Ever since Jeffrey Epstein died in prison under mysterious circumstances, conspiracy theories have been running wild on social media. At first people were asking intelligent questions, but since the coronavirus shutdown, the movement has been hijacked by a large group of generally low IQ borderline psychotic evangelical Trump worshipers who have nothing to do at home all day but go on social media and have become increasingly unhinged by cabin fever. These people believe Hollywood is run by a Satanic cult who drink baby blood to stay young and that the coronavirus shutdown is just a way to hide the fact that big celebrities are on house arrest. They believe Hollywood hates Trump because he was sent by God to arrest these child traffickers.
Ellen DeGeneres became a target for these morons when she added some palm trees to her TV set. Since Jeffrey Epstein also had palm trees on his island, this got the conspiracies rolling:
Then when Ellen started hosting her daily talk show from home because of the coronavirus, they started saying she must be on house arrest.
Ellen likes to sit Buddha style on a chair.
But one lady on social media asked:
Why are you always sitting like that on the chair? Is it to hide your ankle bracelet?
More psychotic comments followed:
Many of these people went to great effort to prove their theory, creating a matrix of photos, circling any bulge at the bottom of her pants as proof and perhaps photo-shopping when necessary.
Unfortunately they lacked the IQ to notice the “ankle bracelet” is on her left leg in some photos and her right leg in others.
It’s scary how many low IQ psychotics walk among us.
My first question: although IQ tests purports to be designed empirically, it feels like the weighting of speed vs. accuracy is completely arbitrary, whats up with that?
The way I see it, IQ tests are just a sample of all your cognitive abilities. But because no one knows the nature and number of every cognitive ability in the human mind, all psychologists can do is select an arbitrary sample that is as large and diverse as possible. Luckily, all cognitive abilities appear to be positively correlated and by prioritizing cognitive abilities that correlate well with every other known cognitive ability, the total score presumably predicts unidentified cognitive abilities also.
The reader continues:
I don’t think any IQ tests score you on speed, but most of them have a time limit that’s not long enough for the average person to complete it, giving people who can finish it faster an advantage. While there’s certainly a correlation between one’s speed of reasoning and quality of reasoning, they seem to me like ultimately seperate qualities, yet IQ tests tend to lump them into one. For example, who is smarter, a person who finishes a test in time with 60% accuracy and is confident he got everything right, or a person who finishes half the test before the time runs out so gets a 50% but could have gotten 100% if given twice the time.
Some IQ tests do provide subscores for the so-called speed factor (the Processing Speed index on the WAIS-IV for example) but most timed IQ measures use speed as a convenient way of increasing the test’s difficulty, not because they’re trying to measure speed per se.
For example on a Wechsler spatial subtest, 15% of 16-year-olds are capable of solving every item within the time limit (which is a few minutes for the hardest items), but by giving bonus points to people who can solve the easy items within 10 seconds and the hard items within 30 seconds, only 0.1% can get a perfect score. So the use of time bonuses increases the test’s ceiling by two whole standard deviations without going to the trouble of creating more difficult items that would make the test too long.
When time bonuses are not given, a lot more people score perfect but the rank order of people remains virtually identical especially at age 85 to 90.9 where the correlation is 0.99! (WAIS-IV Technical and Interpretive Manual, Appendix A). The correlation is slight lower at younger ages (but still 0.93+) because of all the ceiling bumping when no time bonus is given. Such absurdly high correlations prove that when used judiciously, time bonuses merely add ceiling without changing the nature of what is being tested.
On group administered tests, the time limits not only don’t typically affect the rank order of scores much, but they don’t even increase the ceiling much. Arthur Jensen has reported that that when the Otis verbal’s time limit was increased by 50% (45 minutes instead of 30) , the average score only increased by 1.5%. When the Otis non-verbal time limit was increased by 150% (30 minutes instead of 20), the average score increased by only 1.7%, and when the Henmon Nelson increased its time limit by 67% (50 minutes instead of 30) scores increased by 6.3% (Bias in Mental Testing, 1981).
The notion of quick superficial thinkers vs slow profound thinkers is probably fallacious. People who do well on the Wechsler Processing Speed index actually have slower brains than people who do well on the untimed Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices. Once you control for general cognitive ability (the g factor), psychometric speed and has no correlation with reaction time (The g Factor by Arthur Jensen).
The reader continues:
My second question, kind of related to the first: what actually is the g-factor? The idea is that g is a construct that links the performance of all cognitive tasks, but how can you actually calculate such a number? It makes sense to me to, say, measure the g-loading of a sub-test with respect to a full IQ test, but how can you measure the g-loading of an entire IQ test? Is it just the test’s correlation to all IQ tests? Wouldn’t that just measure how close the test is to the average IQ test? Also, the idea of a g-factor would seem to require a definition of what’s “general”, and that doesn’t seem like something that can be done empirically. Like if we lived in a society entirely base in music, then would the g-loading of piano skill tests be higher than math tests? And do tests of speed or tests of quality have higher g-loading? Then again, I haven’t read up on much of the literature so I could have some major misunderstandings.
In theory g is the source of variation that all cognitive abilities have in common so the larger and more diverse the battery of subtests from which g is factor analytically extracted, the more likely g reflects something real (as opposed to an artifact of test construction). If we lived in a society based on music, everyone might reach their biological potential for piano playing, while math might be esoteric trivia, so the former may indeed become more g loaded than the latter in that context. However the g loadings of novel tasks, that are not practiced in either our society or the musical one, should have similar g loadings in both.
Exactly 40 years ago today, the original Friday the 13th was released (May 9, 1980) and if you haven’t seen it, you need to stop reading, go watch it, and come back.
Friday the 13th (1980) was not the first slasher film (there was Psycho in 1960 and perhaps even earlier ones), but it’s the film that launched the 1980s slasher craze and the iconic Jason. The film was inspired by the incredible success of Halloween and the film makers admit they were deliberately trying to rip that movie off. Indeed Halloween was ripped off so many times it launched its own sub-genre (stalker films). But because Friday the 13th was the first Halloween rip-off, it got to eat all the low hanging fruit Halloween neglected to pick and perfected the stalker film template.
So the first thing you need when ripping off Halloween is your own scary day to set your film on. Since October 31st was already taken, they got the only other scary day on the calendar (Friday the 13th). Later Halloween ripoffs would have to settle for valentines day, graduation day, Christmas, Prom Night, or some some character’s random birthday (Happy Birthday to Me (1981))
The next thing you need when ripping off Halloween is a location where teenagers are isolated. Since Halloween focused on teenagers babysitting in suburbia, Friday the 13th picked counselors at a summer camp and the forest is perhaps even scarier than the suburbs. Again because Friday the 13th was the first Halloween rip-off, it got the prime real estate.
Once you decide to set a slasher film at a summer camp, you need a reason why someone would be killing camp counselors, especially ones who have sex. In Halloween the killer just killed because he was the boogeyman (which made sense since it was Halloween) but what’s a reason why someone would want to kill camp counselors? The most obvious reason is that having sex instead of doing their job caused something terrible to happen? What’s the most obvious terrible thing that can happen at a camp when counselors are distracted? A child drowning. And who would be most upset that a child drowned? The child’s mother. But we need a reason why she’s killing on Friday the 13th because we have to name our film after a scary day to rip-off Halloween. Oh I know, because that’s the child’s birthday, and since it’s a bad luck day, the child drowned.
So see how the entire story just flows organically from the fact that it’s a slasher film set at a summer camp. Unlike other slashers where everything feels so contrived, in this film everything just flows seamlessly because they had the luxury of being the first Halloween rip-off and the first summer camp slasher.
This was the first U.S. slasher to give us real graphic gore.
In Kevin Bacon’s first role, his character dies from an arrow through the neck from the killer hiding under his bed
When you see such brutal violence using so many different weapons (axes to the face, arrows stabbing you through your matress from under your bed, machete, knife) and corpses being thrown through windows deep in the woods beneath a full moon and rain storm, you picture the killer as some big hulking man. You picture Jason, the big bald hockey mask wearing brute from the Friday the 13th sequels, but what made the original so brilliantly ironic was that the killer is finally revealed to be all American mom played by the 1950s icon Betsy Palmer.
She has the best dialogue in the film, The oh so subtle way she admits her son was mentally retarded without saying it.:
“You see Jason was my son, and today is his birthday” says the killer creepily, explaining both her motive and the film’s title in one brief sentence.
Palmer is incredible in the role. On the one hand she’s the June Clever type mom who had freshly baked chocolate chip cookies for you when you came home from school, the type of woman who would lead the local girl guide troop and thus knew her way around the woods. And yet for all her blonde 1950s aging femininity, she is physically menacing in the part. Wearing multiple sweaters and long johns under her pants to make her character as bulky as possible, the final chase scene is a tour de force. The heroine, Alice, throws a ball of string. The killer punches it away. Alice throws an object too small to see. The killer deflects it with her chin before slapping the hell out of Alice. The two women end up wrestling on the beach until Alice finally prevails in the most dramatic and graphic killing in the entire film. A Shakespearean beheading that put special effects master Tom Savini on the map, decades before CGI made his skills obsolete.
But if all that wasn’t great enough, what makes this the greatest slasher of all time is that one last jump scare that no one saw coming.
Imagine being in the theater in 1980. Viewers would have been jumping out of their seats, their popcorn flying through the air and landing on other viewers.
And yet unlike so many final jump scares, there’s nothing contrived about this. It flows naturally from the story: Alice had just beheaded a mom who was avenging her son’s drowning, so by the logic of horror films, it’s only natural that the child’s drowned corprse would pull her into the lake to avenge mom’s beheading. I love the Shakespearean way it comes full circle.
Of course being pulled into a lake by a child who drowned 23 years ago turns out to just be a dream on Alice’s part. Or was it? The film makers claim they had no intention of a sequel and the final jump scare was all just a dream, but what made the ending so brilliant is we just don’t know. When the film broke box office records, a sequel appeared a year later, and is set just a couple months after the events of the first film.
What makes the start of part 2 so creepy is that Jason has apparently followed Alice from the lake at the camp, to her home in the suburbs but instead of being the drowned child she “dreamed” pulled her into the lake a couple months ago, he’s a big grownass man.
So if Alice had merely dreamed Jason had returned to attack her, why did her dream come true a few months later? But if her dream was true, why was he a child in the dream and a grown man a few months later? Was he a flesh and blood ghost that had catch-up growth to makeup for the 23 years he had been dead a la Toni Morrison’s Beloved, or had he never really drowned at all, but survived in the woods for those 23 years?
I prefer the latter interpretation: Being attacked by a child’s drowned corpse was just a premonition that Jason would indeed return to attack her for killing his mom, but in reality he was a grown man, not a drowned child’s corpse, because he had actually survived. It’s also possible that Jason may indeed have pulled her into the lake, but perhaps she thought she was being pulled in by a child’s corpse (and not a grown man) since she’s thought Jason drowned as a child.
But I love how the series has two interpretations: A supernatural one for the lower IQ and more schizophrenic fans, and a realistic one for the higher IQ and more autistic fans. By part 6 Jason is indisputably undead (they literally dig up his grave and open his coffin) but not even the film makers can agree on whether he was undead in the earlier sequels.
I have always doubted the historical consensus that Africans sold their own people into slavery. The whole point of slavery is that you’re forced to work without pay. If whites were powerful enough to force millions of blacks to work without pay, they would have been powerful enough to take those workers from black countries without having to pay for them in the first place.
Also, if they were going to pay for slaves, then why go all the way to Africa to get them? The whole point of going to a less technologically advanced region to get slaves is that you can take the slaves by force.
Lastly, if you believe in HBD (which many people dismiss as racist pseudoscience), the average white American is about 15 IQ points higher than the average black American and that gap would have perhaps been 20 points before white genes entered the U.S. black gene pool in large numbers. A 20 point IQ gap (if it reflects a genuine gap in intelligence) is so large that whites would have been dominant enough to simply help themselves to whatever resources they wanted in sub-Saharan Africa (including human ones) without having to pay anyone anything. In fact if whites really had to pay for slaves, it calls HBD into question because it implies a business deal among equal races, not an advanced race enslaving a more primitive one.
Ironically, Professor Black Truth agrees that whites stole (rather than paid for) black slaves but he uses it to argue their moral inferiority, not their cognitive superiority:
One of the dangers of having an IQ way off in the stratosphere is that the average American is literally mentally retarded compared to you, and because they can’t understand how you made all your money, they assume you must be some kind of evil witch, out to do them harm.
If Bill Gates’s IQ is anywhere near as high as the SAT measured it (IQ 170), then Bill Gates is to the U.S. population as the average American is to the Downs Syndrome population.
If the average American woke up to find the rest of the country had Downs Syndrome, they would understand what it’s like to be Bill Gates. They would easily become the richest person without even trying, but they would soon encounter jealousy and resentment (as Bill Gates faced when the justice department attacked Microsoft in the 1990s) and if they tried to help the masses, it might backfire spectacularly.
Mr. Gates, 64, the Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist, has now become the star of an explosion of conspiracy theories about the coronavirus outbreak. In posts on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, he is being falsely portrayed as the creator of Covid-19, as a profiteer from a virus vaccine, and as part of a dastardly plot to use the illness to cull or surveil the global population…
…Misinformation about Mr. Gates is now the most widespread of all coronavirus falsehoods tracked by Zignal Labs, a media analysis company. The misinformation includes more than 16,000 posts on Facebook this year about Mr. Gates and the virus that were liked and commented on nearly 900,000 times, according to a New York Times analysis. On YouTube, the 10 most popular videos spreading lies about Mr. Gates posted in March and April were viewed almost five million times.
…Mr. Gates, who is worth more than $100 billion, has effectively assumed the role occupied by George Soros, the billionaire financier and Democratic donor who has been a villain for the right. That makes Mr. Gates the latest individual — along with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading U.S. infectious disease expert — to be ensnared in the flow of right-wing punditry that has denigrated those who appear at odds with Mr. Trump on the virus…
…His disdain for Mr. Trump, whom he has met several times, has also become public. In 2018, footage surfaced of Mr. Gates recounting how Mr. Trump needed help distinguishing H.I.V., which refers to the human immunodeficiency virus and causes AIDS, from HPV, which is the human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted infection.
“Both times he wanted to know if there was a difference between H.I.V. and HPV, so I was able to explain that those are rarely confused with each other,” Mr. Gates said to laughter in comments to his foundation.
Commenter Billy was kind enough to share with us the raw scores he obtained on the WAIS-IV and I have converted these into scaled scores and composite scores. I apologize to the other people who have also asked me to do this for them, but Billy just happened to ask when I had more free time and his demographics make him a unique case study.
Billy is a young American black man born to an upper-class immigrant family. Despite spending his early childhood in sub-Saharan Africa and not learning English until coming to the U.S. at around age eight, Billy obtained one of his highest scores on the culturally loaded Vocabulary subtest.
Below are Billy’s scores. Note that the subtests are scored on a scale from 1 to 19, where 10 is the U.S. mean for one’s age and 3 is the standard deviation. This is comparable to the distribution of male U.S. height, where in the peak age group, the mean is about 10 inches (above five feet) and the standard deviation is about 3 inches.
Presumably Billy took the WAIS-IV circa 2020 (14 years after it was normed). Because older tests tend to give inflated results, in the far right column I have adjusted all of the scores for the Flynn effect. The unadjusted scores are probably too high but the adjusted scores are probably too low because the Flynn effect might not be as large as folks think and may have plateaued or even reversed since 2006 (we’ll know better when the WAIS-V comes out).
scores before Flynn effect adjustments
adjusted for the Flynn effect
Vocabulary (word knowledge)
19
17.73
Similarities (verbal abstraction & thought organization)
19+
18.11+
Comprehension (socio-understanding & common sense)
17
16.49
Matrices (visual pattern recognition)
18
17.24
Visual Puzzles (spatial reasoning)
14
13.62
Figure Weights (quantitative comparison)
17
16.24
Digit Span (rote memory & attention)
17
16.62
Arithmetic (mental math)
12
12
Coding (rapid eye-hand coordination)
9
8.75
Symbol Search (visual scanning)
15
14.75
Verbal comprehension index
150+
145+
Perceptual Reasoning index
136
133
Working Memory index
125
125
Processing speed index
111
111
Full-scale IQ
141+
138+
Adjustments for Flynn effect were made using page 240 of Are We Getting SMARTER? by James Flynn. I assumed that the rate of change that occurred between the norming of the WAIS-III (1995) and the WAIS-IV (2006) has continued to 2020. Flynn had no data for Visual Puzzles, Figure Weights or Symbol Search so rates for Block Design, Matrix Reasoning & Coding were assumed for each of those subtests respectively.
Normally the WAIS-IV includes the subtests Information (general knowledge) and Block Design (spatial analysis) but for whatever reason, Billy’s examiner decided to use optional subtests (Comprehension and Figure Weights) respectively. Such substitutions are allowed as long as the examiner makes them a priori, and not to help or hurt a particular subject’s scores.
Billy wrote the following in the comment section:
Like I said, it’s unofficial, so I was tested out of convenience; not from a professional. Though my personal reason outside of knowing my IQ is knowing where I’m deficient – or my cognitive profile. Based on my Mensa scores, a wonderlic at 75th percentile while a passing RAIT score just doesn’t hint at a stable profile for me. I seem to have a hard time concentrating on tasks, so I figured it’s probably a working memory and or processing speed issue. I’ve never been tested for a mental illness.
Unfortunately the WAIS-IV lumps Visual Abstraction (Matrix Reasoning and Figure Weights) into the same category as Spatial Reasoning (Visual Puzzles) creating a meaningless hybrid known as “Perceptual Reasoning index”. However if we untangle these two abilities, we see that Billy’s Visual Abstraction is almost as high as his Verbal Comprehension (both domains are highly g loaded) and that his Spatial Reasoning is somewhat lower than his Working Memory.
He’s comfortably above average in all domains, but his weak point is Processing Speed, probably because this is the least g loaded domain. It might also imply a weakness in Executive Function, but we’d need neurological testing to infer that. His very superior score in Comprehension implies high social intelligence; on the other hand Comprehension was lower than his other Verbal Comprehension scores. Had the WAIS-IV not foolishly removed the Picture Arrangement subtest, we’d have a fuller look at his social cognition.
Billy’s relatively low scores on Processing Speed and Arithmetic probably explain why he underperformed on the Wonderlic, a speed based test with a lot of number crunching.
Overall Billy is a man of incredibly high intelligence who should succeed at almost anything he sets his mind to. The results may even understimate his IQ, especially in the verbal comprehension sphere, because of his delayed exposure to English and U.S. culture.
On the other hand, the fact that Billy’s English vocabulary is so high despite such delayed exposure to English is consistent with research showing the impotence of early childhood intervention. For a more extreme example, see The Case of Isabelle.
James Flynn writes:
…Current environment is surprisingly self-contained: it influences one’s current cognitive abilities with very little interference from past environments. Most of us assume that your early family environment leaves some sort of indelible mark on your intelligence throughout life. But the literature shows that this is simply not so.
From page 6 of Does Your Family Make You Smarter? by James Flynn.
In 1969, Arthur Jensen wrote an article in the prestigious Harvard Educational Review [HER} that transformed him from highly respected, but little known scholar, to one of the most controversial and influential psychologists of all time. So influential was Jensen, that a new word entered the English language: Jensenism; and a platoon of famous scholars made a career out of trying to debunk him.
The three tenets of Jensenism are:
Compensatory education fails to improve the IQ or scholastic skills of culturally deprived kids.
Genetics explains more of the variance in American IQ than culture.
Genetics likely explains some part of the 15 point black-white IQ gap in the United States
So powerful was Jensenism that President Nixon assigned his staff to report to him on Jensen’s HER article. In 1974 Daniel Patrick Moynihan stated, “The winds of Jensenism are blowing through Washington with gale force.”.
Frank Miele writes:
According to John Ehrlichman, Richard Nixon told him that he believed America’s Blacks could only marginally benefit from federal programs because they were genetically inferior to Whites. All the federal money and programs we could devise could not change that fact. Though he believed that Blacks could never achieve parity in intelligence, economic success, or social qualities, we should still do what we could for them, within limits, because it was the “right” thing to do.
From page 151 of Intelligence, Race and Genetics by Frank Miele
While Nixon was clearly a Jensenista, Jensen was a self-described liberal, stating:
In fact, I voted for Johnson in the 1964 presidential election. I felt strongly enough about it that I voted by absentee ballot because I was in London on sabbatical leave working as a Guggenheim Fellow in Eysenck’s department.
I believed in the Great Society proposals, particularly with respect to education and Head Start. When I returned to California I gave talks at schools, PTA meetings, and conferences and conventions explaining why these things were important and should be promoted. I have always been opposed to racial segregation and discrimination. They go against everything in my personal philosophy, which includes maximizing individual liberties and regarding every individual in terms of his or her own characteristics rather than the person’s racial or ethnic background. How could I think otherwise when at the time I had been steeped in Gandhian philosophy for over 20 years?
From pages 33-34 of Intelligence, Race and Genetics by Frank Miele
But by 1969 he was clearly less liberal when it came to compensatory education for disadvantaged kids. Was he changing his views to gain political traction in Nixon’s more conservative America? Jensen states:
Absolutely false! That way of thinking is completely foreign to me. I am almost embarrassed by my lack of interest in politics and I was even less interested in those days than I am now. The idea of providing any kind of “ammunition,” scientific or otherwise, to help any political regime promote its political agenda is anathema in my philosophy. One always hopes, of course, that politicians will pay attention to scientific findings and take them into consideration in formulating public policy. But I absolutely condemn the idea of doing science for political reasons.
I have only contempt for people who let their politics or religion influence their science. And I rather dread the approval of people who agree with me only for political reasons.
From page 35 of Intelligence, Race and Genetics by Frank Miele
Nonetheless, some racists reached out to Jensen, for help. Jensen states:
After the publicity surrounding the HER article, I did receive a number of letters from so-called citizens’ groups in various Southern states, asking if I would write letters to their local newspapers in support of racial segregation in public schools. I replied that I was, and always have been, absolutely opposed to racial segregation of any kind. One of these people wrote back calling me “just another Berkeley pinko!” He at least gave me the satisfaction of knowing I had angered him.
From page 21 of Intelligence, Race and Genetics by Frank Miele
So after 30 years of arguing that races differ in genetic IQ, what did Jensen think of affirmative action. Jensen states:
When the original concept of Affirmative Action was just catching on in the 1960s it was not a quota system. That only came later. I approved two main facets of its original intent, and I still do: (1) We should make special efforts to ensure that historically underrepresented minorities are fully aware the educational opportunities in colleges and universities, in job training programs, and in employment opportunities are open to all, provided they meet the usual qualifications; and (2) colleges and universities, job training programs, and employers should actively seek out and recruit minority persons who could qualify by the usual standards, including the use of academic talent searches at the high school level, special inducements, and scholarships to encourage academically promising minority students to go on to college.
From page 177 of Intelligence, Race and Genetics by Frank Miele
Professor Black Truth is a youtube personality who reminds me of a black version of “Philosopher” and other alt-right extremists. Just as Philosopher thinks Ashkenazi elites conspire to undermine white interests (by propping up blacks), professor Black Truth thinks the elite serves white interests and conspires to oppress blacks (by propping up tools for white supremacy).
I estimate Professor Black Truth to be more verbally intelligent than 99.75% of Americans (verbal IQ 142(U.S. norms)) but he draws bad conclusions on social issues. He thinks Michael Jackson was innocent and has yet to progress beyond Chomsky talking points when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.
Estimated social IQ? 104 (slightly above the U.S. average)
Estimated overall IQ? About 128 (higher than 97% of America).
Of course that’s very rough because as a listener I can only observe his verbal skills and social understanding, not the many other abilities that are also part of intelligence.
In my opinion he is bitter that his high IQ didn’t take him as far in life as he thought it would and is resentful of the patronizing praise he probably got from much less intelligent white frat boys in college. Unlike Obama (who he views as a closet homosexual), his high IQ probably made him more of a freak than a star, and so he rationalizes his modest success by viewing Obama and other black elites as tools for white supremacy,
Despite his flawed analysis, he’s an extremely talented broadcaster with a darkly entertaining exaggerated delivery, much like a comic book villain. In this episode he accuses Ocasio-Cortez of being an anti-black bigot:
Imagine a pushy mother really wants her average 9.5-year-old son to get into a gifted class. Because IQ tests are normed for age and her son looks young for his age, she decides to tell the psychologist he’s only 6.5, so that he will get a much higher score.
Now assuming the boy is average for a 9.5-year-old in all cognitive domains he should score an age-ratio IQ of 146 in all domains, if the psychologist believes he’s 6.5 (because 9.5 is 146% of 6.5), however modern IQ tests use the deviation scale, where scores are assigned not by how many years advanced a kid is, but by one’s rank, relative to other American kids in one’s own age group. Being in the top 99% gives one an IQ of 65, being in the top 90% gives one an IQ of 80, being in the top 50% gives one an IQ of 100, being in the top 10% gives one an IQ of 120, and being in the top 1% gives one an IQ of 135, and being in the top 0.1% gives one an IQ of 146 etc.
Now obviously the average 9.5-year-old pretending to be a 6.5-year-old will get a high IQ in every domain, but his margin of superiority varies dramatically depending on the test. If he taken the WISC-R for example (before the norms expired), here’s how he’d have scored (for the readers convenience, I converted subtest scores, normally scaled from 1 to 19 into IQ equivalents):
Test:
IQ based on age ratio method: MA 9.5/CA 6.5(100)
Deviation IQ
Deviation IQ corrected for reliability
Information (general knowledge test)
146
130
137
Similarities (verbal abstract reasoning)
146
120
122
Arithmetic (mental math)
146
140
145
Vocabulary
146
138
144
Comprehension (Common sense & social judgement)
146
130
136
Digit Span (attention & rote memory)
146
120
123
Picture Completion (visual alertness)
146
120
122
Picture Arrangement (social interpretation)
146
120
123
Block Design (spatial organization)
146
120
122
Object Assembly (spatial integration)
146
115
117
Mazes (visual planning)
146
120
122
Verbal IQ
146
141
143
Performance IQ
146
128
129
Full-scale IQ
146
139
140
Because more reliable tests show larger correlations with age, the fourth column corrects deviation IQs for reliability. This was done by dividing the deviation from the mean by the square root of the reliability at the age the boy is claiming to be. Note that Digit Span and Mazes are optional tests not used to calculate the composite IQs (in bold) unless they are substituted for a core test. Digit Span was not used to calculate any composite score but Mazes was substituted for one of the core tests (Coding) because Coding is not the same test at all ages.
Now after adjusting for test reliability, our gifted 6.5-year-old (who is secretly an average 9.5-year-old) had deviation IQs ranging from 117 (object assembly) to 145 (Arithmetic).
Why such a huge discrepancy? The most obvious answer is that 9.5-year-olds have two cognitive advantages over 6.5-year-olds. Not only are their brains bigger and more developed, but they’ve also have three extra years of life experience. On tests that require novel problem solving, their advantage will be modest because it only reflects their neurological superiority. It can not reflect their life experience advantage because by definition, novel problems are things we’ve had little experience with.
By contrast, on tests that required acquired knowledge they have two advantages. Not only does the 9.5-year-old have more neurological ability to reason arithmetically, learn and remember facts, and infer the meaning of words, but he’s also had three extra years to acquire number concepts, general knowledge, and vocabulary. Because “crystallized” tests require both neurolgical ability and experience, they show a much steeper age progression than fluid tests (and a much steeper decline in old age, though this is confounded with the Flynn effect), which require only neurological ability (beyond some basic experience threshold that virtually all Americans reach by age 5 or so). Indeed looking at the age progression is a good way to quantify crystalized vs fluid.
Notice also that the tests that show the biggest age effects also tend to be the ones that show the biggest family effects per James Flynn’s method. Because both reflect experience.
Now let’s imagine when the pseudo-gifted boy turned 16.83 and he wanted to get into Mensa, and they were unwilling to accept scores from the past. He is still exactly average in all domains for his true age, but still looking young he tells the psychologist he is only 10.5. She doesn’t buy it, but she’s not about to turn down $800 for a few hours work so she plays along.
Here are his results:
Test:
IQ based on age ratio method: MA 16.83/CA 10.5(100)
Deviation IQ
Deviation IQ corrected for unreliability
Information (general knowledge test)
160
133
136
Similarites (verbal abstract reasoning)
160
130
134
Arithmetic (mental math)
160
120
123
Vocabulary
160
138
141
Comprehension (Common sense & social judgement)
160
130
136
Digit Span (attention & rote memory)
160
110
112
Picture Completion (visual alertness)
160
120
124
Picture Arrangement (social interpretation)
160
115
118
Block Design (spatial organization)
160
125
127
Object Assembly (spatial integration)
160
125
131
Mazes (visual planning)
160
118
122
Verbal IQ
160
139
141
Performance IQ
160
130
132
Full-scale IQ
160
139
140
Because more reliable tests show larger correlations with age, the fourth column corrects deviation IQs for reliability. This was done by dividing the deviation from the mean by the square root of the reliability at age 10.5
Once again, his years of extra life experience (relative to the age group he’s pretending to be) gave him a huge advantage on knowledge based tests like Vocabulary and Information. And once again, novel tasks like Block Design, Picture Arrangement, Mazes and Digit Span showed less advantage.
But what happened to Arithmetic? His advanced age gave him a huge advantage when he was a 9.5-year-old pretending to be 6.5, but now that he is 16.83 pretending to be 10.5, this subtest is even less age dependent than Block Design. The likely explanation is that once kids acquire basic number concepts in school (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) arithmetic depends less on experience and more on neurology.
This is why one can never say, categorically, that a given test measures fluid or crystallized ability. It depends on the population taking it. For example the Raven progressive matrices might be a fluid test within generations but a crystallized test between generations. Even something as seemingly crystallized as the math SAT might measure fluid ability in 17-year-olds with at least four years of advanced math. Among all 17-year-olds, it will still correlate with (but not so much be directly caused by) fluid ability because those with more fluid ability are likely to take advanced math in the first place.
Another interesting case is Similarities, which requires one to infer the link between common things (how are chess and scrabble alike?). This showed small age effects in early childhood, but large age effects in later childhood. At the lower end this test is just about the ability to see associations, but at the higher end, it becomes increasingly dependent on diction and sometimes esoteric concepts, making it more experience dependent.
One question is why, if crystallized tests are more culture dependent, do they often load more on psychometic g (the general factor of IQ tests believed to be a property of the physical brain). Perhaps as some have suggested, once you control for age, in countries where everyone has opportunity for schooling, knowledge tests measure both the ability to learn over an entire lifetime and the ability to store and retrieve a lifetime of learning. By contrast fluid tests only measure the ability to learn in the testing room, and not the ability to store and retrieve it years later. One theory is the more parts of the brain a test samples, the more g loaded it is, which would make sense if g is just overall cognition.
Using twin studies, scientists divide phenotypic variation into three categories: DNA variation, shared environmental variation, and unshared environmental variation. Shared environment are all the experiences MZ twins reared together have in common (same upbringing, same schools, same womb) while unshared environment are all the experiences they don’t share (position within the womb, getting hit on the head, having an inspiring teacher).
The best estimate using massive datasets suggest that within Western democracies, DNA explains 41% of IQ variation at age 9, 55% at age 12, 66% at age 17, and 74% in adulthood. By contrast shared environment explains 33% at age 9, 18% at age 12, 16% at age 17, and 10% in adulthood (Bouchard 2013, figure 2). That leaves unshared environment explaining 26% of the variation at age 9, 27% at age 12, 19% at 17, and 16% in adulthood.
You don’t have to believe these associations are causal, but they are real. They’ve been more or less replicated using studies comparing (1) MZ twins with DZ twins, (2) MZ twins raised apart, (3) unrelated people reared in the same home. Although all of these methods depend of different assumptions, they all converge on the same conclusion: the predictive power of DNA skyrockets from childhood to adulthood while the predictive power of shared environment plummets. The same pattern (known as the Wilson effect) has also been observed for other phenotypes and in other species.
But why? Shouldn’t environment get more important as we age since experience has increasing time to accumulate? One theory is that more and more genes become active as we age. A more popular theory is that we select environments that maximize our genotype, so environment becomes just a magnifier of genes, not a causal force in its own right. So genetically smart people will stay in school and genetically strong people will lift weights and take steroids etc. People invest in where they’re more likely to be rewarded.
But here’s where things get really interesting. The Wilson effect behaves differently on different types of IQ tests. In his book Does your Family make you smarter? James Flynn notes that cognitive inequality increases from childhood to later adulthood (because good genes cause good environments and bad genes cause bad environments, the smart get smarter and the dumb get dumber, relative to the average person their age) but this pattern is much more pronounced on some tests than others.
Flynn describes three types of tests:
Type 1: Tests that show large family effects (shared environment) that decay slowly. This include tests involving vocabulary (define “rudimentary”), general knowledge (How old is the Earth?) verbal abstraction (how are a brain and a computer the same?) and social comprehension (why do you need a passport to travel?)
Type 2: Tests that show small family effects that decay fast. These include spatial manipulation (use these two triangles to make a square) and noticing incongruities (what’s missing or absurd in a picture of a common object or scene).
Type 3: Tests that show that large family effects that decay fast. These tests include clerical speed and arithmetic.
Flynn argues that type 1 tests involve skills that children learn from observing their parents talk, hence the large family effect. By contrast he says of type 2 tests:
Aside from the occasional jigsaw puzzle, they have no part in everyday life. Children never see their parents performing these cognitive tasks as part of normal behavior. Family effects are weak, even among preschoolers. Since these subtests match environment with genetic potential so young, they would be an ideal measure (for, say, 5-year-olds) of genes for intelligence.
From pages 53-54 of Does Your Family Make You Smarter? by James Flynn
In other words, Type 2 tests measure “novel problem solving”, while type 1 tests measure acquired abilities. A more provocative interpretation is type 2 tests measure real intelligence, while type 1 just measure knowledge and experience. This is the age-old distinction between aptitude tests vs achievement tests, culture fair vs culture loaded, fluid vs crystallized.
And yet Flynn largely rejects Cattell-Horn-Carroll’s theory that fluid ability (novel problem solving) is invested to acquire crystallized ability (accumulated knowledge) writing:
…fluid skill is just as heavily influenced by family environment as the most malleable crystallized skill (vocabulary) and therefore, neither skill deserves to be called an investment and the other a dividend.
From page 132 of Does Your Family Make You Smarter? by James Flynn
Flynn of course is referring to the greatest irony in the history of psychometrics and the biggest mistake of Arthur Jensen’s career: the Raven Progressive Matrices (long worshiped by Jensen and Jensenistas as the most culture fair measure of pure intelligence ever invented) is a type 1 test!
Which of the 8 choices completes the above pattern? Image from from Carpenter, P., Just, M., & Shell, P. (1990, July)
But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. There’s no need to abandon CHC investment theory just because a major test got mischaracterized. But at the same time, it doesn’t feel right to reclassify the Raven as a crystallized test, Research is needed to understand why the Raven is so culturally sensitive when it superficially looks like a measure of novel problem solving. Is it measuring some kind of implicit crystallized knowledge we’re not conscious of like being familiar with patterns, columns and rows and reasoning through the process of elimination, or are the family effects on the non-cognitive part of the test (having the motivation to persist and concentrate on such an abstract task). Flynn argues that the brain is like a muscle, but if so, the Raven is an exercise most have never done before, so why isn’t it a type 2 test?
Flynn might argue that if your family helped you with abstract problems in algebra or had philosophical discussions about hypothetical concepts, you’ve been exercising for the Raven all your life, but this seems like a bit of a stretch. All the research shows that cognitive training has narrow transfer (i.e. practicing chess will only make you slightly better at checkers, and not at all better at scrabble) though perhaps the Raven’s uniquely abstract (general) nature allows it to slightly buck this trend.
Pumpkin Person 