kept coming back to it throughout the test. Finally, I blurted out the 'criminal' answer, and was told that that was, indeed, the answer that they wanted. I demanded to why he was hanging upside down, and was told that it didn't matter.
Thirty years later, it still baffles and angers me.
Anyway, that experience (and later taking the SATs) made me leery of making too much of IQs, and of tests in general. Sure, I did well, but I didn't see how the test really demonstrated that I was smart, just that I knew stuff and didn't crack under that particular pressure. Then I read Stephen J. Gould's book, the Mismeasure of a Man, and since then I try to explain to people why they should drop the whole concept of IQ from their thinking. [If you haven't read this book, you should. It's one of the best science books ever, and it's written for a general audience.]
Personally, my experience leads me to think that far too much is made of being 'smart', and that smart people make mistakes as easily, and as often, as everyone else. All too often, in fact, the 'smart' people carry on as if needn't explain themselves to anyone, and thus, they do not. That, in turn, is the express lane to nonsense. Moreover, I think that the concept of 'stupid people' is a myth. There are stupid ideas, and there are people who embrace them, but I think anyone can be smart with sufficient nurturing and motivation
I took an IQ test in third grade, and I did well, and I found it to be an irritatingly stupid test. In fact, it's the first time I remember dealing with a grownup and thinking that they (the test administrator) was an idiot. One question, that I recall finding so bizarrely stupid that I still recall it to this day, went something like this:
A man is walking in the woods. He sees someone hanging upside down from a tree. He calls the police and they come and arrest the person. Who did he see?
The answer that they wanted was 'a criminal'. I considered that answer, but I rejected it, for two reasons: first, how does this man walking the woods know that the man in the tree is a criminal, just from looking at him? Second, why is the man in tree hanging from it upside down?
Considering the matter, it was clear to me that the man in the tree had to a) obviously dangerous and b) comfortable hanging upside for prolonged periods. I knew that bats liked to hang upside down, so from there I made the logical leap that person hanging from the tree must be a vampire. I was told that this was the wrong answer.
I demanded to know what the right answer was, and the irritating woman wouldn't tell me. The question kept bothering me, and I kept coming back to it throughout the test. Finally, I blurted out the 'criminal' answer, and was told that that was, indeed, the answer that they wanted. I demanded to why he was hanging upside down, and was told that it didn't matter.
Thirty years later, it still baffles and angers me.
Anyway, that experience (and later taking the SATs) made me leery of making too much of IQs, and of tests in general. Sure, I did well, but I didn't see how the test really demonstrated that I was smart, just that I knew stuff and didn't crack under that particular pressure. Then I read Stephen J. Gould's book, the Mismeasure of a Man, and since then I try to explain to people why they should drop the whole concept of IQ from their thinking. [If you haven't read this book, you should. It's one of the best science books ever, and it's written for a general audience.]
Personally, my experience leads me to think that far too much is made of being 'smart', and that smart people make mistakes as easily, and as often, as everyone else. All too often, in fact, the 'smart' people carry on as if needn't explain themselves to anyone, and thus, they do not. That, in turn, is the express lane to nonsense. Moreover, I think that the concept of 'stupid people' is a myth. There are stupid ideas, and there are people who embrace them, but I think anyone can be smart with sufficient nurturing and motivation
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Date: 2006-10-03 07:17 am (UTC)Oh, and by the way, I totally agree with you about the IQ question, definitely a vampire, but in that case, why didn't he call Van Helsing, and not the police? It was before Buffy, so Van Helsing would have been the guy's only recourse. ;)
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Date: 2006-10-03 12:51 pm (UTC)The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery didn't have anything like that on it. It was all math, vocabulary and mechanical questions. (Mechanical questions were things where you asked how a machine would work. You were shown some gears and asked which way they would turn, shown a screw and asked which type of screwdriver (from a group they also showed you) would work best with it, and things like that.)
Your vampire answer seems pretty good, but reading your description, I thought of Odin, who, if he was hagning in a tree in this country, would be an illegal migrant, and thus a criminal. Of course, after you call the police and they come running out, they'd get really annoyed with you for calling them about that, and Odin would probably have his son Thor come and beat the tar out of you.
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Date: 2006-10-04 12:37 am (UTC)