How intelligent is the average IQ test designer?

by Dann Simonsen

This article is an adaptation from a Danish article published in the on-line magazine Para-nyt (Para News), the website of the Danish skeptics. It was mainly inspired by the controversy surrounding the Danish IQ psychologist Helmuth Nyborg, an admirer of Jensen, Herrnstein and Murray. Every two or three years Nyborg appears in the Danish media with his sensational ideas, only to disappear again and be forgotten. Many of the quotations in the article were taken from interviews with Helmuth Nyborg in newspapers or on TV. You can look him up in the Danish version of Wikipedia. The Wiki article, however, appears to be written by fans.

Skeptics have a lot of experience with theories of things that do not exist in the real world. When we write about astrology and clairvoyance, we are dealing with people who fervently wish and believe that their favourite fantasies actually exist in the real world. They don’t want to face the facts of this world without the respective mitigating (albeit imaginary) qualities that these fantasies offer them. They may be encumbered with the flaw that they do not exist in the real world, but they have the advantage of letting the world appear to be a much safer place to live.

The superstitious may also go the other way and invent various grotesque conspiracies to explain (away) why the real world is not the jolly place it ought to be. The delusions that skeptics usually concern themselves with may be the focus of media attention since there are many people who either actually believe in or at least enjoy to read or watch TV shows about various paranormal phenomena or their practitioners. Very few of these ideas enjoy the favour of the state, but their believers enjoy the freedom of religion of modern democracy. Their need to indulge in weird beliefs is recognized and allowed, but – except for the national church in some countries – astrologers and clairvoyants are left to fend for themselves and their fantasies, as a niche in the sector of therapy and massage for the bodies and minds of distressed creatures in modern society.

However, some of the themes that skeptics are engaged in are very different from this pattern. A few years ago when Dr. Stanley Pons and professor Martin Fleischman thought that they had discovered cold fusion, the phenomenon turned out to have as little to do with the real world as the afterlife and the allegedly strange influence of constellations of stars on the fate of mankind, although Pons and Fleischman were research scientists who were indeed favoured with the positive attention of the state. In the sciences, however, failures like these do not usually survive for long. Other researchers debunk the wishful thinking of their colleagues as the figments of overwrought imagination that they are.

That is not the case in the fields of the social sciences and the humanities. As recognized university research their practitioners benefit from the freedom of science.1 Like the sciences of nature they are subsidized by the state, and the arguments and products that we investigate in this article enjoy an honour, which is not to be taken for granted in the humanities: to be used in practice by both the state and private enterprise. This field of research may be illusory and its object as non-existent as Pluto’s influence on people’s choice of partners: Its products still have a very real effect on people’s lives.

What is an IQ test?

When we are talking about the most tangible results of this discipline, they may look like this:

a) “2 6 4 5 15 13 14 ___” 2

A more simple exercise might look like this:

b) 2 5 9 14 20 _?_

If you were able to read as far as this, I am fairly sure that you are also endowed with enough brains to be able to figure out that the missing number in exercise b) is 27, since 3 is added to 2 to produce the number 5; 4 is added to 5 to make 9; 5 is added to 9 to get 14 etc., i.e. that the difference between one number and the next increases by 1 each time.

These exercises can be made slightly more difficult, for instance, by doubling the number that is being added each time:

c) 2 3 5 9 17 _?_ (= 33)

Finally it is possible to make more than one kind of operation from number to number. For instance, you may switch between three different ones and then repeat the procedure:

d) 5 7 14 11 13 26 23 _?_ (= 25)

First you add 2, then multiply by 2, subtract 3, and then you repeat the three-step procedure.

So the challenge is very simple: Figure out which procedure was used by the test designer in each case. And like in crossword puzzles the rule also applies in IQ tests: The more tests you have already done, the easier they get. 3

Like in all other similar exercises – consider crossword puzzles again – some people are good at this and some are not. Some people learn fast, others take a little longer.

Big deal, you may think: If people find these exercises entertaining, why not let them enjoy themselves?! There are even people who pay for crossword magazines out of their own pockets, so why not?

The science of IQ

But wait at minute!!! This is not just for fun! This is serious science! Psychology and behavioural science, if you please! This is not simply a question of people who do crossword puzzles and sums to entertain themselves. We are dealing with an alleged measurable power that displays itself in members of the human race.

This is a very childish notion: It is clear to everybody that if you solve a crossword puzzle, then you must also have the ability to do so. But the reverse conclusion is rather inane. If you do not solve it, it does not follow that you cannot solve it at all, in the sense that you completely and utterly lack the natural prerequisites for doing so. It just means that you did not solve it yet. So if you learn the principles of crossword puzzles – and maybe some foreign words and the names of a couple of ancient Norse and Greek gods – you will probably be able to solve them the next time.

It is similar to the number-based exercises that we already looked at: As soon as you understand the principle/s behind them, it gets extremely easy to do this kind of ‘mental gymnastics’.4 However, if you do not understand the principles and if you also are not able to figure them out when you see them, the exercises cannot be solved until you acquire the necessary knowledge. For instance you will not be able to do exercise b) if you are not familiar with addition, and a) and d) require the understanding of multiplication and subtraction.

This also explains both the phenomenon that “all over the world intelligence grows by three points every decade”5 and the alleged racial differences which some IQ fans point to with a certain glee: If you say that the average IQ score of white Americans is 100, “the IQ of black Americans is 85”, and “you (!) almost (!) dare (!) not mention it, but black people in Africa have an IQ of 70”.6

In other words: When the exercises in an IQ test are hardly distinguishable from exercises in schools and are also the kind of exercises that you almost automatically must get better at solving when you learn to ma

ster the disciplines taught at school, it is no wonder that extended school attendance leads to a higher “IQ score” and that the lack of schooling leads to a score at the level of the mentally retarded. This is a fact that the IQ theorists do not really like: They are not only very well aware of the fact that you can easily improve your faculties for solving IQ tests and thus gain a higher score, it is also common knowledge to them that the average population in industrial countries with regular schooling, as already mentioned, has become no less than 30 percent better at filling out IQ tests in the course of the 20th century. And still Helmuth Nyborg and his colleagues claim that there are “no known ways of improving intelligence.” 7

The IQ theory’s contradiction in terms

But on the other hand you should not even be allowed to change your “IQ”, and therefore the 30-percent increase is seen as an “empty effect”, “without any practical value”8 or as just “a kind of blur in the methods of measurement because in time people learn (!) the principles (!) of the various tests.” 9

And that is a contradiction in terms – one which Nyborg et al. are not very keen to announce. When you learn the principles behind IQ tests, you get better at doing them (no surprise, really), and therefore your score, i.e. your IQ, rises, but it should not rise since it is supposed to be a natural constant – in the opinion of the IQ proponents. Nyborg will not allow people to have higher IQs, and therefore he ends up disproving himself when he tries to explain away the ‘measured’ rise: The tendency of the IQ to rise is not caused by people’s increasing intelligence, but by the fact that they have learned how to do the exercises which, in the opinion of Nyborg et al., is a form of cheating – Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s IQ, nor improve upon thine own! – and therefore the measured increase is declared nil and void!

Let us repeat the argument so far:

IQ tests allegedly measure people’s intelligence, but people who know – not the specific exercises, but – the principles that they are based on get better at doing them and therefore achieve higher IQ scores. According to Helmuth Nyborg, however, there are “no known ways of improving intelligence”, but the IQ scores refuse to obey this law of nature and continue to rise, and therefore IQ tests do not measure people’s intelligence after all, but are blurred, empty, of no value etc., which, of course, they cannot be since the advocates of IQ would then have to give up their stupid tests and their entire discipline, which, however, they cling to, and therefore … (go back to 1) and start again)

Naturally the advocates of IQ do not make a great fuss about this contradiction. They probably would not even mention it if it were not for the reason that they are confronted with the decennial three-percent rise in IQ whenever they face a professional opponent. This situation is extremely embarrassing to Nyborg, who happens to be an admirer of the science of nature and would like to achieve the same honour and recognition.10

Imagine a meteorologist in a similar dilemma: On the one hand he claims that his thermometers measure the actual temperatures. On the other hand he is convinced that, in general, it cannot get any hotter: To him heat is a constant! However, now his thermometers tell him that the temperatures in general are rising, a fact which he refuses to accept. Therefore he claims that the generally rising measurements (which he cannot deny) are only “a kind of blur in the methods of measurement”. When the thermometers show rising degrees of temperature, it is not because it is getting warmer. The temperature just happens to be rising!!!

Why are the IQ advocates so dull?

Helmuth Nyborg wants to prove the existence of an alleged inherent, innate factor “g”, “general intelligence”, which, almost by definition, is natural and unalterable. His particular kind of dullwittedness therefore is not a defect of nature and in his case nurture also cannot be blamed – at least not directly. Nyborg is not endowed with some kind of very poor “g” preventing him from seeing what ordinary mortals do not need to strain their brains too much to grasp. He is dull by design which is an entirely different matter. Since they have an axe to grind, he and his colleagues would like to forbid the “IQ” to be as unstable and easily influenced by education as it actually is: They want to present the societal hierarchization of one generation after the other as the outcome of the natural qualifications of each individual.11

It is common knowledge that the school and educational system in the Western world revolves around selection: The best performing pupils/students get the opportunity to move on to the next level in the hierarchy of education, whereas the students who do not perform as well are deprived of this opportunity. And it is also no secret that the higher rungs in the hierarchy of education lead to the better paid rungs in the hierarchy of jobs. No wonder that “countless studies show that the g scores of school children (i.e. their IQ-test results. DS) can rather accurately predict how much they will earn 30 years later.” 12

But Nyborg et al. are masters at reversing cause and effect when they interpret the connection between their measurements of IQ and the success of individuals.

“g” as a social dogma

As mentioned above the IQ theories are based on the idea of a general intelligence. They think that they have discovered an actually existing natural power g by having test subjects do exercises pertaining to, for instance, language, logic/math, three-dimensional orientation and music. Since people who are good at one kind of exercise tend to be good at the others as well, but for instance not at motor coordination – like dancing or skiing – Nyborg and his ilk have decided that this “correlation” must be due to an actual power, g.

Richard Lewontin, leading geneticist and critic of ideologies in science, has called this procedure “reification“: Based only on what they want to believe, they arrive at the notion that when people do not do things equally well, it must be due to the existence of a kind of substance that some people are endowed with in plenty, whereas others received less than their fair share at birth. This assertion is as reliable as if they had claimed “as proof of the existence of God that he is mentioned in all the books of the Bible.” 13

In agreement with their invention of g, the IQ theorists do social studies. To the question – “But does it (the theory of IQ) not simply contribute to creating a class society (divided into) the smart and the dumb?” Nyborg answers – “No, it is a misunderstanding that if you talk about it, then you create a class society. We already have the class society. What most people do not know is that it is divided according to intelligence, so whether we talk about it or not, it (!) works in practice.”14

In other words: The existence of underpaid road sweepers and surgeons in millionaire mansions, long-term unemployed receiving cash benefits and ministers of science and education with various extra earnings is proof that IQ is at work. Without the difference in IQ we would all belong to the same class. But the differences are an irreparable fact of nature and therefore necessitate the hierarchy of professions. As mentioned above intelligence differs from learning since it cannot be taught:

“If you are not very intelligent, we do not know of any way to repair (!) it today.”

Here silicone implants, braces or remedial teaching cannot help you correct real or imaginary deficiencies! According to Helmuth Nyborg’s ideas our hereditary “IQ” “works” in a way so that the rest of our lives from school to careers “in practice” are hereditary.

So the interest in IQ is the interest in inventing differences between people – natural differences – to justify the actual differences which, in the real world, are created by other, very unnatural institutions. IQ is meant to be both an instrument of selection and the justification of the same selection. For that purpose, what counts are the allegedly unalterable differences between the individuals and not the progress that the same individuals must be making when the IQ of an entire ethnic group rises.

The interest in selection is very different from the interest in making people smarter, in educating them. It is the exact opposite intention. Therefore it only has practical value when restricted admission excludes some people from education beyond basic school and the IQ psychologists are able to tell them that this is not simply due to a decision made by the state: It admits some people, but excludes others from education. According to the IQ advocates the selection and the hierarchization of the system of education is not simply a decision made by the state. As established by the science of IQ it is caused by nature, by objective reality: The natural potential of the individuals is responsible, when some people are not admitted to college. It simply means that nature has asserted itself. “Unfortunately” their genes did not endow them with the necessary IQ score and consequently the grades required for the education they desired.

The same argument is used to explain the hierarchy of jobs: Employers only want to hire (and pay) the very best of manpower (when they are able to pick and choose) and may therefore screen out smokers, the obese, the bald,15 women, blacks, Muslims, the hard-of-hearing, the visually impaired, the middle-aged, or people born in the sign of Pisces.16 However, a (sometimes) politically correct public denounces instances like these as discrimination, but it is not considered to be discrimination if you screen out allegedly less bright applicants. That is in the pure self-interest of the companies and consequently not discrimination. Therefore IQ tests have become very popular when vacancies are to be filled, and indeed there is no reason to believe that IQ psychologists (or psychometricians) are less efficient than business astrologers in the screening process. The use of IQ tests by personnel managers also have the marvellous effect that the IQ theories become self-fulfilling prophecies when they procure the outcome predicted by their own forecasts: ‘His IQ is too low, he’ll never get a steady job, isn’t that what we always said?!’

However that does not mean that people with less than ultimate IQ scores are too stupid to fill out the positions that they do not get. If there are 100 applicants for 10 jobs, 90 are bound to be rejected – whatever their qualifications are, g score included!

Unfortunately nobody wants to eliminate the underlying problem: The free and equal labour market guarantees that some people get the job and others do not, which is why they are reduced to receiving cash benefits. The critics of the prevailing selection may complain a little about the inequality of it all: that too many women or applicants “of other ethnicities” are weeded out. That positions should be filled to reflect demographic (and why exclude astrological?) population averages, however, is a submissive (and very stupid!) ideal which is incompatible with competitive society – both before and after the “globalization”. Being screened out on the basis of a strict, politically correct principle is not very useful to the unemployed anyway … and regrettably nobody seems to be interested in eliminating the market economy.

And even Helmuth Nyborg pities the poor devils who never get jobs and incomes because working at a lathe now requires computer skills, which an insufficient IQ-score in his opinion prevents a large part of humanity from learning. However, when he thinks that “it seems unfair, undemocratic”, he is deliberately disregarding that neither evolution nor the size of your IQ renders it impossible to eliminate unemployment. When you have to compete with others to qualify for (further) education, some people must be winners and some must be losers – not because they cannot comprehend the necessary learning, not because the lessons are beyond them, but because society does not find it profitable to spend what is necessary to educate them. And old lathes are replaced by CAD/CAM because high-tech tools like these pay for themselves (and then some) by making manpower (= wages) redundant, which is why it is not profitable to educate more than a few of the workers rendered superfluous by the new machines.

Or, expressed in words that even Nyborg cannot misunderstand: The superfluous people are the ‘Neanderthals’ of neither evolution nor nature, but of the market economy. As such they serve a useful purpose for society: as a warning to the rest of us who have to try a little harder so that we will not be next in line for the redundancy notice.

Thus the IQ critique in this article actually is without any practical value whatsoever and the IQ tests are very practical.17 They may be nothing but ideology, but as such they present the victims of society in a very flattering light – flattering to society, that is. They are not the victims of society, they fall prey to their own deficient nature.

A high IQ, on the other hand, is no guarantee against ordinary stupidity! Consequently the following intelligence test does not intend to either test or increase your IQ, and you cannot win anything by taking it. However, you cannot completely rule out the risk that it may make you a little smarter.

An Alternative Intelligence Test

1. Question: What is it in the real world that prevents some people from doing well in the educational system, whereas for instance Helmuth Nyborg may go on to become a professor of developmental psychology?

2.a Why are grades so indispensable in school?

2.b On the other hand: Why can driving tests be decided after the pass/fail principle? Does everybody with a drivers license drive equally well? If not, why don’t we have particular lanes for inferior drivers?

2.c Why is deficient learning in school not a reason to teach the students what they missed, so they can take the education that they want? Why is it a reason to deprive them of the opportunity to study?

2.d Why aren’t students with low grades allowed to raise their grade average by repeating a couple of the exams so they can get the education that the restricted admission prevents them from getting?

3. Kevin Langdon, a member of Mensa, the society for high-IQ dimwits, designed a test to find people with a higher IQ than 99.997 percent of the population (or approximately 1 in 30.000), because he wanted to “meet women that he did not have to talk down to”.

Question: What is wrong with Kevin? (The answer ‘His membership of Mensa’ is not actually wrong, but it is not the answer that we are looking for in this context.)

4. As you already know Helmuth Nyborg is a professor in Århus. He has noticed a change taking place in the behaviour of students since the 1960s:

“‘ The department (of psychology) now has students who are a little more well-behaved. They approach us with a more polite and patient attitude. They used to go for us in a much more direct way.’

He thinks that it can be attributed to the entry requirements to psychology being higher. This year a grade average of 9.6 was required, but it used to be as much as 9,8.”

Question: What is the connection between grade average and politeness?

5. When Nyborg talks about “man as … a system whose ontogenetic intrasystematic structure and function is based on interaction between DNA molecules (nature) and molecularly defined extra systematic pressures from the environment (nurture)”, he appears to think that influence received by humans are of a physiological nature only, i.e. that for instance the words in his own invitation for a lecture influence the readers in the capacity of the molecules that make out both the words and the readers and not due to the ideas expressed through the words, because people – like everything else – “are beyond meaning, logic, morals, intention, desire and other synaptically (!) based philosophical-mentalistic-linguistic illusions.”

Question: Does he actually believe that? Additional question a): If he does believe his own words, why does he indulge in the illusion that he has intentions of presenting arguments for his ideas, instead of simply taking it easy and leaving it to the synapses to fire at will as they see fit to do? Additional question b): Can you blame Nyborg’s “nature” or “nurture” for his way of thinking? Additional question c): Is there any kind of stupidity that we as human beings are able to make and correct without having to resort to some natural or social version of fatalism?

6. Nyborg and Caucasian males tend to have a really big one which started to outgrow the ot

hers’ when they were about 12-13 years old. It is much bigger than the one that negroes can show off – not to mention the women who are inferior in this discipline, too.

Question: What exactly are we talking about?

Footnotes

Quotations and background

Freerk Huisken: Forskningsfrihed (Bremen Universität 1999)

Freerk Huisken: Hjernen determinerer psyken: fejl, funktion, følger.

Freerk Huisken: Gymnasiemassakren i Erfurt (Social Kritik 81/2002)

Freerk Huisken: Afsnittet Opdragelse og individ fra Erziehung im Kapitalismus , (VSA-Verlag, 1998)

Kevin Langdon: The World’s Hardest IQ Test (Omni, April 1979)

Richard Lewontin: The Inferiority Complex (1981/2000), article in the book: It Ain’t Necessarily So (Granta, 2000)

Helmuth Nyborg: 19-direkte, (DR-TV 1, 09.01.2002)

Helmuth Nyborg: from Fynbos Klumme 27/5/99

Helmuth Nyborg: Lecture about IQ, Anatomisk Institut, arrangered by Dansk Human-Etologisk Forening (København 22.05.2001)

Marie Bering Pedersen: Professoren: “Bryd professorvældet!”

Politikens bog om det alternative : en håndbog om mystik og videnskab. (Politiken 2002)

de Séréville/Myers: Nøglen til succes i alle IQ-tester (Bonniers 1994)

Dann Simonsen: IQ – den demokratisk lutrede racisme (Social Kritik 72/2001)

Hvad er intelligent?

Nils Thorsen: Hovedernes kamp, Politiken 12.1.2002

Mogens Winther: Astrologi – vildfarelse eller videnskab? From the book Bedst af alle verdener (Fremad, 2000) (Para-nyt 5/2000)

Mogens Winther: Helbredelse ved forbøn (Para-nyt 5/2002)

