This is a subtle aspect of intelligence measurement that not many people think about.

To go from an IQ of 100 to 130 might require an increase in brainpower of x, and from 130 to 170 might require 3x for example, and from 170-171 might be 9x compared to 100.

We have to have a relative scale and contrive a Gaussian from the scores because we don’t have an absolute measure of intelligence.

It would be a monumental achievement if computer science ever advances to the point where we have a mathematical way of determining the minimum absolute intelligence required to solve a given problem.

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groby_b 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

> It would be a monumental achievement if computer science ever advances to the point where we have a mathematical way of determining the minimum absolute intelligence required to solve a given problem.

While that would be nice, it's likely a pipe dream :( There's a good chance "intelligence" is really a multi-dimensional thing influenced by a lot of different factors. We like pretending it's one-dimensional so we can sort folks (and money reinforces that one-dimensional thinking), but that means setting ourselves up for failure.

It doesn't help that the tests we currently have (e.g. IQ) are deeply flawed and taint any thinking about the space. (Not least because folks who took a test and scored well are deeply invested in that test being right ;)

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FredPret 7 months ago | parent | next [-]

It might be the hardest problem of them all, because you'd have to understand how all problems work.

But on the other hand, maybe it all comes down to a Turing machine requiring a particular length of tape and runtime.

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nextn 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

What is a flaw of the IQ test?

	▲	groby_b 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		There is no "the IQ test". The most prominent ones are Stanford-Binet and Wechsler. That, I think is the first problem. There isn't a single agreement what IQ is or how to measure it. There isn't a single one for good reasons, because they all measure slightly different things. But that means that fundamentally any single IQ scale is likely flawed. (Wechsler acknowledges this. SB sorta does as well, but hides it well) But if we're looking for a second at Stanford Binet : It's hard to administer. Scoring requires subjective judgment. It's sexist. It uses language and situations that don't apply to current times. It's highly verbal. The normative sample is questionable (though SB-V has gotten better) And because I've had this discussion before: I'm not saying IQ tests are completely meaningless. Yes, there's some signal there. But it's so deeply flawed signal that building rigorous science on top of it is just hard to impossible.

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logicchains 7 months ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>It would be a monumental achievement if computer science ever advances to the point where we have a mathematical way of determining the minimum absolute intelligence required to solve a given problem

For a huge number of problems (including many on IQ tests) computer science does in fact have a mathematical way of determining the minimum absolute amount of compute necessary to solve the problem. That's what complexity theory is. Then it's just a matter of estimating someone's "compute" from how fast they solve a given class of problems relative to some reference computer.

	▲	FredPret 7 months ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You're right - we can get closer and closer to an absolute measure by looking at many brains and AI's solving a problem, and converging to maximum performance given a certain amount of hardware by tweaking the algorithm or approach used. But I think proving that maximum performance is really the ultimate level, from first principles, is a much harder task than looking at a performance graph and guesstimating the asymptote.
	▲	shkkmo 7 months ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Then it's just a matter of estimating someone's "compute" from how fast they solve a given class of problems relative to some reference computer. Heh... "just"... Good luck with that.

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silvestrov 7 months ago | parent | prev [-]

I wonder how a graph looks for "how many seconds does it take people to run 100 meters".

Might be a mix because quite a number of older or overweight people runs very slowly and some can't at all.

	▲	hammock 7 months ago \| parent [-]
		Poisson distribution