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IQ Matters Less Than You Think

nautil.us

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Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#231

Post by vec »

dragonwriter wrote: post #186
Shekelberg wrote: post #155

Funny how HN is full of people with >120 IQ claiming that IQ doesn't matter. If that's really true, than why is pretty much everyone here in the top 10-15% of the population? Where are all the <100 IQ people here claiming to have successful careers in the tech industry despite their IQ scores? Remember, the average IQ is 100 by definition, so roughly half the general population is <100. What are the odds of this happ…

> Funny how HN is full of people with >120 IQ claiming that IQ doesn't matter. If that's really true, than why is pretty much everyone here in the top 10-15% of the population Everyone here probably isn't. People who have a near-average (on either side) IQ are less likely to have it tested, and those with an average or below IQ less likely than those above the average to talk about their score. Consequently, people w…

Moreover, our industry has a questionable habit of describing all kinds of human accomplishments as "brilliant" "innovations" done by "geniuses".

Being a competent professional engineer requires some raw intelligence, true, but also determination, interpersonal communication skills, organizational skills, time, training, resources, access to the infrastructure you want to work with, and no small amount of luck. Those all interact in complicated ways, and most can be used to buttress the others depending on where one's personal talents lie.

There's probably some minimum necessary raw intelligence necessary to become a hacker, but I suspect that bar is much lower than HN would like to admit. And I am very sure that there's no maximum past which the rest of the list ceases to matter.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#232

Post by Retric »

owens99 wrote: post #181
toasterlovin wrote: post #93

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…

150 IQ is extremely high ~1/1,125 relative to the general population and that score may or may not be that accurate. Which seems to disagree with your suggestion.

Winning a Nobel prize is a highly random process as someone needs to be in an 'open' field ripe for major discovery.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#234

Post by account2 »

cc-d wrote: post #190
account2 wrote: post #28

I wonder how many IQ test misclassify intelligence? Feynman had a score of 125 and many people here have a high score than that. I bet no one here with a higher score of 125 are actually smarter than Feynman though. I think this is just one of many possible such examples where IQ test miss the purported people they were suppose to capture. Feynman’s score wouldn’t even qualify him for MENSA. I wonder how many IQ exam…

Feynman is a notable exception to the trend. Using a single exceptional result as evidence for decrying a trend is foolish. IQ tests obviously do not account for __every__ variable which we cumulatively call "intelligence", but IQ is heavily correlated with the ability to succeed at tasks society classifies as "smart people stuff". The difference in intelligence between two individuals is much less pronounced if both…

>Feynman is a notable exception to the trend. Using a single exceptional result as evidence for decrying a trend is foolish.

You missed my question. I am concerned with how many smart people with disabilities IQ exams misclassifies. I am not using Feynman to say he had a disability or anything, I was using him as an example of a case where his IQ score doesn't match his actual intelligence, and I am in no way claiming why that may be. I am merely stating IQ exams aren't perfect. If you are interested in replying, then reply to the question I posed. I think IQ test potentially misclassifies people with high functioning autism and other highly intelligent people with mental disabilities, showing they have lower intelligence than they actually have.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#235

Post by WorkLifeBalance »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #200
toasterlovin wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The difference between 99th and 99.99th percentile is 1.4 standard deviations, a common IQ test ought to be able to be accurate to that. Otherwise it couldn't measure the difference between 100 and 120 IQ (0 to 1.4z) which it clearly can.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#236

Post by badpun »

astura wrote: post #169
wufufufu wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still plenty of fields where you can start late in life and not come from wealth but still be the best in the world. It's only the most popular and rewarding fields that require a life optimized to be the best to actually be the best.

>There are still plenty of fields where you can start late in life and not come from wealth but still be the best in the world. Such as?

Stuff from Guiness World Records?

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#237

Post by alayne »

compcoffee wrote: post #134
teilo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm around 150, and I don't consider myself smarter than Feynman. And I'm no savant, am socially well adjusted, and not on the autism scale. This, among many other data points, has led me to question the entire concept of IQ. The measurement of IQ borders on pseudo-science. It measures something, but what exactly? Everyone has a different answer. Ok, sure, intelligence. Now try to define "intelligence" empirically. W…

> I'm around 150 Good old HN: 1 out of 200 people in the population have an IQ of 140+, but half the people in this thread do. Can't wait for the ironic "But HackerNews is filled with such smart people!" comments.

Not only is HN full of smart people, people with high IQs are likely drawn to articles about high IQs.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#238

Post by pickleman »

owens99 wrote: post #181
toasterlovin wrote: post #93

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…

If the standard is "likely[ness] to win a Nobel Prize" that makes sense. The Nobel Prize is not purely meritocratic, to say the least.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#239

Post by com2kid »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #225
cm2187 wrote: post #89

The title is a bit misleading. The study is basically comparing the path of the top 1% to the top 2% of the IQ distribution and arguing that it doesn't matter that much in term of extraordinary achievements (nobel prize, etc). If you compare the top 20% to the bottom 20% of the distribution I bet there will be a strong correlation to professional sucess.

It's well understood that IQ is linked to academic achievement. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=G_factor_(psychom...

I genuinely wonder sometimes if no one on HN has actually bothered to go through and take a full intelligence test.

You get a multi-page report back with measurements of all types of cognitive functions. An IQ number is given, but it quickly becomes apparent that number is just a summary measure. Just as a 3.95 GPA doesn't tell what subjects a student is good in, a high IQ doesn't tell you what areas of mental strengths and weaknesses someone has.

That 3.95 GPA student may have had to spend 4 hours a day studying math, while being able to write beautifully structured long form English essays in half that time.

Maybe that student did great in stats and had a horrible time in discreet mathematics. Or vis versa.

Summary numbers are useful in that large variances can indicate overall trends, that 4.0 GPA student did better all up, but that student with a 3.0 GPA may very well be better in a given subject than the 4.0 GPA student.

Likewise, someone with a high IQ can still have weaknesses, it is just that to get the really high score, any weaknesses will have to be offset by strengths in other places.

If you are reading this an are interested in finding out an objective scientific measurement of what you are good and bad at, pay for a full psychological intelligence evaluation. It takes a long time, the testing is long enough that you probably want to do it over multiple days, insurance won't cover it, and it is rather expensive (I think I paid around $1500 for mine, maybe more).

At the end of it all you'll get an IQ number, and a better understanding of why one number does not represent a person's capability.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#240

Post by drb91 »

Shekelberg wrote: post #155

Funny how HN is full of people with >120 IQ claiming that IQ doesn't matter. If that's really true, than why is pretty much everyone here in the top 10-15% of the population? Where are all the <100 IQ people here claiming to have successful careers in the tech industry despite their IQ scores? Remember, the average IQ is 100 by definition, so roughly half the general population is <100. What are the odds of this happ…

> Funny how HN is full of people with >120 IQ claiming that IQ doesn't matter

I’d assume a similar distribution to the general population, actually. Why would I think otherwise?

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