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“Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.” — Charles Addams
Intelligence Quotient
IQ is a measure of a person’s mental ability to perform functions considered valuable. The metric was created at a time when eugenics was on the rise, and people were being ranked according to their race, age, gender, and cultural background.
In the early 20th century psychological semi-sciences were being applied to education and social engineering. The goal was to identify people most likely to outperform in a modern, Western society. IQ is useful in predicting how a person will perform on tests administered in schools.
IQ is not so much measured by IQ tests as it is defined by them. These tests do measure something. A person’s IQ is stable over time as long as they don’t try to improve their skills on these tests, but the tests are neither comprehensive nor intrinsic. You can improve your IQ score with training.
Those people who do the best on IQ tests are those people who think linearly, which is like the questions on the tests, and who respond receptively to being told they need to answer questions. The questions on IQ tests are narrow-minded and specifically focus on circumscribed, deductive thinking.
Creative people perform below what is expected of them because they are inclined to think differently, which means they distort the questions they’re asked. People rarely value another person’s distortion of their questions.