Validity of verbal IQ tests

[Kriminal99]

I realized something when looking at the IQ correlations of GRE scores.

I noticed that a verbal score supposedly correlated with a higher IQ than it would if it were the same number math score.

It implies that extreme verbal skills are rarer than extreme math skills, and that this rareness implies greater associated intelligence.

However what if there is a negative correlation between intelligence and verbal scores beyond a certain level.

In other words, what if people who are intelligent realize that metaphorical reasoning is not useful in gathering information and reject it. Perhaps a person with a higher verbal score practices the art of persuasion, but truly intelligent people practice the art of COMMUNICATION and reject using metaphors to convince someone of something that may not be true.

[Thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

I realized something when looking at the IQ correlations of GRE scores.

I noticed that a verbal score supposedly correlated with a higher IQ than it would if it were the same number math score.

It implies that extreme verbal skills are rarer than extreme math skills, and that this rareness implies greater associated intelligence.

However what if there is a negative correlation between intelligence and verbal scores beyond a certain level.

In other words, what if people who are intelligent realize that metaphorical reasoning is not useful in gathering information and reject it. Perhaps a person with a higher verbal score practices the art of persuasion, but truly intelligent people practice the art of COMMUNICATION and reject using metaphors to convince someone of something that may not be true.

The metaphorical can be a great device at getting to truth also, mythology may be historically false, butat certain levels metaphorically true.

[Kriminal99]

I agree that metaphors can be used to open someone's mind to something they previously thought ridiculous, or suggest a possible explanation to us for something that we have trouble understanding.

But suggest is the key word here. Only through evaluating the specific properties of things and their logical implications can we determine these things for sure.

People who become more concerned with the way things really are than with the way things could be may very well forsake skills related to the use of metaphors in convincing people of things.

In the end the metaphor allows us to support any argument and it's mutually exclusive opposite at the same time. Not the same metaphor, but as way of arguing in general metaphors allow this. Logical arguments however, when used properly, can only ever support one argument based on the given information.