Average Intelligence

[HappyHapyJoyJoy]

Generally when people think of "average" they think of something unexceptional, but also not something inferior or inadequate. They think of some kind of middle ground. Which raise the question:

Do you think "average intelligence" is actually anywhere near a "middle ground"?​

An average, after all, is not actually a median of available options, but one of available examples. If you take an intelligent person, and a stupid person and average that you'd get something in the middle. If you take an intelligent person and 100,000 stupid people, or the opposite, the average will be nowhere near the middle, instead sitting right beside the much larger group since the individual who's set apart becomes an outlier and their influence is thus minimized.

So,how high or low do you think "average intelligence" is? On a scale of 1 to 100, with 1 being someone so disadvantaged they can barely tie their own shoes, and 100 being the remarkable intellects of people like Einstein and Hawking... where do you think actual average of human intelligence falls, and why?

 

[WntrMute2]

Forty at best. The stupidity of most people stuns me. Take the appeal of Donald Trump for instance

 

[Mr. Daystar]

I was under the impression that, that number had already been established. I had always believed an "average" I.Q. to be 100 to 110, with 140 being Mensa material, and 75 being on the low side. Please don't ask what I mean by low....I typed out several things, they all sounded really horrible when I read them back.

 

[Johan]

People think about Intelligence as an ending. Truth is it's just a mean.
Just like a Porsche without gas won't drive you anywhere, a person with a very high IQ but very poor knowledge won't do any good.
An 80 IQ person who reads a lot, who's curious about things like Science or History, goes to museums, art exhibitions, theatre, etc. will most probably do more good than a person with a IQ of 130 who would spend most of his time watching real-TV shows and playing GTA or Call of Duty

 

[Supafly]

I had the opportunity to be along persons (One at a time, by chance) thta had an I.Q. of 65. Another chance: Just a few months before, here in Germany, in Munich, to be exact, there was an subway incident where, on a station, two young men got into what would normally be an argument, but it went extremely violent very fast, and the security camera footage became very popular, as one of them, when the old man, a scrawny 7-year-old, was already on the ground, kicked him very hard in the head.

People of that area of intelligence, a court psychologist stated, have not the capacity to find various stress solutions, and in case they feel belittled and offended, they kind of go into autodrive and that led to this event.

The young man in particular had the I.Q. of around 65, too.

When I spoke to the one O got to know, he absolutely believed that everything he saw on TV or video was the truth. His mind wasn't able to handle the thought that even "Battlestar Galactica" is fake. How could it be? It was in plain sight! And, not surprisingly, he was extremely easy to manipulate.

He considered me a good leading figure, as I was good with words and as I was always friendly to him, he would have been the perfect tool - like he was before he came into that facility, when a bunch of local drug pushers used him as a runner. They fed him ICE-T romantic gangsta imagery, and he was happy to be a part of the pack and do the cool jobs.

I dfon't think that we should measure the average by counting heads.

 

[seamanmonkey]

Some people get more taken in by propaganda and marketing, in other ways they're brain is fine

 

[dpantski]

This is the definition of intelligence for this thread

1. the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

Of course this assumes Happy is referring to things such as IQ, common sense etc rather than the alternative meanings (this seems like a safe assumption)

People are all different and their skills and abilities vary considerably. A simple example is myself, I'm very good at Maths, above average when it comes to language and literature but average or sometimes below average when it comes to scientific knowledge. I think the best way to assess average intelligence is to take some time really analysing a persons strengths and weaknesses in what they know and averaging that out. Obviously the more intelligent you are, the higher you'll likely set the bar for being average since everyone generally assumes that their knowledge is normal and form their opinions based off whether the other person is better at or worst than them at certain things.

I'd also have to ask Happy what average you mean? Is it the average number of IQ or the most commonly occurring IQ? I haven't done any research on this but what I consider pure average (the mean) takes into account both extremes of the spectrum and if there's twice as many people at the lower end than there are at the top end then what do you consider average? To get along in an everyday normal adult life you need to be able to handle expenses, take responsibility, make decisions, drive a vehicle and so on and so forth. All these things require knowledge and thinking so the average working adult's IQ would I imagine be higher than the global average.

 

[Rey C.]

People think about Intelligence as an ending. Truth is it's just a mean.
Just like a Porsche without gas won't drive you anywhere, a person with a very high IQ but very poor knowledge won't do any good.
An 80 IQ person who reads a lot, who's curious about things like Science or History, goes to museums, art exhibitions, theatre, etc. will most probably do more good than a person with a IQ of 130 who would spend most of his time watching real-TV shows and playing GTA or Call of Duty

Hmm, interesting twist. :hatsoff: