How IQ and Intelligence Affect Our Life (or Not!)
For my father, intelligence was all that matters Ever since my brother, Charles, was diagnosed to be a gifted child. All he talked about were IQ and intelligence.
Research, W a high IQ, strongly predicts good grades, a good career, and even health and mortality stuff.
His favorite story is Kim Ung Yong a Korean with an official IQ of 210 Just six months old.
He was already speaking fluent Korean and at age 3 wrote essays in German and English.
Then he would hug Charles and look at me with this question on his face.
I hated that I wondered if I could reach my little brother in anything When I was young I and my dad were best buddies.
He never even cared much about IQ or G or whatever.
When my brother started reading at just 2 years old everything changed Suddenly.
I was forgotten and soon after I was the slow one Once when I got a C in math, he didn’t even look at my paper and just told Charles that an ape is believed to have an IQ of 40.
I hated his sarcasm Once at dinner. When he started talking about intelligence or G, he’d say G stands for general intelligence and scientists say it exists because apparently, most IQ tests correlate whatever he was talking about it, and then drew up this graph on a piece of paper.
Saying look, boy.
This is the distribution of intelligence of all people in town 0, 1 of the people will have an IQ of 55 or below 2 have an IQ between 55 to 70, and 14 are between 70 and 85.
34 will score between 85 and the average, which is set at hundreds.
Thirty-four have an IQ between 100 and 115 and 14 between 115 to 132, 2 have an IQ higher than 130, and only 0 1 will have an IQ of a genius of 145 or above, like your little brother.
I told him I’m not interested.
I guess I shouldn’t: have He exploded Not interested? Do you know what this all means boy? He turned the paper around and started all over.
It means that if you take 1 000 people, then one has some form of mental retardation, which means trouble living alone.
20 will have difficulty reading the map 140 can perform simple tasks at work, but cannot qualify to become a soldier in the US.
Army. 340.
Probably finished high school and another 340 will go to college.
Maybe 140 can do a Ph.D. and later work as surgeons 20 are capable of producing significant scientific work and only one will make it into an Ivy League college like MIT, where the average IQ is 145.
Your little brother got an IQ higher than that.
A few weeks later was career day at my school.
Some people in suits showed up and told us about a new form of cognitive assessment we could be doing, which would help us find the right job.
The technical term is the Wechsler IQ score.
When I heard the words IQ, I got completely sweaty hands.
My heart started racing.
This could be the moment of truth. Then one woman started speaking.
She told us that we are now going to take a test and just 1 week later, we all get the results with some specific ideas about our future career path.
She said it takes only 90 minutes and measures our intelligence in the following four areas: perceptual reasoning, verbal comprehension, working memory, and processing speed.
The assessment was voluntary and my friend instantly stood up to leave the class showing what he thought about this whole thing.
My heart still racing, I wasn’t sure what to do and kept seated.
Our teacher then handed out some questions when she passed by my table.
She simply said you gon na do fine here.
I don’t think she realized this, but I was so happy to hear her say that Maybe I’m not all that bad at these stupid IQ tests.
Maybe it’s a day that I can show my dad, who I am What shall I do? I was so ready to show my dad that I’m no idiot.
I decided to stay. I turned the first page over it read the following: perceptual reasoning is the ability to think and reason with visual information.
It is the ability to see what is being asked and to organize information in our heads through images.
The first question was When folded into a cube which of the following corners would touch corners A D B E or C?
I tried to fold the cube in my head and yeah.
It worked, It must be D.
The second section was about working memory, our ability to keep several chunks of information in our mind simultaneously.
One of the questions was what is the next number in the series? 4.
12.
6.
9. 8.
6.
There were four options: 6, 5, 10, or 12.
The trick here was to put all the digits in my head and look for a pattern: 4 X, 6 X, 8 X, which means the next would be 10.
The third section was verbal comprehension, which measures our ability to access vocabulary, express ourselves in a meaningful manner, and apply reasoning, skills to information presented verbally.
In the first question, it said: what is the difference between the words refuted, and irrefutable?
Do they have similar meanings, contradicting meanings, or mean neither the same nor the opposite? They must have contradicting meanings.
The fourth section was about processing speed, the pace at which we take in new information and make sense of it to prepare a response.
One of the questions asked was: what is the 12th letter of the alphabet? Is it T L, R, or B? I realized I had to rule out all the options that didn’t look right, counting would have taken way too long.
L is the right answer. I had completed all of the 50 questions in time and I was very relieved In the end.
The woman said.
A lot of research over the last century went into the IQ test we had just taken and there is convincing evidence that our intelligence is mainly a product of our genes.
There is an estimate of a heritability range from 50 to 90.
Although the environment also matters, she continued especially negative influences during your childhood, like an infectious disease, malnutrition, air pollution, or lead in the paint of your walls at home.
These things can reduce your IQ forever.
She explained that it’s because, during the prenatal period and early years of life, a child’s brain consumes a huge part of the body,’s energy to grow, and if the body was under attack, it cannot support the brain’s growth to Its full potential – In other words, you were born with a pretty fixed IQ, Good parents and schools, can keep the IQ at its genetically predefined level and maybe increase it.
A bit of negative influence, however, can surely reduce it a lot.
I am just saying this.
She closed because if you are getting your results next week and you are not happy with your score or our recommendation then know that there is little you can do about that. Even if you practice for years or continue school indefinitely, it’s almost impossible to improve your score by more than 10 points.
Just think about that before you open that envelope, You don’t have to When the envelope was handed to me a week later.
I got excited to open it.
I took a deep breath, but before I ripped the cover apart, I halted.
Do I want this? Why do I care so much? Do I want to compete with my brother And if so, what does this prove? There are? So many aspects of my life that matter more than my measured intelligence.
I’m, probably no genius, but I know I did well But more importantly, I know that I don’t need to prove anything to anyone.
I decided not to open the envelope and I loved this new idea of myself free from these limitations.
I felt like I had grown up Now when I heard my father speak all proud about Charles I just smiled.
I realized that it was not that he loved him more.
No, my brother just gave my dad the chance to get attention to be someone. He’s the dad of a genius and not just another middle manager at the bank on the middle street.
A few years later, I dropped out of college and started my own company soon after fell in love with a wonderful woman and also started a family.
My brother is now a professor at a famous university but never found the right girl and, like many very smart people suffers from depression.
My dad doesn’t care so much about IQ anymore.
He’s now a proud grandfather.
They say it takes intelligence to know how to do things right, but wisdom to do the right thing.
Leaving that envelope closed was the best decision of my life.
Here are five questions from a real IQ test.
You’ve got five seconds each When you are done post your answers in the comments.
Good luck, 1. A package of gift cards has a length of eight centimeters, a width of four centimeters, and a volume of 64 centimeters cubed.
What is the height of the box? 2? Some Bargles are Chongos and some Chongos are Munhattsens.
Are some Bargles, definitely Munhattsens, Yes or No 3 Max needed to get seven new doors from the home improvement store for his house.
His car could only hold two doors at once.
How many times did Max have to visit the store? 2, 4, 7, 8, or 9 4 Art is to the wall as the cup is to handle the coffee cupboard rim nail 5.
What is the missing number in the series? 1.
16.
81.
Blank.
625. 1296.
If you like this video and the way we explain the subject subscribe to our channel, We try to explain complex subjects and simple language and cartoons to support students all around the world in their learning.
If you want to support us, you can go to www.
Patreon com sprouts and donating just 1 from many fans make a big difference.
