It depends on how well read you are and how good you are at conversations.
A solid combination of those two will make anyone look like a genius. A lack of either will make even the greatest genius of all time look like a fool.
This is very true. I see this with me and my brother. I am naturally more intelligent than he is but he is much, much more educated than I am so he usually comes off as the smarter one. My problem is that I'm a bit dyslexic and I can't read very fast which makes it hard to even want to sit down and read for hours. It kind of sucks.
"You're totally lucky you beat me scrub, lucksack top deck, you play so bad"
-20% of the guys at every FNM event ever.
Only 20%? That would be Xanadu.
If you have a genius IQ that would put you in the top 2% of IQ scores... that's how it works. Of course i suspect someone with a genius IQ wouldn't make the mistake of substituting the word 'smart' for 'intelligence'
If you have a genius IQ, it shows you know how to score well on an IQ test. That's it. IQ tests have non-insignificant cultural, gender, race, and socioeconomic biases in them.
They are not particularly good predictors of success, and they treat "intelligence" as one immutable statistic, which isn't the case. There are many kinds of intelligence (Harvard University psychologist Howard Gardner, Ph.D., lists seven kinds of intelligence - linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal and intra-personal). There are autistic savants who score fantastically high on IQ tests, but can't survive on their own with a nurse caring for them.
IQ tests are like the Drake Equation: Fun to talk about at parties, not all that predictive of reality.
I got a 147 on my IQ test, and I am not a "genius" by any stretch of the imagination. I am a good test taker though.
I don't know about the MTGS users, but compared to the general population, my IQ is 165.
I'm also smart enough to realize that I don't know everything, whereas most people never reach that level of intelligence. I find the more I learn, the less I know.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
This is super amusing. We all think we're smarter than we are.
Since I don't know how smart you all are, I went with how I feel in the world at large. (Somewhere in the top 10%)
Which means I'm probably more like in the top third in reality. Oh well!
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"It is not your place to rule, Radiant. It may not even be mine." ~Serra, Humble
"I Come Looking for Demons and I find a plane full of Angels. I Hate Angels" -Liliana Vess, Killing Wave
"Walls? What Walls?" ~Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, Word of Blasting
"I don't have to have the perfect plan. My foe just has to have an imperfect one." -Jace Beleren, Summoner's Bane
"When your cities and trinkets crumble, only nature will remain" ~Garruk Wildspeaker, Naturalize
In theory though, the poll doesn't have to be wrong - might be all the actual smartest people in the room happened to vote on this poll, and the not-quite-as-smart people didn't (or maybe didn't figure out how to).
If you have a genius IQ, it shows you know how to score well on an IQ test.
It shows much more than that.
IQ tests have non-insignificant cultural, gender, race, and socioeconomic biases in them.
Parts of IQ test do, other parts really don't e.g. this, although it's less significant then your leading on.
They are not particularly good predictors of success,
People with higher IQ are more likely to have a 'mental illness' among other negatives, however IQ=/=success, of course, but this doesn't mean IQ=/= a good measure of intellect.
and they treat "intelligence" as one immutable statistic,
No, they don't.
There are many kinds of intelligence (Harvard University psychologist Howard Gardner, Ph.D., lists seven kinds of intelligence - linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal and intra-personal). There are autistic savants who score fantastically high on IQ tests, but can't survive on their own with a nurse caring for them.
Complete IQ tests actually account for various types of intelligence, you forgot Naturalist Intelligence among other things.
"I have no idea what it's like not to be a straight white male, and the experiences of others are irrelevant." -Conservative Motto
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
This is secretly a "how big is your ego?" poll, isn't it?
The great irony of nerd superiority complexes is not being able to admit when you are the lowest common denominator (not you specifically, but in general). I was guilty of this myself until I found greater sources of self esteem than intellectual superiority. I'd much rather be the above average jack-of-all trades I am, as it means I no longer feel like I have to be the best at something or I'm a failure.
That's an article reporting the results of the largest study done on intelligence ever. Some choice quotes
"After conducting the largest ever study of intelligence, researchers have found that far from indicating how clever you are, IQ testing is actually rather ‘meaningless’"
"Traditional IQ tests are ‘too simplistic’, according to the research, which found that what makes someone intelligent is too complex to boil down to a single exam."
"Study leader Dr Adrian Owen, a British neuroscientists based at Western University in Canada, said an ‘astonishing’ number of people had contributed to the research. ‘When you take 100,000 people and tested their brain function, we couldn’t find any evidence for a single uniform concept of intelligence."
‘IQ tests are pretty meaningless - if you are not good at them, all it proves is that you are not good at IQ tests."
So sorry, but you're wrong. IQ tests are not good measures of intelligence. They just show that you are good at taking an IQ test
Quote from magickware99 »
That would place you at an IQ level higher than that of Einstein, or his estimated one, at least.
Which further illustrates how bad IQ tests are at measuring intelligence.
Which further illustrates how bad IQ tests are at measuring intelligence.
Agreed. What made Einstein so great was his creativity and him not being bound by established thinking. The man could sit and think productively and creatively all day and just wittle away at a problem. Yes, he had a lot of knowledge, but no matter how much knowledge and mathematical aptitude anyone has it takes unimaginable creativity and focus to do what Einstein did. You will hear people talk about a breakthrough and say things like "someone would have come up with it eventually", but I honestly think that is not the case with Einstein. I think people, ie a few independant thinkers, would have eventually come in to parts of what Einstein eventually published, but no single person. His was a singular mind and I am not sure if we have seen it's like since.
I could be wrong and there is a new Einstein out there right now, I hope I am, but not that I have heard of.
I'm a strong proponent of the idea: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." Intelligence is useless if you don't have motivation. I often got better marks than friends I considered far more intelligent because they were apathetic, while I both found school interesting and wanted good marks, and so I worked. I remember that in high school Pre-Calculus I was often one of the last to finish a test because I refused to finish until I could figure out the answer, and I would recheck multiple times because I blunder a lot. Fast forward to the final exam, and I score a cool 98%, though this was disappointing because I scored 99% in my practice exam
The great irony of nerd superiority complexes is not being able to admit when you are the lowest common denominator (not you specifically, but in general). I was guilty of this myself until I found greater sources of self esteem than intellectual superiority. I'd much rather be the above average jack-of-all trades I am, as it means I no longer feel like I have to be the best at something or I'm a failure.
I feel the same way. This thread is a terrible source of any reliable demographics regarding MTGS intelligence, but it is a fascinating social experiment.
So yeah, I addressed this poll by realizing that in Europe just about 10 % of the population obtains an actual university degree (I've seen statistics that say 30 %; but these contain ALL tertiary education, not just universities) and even fewer of those get a masters degree.
Do you think this include eastern European countries?
Judging the fact that I graduated in the highest 10 % with respect to my grades, that would put me education-wise in the top 1 % approximately. I realize that education is not a 100 % accurate predictor of IQ, but they're closely correlated and that's the best estimate I have (I had my IQ measured when I was 12, but the score was absurdly high; and besides, I'm quite sure college life made my IQ drop a few points at least).
By closely correlated you mean almost not correlated?
No they don't. "Intellect" is much, much broader than anything that can be measured by a test,
This is a really silly statement. Effectively you're saying 'intellect' is a thing. But it can't be measured. Sorry but if it exists, it can be measured. Then you site a half ass media report of some scientist opinion of data, as proof of this. While i except that IQ test aren't the end all be all of overall intelligence, mainly because they also measure knowledge and combine different types of intelligence into one overall score. It doesn't mean IQ test are only good for proving you can score well on a IQ test.
Which further illustrates how bad IQ tests are at measuring intelligence.
Einstein was rather avg. in certain intellectual areas and had profound genius in other areas. Also, Einstein never actually took an IQ test... people have just estimated his IQ was between 160-180...
Besides i'm sure a certain a MTGS poster is lying.
"I have no idea what it's like not to be a straight white male, and the experiences of others are irrelevant." -Conservative Motto
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
This is a really silly statement. Effectively you're saying 'intellect' is a thing. But it can't be measured. Sorry but if it exists, it can be measured. Then you site a half ass media report of some scientist opinion of data, as proof of this. While i except that IQ test aren't the end all be all of overall intelligence, mainly because they also measure knowledge and combine different types of intelligence into one overall score. It doesn't mean IQ test are only good for proving you can score well on a IQ test.
So you are saying the largest study on intelligence ever done, with over 100,000 participants, conducted by neuroscientists from a respected Canadian University, is a "half assed media report"? OK, if you want to believe you know more than them on the topic, that's your choice. I know which source I trust more.
Intelligence is not measurable on a single range, because it is not a single thing. It's like saying "Measure the temperature of "hot". It's not a single number, it depends on a multitude of factors, and trying to boil it down to a single number is going to give you a fairly meaningless result.
IQ tests are flawed in that they do not cover all areas of intelligence, and that's besides the cultural and socioeconomic biases they have been proven to have
They are interesting conversation starters, but not very good at measuring intelligence in any meaningful way. Like I said before, you could have an autistic savant who could score fantastically high on an IQ test, but isn't able to navigate a subway station.
Einstein was rather avg. in certain intellectual areas and had profound genius in other areas. Also, Einstein never actually took an IQ test... people have just estimated his IQ was between 160-180...
I think Goddard estimated Voltaire's IQ. I bring up Voltaire because we could take Voltaire's quote on God and apply it to IQ: There is no evidence for the IQ of historical personages, but that doesn't keep people from finding it.
That's an article reporting the results of the largest study done on intelligence ever. Some choice quotes
"After conducting the largest ever study of intelligence, researchers have found that far from indicating how clever you are, IQ testing is actually rather ‘meaningless’"
"Traditional IQ tests are ‘too simplistic’, according to the research, which found that what makes someone intelligent is too complex to boil down to a single exam."
"Study leader Dr Adrian Owen, a British neuroscientists based at Western University in Canada, said an ‘astonishing’ number of people had contributed to the research. ‘When you take 100,000 people and tested their brain function, we couldn’t find any evidence for a single uniform concept of intelligence."
‘IQ tests are pretty meaningless - if you are not good at them, all it proves is that you are not good at IQ tests."
So sorry, but you're wrong. IQ tests are not good measures of intelligence. They just show that you are good at taking an IQ test
I don't know what is more incredible: You citing the Daily Mail, or the Daily Mail thinking anything is "too simplistic". So, stopped clock?
But seriously, the most any test can do is test one's ability to take tests. Remember the King of the Hill episode where Cotton admitted that he memorized the eye chart at the DMV a long time ago? Yeah, kinda like that.
By closely correlated you mean almost not correlated?
Wasn't it like a .3 correlation?
The confusing part is, if you define "correlated" loosely enough, anything can be correlated. The general rule is to look for correlations of .6 or greater.
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Card advantage is not the same thing as card draw. Something for 2B cannot be strictly worse than something for BBB or 3BB. If you're taking out Swords to Plowshares for Plummet, you're a fool. Stop doing these things!
So you are saying the largest study on intelligence ever done, with over 100,000 participants, conducted by neuroscientists from a respected Canadian University, is a "half assed media report"? OK, if you want to believe you know more than them on the topic, that's your choice. I know which source I trust more.
Not what i said at all. I said a half assed media report is a half assed media report. Here is a quick list of things missing in the media report.
1) dissenting opinions, or more then a brief 2 line quote of a couple of cherry picked scientist involved in the study.
2) An in depth presentation of the data so people can form their own conclusions or agree.
3) A recognition that because someones opinion that IQ tests are 'too simplistic' to be effective at gauging intelligence doesn't mean IQ tests are 'Meaninglessly simplistic' as the title of the article exclaims... I mean if you don't see the Chinese whisper effect here well...
4) A recognition that IQ tests are a way of trying to convert all forms of intellect one score and aren't intended to be a perfect measure of intellect...
Intelligence is not measurable on a single range, because it is not a single thing. It's like saying "Measure the temperature of "hot". It's not a single number, it depends on a multitude of factors, and trying to boil it down to a single number is going to give you a fairly meaningless result.
Do you understand how miserable wrong this is? Hot isn't a perfect measure of temperature therefor it's 'meaningless'... meaningless should actually be imperfect measure of temperature. Same goes for IQ test, however IQ test are actually a significantly better but still highly flawed imperfect measure of intellect.
In effect IQ test are an algebraic representation of something that's really calculus.
IQ tests are flawed in that they do not cover all areas of intelligence, and that's besides the cultural and socioeconomic biases they have been proven to have
Again ill ask what are the cultural and socioeconomic biases of shapes like Triangles, Circles and Squares? The 'proven biases' of IQ test are overplayed pseudo-intellectual garbage.
They are interesting conversation starters, but not very good at measuring intelligence in any meaningful way. Like I said before, you could have an autistic savant who could score fantastically high on an IQ test, but isn't able to navigate a subway station.
Like this kid? IDK man he seems much smarter then me in many ways... It's almost like his really high IQ is meaningful.
"I have no idea what it's like not to be a straight white male, and the experiences of others are irrelevant." -Conservative Motto
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
Whether or not it worked does not validate the play. That's hindsight probability. Let's say I offered you a bet -- I'm going to flip a coin and if it's heads, I'll give you 1 dollar but if it's tails, you'll give me 2 dollars. This is obviously a terrible bet for you. Accepting it is a bad decision. You can't justify it afterwards by arguing that you won the flip, therefore you made the right decision.
Do you honestly think education level and intelligence are not strongly related? I'm fine with looking it up, but I think it's quite safe to assume both are strongly related.
And I was speaking more about western Europe since I am not all too familiar with how well education fares in eastern Europe.
I do not.
Source: Engineering degree, with those around me and their levels of education.
This poll sucks. What kind of intelligence? There were a few people in my graduate department that could read and comprehend massive data results, but could not properly use a road map. Street, investigative, mathmatical, logical, etc. smarts are very different to test and are difficult to compare. My mind is more more street/outdoors and investigative smart, but fidget with math and LSAT type questions. I can navigate the outdoors with ease, but get horribly lost in malls (its kryptonite to me).
I love Albert Einstien's quote: The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.”
If you have a genius IQ that would put you in the top 2% of IQ scores... that's how it works. Of course i suspect someone with a genius IQ wouldn't make the mistake of substituting the word 'smart' for 'intelligence'
Communication problems. One of the many drawbacks of AS
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"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
I suspect, but cannot prove, that the distribution of poll responses reflect a combination of selective memory plus a fairly rudimentary flaw in logic.
I suspect that most respondents went through a thought process something like this:
1) Looked back at standardized tests (IQ, SAT, etc.) that they may have taken at some point in the past
2) Dropped low scores - including scores where they "weren't trying" or "didn't study"
3) Reported the highest remaining percentile(s)
#2 would be selective memory.
#3 would be the flaw in logic - while that percentile may be comparable to the broad population, they failed to consider that respondents on this board may score 1-2 sigma above the general population on those same standardized tests. i.e., they failed to rebaseline.
I would not be at all surprised if 27% of MTGS members have scored in the top 2% on at least one standardized test when compared against the general population. i.e., the average college student is 1 sigma above the general population; the average STEM student is 1.5-2 sigma above the general population. And this game happens to have strong appeal to those on the college path, with a STEM concentration.
And then there are those that thought it might be humorous to self report in the bottom strat.
Two other factors that I believe contribute to the top-heavy poll results:
1) Selection bias. I don't think it will be controversial to suggest that people who believe themselves to be of above average intelligence among a population will be more likely to respond to a poll asking them to rank their intelligence within that population.
2) The imprecise term "intelligence." Intelligence involves performance at a variety of cognitive tasks, and there is no widely agreed-upon standard for weighting said tasks to determine some sort of overall "intelligence level." (Standard IQ tests hardly even try to achieve this) Respondents must base their self-assessments on their own perception of the relative importance of various cognitive tasks. While it seems likely that most people will weight those tasks in ways that are flattering to their own egos, we have no "correct" methodology for obtaining a holistic measure of "intelligence" from assessments of performance on individual cognitive tasks.
So, even if every person was perfectly accurate and honest in responding to the poll, we shouldn't be surprised if >2% of respondents rated themselves in the top 2%. How much more? 27%? I doubt it, since I'm assuming that deviations from perfect accuracy and honesty will bias the results toward overestimation rather than underestimation, but the result may not be as ridiculous as it appears at a glance.
This is very true. I see this with me and my brother. I am naturally more intelligent than he is but he is much, much more educated than I am so he usually comes off as the smarter one. My problem is that I'm a bit dyslexic and I can't read very fast which makes it hard to even want to sit down and read for hours. It kind of sucks.
Only 20%? That would be Xanadu.
If you have a genius IQ, it shows you know how to score well on an IQ test. That's it. IQ tests have non-insignificant cultural, gender, race, and socioeconomic biases in them.
They are not particularly good predictors of success, and they treat "intelligence" as one immutable statistic, which isn't the case. There are many kinds of intelligence (Harvard University psychologist Howard Gardner, Ph.D., lists seven kinds of intelligence - linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal and intra-personal). There are autistic savants who score fantastically high on IQ tests, but can't survive on their own with a nurse caring for them.
IQ tests are like the Drake Equation: Fun to talk about at parties, not all that predictive of reality.
I got a 147 on my IQ test, and I am not a "genius" by any stretch of the imagination. I am a good test taker though.
I'm also smart enough to realize that I don't know everything, whereas most people never reach that level of intelligence. I find the more I learn, the less I know.
On phasing:
Since I don't know how smart you all are, I went with how I feel in the world at large. (Somewhere in the top 10%)
Which means I'm probably more like in the top third in reality. Oh well!
"It is not your place to rule, Radiant. It may not even be mine." ~Serra, Humble
"I Come Looking for Demons and I find a plane full of Angels. I Hate Angels" -Liliana Vess, Killing Wave
"Walls? What Walls?" ~Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, Word of Blasting
"I don't have to have the perfect plan. My foe just has to have an imperfect one." -Jace Beleren, Summoner's Bane
"When your cities and trinkets crumble, only nature will remain" ~Garruk Wildspeaker, Naturalize
In theory though, the poll doesn't have to be wrong - might be all the actual smartest people in the room happened to vote on this poll, and the not-quite-as-smart people didn't (or maybe didn't figure out how to).
That would place you at an IQ level higher than that of Einstein, or his estimated one, at least.
It shows much more than that.
Parts of IQ test do, other parts really don't e.g. this, although it's less significant then your leading on.
People with higher IQ are more likely to have a 'mental illness' among other negatives, however IQ=/=success, of course, but this doesn't mean IQ=/= a good measure of intellect.
No, they don't.
Complete IQ tests actually account for various types of intelligence, you forgot Naturalist Intelligence among other things.
Flame infraction. - Blinking Spirit
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
Which is a possibility.
The great irony of nerd superiority complexes is not being able to admit when you are the lowest common denominator (not you specifically, but in general). I was guilty of this myself until I found greater sources of self esteem than intellectual superiority. I'd much rather be the above average jack-of-all trades I am, as it means I no longer feel like I have to be the best at something or I'm a failure.
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No they don't. "Intellect" is much, much broader than anything that can be measured by a test,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2250681/IQ-tests-meaningless-simplistic-claim-researchers.html
That's an article reporting the results of the largest study done on intelligence ever. Some choice quotes
"After conducting the largest ever study of intelligence, researchers have found that far from indicating how clever you are, IQ testing is actually rather ‘meaningless’"
"Traditional IQ tests are ‘too simplistic’, according to the research, which found that what makes someone intelligent is too complex to boil down to a single exam."
"Study leader Dr Adrian Owen, a British neuroscientists based at Western University in Canada, said an ‘astonishing’ number of people had contributed to the research. ‘When you take 100,000 people and tested their brain function, we couldn’t find any evidence for a single uniform concept of intelligence."
‘IQ tests are pretty meaningless - if you are not good at them, all it proves is that you are not good at IQ tests."
So sorry, but you're wrong. IQ tests are not good measures of intelligence. They just show that you are good at taking an IQ test
Which further illustrates how bad IQ tests are at measuring intelligence.
I could be wrong and there is a new Einstein out there right now, I hope I am, but not that I have heard of.
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I feel the same way. This thread is a terrible source of any reliable demographics regarding MTGS intelligence, but it is a fascinating social experiment.
But unlikely.
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By closely correlated you mean almost not correlated?
Wasn't it like a .3 correlation?
This is a really silly statement. Effectively you're saying 'intellect' is a thing. But it can't be measured. Sorry but if it exists, it can be measured. Then you site a half ass media report of some scientist opinion of data, as proof of this. While i except that IQ test aren't the end all be all of overall intelligence, mainly because they also measure knowledge and combine different types of intelligence into one overall score. It doesn't mean IQ test are only good for proving you can score well on a IQ test.
Einstein was rather avg. in certain intellectual areas and had profound genius in other areas. Also, Einstein never actually took an IQ test... people have just estimated his IQ was between 160-180...
Besides i'm sure a certain a MTGS poster is lying.
Flame infraction. - Blinking Spirit
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
So you are saying the largest study on intelligence ever done, with over 100,000 participants, conducted by neuroscientists from a respected Canadian University, is a "half assed media report"? OK, if you want to believe you know more than them on the topic, that's your choice. I know which source I trust more.
Intelligence is not measurable on a single range, because it is not a single thing. It's like saying "Measure the temperature of "hot". It's not a single number, it depends on a multitude of factors, and trying to boil it down to a single number is going to give you a fairly meaningless result.
IQ tests are flawed in that they do not cover all areas of intelligence, and that's besides the cultural and socioeconomic biases they have been proven to have
They are interesting conversation starters, but not very good at measuring intelligence in any meaningful way. Like I said before, you could have an autistic savant who could score fantastically high on an IQ test, but isn't able to navigate a subway station.
I think Goddard estimated Voltaire's IQ. I bring up Voltaire because we could take Voltaire's quote on God and apply it to IQ: There is no evidence for the IQ of historical personages, but that doesn't keep people from finding it.
I don't know what is more incredible: You citing the Daily Mail, or the Daily Mail thinking anything is "too simplistic".
But seriously, the most any test can do is test one's ability to take tests. Remember the King of the Hill episode where Cotton admitted that he memorized the eye chart at the DMV a long time ago? Yeah, kinda like that.
The confusing part is, if you define "correlated" loosely enough, anything can be correlated. The general rule is to look for correlations of .6 or greater.
On phasing:
Not what i said at all. I said a half assed media report is a half assed media report. Here is a quick list of things missing in the media report.
1) dissenting opinions, or more then a brief 2 line quote of a couple of cherry picked scientist involved in the study.
2) An in depth presentation of the data so people can form their own conclusions or agree.
3) A recognition that because someones opinion that IQ tests are 'too simplistic' to be effective at gauging intelligence doesn't mean IQ tests are 'Meaninglessly simplistic' as the title of the article exclaims... I mean if you don't see the Chinese whisper effect here well...
4) A recognition that IQ tests are a way of trying to convert all forms of intellect one score and aren't intended to be a perfect measure of intellect...
Do you understand how miserable wrong this is? Hot isn't a perfect measure of temperature therefor it's 'meaningless'... meaningless should actually be imperfect measure of temperature. Same goes for IQ test, however IQ test are actually a significantly better but still highly flawed imperfect measure of intellect.
In effect IQ test are an algebraic representation of something that's really calculus.
Like this kid? IDK man he seems much smarter then me in many ways... It's almost like his really high IQ is meaningful.
Flame infraction. - Blinking Spirit
Calling someone a Commie is flaming and must be stopped, but turning the word Conservative into a loaded pejorative and using it over and over again is perfectly acceptable.
- Define intelligence (TC specifically, just for clarification).
- I'd like to know how one would even go about comparing one's intelligence to the overall intelligence of every other MTGS user.
I do not.
Source: Engineering degree, with those around me and their levels of education.
I love Albert Einstien's quote: The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.”
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Communication problems. One of the many drawbacks of AS
"I am disillusioned enough to know that no man's opinion on any subject is worth a damn unless backed up with enough genuine information to make him really know what he's talking about."
-H. P. Lovecraft
I suspect that most respondents went through a thought process something like this:
1) Looked back at standardized tests (IQ, SAT, etc.) that they may have taken at some point in the past
2) Dropped low scores - including scores where they "weren't trying" or "didn't study"
3) Reported the highest remaining percentile(s)
#2 would be selective memory.
#3 would be the flaw in logic - while that percentile may be comparable to the broad population, they failed to consider that respondents on this board may score 1-2 sigma above the general population on those same standardized tests. i.e., they failed to rebaseline.
I would not be at all surprised if 27% of MTGS members have scored in the top 2% on at least one standardized test when compared against the general population. i.e., the average college student is 1 sigma above the general population; the average STEM student is 1.5-2 sigma above the general population. And this game happens to have strong appeal to those on the college path, with a STEM concentration.
And then there are those that thought it might be humorous to self report in the bottom strat.
1) Selection bias. I don't think it will be controversial to suggest that people who believe themselves to be of above average intelligence among a population will be more likely to respond to a poll asking them to rank their intelligence within that population.
2) The imprecise term "intelligence." Intelligence involves performance at a variety of cognitive tasks, and there is no widely agreed-upon standard for weighting said tasks to determine some sort of overall "intelligence level." (Standard IQ tests hardly even try to achieve this) Respondents must base their self-assessments on their own perception of the relative importance of various cognitive tasks. While it seems likely that most people will weight those tasks in ways that are flattering to their own egos, we have no "correct" methodology for obtaining a holistic measure of "intelligence" from assessments of performance on individual cognitive tasks.
So, even if every person was perfectly accurate and honest in responding to the poll, we shouldn't be surprised if >2% of respondents rated themselves in the top 2%. How much more? 27%? I doubt it, since I'm assuming that deviations from perfect accuracy and honesty will bias the results toward overestimation rather than underestimation, but the result may not be as ridiculous as it appears at a glance.