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Comment by flocciput | Hacker News Reader

I was just thinking recently about how much I hate the imposition of time limits on things like this! Although I'm not super interested in figuring out my own or others' IQ, these are a fun set of questions to mull over.

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I have always disliked any kind of speed tests, because that parameter becomes the trivial and over-ruling influence on the outcome ... knee-jerk versus mulling. It discriminates against multiple sub-populations, e.g. the very learned, the aged, the ill, and those who hadn't enjoyed a good night's sleep.

I sympathize because I tend to be a slow thinker as well in some ways, but really, how fast one can solve a problem is a feature of how intelligent one is, and bad sleep or illness does decrease one’s ability to think intelligently (and not just in terms of speed).

Eh, if one person takes 10 min to solve a problem that takes another person 10 hours, we would usually say the faster individual is more intelligent.

Speed is just one dimension of intelligence, no?

Who's more intelligent, person A that would score 80% on a test given 30 minutes, and 85% given 60 minutes; or person B that would score 50% given 30 minutes, but 99% given 60 minutes?

Person A might be perceived as quick, have an accurate intuition, and able to come up with a lot of ideas. Person B on the other hand is of the slow and steady kind that will methodically and tirelessly work on a problem until it's solved.

I think this is getting close to the idea of liquid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. The scary thing about valuing the liquid kind is that it’s the one that shrinks with age. Crystallized intelligence grows with age.

Working memory size, processing speed, fluid intelligence (novel problem solving / creativity), and crystallized intelligence (knowledge), are are all different components of intelligence that are pairwise not perfectly correlated.

Some person A can solve problem X in 1 minute and problem Y in 1 hour, while some person B can solve both in 10 minutes, even with the same crystalized intelligence.

Or person C, who knows when to rely on A's speed or B's depth.

Not necessarily. If the problem was solved more easily if one possessed some specific amount of crystallized intelligence, one could say the "tardy" person turns out to have superior fluid intelligence.

The trick given this rule is to simply decline to solve any problems. Keep your solve time at zero and laugh at the ten minute rubes

Only if there is only one solution.

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