^this
It's not surprising that tests correlate with each other, because they use each other for calibration - an intelligence test is deemed to be valid precisely *if* it correlates with the others! Suppose I made a new test which placed more emphasis on, say, musical ability or joke-telling. Then many people would perform better on that test than on a standard IQ test, and others would perform worse. Who is to say which one is 'right'?
General intelligence is a myth, a reification of an arbitrary measurement.

I'd also like to call SGB out on the 'that's not a 'real' IQ test' argument. That's a bit like saying 'If you really want to measure someone's shoe size, you have to do hundreds of measurements to get the precise shape of their foot'. True, that gives you a much better measurement of someone's feet, but it's not shoe size any more. IQ is what IQ tests measure. And the fact that different IQ tests give different (if correlated) results just illustrates the point!
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Tue 23 Nov 2010, 10:09, Reply)