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IQ Matters Less Than You Think

nautil.us

191–200 of 347 posts

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#192

I started to write a much longer response but don't have time. My IQ was tested at 142 some decades ago and, from what I've read, would be higher cause the tests have changed. I was always very successful in my jobs but, when it came to starting my own business, I needed a lot of active encouragement or I would give up too quickly. However, in two cases, a business clicked with me, for some reason, which made me exci…

You are almost 3 standard deviations up, meaning you the distance between you and the average is the same as between average and someone with what used to be called "mild mental retardation".

If it was something like WAIS you did it is actually a pretty comprehensive test including many different areas of mental performance (working memory, abstract verbal reasoning, visual spatial comprehension, inductive reasoning, attention encoding, auditory processing, quantative reasoning, associative memory, processing speed among others.).

A high score on something like WAIS is a pretty good predictor of work performance.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there's also probably a big difference between the top 0.01% percent and the top 1%. The difference between the top 1% and top 2% isn't very important for most types of talent. Being in one of those categories for athletic talent, for instance, wouldn't get you into a professional sports league of any kind.

Surprisingly, many findings show there is not. Malcolm Gladwell explains this well in his book Outliers. https://www.honorsociety.org/articles/trouble-geniuses-malco... “Gladwell cites studies done by Arthur Jensen that indicate the IQ level needed to successfully attend and graduate from undergraduate college is 115, after which Jensen believe IQ becomes relatively unimportant. For comparison, Albert Einstein, a wel…

Gladwell generally badly oversimplifies and mischaracterizes.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#195
post #51

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…

Yeah, the article talked about "only" becoming Stanford professors... maybe the author doesn't realize how incredibly hard and rare it is to be a professor at a tier 1 research institution, not to mention being as prolific as Cronbach. The kids didn't become Nobel laureates but... so? That's an insane expectation for high achievement.

I believe that Shockley just missed the cutoff for this study. Because it had a fairly high weight on verbal score.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> weird idea that intelligence without effort can yield results In my experience, that 'weird idea' comes from early schooling. Highly intelligent (gifted?) kids generally don't have to exhibit any effort on school work, at least up to a certain time. I can tell you that, in my case, I coasted up until around 11th grade, then I hit a bit of a mental wall. I'm sure other physiological changes impacted, but at core, I…

It's all because schools generally focus on the common denominator and more talented children are lost to boredom and lack of challenges. This doesn't apply everywhere, but it certainly applied to my pre-university education.

I skipped a grade, but even that wasn't enough. Parents indicated later that there was thought of skipping 2 grades, but the social/age difference might have been too great, so it was nixed at the time, then never revisited.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MENSA?

I'm not at the level required for MENSA (140 in the UK) but all I heard when I looked into it is it's a bunch of pretty dysfunctional people trying to one-up each other. I already have Reddit and HN for that :-D

As far as I can tell, it's a boardgaming club. I only went to two or three meetings before lapsing, though.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#198
post #161
post #92

Intelligence doesn't matter much when you have it. It matters quite a lot when you don't. Like in basketball - being 2.50m tall doesn't mean you'll beat everyone on the court. But being 1.50m pretty much guarantees you're out of luck.

> But being 1.50m pretty much guarantees you're out of luck 1.60 m, though, is apparently good enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues

Bogues is really the exception that proves the rule. He had to be incredibly talented and athletic to make up for his lack of height, but even then he was only a good, not great, NBA player. If you are 1.60m tall and your dream is making the NBA, well, unless you are literally one of the most athletically talented people on the planet, you should probably give it up.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#199
Given how often we've been told that IQ tests don't measure anything but the ability to take tests, the title is obvious bullshit. I think it is fair, though, to say IQ tests tend to become less accurate as the test takers approach the intelligence of the test designers. An they're when the test takers are much smarter than the test designers, the tests are really no good at all at determining how much smarter.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#200
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but you are assuming the IQ test is inifinitely precise which I doubt it is. It is only a measure of intelligence.

I'm not really assuming it's very precise. It's more that there's a huge difference between 99th percentile levels of talent and 99.99th percentile levels of talent. For instance, I am easily better than 99/100 males at basketball. I'm 6'6", reasonably athletic, and I played semi-competitively when I was young. But I am nowhere near being better than 9,999/10,000 males. And no amount of hard work or persistence is go…

The objection was that you can't reliably tell apart the 99 from the 99.99 percentile with a common IQ test.
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