Defining IQ

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti

It's amazing that if you test a person's mental abilities on a very limited set of instruments, say face memory, picture puzzles, repeating long strings of numbers, and reaction speed, you can give a fairly accurate estimate of their performance on tasks that seem completely unrelated, like their vocabulary, or their knowledge of history, or their ability to distinguish musical tones. It's amazing, but it's true. Intelligence isn't just a vast variety of different abilities combined. Most of all, it's one hidden trait that is at the core of all mental abilities.

Very interesting, are there ways of improving performance on these basic metrics?

One thing that I have noticed is that every time I improve my physical fitness my memory is better, my thoughts are clearer, I feel more alert and my reaction time seems quicker. I'm not sure if that is all just in my imagination.

[JoelSammallahti]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

Very interesting, are there ways of improving performance on these basic metrics?

Yeah, you can improve specific subtest scores with practice. But unfortunately, that training effect does't transfer to any other abilities; there's no evidence you can improve general intelligence, just specific narrow skills. From the point of view of testing, it's just a little more noise in the system.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

One thing that I have noticed is that every time I improve my physical fitness my memory is better, my thoughts are clearer, I feel more alert and my reaction time seems quicker. I'm not sure if that is all just in my imagination.

Martial art masters usually say that the difference between the body and the mind is thiner than a butterfly's wing.

[AlexanderHowl]

Which is an interesting phenomena. Improving cardiovascular health does seem to improve overall mental acuity, though the reverse is not necessarily true (you can improve the functions of the mind without improving the functions of the body). The brain is more plastic than the body, so you can restructure the brain with a lot less effort than you can restructure the body (brain damage can cause massive changes to performance and personality, and a sadist can become a saint or a saint can become a sadist with brain damage within the structures that contain their personality). In general though, cardiovascular exercise seems to help with brain healing and brain plasticity, so you become better faster if you exercise the right way.

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti

Yeah, you can improve specific subtest scores with practice. But unfortunately, that training effect does't transfer to any other abilities; there's no evidence you can improve general intelligence, just specific narrow skills. From the point of view of testing, it's just a little more noise in the system.

I gather from your response that you can't raise real world IQ like you can gurps IQ.

[JoelSammallahti]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

I gather from your response that you can't raise real world IQ like you can gurps IQ.

Looks that way, yeah, although there are studies that attribute a modest effect to general education. I treat character advancement as a concession to gamey fun at the expense of realism, anyway. Realistically, maybe you could raise ST and HT by up to 3-4 levels or so and DX by 1-2 over the course of years of training... but I don't really need that kind of realism in my games about dimension-hopping superheroes and warrior necromancers. :)

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by JoelSammallahti

I treat character advancement as a concession to gamey fun at the expense of realism, anyway. Realistically, maybe you could raise ST and HT by up to 3-4 levels or so and DX by 1-2 over the course of years of training.

If you were going to do realistic advancement (which GURPS does quite well, and I tend to prefer) you'd probably be better off just not giving out CP and using the Training rules, anyway, in which case improving Attributes is not possible.
I don't think you necessarily could improve DX, or HT, though. I think that various learnable advantages and Fit would probably cover this. A lot of basic agility is just as neurological as the intellect. No matter how much I train I will never compete with Chinese gymnasts for a picosecond, and most of those girls would be more agile than me even if they spent their entire lives eating corn dogs and watching Youtube.

Strength can be improved, although I don't think quite as straight-on as GURPS would let characters. More like Lifting ST with a severe lag on the rest.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

If you were going to do realistic advancement (which GURPS does quite well, and I tend to prefer) you'd probably be better off just not giving out CP and using the Training rules, anyway, in which case improving Attributes is not possible.

Note that it's actively unrealistic to use the 200 hours = 1 character point for everything. Real people are much more complex than that and it is fairly well documented that military training, especially combined with surviving combat and performing well, can result in point gains far ahead of what even Intensive Training can yield. Gaining points from 'adventuring' experiences is a real thing.

A couple of points in combat skills don't have to represent a lot of hours of training, they can represent discovering the mental capacity to hurt others when required. I'd hazard a guess that gaining Brawling through 200 hours of instruction is the exception, not the rule, with the majority gaining it by some combination of experience, attitude or as part of the hand-to-hand training in a military, which generally has fewer hours than would be needed to gain any points.

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

I don't think you necessarily could improve DX, or HT, though. I think that various learnable advantages and Fit would probably cover this.

A lot of basic agility is just as neurological as the intellect. No matter how much I train I will never compete with Chinese gymnasts for a picosecond, and most of those girls would be more agile than me even if they spent their entire lives eating corn dogs and watching Youtube.

Fairly irrelevant. GURPS DX is entirely agnostic on whether it represents inborn agility or trained facility with such a variety of DX-based skills that an increased Attribute is the simplest way to represent it.

The biggest single part of all Attributes having to do with skill resolution is willpower. Not GURPS Will, but the broader concept, which is what distinguishes a DX 13; IQ 13; HT 13 special operator from a fairly ordinary man with Attributes around 10, who may nevertheless have been born with the exact same genes and inborn potential.

Even if two characers had the exact same genes that govern their physical muscles, flexibility and health, I wouldn't have any trouble buying a large disparity between them in terms of actual ability, if one of them was disciplined, motivated, strong-willed, sanguine and level-headed, but the other was unmotivated, unfocused and without any motivation to perform well. GURPS Attributes measure success at accomplishing tasks and, as such, they are not really about inborn gifts. They represent anything that contributes to success at those tasks that fall under the Attribute, which for all Attributes is just as much mental as it is physical.

Originally Posted by VonKatzen

Strength can be improved, although I don't think quite as straight-on as GURPS would let characters. More like Lifting ST with a severe lag on the rest.

Eh, not really. ST can fluctate quickly by 2-3 levels, depending on a variety of factors. It's easy to drop ST by cutting too much weight to try to compete at a lower weight class and/or by not training well enough and that ST can come back very quickly. Greater changes are possible with lifestyle changes.

Someone who used to be ST 9 back when they lived on sodas and snacks, had an office job, sedentary hobbies and depression might become a ST 14 powerlifter and strongman after taking up exercise to manage their depression, discovering new hobbies, developing a new career and making some major dietary changes. It would take time, but it's not impossible. The starting Attributes don't really tell us anything about whether the character had potential to be something else.

As it doesn't cost any points to declare whether a character's Attributes at character creation are the absolute pitch of conditioning perfection, representing him living up to the utmost of his potential, or whether he's got a lot of unrealised potential, but is simply out of shape, feeling out of sorts or lacks motivation at present, it's deeply unfair and mechanically nonsensical to enforce rules that somehow freeze the character at that exact level of Attributes.

[AlexanderHowl]

I agree, Attributes are meant to be improved in GURPS 4e. As for the realism of improving IQ, I have known people to go up two standard deviations on IQ tests when they actually worked on being intelligent. It is possible that a character suffers from a brain parasite, nutritional deficiency, etc when created and the increase in IQ just represents their body rejecting the parasite, their body responding to a better diet, etc. IQ is as physical as ST, and I imagine that as many people have optimized their IQ as they have their ST (around 0.01%).

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Note that it's actively unrealistic to use the 200 hours = 1 character point for everything...Gaining points from 'adventuring' experiences is a real thing.

I should have mentioned that I would also count time spent adventuring as training or intensive training, when relevant to the skill, to offset the lack of CP advancement. A similar effect could be achieved by simply restricting CP allocation to stuff you actually did or trained at, i.e. you can put CP into skills you're using or training in on top of gains from training but you can't just magically gain traits or skills.

Fairly irrelevant. GURPS DX is entirely agnostic on whether it represents inborn agility or trained facility with such a variety of DX-based skills that an increased Attribute is the simplest way to represent it.

GURPS attributes in general are fairly agnostic, but I'd prefer to treat them as core builds, whereas characters can gain skills and advantages (maybe even talents) through training and experience.

The biggest single part of all Attributes having to do with skill resolution is willpower. Not GURPS Will, but the broader concept, which is what distinguishes a DX 13; IQ 13; HT 13 special operator from a fairly ordinary man with Attributes around 10, who may nevertheless have been born with the exact same genes and inborn potential.

I would agree but I'd say that a good way to deal with this would be limiting the amount of training you can do to some function of your Will. The Burning Wheel has rules that follow this logic.

Eh, not really. ST can fluctate quickly by 2-3 levels, depending on a variety of factors. It's easy to drop ST by cutting too much weight to try to compete at a lower weight class and/or by not training well enough and that ST can come back very quickly. Greater changes are possible with lifestyle changes.

If you treat ST as a 10 point skill and use the rules for maintaining skills this can be represented. Improve your lifestyle, engage in rigorous activity or specialized training and you can increase your ST fairly rapidly from a lower level, or fairly slowly at a higher level. Even here I think your ST would increase as follows: Lifting ST first, then Striking ST, with Lifting always being ahead of striking ST. This is because Striking ST (especially Swing) simply does too much damage, even in lifting ranges that are entirely possible. I won't elaborate on this because there are like ten threads about this on the forum here, including one I started.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

As for the realism of improving IQ, I have known people to go up two standard deviations on IQ tests when they actually worked on being intelligent.

I don't think psychometric IQ has a lot in common with GURPS IQ (there are already other threads on this), and GURPS IQ is simply too broad to be realistically increased, especially to higher levels. What you're talking about could simply be reflected by acquiring skills and advantages, with the upper limit for psychometric IQ increase being limited by your basic IQ level (i.e. a person with a good base GURPS IQ can improve the puzzle-solving abilities by learning skills and advantages and the resulting total will be higher at a lower cost than a person with a lower GURPS IQ).

Again, GURPS is agnostic and game-y in some of these respects, but if I were playing a realistic game I think it's good to use GURPS attributes as a reflection of one's core natural potential and talent simply because there's no alternative, and real people really do have these limits. Some people make huge improvements in short order, and this would be represented by: good natural Attributes and Talents but few point investments or lower Attributes but larger investments of points in skills and traits related to the ability.

If playing a fiction-based game, where attributes are painted and interpreted in very broad terms then the normal rules of advancement are appropriate. Conan really has an awesome ST and DX, Batman has an awesome IQ; but these characters are far more proficient, talented and powerful than any human being who ever lived.