IQ tests are ok, but I always feel awkward about them. I'm not that curious to know because I don't believe we can really put a number on how we think. I went with a group of friends and I took one about 6 years ago; I scored 135. Which is apparently good. I was constantly questioning what it measured against (how is that defined).
I took another one early last year and I got 144. That just goes to show that these numbers are generally arbitrary and don't mean much. If anything it's just a measurement of how well you can gather information, process it, and respond to it. I can assure you I am not that smart, at least I don't believe it.
In the end it doesn't matter how smart or how strong you are, it is how adaptable you are that counts. Right?
Xessive: IQ is certainly an incomplete measure of intelligence. There is no doubt about that. Also, you're right in pointing out that attaching a single number to a person's intelligence is far too simplistic to be meaningful. Also, there is an important difference between a person's performance on a single test, and that person's long-term competence, since even something as apparently trivial as eating a candy bar before an IQ test can cause statistically significant variation in performance.
To clarify, IQ typically measures efficiency and speed of processing, working memory capacity, etc. These are some of the aspects of what many people call our System 2 cognitive processes: those cognitive abilities that are language-like, sequential, rule-based, slow, complex, and linear. System 2 is also referred to as the "cool" system, or the "know" system. IQ tests typically don't do a great job of measuring differences in System 1 performance: the "hot" system, or "go" system, as some like to call it. It has much more to do with parallel distributed processing, real-time adaptation to problems, and diffuse, intuitive, fast, simple, emotion-informed, perception-like pattern recognition. A person can have a well-developed System 1 without necessarily having a well-developed System 2, or vice versa.
The reason why only these simple System 2 measures are used in is because we are *able* to determine them in a somewhat objective way. That's mostly because it's easier to pick apart something linear, such as language, as opposed to something non-linear, like an image or proprioceptive feedback. This helps make clear the specific *way* that IQ tests are incomplete. By ignoring all those aspects of human cognition that scientists have not yet been able to correlate with reliable, observable measurements in either behaviour or localized neuronal activity, proponents of IQ tests suggest (either explicitly, or simply mistakenly or carelessly) that those measures provide an exhaustive account of individual differences in intelligence. They don't, and Cognitive Scientists that aren't behaviourists like B. F. Skinner (i.e. most of us) think that this kind of presumption is nothing short of friggin' retarded. However, as anyone that has studied long-term memory consolidation will be happy to point out, changing the opinions of the scientific establishment does become increasingly difficult (and therefore takes longer to accomplish) as its average age increases.
It is becoming increasingly clear to a lot of younger Cognitive Scientists, however, that concepts such as knowledge and intelligence have been confounded, obfuscated, and mis-analyzed over the past century of shock-the-rat-style behaviourism. The areas of expertise that I am currently familiarizing myself with include intelligence, expertise, insight, problem solving, and wisdom. So far, my review of scientific, philosophical, and folk (i.e. religious and non-theistic traditional) discussions on these topics paint a very disjoint picture of their respective concepts. Many philosophical discussions about thinking and thought processes are largely neuroscientifically implausible, whereas just as many psychological theories on the very same topics are quite arrogantly philosophically uninformed, to the point of being outright fallacious. Yet somehow, contemporary scholars in their respective fields seem to remain comfortably insular and well-funded.
Although I still haven't finished my term essay on the many, many problems with IBM Yale psychologist Robert J. Sternberg's "balance theory of wisdom", one thing I can say is that your comment about adaptiveness suggests that you're on the right track. As a brief, inchoate suggestion, the three main categories of cognitive attributes that differ from person to person and appear not to be reducible to each other might be knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom. To be knowledgeable, smart, and wise are three very different things. Although it is certainly true that each of these aspects do help the other two out in major ways, it does not seem to be the case that, for example, wisdom is simply a specialized kind of knowledge, or that intelligence itself can be improved by acquiring more knowledge.
Time to grab a bite to eat before my Theoretical Psychology class: remember, kids... low glucose levels have been correlated with ego depletion and reduction of ability to self-regulate.
More talk on thought to follow soon.
