IQ Matters Less Than You Think

It's funny, the article says that none of Terman's Termites became examplars of genius, but Lee Cronbach is definitely in the top 1% of most influential psychologists.

To name a few accomplishments..

* If wikipedia is correct, he was the "48th most cited psychologist as of 2002".

* He has an extremely popular metric named after him (Cronbach's alpha)

* President of American Psychological Association.

Maybe what he is missing to the author is the popular media appeal Feynman has. However, I'm not sure that's a good criterion for genius, since I'm not sure it's something Cronbach wanted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Cronbach

With the danger of sounding conceited: I have lived this.

Me and my sister are polar opposites in everything, I’m lazy. She’s motivated. I tended to be above average when tested. She tended to be below average when tested. She wanted nothing more than being outside in nature and I wanted nothing more than being inside and messing with my computer.

Hell. Even down to the fact she has a boys name and I have a girls name (I’m a guy) and that I was skinny and she was not.

She is now a barrister, something that I could never have become. I was close to being a shelf-stocker at the UK equivalent of wal-mart but ironically they wouldn’t have me. If not for the fact that this industry is a huge bubble I would be on my arse. And why? Because I’m lazy and smart. And she is persistent and dumb.

I have tremendous respect for my sister, but it’s a fact that her success is down to her persistence. She never gives up. Even when people dump all over her for being slow or sounding thick. She’s awesome. We could all learn something from her.

Like all quotes, on first glance it appears insightful and impressive, but a closer second look reveals it to be nonsense.

> Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.

Luck and circumstance can.

> Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.

The world is also full of persistent failures as well.

> Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

The Axis powers in ww2 were as persistent and determined as the allies. You could argue they were even more persistent and determined. They failed. Has there been a more persistent and determined presidential candidate than Hillary Clinton? She failed twice. If persistence was all it took, Hillary would have been president.

People love to pat themselves on the back for their successes. If coolidge was born into a black family in the 1800s rather than into an elite new england family, I wonder how much persistence and determination would have mattered.

Persistence is an important characteristic in life, but there are far more to success than persistence.

Intelligence is not necessary in many endeavors including business.

There's an unspoken assumption in this discussion that ability, however it is defined, leads inevitably to success, whatever that means. Then you're looking at whether IQ is a good measurement of ability in the first instance (is it often wrong in what it is trying to measure it not?) And whether it is trying to measure the right thing or is ability elsewhere unmeasured?

Nowhere in all of it is dumb luck considered a factor. Lottery winners are successful. What can you infer about their personality attributes? It's obviously risible.

At the other end of the scale is there ability so profound that considering the role of luck is uninteresting? Or are there N others with comparable ability who weren't so fortunate and did not succeed? How big is that N? Is it possible to answer such questions with anything more than prejudice? Do you have to get lucky with your research to get a Nobel? Eg would Feynmann have got one for something else if QED was published by someone else a couple of years before he got there? Don Bradman was lucky to achieve what he did in sports, really?

My own prejudice is that IQ is total bullshit. I believe in my ability and was once told as a child that my IQ was impressive (whatever that meant - I don't know). I know I mirror my parents reaction to that news: "We think you're clever and always did, just not because of this nonsense."

Maybe I'm not super remarkable too and who cares? Life is too short. All of us should rise early, work hard and strike oil.