saint_matthew wrote:No they really aren't. I'm sorry, but its just not so.
Your claim is contradicted by actual evidence
on the subject. Kaufman (2009, "IQ Testing 101") found predictable patterns of IQ related to education (doctorates scoring highest, non-high school grads scoring lowest, levels in between pretty much where you'd expect) and occupational status (professional and management highest, service and untrained workers lowest). The APA released a report ("Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns") showing a relationship between IQ and school performance (children with higher IQs learn faster and retain more of what they learn), job performance, social status, and income. And http://www.govrel.vcu.edu//news/Releases/2005/june/McDaniel-Big%20Brain.pdf
finds a relationship between brain size and IQ.
IQ as measured by an IQ test is not a measurment of intelligence.
Intelligence, broadly defined, is the ability to 1) learn quickly, 2) retain what you learn, 3) solve problems, 4) reason, 5) understand, and 6) plan. IQ tests directly measure 3 and 4, and are correlated with 1 and 2. If education implies understanding, then it's also correlated with 5. I'm not aware of anything that directly examines 6.
One can learn the answers to the three standard IQ tests easily & still not be overly intlligent. Kind of like how a blind person can memorise an eye chart & still be completely blind.
Rote memorization is an issue with any written test. By this logic, a physics test doesn't actually test your knowledge of physics, since you could simply memorize the answer key. This type of "tricking" the test is possible, but there are multiple IQ test forms that could be used, and who is really going to memorize the answer key? This is not a valid point.
Likewise a high IQ doesn't mean you are skilled, it just means you know a lot of random things & have a good contol of mathematics & visual speace recognition. Which again is not as good as actually having a depth of knowledge in a particular field. Most experts are not geniuses, they are just people who have put in the effort to learn a topic extensively.
As I've referenced, none of this is correct. IQ is related to your ability to acquire and retain skills. Job performance is correlated with IQ - ALL jobs, not just academic ones (though academic ones have a stronger correlation). Most experts have a higher IQ than non-experts (people with doctorates have higher IQ than those with bachelor's degrees, people in skilled occupations have higher IQs than people in unskilled occupations).
After this terrible thread derail, I feel obligated to contribute to the actual OP!
I like the idea of a villain who learns incredibly fast - and I mean learns everything
really fast. He can watch a karate master practice and learn the art in a day (note this doesn't actually make him stronger, he just knows how to move his body). He can blow through a book on animal psychology and learn how to train war beasts. He can pick up a language just by being immersed in it for a little while.
I'd represent this with a borderline abusive Variable effect - but he's a villain, so it's fair game. Say he's a PL 10, he'd have high Intellect and a Variable rank 2 or 4, as a free action or reaction, applying to Enhanced skills and Advantages only. This would basically give him a free +10 to +20 to ALL his skills, but give him the limitation that he must spend an appropriate amount of time learning it. Give him mental quickness so that this time is lessened however much you feel like, for example 1 year to 1 day. All of this gives him a lot of flexibility both in and out of combat for cheap. Sort of the same effect as giving him ranks in ALL the skills and advantages (since it's an NPC you aren't point-limited anyway), but I feel is a bit more elegant and thematic (and less to write on a character sheet!).
I like the idea of this guy not having any other powers, at least nothing particularly superhuman. He's just a really really