Is IQ is a Valid/Meaningful Measure of Intelligence?

[AtmanIsBrahman]

I've been researching IQ a lot recently. 

Intelligence feels like a very important part of this work, so it feels like our duty to evaluate our own intelligence if a tool exists to do so.
(As a quick note, I'm talking about plain regular intelligence here, not mystical intelligence. That seems like a different domain and would complicate the picture significantly.)

I initially thought it's silly to quantify intelligence and there's no way IQ can be a good measure of it anyway considering it involves math and language -- cultural constructs. 

But I realized there is actually good science backing it up. General intelligence -- the mysterious thing that makes people who do well on one cognitive task do well on others -- is very well observed. IQ is just a way of quantifying general intelligence, which is done through a variety of tests that are given a correlation with G from 0.0-1. The interesting thing is that progressive matrix problems and mental rotation problems tend to correlate well with G and also correlate with crystallized intelligence tests like vocabulary. This means that what IQ measures might not be culturally constructed, but a real innate faculty of someone's mind. 

Regardless, it seems obvious if we're honest that some people are more intelligent than others. Not just in some things but across the board. And we should want to know where we stand in the pecking order if we're committed to truth, as much as it could hurt our feelings. 

I wonder whether IQ would correlate with someone's progress in spirituality or their epistemic ability.
I don't know exactly where I stand on this. The IQ topic is super complicated, and people are ideological on both sides.

What do you think? 
Is IQ valid, and would you take an IQ test?

 

 

Edited 13 hours ago by AtmanIsBrahman

[Olaf]

@AtmanIsBrahman the only real intelligence is consciousness, how conscious you are, guess what, no one is, not even all these spiritual people singing "om namah shivaya" barely anyone is conscious and lives life in accordance. The most intelligent person I know is the most conscious, brave person that I know, not the most intelligent, because he knows 1 + 1 = 2 therefor he is intelligent. Look at autistic people, they are intelligent only in a certain area, their mind is sharp, but they can't pick up if someone is feeling good/bad/frustrated etc. They can't read energy properly, that is not intelligence, that is being stuck in your head. I know a guy that just like me, can read peoples energies from a distance, he is the most intelligent person I know. 

[enchanted]

I'm also not sure. 

On one hand, it seems wrong to say that spirituality is limited to 5-10% of the population with a high IQ. 

At the same time, it obviously takes some brain power to understand advanced spiritual concepts.

Edited 9 hours ago by enchanted

[AtmanIsBrahman]

9 hours ago, Olaf said:

@AtmanIsBrahman the only real intelligence is consciousness, how conscious you are, guess what, no one is, not even all these spiritual people singing "om namah shivaya" barely anyone is conscious and lives life in accordance. The most intelligent person I know is the most conscious, brave person that I know, not the most intelligent, because he knows 1 + 1 = 2 therefor he is intelligent. Look at autistic people, they are intelligent only in a certain area, their mind is sharp, but they can't pick up if someone is feeling good/bad/frustrated etc. They can't read energy properly, that is not intelligence, that is being stuck in your head. I know a guy that just like me, can read peoples energies from a distance, he is the most intelligent person I know. 

I totally get what you're saying, but I think this is conflating mystical intelligence with normal intelligence. 

I do believe that mystical intelligence is a thing that is transcendent and even more valuable than normal intelligence. But I also think it would be wrong to act as though normal intelligence isn't a real thing.

[Leo Gura]

No