{"id":30526,"date":"2016-10-29T01:00:54","date_gmt":"2016-10-29T05:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=30526"},"modified":"2017-05-21T09:50:09","modified_gmt":"2017-05-21T13:50:09","slug":"qotd-iq-and-different-types-of-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/10\/29\/qotd-iq-and-different-types-of-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: IQ and different types of intelligence"},"content":{"rendered":"

My last IQ-ish test was my SATs in high school. I got a perfect score in Verbal, and a good-but-not-great score in Math.<\/p>\n

And in high school English, I got A++s in all my classes, Principal\u2019s Gold Medals, 100%s on tests, first prize in various state-wide essay contests, etc. In Math, I just barely by the skin of my teeth scraped together a pass in Calculus with a C-.<\/p>\n

Every time I won some kind of prize in English my parents would praise me and say I was good and should feel good. My teachers would hold me up as an example and say other kids should try to be more like me. Meanwhile, when I would bring home a report card with a C- in math, my parents would have concerned faces and tell me they were disappointed and I wasn\u2019t living up to my potential and I needed to work harder et cetera.<\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t know which part bothered me more<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Every time I was held up as an example in English class, I wanted to crawl under a rock and die. I didn\u2019t do it! I didn\u2019t study at all, half the time I did the homework in the car on the way to school, those essays for the statewide competition were thrown together on a lark without a trace of real effort. To praise me for any of it seemed and still seems utterly unjust.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, to this day I believe I deserve a fricking statue<\/em> for getting a C- in Calculus I. It should be in the center of the schoolyard, and have a plaque saying something like \u201cScott Alexander, who by making a herculean effort managed to pass Calculus I, even though they kept throwing random things after the little curly S sign and pretending it made sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

And without some notion of innate ability, I don\u2019t know what to do with this experience. I don\u2019t want to have to accept the blame for being a lazy person who just didn\u2019t try hard enough in Math. But I really<\/em> don\u2019t want to have to accept the credit for being a virtuous and studious English student who worked harder than his peers. I know<\/em> there were people who worked harder than I did in English, who poured their heart and soul into that course \u2013 and who still got Cs and Ds. To deny innate ability is to devalue their efforts and sacrifice, while simultaneously giving me credit I don\u2019t deserve.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, there were some students who did better than I did in Math with seemingly zero effort. I didn\u2019t begrudge those students. But if they\u2019d started trying to say they had exactly the same level of innate ability as I did, and the only difference was they<\/em> were trying while I<\/em> was slacking off, then I sure as hell would have begrudged them. Especially if I knew they were lazing around on the beach while I was poring over a textbook.<\/p>\n

I tend to think of social norms as contracts bargained between different groups. In the case of attitudes towards intelligence, those two groups are smart people and dumb people. Since I was both at once, I got to make the bargain with myself, which simplified the bargaining process immensely. The deal I came up with was that I wasn\u2019t going to beat myself up over the areas I was bad at, but I also didn\u2019t get to become too cocky about the areas I was good at. It was all genetic luck of the draw either way. In the meantime, I would try to press as hard as I could to exploit my strengths and cover up my deficiencies. So far I\u2019ve found this to be a really healthy way of treating myself, and it\u2019s the way I try to treat others as well.<\/p>\n

Scott Alexander, “The Parable of the Talents”, Slate Star Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2015-01-31.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My last IQ-ish test was my SATs in high school. I got a perfect score in Verbal, and a good-but-not-great score in Math. And in high school English, I got A++s in all my classes, Principal\u2019s Gold Medals, 100%s on tests, first prize in various state-wide essay contests, etc. In Math, I just barely by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,41,73,16],"tags":[1129,778,139],"class_list":["post-30526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-quotations","category-randomness","category-science","tag-iq","tag-mathematics","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7Wm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30527,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30526\/revisions\/30527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}