What is your "real" IQ?
>> Tuesday, October 06, 2009
I installed one of the iPhone apps which tries to find out the IQ of a person. When answering those questions, I thought this is wrong. Why?
I think when we say a person is knowledgeable or intelligent that doesn't necessarily mean he should remember everything. No one can remember everything unless he is a maniac or some exceptional memorizer (Memorizers are not always intelligent). If some one knows the methods and has the proper tools, then getting relevant knowledge to do something using google and get things done is not a big deal. What is needed is the ability and the willingness which I think comes from experience too.
I think this is the same argument that was going on about open-book vs closed-book exams (for the record, I like open-book exams, because 1) I don't need to memorize things and 2) those exams challenges the wisdom since the lecturer has to be creative to set a good open-book exams)
Knowledge is out there and google is indexing most of them. Most people have access to internet thru laptops or thru their mobile devices, at any given time. When some one asks a question, if you don't know the answer or if you don't agree to an answer, how many times have you googled and found the right answer? Ability to find/search for the proper information and using or adapting those to solve current problems is when I call some one intelligent. This doesn't mean he should google to find the answer for 2 + 3, you know :)
This is the same reason why I like people who come for interviews and say "... I don't know about this technology X, but I strongly think I can learn it and do what you want". And also who says "... the method you suggested is good, but I found another way (on the internet or myself) and used that. These are the goods and bads"
Brainbench, IIRC, correctly tests the ability, but not the knowledge, which I think is very good.
