• sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    52·
    26 days ago

    Reading through the provided paper provides even more comedy

    This paper takes up that challenge through an examination of the contemporary case of YoungHoon Kim, a South Korean polymath in psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics, who has been credited with an IQ of 276 on a scale with a standard deviation (SD) of 24 (corresponding to an equivalent IQ of 210 on the more common SD=15 scale).

    My man is literally using a modified IQ scale that inflates iq scores because … shrug-outta-hecks

    This score, if recalculated on the standard deviation scale used by modern tests (Mean=100, SD=15), would represent a deviation of approximately 7.33 standard deviations above the population mean—a level of rarity so profound as to be statistically indistinguishable from infinity.

    I think this kind of understates how rare a 7.33 standard deviation event is. It’s a 1 in 10 trillion probability. You would need to multiply the human population by 1000 to have about a 2/3rds chance that an individual with such a high iq exists (at some given time)

    This shift was a monumental advance for psychometrics, creating a stable, meaningful scale for comparing intellectual ability across the entire lifespan. Yet, it created an unintended paradox. While making IQ measurement more rigorous for the 99% of the population within ±3 SD of the mean, it simultaneously made the measurement of the extreme “tails” of the distribution exponentially more difficult. A ratio IQ could, in theory, generate an arbitrarily high number for a sufficiently precocious child. A deviation IQ, however, is directly tied to population rarity.

    Is … is this guy literally trying to redefine intelligence measurements so he can get a higher number?

    However, there is a maximum possible raw score for each subtest, which corresponds to a maximum scaled score (typically 19 on WISC-V subtests) and a maximum FSIQ (typically 160 on the WAIS-IV and SB5) (Wechsler, 2014; Roid, 2003). A person with a “true” intellectual ability of IQ 165 and another with a “true” ability of IQ 185 may both achieve perfect raw scores on several subtests. The test will assign them both the same ceiling-level FSIQ of160. The score no longer reflects their ability; it merely reflects the limit of the instrument. This inability to discriminate among individuals at the top end of the scale renders standard IQ tests invalid for the assessment of profound giftedness.

    The whole justification of this paper is that people with “profound giftedness” are undeserved by society. And yet, getting an iq scores of 160 is already enough to measure such “profound giftedness”! What is the use of distinguishing iq scores higher than that? How does it even massage your ego to have an iq higher than that? Do your actual achievements mean nothing in front of a test score?

    • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      37·
      26 days ago

      Now onto the “4 component model” this guy proposes to measure his own intelligence and “profound giftedness”

      1. Component 1 is to literally just use existing tests. There are 3 of them. A mainstream test. The extended test by the NAGC. And some random ass test that even this guy claims is garbage. Why use the last test which is considered trash? Um …

      2. Component 2 is just to do item response theory, a theory this guy did not invent. Item response theory appears to me as genuinely interesting and useful, and this is likely because this guy had nothing to do with its invention

      3. Component 3 says … combine components 1 and 2. I thought that was already implied and didn’t need an additional component, but who I am to criticise the paper padding techniques of this 276 iq individual?

      4. Component 4 is to do long term studies of the life of high iq individuals, a thing which is already done by some research organisations which this guy points out.

      All in all, I am amazed. This guy’s entire contribution to the field of intelligence measurements is … to say that we should do techniques that other people invented and are already using.

      This is more impressive than it sounds. Making an 18 page paper out of doing fuck all really does take skill and finese

    • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      24·
      26 days ago

      The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V) has a standard FSIQ ceiling of 160 but offers an extended FSIQ ceiling of 210, developed by Pearson in response to requests from the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC)

      I have a bad feeling that this NAGC is a profoundly ghoulish organisation

      • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        18·
        26 days ago

        Wait this guy did the WISC? That one is specifically for children and any halfway intelligent adult would do pretty well in it. As part of my ADHD diagnosis I had to do the adult counterpart, the WAIS (I know, yikes), and it had a lot of components that control for adult intelligence and education. Taking the children’s test to seem more intelligent than he is has to be one of the most cringe things I’ve ever heard.