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210 IQ Is Not Enough

taylor.town

61–70 of 284 posts

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#61
post #32
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other problem with IQ is that it's not a fixed scale, so you can't really compare IQ scores across time. An IQ of 100 is average by definition. Even if the average "intelligence" (or whatever IQ measures, because it doesn't seem to be intelligence as people think of intelligence) rises or falls over time, that average will always be a 100 IQ.

why couldn't you? i've always imagined IQ as the raw potential? or am I misunderstanding

It's not raw, in the sense that it's not an objective measurement. It's a comparison with other humans of the same age that took the same tests. 100 IQ means that you score in a perfectly average way, you're better than 50% of people that took that test and worse than 50% other people that took that test, it's a comparison, not really an absolute score.

So, to compare 100 IQ now with 100 IQ 50 years ago is hard, since you're not using the same test anymore.

There's an effect called the Flynn Effect which is essentially an inflation of IQ, so the tests are changed every few years so that it keeps the same distribution (so that the averagely intelligent human would score 100)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

In fact, you can't always compare the IQ tests of 2 humans alive, because the given score is comparing you to the other people of your age, not to the global population. So if you compare the IQ of a kid and middle aged man, it doesn't mean that one is more smart than the other in an absolute way (it's more a theoretical potential)

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#62
post #7
post #4

The "world's smartest man" very recently predicted on X that Bitcoin would hit $220k by the end of the year. [1] Here's the thing: IQ probably doesn't mean much of anything. But it is one of only a handful of ways we have to benchmark intelligence. The training of AI systems critically requires benchmarks to understand gain/loss in training and determine if minute changes in the system is actually winging more intell…

tbf you started with what intelligence is in rejecting their claim of being the smartest: ability to predict the future

This isn't even that. If I'm a person others may take as a reference and I hold Bitcoin, it is in my interest to publicly state that Bitcoin is going to increase in value, because that in itself makes it increase in value and it's good for me.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#63
post #19
post #4

The "world's smartest man" very recently predicted on X that Bitcoin would hit $220k by the end of the year. [1] Here's the thing: IQ probably doesn't mean much of anything. But it is one of only a handful of ways we have to benchmark intelligence. The training of AI systems critically requires benchmarks to understand gain/loss in training and determine if minute changes in the system is actually winging more intell…

> IQ probably doesn't mean much of anything. But it is one of only a handful of ways we have to benchmark intelligence. IQ means a lot of things (higher IQ people are measurably better at making associations and generating original ideas, are more perceptive, learn faster, have better spatial awareness). It doesn't give them the power to predict the future.

It is less meaningful than that. It identifies who does well at tests for those things. That is not the same thing as being "better" at such things, it often just means "faster". IQ tests are also notorious for cultural bias. In particular with the word associations, they often just test for "I'm a white American kid who grew up in private schools."

And I say this as one of the white amercian kids who did great on those tests. My scores are high, but they are not meaningful.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#64

A really good litmus test of individual perspective and maturity, here. Already seeing comments nitpick specific arguments or points, which is itself the trap to shine a light on those individuals more obsessed with arbitrary external measures of their personal definition of success, rather than self-reflecting on said definition and asking whether or not this definition fits who they are or want to be as a person, o…

Dunno - I think it's hard for a lot of us who rolled the dice on our interests early on, picked the winning combo of CS + Finance, and then just raced ahead in the career ladder over our peers as software work consumed the world. Now it's ten years later, those ladders have disappeared, many of us seeing the writing on the wall, and wondering whether we were anything special at all. (The answer of course is no, but i…

But isn’t being special rather… lonely?

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#65
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It correlates to 7.3 sigma, meanwhile 7-sigma event has a probability of approximately 1 in 390 billion. We only have 8 billion humans on Earth. why can't you use historical population? like, the total amount of humans that ever existed? rough google shows around 100billion. seems legit that in the history of humanity, we could pop out someone so intelligent? But I do agree that IQ is probably a decent signal but e…

That one person in our entire history somehow got tested accurately (is that even possible? there isn't any sense or point for any IQ test to even go into that range, because what would you be baselining and verifying the test against?) and is advertising about it? Count me skeptical.

Someone crazy smart is far more likely to take an IQ test at some point in their life. Ask the opposite - how hard would it be to overlook the fact that a 3 year old is doing fucking calculus? That's just insane. There is virtually no chance that gets looked over.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#66
post #44
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it seems unlikely, I wouldn't find it impossible (edit: learning more about IQ score, yeah 276 is definitly BS). You can be "intelligent" as in very good at solving logic puzzle and math problem, and the most obtuse and subjectively dumb person when it comes to anything else. It might be less likely but definitely happened. I have met people working in very advanced field having the perspective and reflection o…

I'm not saying he doesn't have 276 IQ because it's impossible for someone who says that stuff to be smart, I'm saying he doesn't have 276 IQ because people who say that stuff tend to also lie about their IQ.

Well, it is mathematically impossible. Traditional IQ tests have a mean/median of 100, and follow a normal distribution with standard-deviation of 15 points.

So 270 would be 11 standard deviations above normal so 1 in 17,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 people.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#67
> According to Yoo, by the time he was 1, her son learned both the Korean alphabet and 1,000 Chinese characters by studying the Thousand Character Classic, a sixth-century Chinese poem.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ung-yong

Is that true? How is that even possible? Like, biologically.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#68
post #3

There are no such thing as 210 IQ. It correlates to 7.3 sigma, meanwhile 7-sigma event has a probability of approximately 1 in 390 billion. We only have 8 billion humans on Earth. These absurd claims about IQ is almost evidence that the claimant are nowhere close. For starters, any IQ tests are not going to be normalized to that range because it is impossible to normalize to that range as there are 0 realistic sample…

That's not really how statistics works. It is not impossible to roll two sixes on a single roll of two dies because it is more likely you won't.

It's not impossible, but improbable.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#69
IQ and EQ are two different things often not found in the same individual. IQ is being smart enough to know that something is happening. EQ is being smart enough to be able to convince other humans to do something about it.

High IQ low EQ folks often struggle in careers and life because they’re “right” but can’t get anything done.

The most successful tend to be high-ish IQ but with enough EQ to get things done. Those folks are unstoppable.

Re: 210 IQ Is Not Enough

#70
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no assumption, that is the definition of IQ. Is human intelligence a normal distribution? Probably not. But IQ is extrapolated as such, and probably useless anyway. Which make absurd claims like this even more laughable.

IQ is offset and scaled with the goal of producing that normal distribution, but that process is informed by the available data. Outliers don't get forced onto the curve, because there definitionally isn't enough data to figure out how outlying they are as a percentile.

Exactly.
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