system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Intelligence Quotient / IQ, what exactly is it and what are its criticisms? Why is it potentially wrong?
gpt
IQ is a measure of how 'intelligent' you are compared to the average person your age where you live.

Having an IQ of 100 by definition means that you are exactly average for your age and area.

A 20 year old and 12 year old writing the same test and marking the exact same answers would get different results. The 12 year old having answered everything the same as the 20 year old would get a higher IQ because older people are expected to get more answers right than children.

Similarly the test is reclibrated based on region, but this is not a big difference in practice. The result however is that the average IQ in the US is exactly the same as the average IQ in for example Pakistan: 100 because that is how the whole thing is defined.

Some criticisms are based on the age thing. Some children develop faster than other which might lead to having fantastically high IQs as children which later when they reach adulthood go down to only normal 'very smart'.

Other somewhat controversial criticisms are for example about the fact that IQ test are supposedly culturally biased in some way or another.

Even more controversial theories attack the concept of intelligence itself and demand that it be more inclusive. Some people believe that certain other skills and abilities such be seen as forms of intelligence, that for example someone who is not good with numbers or words or spatial reasoning or abstract ideas but is a really good dancer should be considered to be 'intelligent' in that area. While there might be some kernel of a rational and worthwhile argument at the core of this theory it has been pretty much co-opted by people who use it unintelligently like parents who refuse to admit that their child has below average intelligence and insists that he is merely differently intelligent as evident by the fact that he is good at sports.