Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IQ Matters Less Than You Think

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 347 posts

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#301

Post by debacle »

MrEfficiency wrote: post #5

Can someone do a test for willpower/hardwork? I think that would be a useful indicator. I was a B student, but I've accomplished more than A students now that I'm approaching my 30s.

There have been willpower studies in young children. The findings were something like:

- Willpower at some point (age 4?) actually goes down for some period of time.

- Willpower at (I believe) age 8 was highly predictive of future success. Higher than IQ, but

- Willpower (I think here measured as focus) tends to increase with IQ.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#302

Post by nothingtodo »

The discussion here is interesting, and I think it might be worth it to consider that despite any real differences in IQ, everyone is suffering from the same miserable dysfunctions that are rooted in systems that affect your life. For example, there's another post on the HN front page today about a Nobel laureate who sold his medal to pay his medical bills. At the end of it, there's seems to be an ingrained futility to anything. It seems luck is a more important factor than genetics.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#303

Post by belenos46 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #294
dragonwriter wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It makes understanding people easier - much easier, in fact - but it doesn’t necessarily help you use that understanding any better. Firstly, as others have observed, it makes it hard to relate to others when the majority of people you meet seem to have the intellect of a child - I don’t mean this unkindly, rather more that one ends up looking at most folks as making grievous and avoidable errors incessantly, and alm…

The expectations part is the brutal one for me. Did it for years. Only started trying to not in the last year. Lost a few folks I thought were friends, but turned out to just be folks who were outsourcing their problemsolving to me.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#304

Post by [deleted] »

com2kid wrote: post #250
baccheion wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Average IQ among intuitor types (xNxx; MBTI) Please stop giving MBTI mind share, it has repeatedly been proven to be non-scientific. The creators of the test had minimal to no training in psychology, the underlying basis of the test are not based on sound theory, and test results for a given person are not stable across multiple retakes over medium periods of time. MBTI was sold to corporations as a psuedo-scientif…

[deleted]

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#305

Post by jerf »

com2kid wrote: post #274
debacle wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no other measure we have that tracks as well with intelligence.

There is no single, easy to post about online, number. Intelligence is not single faceted. Posting and interpreting an entire psych tests worth of numbers is possible, but it is harder to have silly Internet arguments over subtly and nuance around a topic that requires research and education. The level of discourse talking about "IQ" reaches is the same as discussing a new vehicle by saying it has 300 horse power, an…

"Intelligence is not single faceted."

Intelligence is not single-faceted. However the evidence is overwhelming that those facets are far from uncorrelated. If you know that person X is very good with mathematics, you can guess with reasonably high probability that any given other facet of intelligence you may care to name is also likely to be high.

People are diverse and brains are complicated and you can always find someone who is generally very intelligent but can't string three words together in writing, or someone who is generally incredibly stupid but has one particular measure very high ("idiot savant"). But in the general population all the intelligence measures are highly correlated, which means that something like an IQ number can exist and have significant, if not necessarily totally definitive, truth to it.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#306

Post by 2_listerine_pls »

Alex888 wrote: 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.

And a billion dollars doesn't really matter when you have a billion dollars. Also, red shoes are red when they are red.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#307

Post by enraged_camel »

Bartweiss wrote: post #259
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…

>>It's the rocket scientist saying he knows lots of people smarter than him

Well, that much is probably true: the very nature of his/her profession surrounds him/her with similarly smart people, some of whom are going to be smarter.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#308

Post by gms7777 »

Bartweiss wrote: post #259
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…

I think another way of stating it is that often times, IQ is necessary but not sufficient.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#309

Post by xfer »

cossatot wrote: post #285
Bartweiss wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think that the filters you mention are an important mechanism here. These continuous variables like IQ or test scores get mapped onto binary ones (filters/gates) as you make it, or don't, into schools or jobs or other opportunities. It's not necessarily a linear or symmetrical mapping, either. For example, when I was in graduate school, the chair was discussing how high GRE scores were not very strong indicators of…

> IQ probably maps pretty linearly to GRE scores

For native english speakers, you mean? When i participated, GRE had 2 sections on english language: 1. about vocabulary(may not be relevant depending on your discipline) 2: reading comprehension(certainly useful). I don't think it maps that well to IQ. I certainly had to work on my vocabulary, which i don't have any use for and don't remember much at all.

Re: IQ Matters Less Than You Think

#310

Post by com2kid »

debacle wrote: post #272
baccheion wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you have citations for the things you have said here? I am not being accusative. You seem to know what your talking about and I want to read further.

The intro paragraph to the wikipedia article about MBTI is nothing but citations about how bad it is.

Aside from that, the standard sources of psuedoscience woo debunking all have long articles

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4221

and finally https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/09/the-personality-test-tha... has a brief bio on Katharine Cook Briggs

Post reply on HN