The frustrating thing for me with IQ as a measure is that realistically, it conflates a couple of factors. Specifically, it is testing both the efficiency of

The frustrating thing for me with IQ as a measure is that realistically, it conflates a couple of factors. Specifically, it is testing both the efficiency of your thought process (which is _extremely_ trainable) and the speed and error rate with which your brain executes that thought process (which is probably somewhat less trainable). The IQ test should really be re-designed into separate extremely challenging un-timed problems, and extremely simple timed problems. Problems should also be timed separately rather than as a group, and we should look at the average deviation from mean solution time; this would avoid penalizing people with poor test-taking strategies (i.e. spending an inordinate amount of time on one problem in a timed test, resulting in less time for other problems). As for IQ being more important than grit, IQ probably explains more variance in success for the average person. On the other hand, if you look at the extreme outliers in terms of success, I would confidently wager than extreme grit is much more common than extreme intelligence.