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New IQ research shows why smarter people make better decisions

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Re: New IQ research shows why smarter people make better decisions

#31

Post by everdrive »

delegate wrote: post #20

It's interesting how people always try to find some kind of number to race against. Here's a simple theoretical situation. A brilliant mathematician with very high IQ crashes in the jungle, but is unhurt. Not far from the crash site, there's a tribesman who lived in the jungle all his life. He doesn't know how to read or write. The jungle is filled with predators, spiders and snakes. The sun is setting, the night sta…

I think a more valid comparison would be that you have two tribesmen who have lived in the jungle all their lives, but one has a very low IQ, while one has a very high IQ. Both crash land in the jungle. Who has the bigger chance of surviving?

Re: New IQ research shows why smarter people make better decisions

#33

Post by [deleted] »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #27
s_dev wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happiness > Wealth Accumulation. Depends on what you're optimising your life for. Money is very easy to measure, work/life balance, family and other factors are all incredibly difficult to measure and are arguably more important. Plenty of relatively poor people have extremely happy lives.

If you have to work to survive you are working class, simple as. Life's much happier without survival struggle

[deleted]

Re: New IQ research shows why smarter people make better decisions

#34

Post by owebmaster »

HPsquared wrote: post #21
s_dev wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happiness > Wealth Accumulation. Depends on what you're optimising your life for. Money is very easy to measure, work/life balance, family and other factors are all incredibly difficult to measure and are arguably more important. Plenty of relatively poor people have extremely happy lives.

There are plenty of unhappy poor people. It's probably the largest category overall.

there are plenty of unhappy rich people and probably the % is bigger.

Re: New IQ research shows why smarter people make better decisions

#35

Post by dinfinity »

delegate wrote: post #20

It's interesting how people always try to find some kind of number to race against. Here's a simple theoretical situation. A brilliant mathematician with very high IQ crashes in the jungle, but is unhurt. Not far from the crash site, there's a tribesman who lived in the jungle all his life. He doesn't know how to read or write. The jungle is filled with predators, spiders and snakes. The sun is setting, the night sta…

You're confusing 'adaptation', 'knowledge', and 'intelligence'. The scientific comparison would be to put the mathematician and (lower IQ for the example) tribesman in the same situation from birth and see which performs better.

Now it's still not a given in that situation that the high IQ individual would be better adapted to the environment as physical traits may matter more, but it is probable that the high IQ individual has a better model of the predators, spiders, snakes and environment in general.

The speed with which an individual develops accuracy in their model of something (ceteris paribus) does seem to be captured by an IQ-like score, according to the research.

The thing people that actually causes problems is that people mentally equate 'higher intelligence' with 'better' or 'more valuable' which goes against our desire for humans to all be equal(ly valuable). That is what generally leads people to come up with other forms of 'intelligence' (emotional intelligence, street smarts, etc.), even though that just redefines intelligence to the point where the original meaning is lost and a new word needs to be introduced. Much better imho is to keep the original word intact and use terms like 'emotional competence', which also capture the experience part rather than just the genetic part.

Re: New IQ research shows why smarter people make better decisions

#36

Post by fsloth »

delegate wrote: post #20

It's interesting how people always try to find some kind of number to race against. Here's a simple theoretical situation. A brilliant mathematician with very high IQ crashes in the jungle, but is unhurt. Not far from the crash site, there's a tribesman who lived in the jungle all his life. He doesn't know how to read or write. The jungle is filled with predators, spiders and snakes. The sun is setting, the night sta…

The applicable experiment for IQ would be to take two ”equal” populations (say,1000 ppl with middle-class background each), sort by IQ, cut the sample set at the middle to lower than median, and higher than median group.

The statistics so far show that the upper median group will do better on average. One might end up in jungle but it does not really matter for our experiment.

For individuals, IQ is sort of statistical proxy for lots of things if your daily life is lived in a first world country.

But it’s insane to hold it as some sort of key indicator of fundamental human potential.

In population statistical situations, like when hiring, however, imho it does make sense to prefer high iq individuals. Not because of what it tells of a single candidate’s potential, but it acts as a sort of maxwells demon for the workforce as total. So you end up with a employee pool closer to above-median group in our experiment which may or may not provide better business outcomes.

Re: New IQ research shows why smarter people make better decisions

#37

Post by dgfl »

nunodonato wrote: post #25
mrspuratic wrote: post #5

I prefer to think of "smart" as a vector, I'm more interested in the dot-product with the situation at hand.

Interesting take! But don't you think that smartness would be something that would work across all/many domains?

Decades of research on the g factor seem to imply that most cognitive tasks are indeed heavily correlated.

Re: New IQ research shows why smarter people make better decisions

#38

Post by 7thaccount »

delegate wrote: post #20

It's interesting how people always try to find some kind of number to race against. Here's a simple theoretical situation. A brilliant mathematician with very high IQ crashes in the jungle, but is unhurt. Not far from the crash site, there's a tribesman who lived in the jungle all his life. He doesn't know how to read or write. The jungle is filled with predators, spiders and snakes. The sun is setting, the night sta…

In this case you're talking about some information that the professor doesn't know. We don't know if he would or wouldn't have naturally excelled at that if he had been born in that environment.

I think there is learning ability like what kind of CPU your brain gets. Some people get a super computer that seems to break down at times. Some get an i7, some a Pentium III, and even some a TI-89 chip.

Then there is knowledge, which is what you take the time to learn and is kind of like an external storage drive to continue with the computing analogy. Even if you're not able to learn as fast as someone who is equipped with a better chip, you can outperform them at work if you know a lot more about the subject (you studied hard outside of work) and have taken the time to learn new skills like programming (you added new software programs to continue the analogy).

Then there is wisdom. You have a sort of common sense and ability to see the consequences of certain actions in a way that isn't so common.

Overall Intelligence in my eyes is then the sum total of someone's 1.) learning/processing ability, 2.) knowledge across multiple domains, and 3.) wisdom. Someone with a lot of #1 may be considered by many to be unintelligient if they have little of #2 and #3.

This is just my own stupid view on the subject though. I sometimes think we just haven't invented the vocabulary necessary to discuss this - that or I'm just not educated on the subject.

Re: New IQ research shows why smarter people make better decisions

#39

Post by switknee »

delegate wrote: post #20

It's interesting how people always try to find some kind of number to race against. Here's a simple theoretical situation. A brilliant mathematician with very high IQ crashes in the jungle, but is unhurt. Not far from the crash site, there's a tribesman who lived in the jungle all his life. He doesn't know how to read or write. The jungle is filled with predators, spiders and snakes. The sun is setting, the night sta…

I believe you're confusing knowledge and intelligence. This is effectively like saying intelligence is circumstantial because Mike Tyson could punch through the mathematician's head in the boxing ring. You're comparing an ability (intelligence) to a skill (jungle stuff).

To accurately test the jungle guy's intelligence you'd need to devise a test that doesn't require reading nor writing (skills he hasn't yet developed). The point is to test how well his brain works, not what he's learned. With physical testing there are similar situations, where two people can have the same strength and endurance but one of them can achieve more with it due to certain skills like dance or being Mike Tyson.

Re: New IQ research shows why smarter people make better decisions

#40

Post by [deleted] »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #27
s_dev wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happiness > Wealth Accumulation. Depends on what you're optimising your life for. Money is very easy to measure, work/life balance, family and other factors are all incredibly difficult to measure and are arguably more important. Plenty of relatively poor people have extremely happy lives.

If you have to work to survive you are working class, simple as. Life's much happier without survival struggle

[deleted]
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