Notes

Now, then, we come to the matter of intelligence-testing, the determination of the
“intelligence quotient” or “IQ.”
If, as I maintain and firmly believe, there is no objective definition of intelligence, and what
we call intelligence is only a creation of cultural fashion and subjective prejudice, what the
devil is it we test when we make use of an intelligence test?
I hate to knock the intelligence test, because I am a beneficiary of it. I routinely end up on
the far side of 160 when I am tested and even then I am invariably underestimated because
it almost always takes me less time to do a test than the time allotted.
In fact, out of curiosity, I got a paperback book containing a sizable number of different
tests designed to measure one’s IQ. Each test had a half-hour time limit. I worked on each
one as honestly as I could, answering some questions instantly, some after a bit of thought,
some by guesswork, and some not at all. – And naturally, I got some answers wrong.
When I was done, I worked out the results according to directions and it turned out I had
an IQ of 135. – But wait! I had not accepted the half-hour limit offered me, but broke off
each section of the test at the fifteen-minute mark and went on to the rest. I therefore
doubled the score and decided I have an IQ of 270. (I’m sure that the doubling is unjustified,
but the figure of 270 pleases my sense of cheerful self-appreciation, so I intend to insist on
it.)
But however much all this soothes my vanity, and however much I appreciate being vicepresident
of Mensa, an organization which bases admission to its membership on IQ, I
must, in all honesty, maintain that it means nothing.
What, after all, does such an intelligence test measure but those skills that are associated
with intelligence by the individuals designing the test? And those individuals are subject to
the cultural pressures and prejudices that force a subjective definition of intelligence.
Thus, important parts of any intelligence test measure the size of one’s vocabulary, but the
words one must define are just those words one is apt to find in reading approved works of
literature. No one asks for the definition of “two-bagger” or “snake eyes” or “riff,” for the
simple reason that those who design the tests don’t know these terms or are rather
ashamed of themselves if they do.
This is similarly true of tests of mathematical knowledge, of logic, of shape-visualization,
and of all the rest. You are tested in what is culturally fashionable – in what educated men
consider to be the criteria of intelligence – i.e., of minds like their own.