[themetrician]

What is the name of the IQ test you took?

Intelligence really isn't "multi-faceted" (read Gardner's own admission that his theory never panned out) and it isn't ill-understood (refer to the Nature or Nurture interview with Nancy Segal on YouTube).

There's two reasons people say that. One is, they fared badly on a test and want to dismiss it, and the other is, they fared well on a test and are bashful about it.

Also, IQ tests are meant to measure a person's intelligence, not to convince them that IQ tests are "a good idea" - for that you would have to study Psychometrics.

[Mz]

IQ tests are somewhat ridiculous to begin with. The first tests that eventually became IQ tests were not intended to measure intelligence. They were intended to measure school readiness of rural children whose birthdates were often not known with certainty. The lack of clear birthdates meant an age cut off could not be used and rural children faced cultural differences from kids in the big city (namely: Paris) that created inherent challenges to them fitting in and doing well in school.

Intelligence is neither well defined nor well understood. It is fairly controversial stuff.

[arethuza]

"it isn't ill-understood"

I worked on AI research for a number of years and my strong opinion is that our understanding of general intelligence is, as some wit put it, "pre-Newtonian".