The concept of the g factor (IQ) is the very ability to solve very general problems. It strongly correlates with socioeconomic outcomes such as job, educational attainment, but also morbidity and morality. It strongly correlates with talents, creativity and memory abilities.
When you can put only two things in your head simultaneously you won’t be a mathematician, engineer and so on (and the real geniuses can put, for example, 100 things in their head simultaneously while working with them). Your short-term and working memory (these two do overlap) have some limits. So either you have to be really quick to resolve the problem until the things disappear from the mentioned memories or your memories must be very long. It same goes with logic, it’s not some random logic, it is logic measured by factor analysis.
The g factor is distributed by Gaussian curve and as with every Gaussian curve, it has its extremes of the extremes. Thus, people with IQs of 160 and 180 are the leaders of research and further development.
But no! The IQ is outdated so we have Howard Gardner’s Theory of multiple intelligences. While the “g factor” is something statistical and vague, but multiple intelligences?
Not only that is doesn’t suit the definition of intelligence, but something statistically significant arises among his proposed “intelligences”- and it is the “g factor”.
1. Visual-spatial (a part of IQ))
2. Linguistic-verbal (Verbal IQ)
3. Logical-mathematical (What kind of logic does he mean? G factor logic is the true logic))
4. Body-kinesthetic (has no attributes of intelligence)
5. Musical (it is not intelligence, but rather a talent)
6. Interpersonal (nothing to do with intelligence)
7. Intrapersonal (nothing to do with intelligence)
8. Naturalistic (am I dreaming?)
The issue is that IQ can be analyzed by neuroscience. Something like Flynn’s effects has appeared. As a true pseudoscience, the proposed intelligences have no evidence backing it, have no proven peak (unlike IQ), no proven decrease (if the disgraced scholar even proposed any decline), no female-male differences, no validity, no relationships to academic achievement, occupational success, prediction of job performance, no nurture vs. nature, sporadic correlations, no scales, minority exclusion, little or no functional administration, no pathology (brain damage, autism, mental retardation, alcoholism, psychiatric disorders, dementia). And what if an individual is bilingual? Do we have any candidate genes responsible for each of the intelligences?
Also, there are no statistical relationships mentioned with relative factors or subfactors of IQ.
Yes, tons of people would be needed to conduct the research, but the clever psychometrists are fortunately repealed by it.
The shame is that even some psychologists who publish books (either popular science or – in a worse case – for experts) incorporate this false theory into them.
While mainstream psychometry is a true science (and the top is created by the top), the Theory of multiple intelligences is nothing but mere fraud. But what I am missing? Sexual intelligence, gaming intelligence, vehicle driving intelligence, military intelligence, dating intelligence, elevator small talk intelligence, pet psychic intelligence, tetris intelligence, puzzle intelligence…
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