How do you test a person's IQ over 160?

Answer 1

The answer: you don't. Not accurately. Anything over about 130-140 begins to depend so much on the particular test that the scores become meaningless as applied to comparison with people who have not taken that particular test. That negates the whole point, since relative intelligence has to be measured against something else.

Intelligence tests try to measure the way creatures use their minds to aid their interactions with the world around them. A bushman from the !Kung people of the Kalahari would unquestionably score very poorly on a test crafted for well-educated white Americans yet, in his own environment, he might be at the top of the heap. IQ tests, by their nature, tend to be environment-specific since all but the simplest require literacy, and most are far more specific than that.

There are a variety of tests that purport to test high levels of intelligence on an accurate scale. Although well thought of by those who devised them, they are theoretical at best. When measuring intelligence, a point is reached where a person is simply highly intelligent, and that's pretty much that.

Put very simply, IQ tests are not especially useful except as accurate predictors of the ability to cope with IQ tests. Even with a high IQ, the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. The ability to cope is highly relative, as well. The writer is a case in point: he scored in the top 1% and top .5% of the population on two tests taken on the same day, yet went out that night and got drunk. Hello?