Here are my thoughts.

Raising IQ negates the reward system. It doesn't feel rewarding. There's no feedback loop to say well done.

It "might" feel good when getting better grades or a promotion. But even then the promotion is a competition and I've even heard that top high school grades are actually limited to keep the top Universities from letting anyone in down the line.

Solving a puzzle which someone has been stuck on for a while may "potentially" feel nice. But then the person may feel a sense of dread about how it would have felt better and been more beneficial if they solved it sooner, like if they were on a tv game-show.

What are your thought on this topic?

Edited Thursday at 08:53 PM4 days by HawkII

A life well-lived is its own reward, not just for oneself but also for those around you.

High IQ cannot achieve this on its own, but is a facet of developing strong cognitive abilities which definitely do help in formulating and achieving one's personal goals more easily.

More important, though, is the manner in which you live your life. Behaving in such a way as to form and maintain positive connections with those around you, and so forth. Intelligence can help here too, but in general it is a different type of intelligence.

Another crucial factor is developing the emotional strength to maintain a positive attitude and act in an authentic manner especially in times of adversity.

Please read that last paragraph again, carefully this time, as I don't believe that IQ (however you define it) is the real issue emerging from your OP.

14 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Another crucial factor is developing the emotional strength to maintain a positive attitude and act in an authentic manner especially in times of adversity.

Yeah but on the TV game show 'Crystal Maze' if you take too long to solve a puzzle, you get locked in the room.

Edited Thursday at 10:48 PM4 days by HawkII

In what strange universe do you believe that shows like 'Crystal Maze' teach you anything about how to live a worthwhile life out in the real world?

1 minute ago, sethoflagos said:

In what strange universe do you believe that shows like 'Crystal Maze' teach you anything about how to live a worthwhile life out in the real world?

The contestants go through a process of natural selection based on their strength and intellect.

Nothing remotely natural about it. It's called "escapism" because that's what it is: an escape from reality. How much time do you spend watching television?

4 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Nothing remotely natural about it. It's called "escapism" because that's what it is: an escape from reality. How much time do you spend watching television?

Have you seen the show? Have you seen the humiliation they go through? They didn't go in expecting any of it. To top it off, they barely know the other contestants.

I watched a few episodes of the first series over thirty years ago when it was hosted by Richard O'Brien. My children seemed to enjoy it at the time.

This conversation is beginning to rot my brain. Have to go now. Nice meeting you!

2 hours ago, HawkII said:

Have you seen the show? Have you seen the humiliation they go through? They didn't go in expecting any of it.

Seems unlikely. Aren't contestants fans who want to get on the show and audition for a slot?

(Not from UK, so unfamiliar with this particular show, but assume all such game shows have some similarities)

2 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

watched a few episodes of the first series over thirty years ago when it was hosted by Richard O'Brien.

Does it involve doing the Time Warp?

13 hours ago, TheVat said:

Does it involve doing the Time Warp?

A Rocky Horror Picture Show crossover version of Snakes and Ladders, Parquet and Come Dancing? Ticks all my boxes 🥸

For heaven’s sake, I may well be wrong, of course, but I wouldn’t view IQ as something like a muscle that gets increasingly toned at the gym.

I see it more as the pressure of expectation that is inevitably associated with school life, than the actual starting point, and if every problem solved is immediately met with “I should have done that faster”, the way one internally processes success is the real problem. So, a minor defeat can be represented even by solved puzzles as a minor defeat, or I would also compare it to the moment after studying. To be more precise, I honestly think of it as when you believe you’ve got it down, and then you’re completely unsure.

Striving to become wiser would probably be more enjoyable if you didn’t treat it as a race for a higher score. Personally, I too often lack the time for it, but reading, discussing, noticing mistakes, and developing patience with difficult things bring more to our daily lives than an abstract score, as often as possible. A game show is a poor model here. Real life rarely locks you in a room just because you needed three minutes longer to think.

IQ is a score that is associated with a wide variety factors, many of which not really do not understand. Some factors which have been associated with include high (parental) socioeconomic status, nutrition, a stimulating learning environment, frequent reading etc.

So while the question in OP doesn't make a lot of sense, the factors associated with higher IQ can be, in fact enjoyable (good food, reading books, stimulating environment etc). Of course, the correlation is not causation caveat also applies here. Getting better grades is not necessarily associated with IQ. I.e. if you train to improve your grad your IQ may not be impacted (much). And it should also be added that the IQ test was initially developed to test learning deficiency not the other way around.

But in a broader sense, learning anything can be enjoyable.

Is pretending to raise your IQ as fun as it sounds ?

4 hours ago, MigL said:

Is pretending to raise your IQ as fun as it sounds ?

It's awesome. And even easier if you get my approved protein supplement made from real organic aromats. Maximize your brain at the cost of only one or two kidneys. Like and subscribe!

7 hours ago, CharonY said:

I.e. if you train to improve your grad your IQ may not be impacted (much). And it should also be added that the IQ test was initially developed to test learning deficiency not the other way around.

But in a broader sense, learning anything can be enjoyable.

It's about raising IQ not already having a high one.

Good to know it was designed as a way to test learning deficiency.

4 hours ago, MigL said:

Is pretending to raise your IQ as fun as it sounds ?

I am raising my IQ, and I found it negates the reward system. Like pressing 'Further analysis' on an AI feature that's already critiqued my painting.

IQ has developmental components. It is not something that you can really raise. What you can raise however, is to perform better in certain types of tests, if that is what you mean. Certain types of IQ tests try to reduce that component, but I am doubtful how effective those are.

9 hours ago, aliceinwonderland said:

A game show is a poor model here. Real life rarely locks you in a room just because you needed three minutes longer to think.

This would have effectively ended my wife in shop dressing rooms long ago.

Perhaps I'm being a bit pedantic but I always understood that you cannot improve your fundamental IQ although with practice you can improve your score on IQ tests.

5 hours ago, OldTony said:

Perhaps I'm being a bit pedantic but I always understood that you cannot improve your fundamental IQ although with practice you can improve your score on IQ tests.

These day's it's a number for validating one's worth, via the internet, which is ironic given Einstein syndrome...

43 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

These day's it's a number for validating one's worth, via the internet, which is ironic given Einstein syndrome...

Well, it would seem to be true that if your communication skills are poor then your performance in tests involving communication will give you a lower IQ number than you deserve. This would be particularly true within the time that late talker children are "catching up" with their age group. Perhaps that basically sorts itself out by the time that speech skills become more in line with others of the same age group.

22 hours ago, OldTony said:

Well, it would seem to be true that if your communication skills are poor then your performance in tests involving communication will give you a lower IQ number than you deserve. This would be particularly true within the time that late talker children are "catching up" with their age group. Perhaps that basically sorts itself out by the time that speech skills become more in line with others of the same age group.

It's a very narrow window of the definition of intelligence, for instance "catching up" to what?

For instance, the ability to communicate; I saw a meme the other day on FB, I think, that said the higher the IQ the less able they are to communicate with"normal" people.

IQ is a measure of how well you do in IQ tests.

2 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

IQ is a measure of how well you do in IQ tests.

Quite. I replied in a similar vein to someone who told me the elderly should do crosswords to keep their minds sharp: "Crosswords enhance your cognitive skill...at doing crosswords."

Edited Sunday at 02:39 PM1 day by TheVat
Low IQ event

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

Quite. I replied in a similar vein to someone who told me the elderly should do crosswords to keep their minds sharp: "Crosswords enhance your cognitive skill...at doing crosswords."

True, but there are a class of activities that centre on exploring complex structures built from sets of fundamental units that seem to share much common mental real estate:

Word games (the alphabet)

Chess (the pieces)

Music (the harmonic series)

Bridge (deck of cards)

Maths (the integers)

Particle Physics (the standard model)

Chemistry (the elements)

Cooking (basic ingredients)

Computing (the set of logical operations)

Minecraft (the building blocks)

If someone is skilled at any one of these, hearsay has it that they are at least likely to have an aptitude for some of the others. The symmetries inherent in one tend to repeat in odd places among the others with only minor tweaks. Does the sound and spelling of a phoneme have a direct causal relationship with the wave/particle duality of a photon? Probably not, but there is a shared symmetry in there that just helps gain a foothold...

Could be confronting to realise how much you don't know and how much of what you thought you knew was wrong. And how big and daunting the task of learning all over again can be.

Rather than bringing confidence and certainty it may bring the opposite.