The original IQ test is most certainly bunk (what wasn’t back then?), but modern tests (at least the one i took, which i think was WAIS-IV) seem fine so long as you don’t start reading a bunch of other extrapolations into them.

Nowadays it’s not just a single number, because “intelligence” isn’t a single thing. For example my total score is like 120, but i have dogshit working memory (80 i think?), so that quickly summarizes that i’m good at things like pattern recognition and understanding language, and i’m fast at it, but i clearly need help with remembering new things.

I’m sure it’s far from perfect still, but i feel like a lot of the complaints people have about IQ tests is because the name is bad. It shouldn’t be called “intelligence quota”, but rather something like “cognitive performance index” so people don’t treat it as something grander than it is.

It’s the brain equivalent of measuring how much you can lift and squat, how fast you can run 100m, how fast you can run a marathon, and how high you can jump, comparing that against how everyone else performs, and then averaging out the scores and acting like it’s an accurate measurement of how healthy you are… If you just actually look at the individual scores it’s obviously a reasonably useful measurement, but at the same time it obviously doesn’t have anything to do with your value as a person.

Intelligence is not something that can be quantified in any way whatsoever, and I would consider any IQ test to be fully arbitrary—so the answer is yes. I’m sure there’s some problem solving component.

If you ever want evidence of IQ being bullshit, I have a super genius IQ. It’s like 666 standard deviations above the mean. Talk to anyone who has ever talked to me and they will very quickly disagree! 😂