Earlier quoted context omitted.
They weren't autistic, and there didn't seem to be any strange behaviors socially, and they were quite inquisitive and swift on the uptake. I once heard IQ defined as "ability to navigate bureaucracy, getting the answers others think correct in a manner testwriters imagined, and color in the lines" (paraphrased). This may have something to do with the phenomenon here. The odds that someone would 'get a degree, earn l…
I think your quote comes from Cosma Shalizi. Thomas Sowell addressed that complaint years before by noting that most of the countries where you find that modern complexity are pretty nice places to live, whereas other places are hellholes. The correlation between IQ and income holds true for places outside of the US, too, so one might be tempted to think that a bureaucratic, find-objective-answers, fill-out-these-for…
My main point is that truly excellent thought doesn't depend on the same skills that would allow scoring highly in an IQ test. In many cases such skills would inhibit it. In an IQ test it helps to rapidly adapt to the assumed constraints of the problem and come quickly to the closest, most linear answer. If you have a mind compelled to bring questions back to reality, to challenge assumptions or think of things from many different angles, you'll do, on the whole, more poorly than if you had not. But these behaviors are sometimes precisely what you'd want!