What can we Learn about a person from a question they pose?
When people submit questions for inclusion on the Quora site: Intelligence & IQ, the first question I ask myself is, “Is this something that would be of interest to a large number of our followers?”; if so I’ll search for an answer already posted by someone with knowledge in that particular area and share that answer. If I have some level of expertise in that area, I’ll post my own answer.
The quality of the question posed often reflects the age, level of education, and to some extent, a hint of the person’s intelligence. A question such as, “How smart would be a person with an IQ of 600?” suggests that the person posing the question doesn’t understand the limits of IQ as a measure of intelligence or the fact that any answer would be purely speculative and of little value to most people.
By contrast, a question such as, “Is there a correlation between IQ and wealth?” is one that is of interest to a large number of people, and can be answered with some degree of accuracy based on current research. The first question presented above seems naive, and might have been posed by an intelligent young person who knows little about IQ. The poser of the second question, in asking about a correlation between IQ and wealth appears to have an understanding of the concept of correlation and has framed the question in a precise way. A person with a less-schooled mind might have asked, “Are smart people wealthy?” or “Are wealthy people smarter than the rest of us?”
What can we Learn about a person from an answer they give to a question?
Answers usually reveal much more about a person’s education and intelligence than questions. The quality of the argumentation in a response is perhaps the most important measure of a person’s educational background and IQ. A well-reasoned, logically connected sequence of statements, leading to a conclusion and supported by research, usually signals someone of superior intelligence. Often such answers come from people with expertise in a particular field.
One of the most telling signs of lower intelligence is evident in answers that manifest as an emotional rant, supported by many questionable assumptions, sometimes containing one or more non sequiturs. For example, a statement such as, “The government should tax away the money that the super rich are using for their space toys and use this money to feed the starving people in the world,” reveals a simplistic view of wealth as a fixed pie, linking one person’s wealth to another’s poverty. Such a statement may indicate noble intent, but also reveals a high level of naiveté in economic principles.
Poor grammar and articulation are red flags, suggesting that the person has an untrained mind, although special allowance must be made in cases where English is not the person’s first language. In the play Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw made the point that people in England were judged by their dialect. In the print mode, differences in education are most evident in the clarity of the articulation and the structure of the sentences. Of course, there are brilliant people who may not articulate well for a variety of different reasons, and so these judgments have to be considered a “first approximation.”
An example of a well-reasoned and fully documented answer by Shalom Dickson was provided in yesterday’s post on the Quora site Intelligence and IQ. Responding to the question, “Who is the most creative mathematician ever?” Dickson, who resides in Lagos, Nigeria provided research to support his opinion that Nash and Ramanujan were the most creative mathematicians of all time. Although others might choose different mathematicians, Dickson makes a strong case and articulates clearly, enabling others to agree or challenge his judgments. He is obviously an intelligent person.
Judging someone’s level of education or intelligence from a question they pose or an answer they provide is like judging a person on a first meeting. Our first impression is often correct, but it’s incorrect often enough to regard it only as a first approximation that requires further confirmation.
