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IQ Matters Less Than You Think

nautil.us

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Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#251

Post by WillPostForFood »

astura wrote: post #180
madeuptempacct wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much this - average genes, hard work, and sacrifice can generally guarantee upper middle class (barring accidents). Basically, all you need to get there is being a good cog in the machine. That is to say - you come in groomed, you do your job, you study or take night classes, you don't spend your money on having a life, you don't make mistakes which come with fun. Eventually, you will get to your $100,000/year a…

$100,000/year salary and $1M net worth are incredibly specific numbers, where are you getting them from? It's a tautology to claim "average genes, hard work, and sacrifice can generally guarantee upper middle class" because if someone isn't upper middle class you can just claim they don't have average genes, they didn't work hard enough, or they didn't sacrifice enough. None of those things are measurable.

You could come up with some loose measure for each of those. Genes: IQ, hard work: educational attainment, sacrifice: hours worked. Someone with ~110 IQ, college degree, and willing and able to work 60 hours a week is going to have an extremely high probability of achieving upper middle class. The biggest obstacle for that person is going to be health issues.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#252

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

baccheion wrote: post #165
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…

Average IQ among intuitor types (xNxx; MBTI) is said to be one standard deviation above the norm (115+ SD15). They are also very overrepresented online. Having an IQ 2 standard deviations above the norm (130+ SD15) tends to attract problems/difficulty/friction in corporate environments. That is, companies are biased toward Te users (xxTJs) and extroverts + judgers (ExxJs) with IQs in the 115-125 range. Synthesis usua…

I'm also asking for sources here.

I'm really hoping you have some, because intuitively this seems very true for me.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#253

Post by wufufufu »

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?

https://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-some-world-class-...

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#254

Post by com2kid »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #247
com2kid wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 streng…

Don't follow. I didn't say that personality, or intelligence, is a single-dimensional variable.

I am more railing against the discussion of IQ as the definitive way to measure intelligence. Everyone down thread is arguing "Yes IQ! No IQ! Confounding factors!"

It is as if people argued about someone's GPA in college while not paying attention to the subject's major, study habits, or natural abilities.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#255

Post by wufufufu »

ummonk wrote: post #188
madeuptempacct wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much this - average genes, hard work, and sacrifice can generally guarantee upper middle class (barring accidents). Basically, all you need to get there is being a good cog in the machine. That is to say - you come in groomed, you do your job, you study or take night classes, you don't spend your money on having a life, you don't make mistakes which come with fun. Eventually, you will get to your $100,000/year a…

You seem to be assuming there isn’t any genetic component to hard work.

"There is no free will."

Ok, what implications does that have?

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#256

Post by JamesBarney »

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…

I don't think there would be too much disagreement if I said von neuman was one of the smartest 10 guys to live in the last century.

But he seemed to relate to people just fine.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#257

Post by philipkglass »

jlawson wrote: post #87
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…

You don't need to "define" it in some philosophical sense to use it. Compare "mass". What is mass? Can you really define it? You can say what it does, but what "is" it? Well, nobody can define it, except in terms of the things that it does . Because those are all we see of it. We can measure it, we see those measurements let us predict other outcomes. So we can use our knowledge of mass in practical, predictive ways…

You can quantify mass identically for humans, for other animals, and for inanimate objects. Intelligence-as-measured-by-IQ-tests apparently only works for humans. I would like to see intelligence measurement procedures that work alike for corvids, humans, and digital computing systems. I don't know if they exist. It appears that ordinary IQ tests cannot be applied that way.

My main grievance with IQ as "general" intelligence is its human parochialism. It does not generalize much at all. "The most solid, repeatable, predictive result in all of psychometrics" sounds like very faint praise to someone with a background in the natural sciences.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#258

Post by astura »

madeuptempacct wrote: post #223
astura wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100,000/year salary and $1M net worth are incredibly specific numbers, where are you getting them from? It's a tautology to claim "average genes, hard work, and sacrifice can generally guarantee upper middle class" because if someone isn't upper middle class you can just claim they don't have average genes, they didn't work hard enough, or they didn't sacrifice enough. None of those things are measurable.

That's realistic income at 45 with a 4-year degree in some engineering discipline. You can save a mil at that income in 15-20 years.

Sure, but what does that have anything to do with the "average person with average genes who works hard and sacrifices?" Most people aren't engineers and most people can't become engineers, the market can't sustain a 200%+ increase in engineers.

You seem to merely be saying engineering is a good career. Everyone already knows that.

It takes more than hard work to stick out engineering for 20 years, its not a job for everyone, you're going to burn out if you absolutely hate the work. I personally know two mechanical engineers who were both straight A students but hated it once they got to the job. Both didn't even make it to 5 years as engineers.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#259

Post by Bartweiss »

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.

There's an excellent rant somewhere about the pattern where people at the extreme margins of a trait proudly declare that the trait doesn't really matter for success.

It's the rocket scientist saying he knows lots of people smarter than him, and obviously hard work and precision are what really matter in rocketry - never mind that estimates put the average IQ in the physical sciences around 125. Or the pro basketball player saying that it's not enough to be the biggest, they key is to train hard and work as a team - never mind that the person saying it is the NBA-average height of 6'7". What these people are actually seeing is that once you have lots of a key trait, other traits gain relevance.

Or to take a less quantifiable example, we can look at something like musical skill. 10,000 hours of practice will (in)famously make you an expert, but Ericsson et al actually found that "time to expertise" is fairly constant in some fields, and massively variable in others. (I seem to remember examples varying by a factor of four?) Skill at a musical instrument can be learned by almost anyone, but some people will see vastly better return on their time investment than others. And if we're looking at professionals, then "just practice harder" ceases to be an option.

None of which means most people are excluded from most roles, or that success is tightly correlated with IQ. But there's a distinct pattern of assessing the importance of some trait after applying a hard filter on that trait, and it does everyone a disservice to pretend that's comparable to a population-level result.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#260

Post by syn0byte »

dragonwriter wrote: post #205
owens99 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> He gives the example [paraphrasing from memory] of an individual with an IQ of 170 who was so intelligent it impaired his ability to relate to normal people and hold a job. High IQ doesn't do that (in fact, it makes it easier to understand other people, including those of average intelligence, if you are so inclined), though people with high IQ and a problem that does impair their social interactions may be incline…

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028961...

You sure?

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