7 ms·

Genius has nothing to do with IQ. Genius is a level of creative thought that appears magically simple once you behold it, but yet was beyond people up to that p

Genius has nothing to do with IQ. Genius is a level of creative thought that appears magically simple once you behold it, but yet was beyond people up to that point. The things that IQ tests for are almost orthogonal to this. Sure, there are probably geniuses with high IQs, but I'd be very surprised if high IQ has any predictive ability to detect genius.

sanxiyn 9y ago
> I'd be very surprised if high IQ has any predictive ability to detect genius. This is the most ridiculous thing I have read for a while.
- f055 9y ago
  Why? High IQ means you are very good at solving the IQ test problems, not that you are intelligent or genius. I don't think these problems represent anything else, or if there are examples of high IQ people that made actual, genius contribution to humanity. Do you?
  - sanxiyn 9y ago
    Are you familiar with modern intelligence research? IQ test is reliable (get the same score when you test multiple times) and valid (correlate with things we actually care about, not just being good at solving IQ test problems). Intelligence: All That Matters by Stuart Ritchie is a good summary of modern intelligence research. https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-That-Matters-Stuart-Ritchie/dp/1444791877 https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-That-Matters-Stuart-Ritc... To quote: "The scientific evidence is clear: IQ tests are extraordinarily useful. IQ scores are related to a huge variety of important life outcomes like educational success, income, and even life expectancy, and biological studies have shown they are genetically influenced and linked to measures of the brain. Studies of intelligence and IQ are regularly published in the world's top scientific journals."
    - lainon 9y ago
      http://www.pnas.org/content/109/2/425.full.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/109/2/425.full.pdf (Schooling in adolescence raises IQ scores)
      - sanxiyn 9y ago
        Summary: "The quasiexperimental results suggest that the reform increased the average IQ score for Norwegian men by a statistically significant 0.6 IQ points." This paper shows two things, although only one is surprising enough for publication. The surprising part is that "schooling in adolescence raises IQ scores", which is the title of the paper. Another is that IQ is so reliable that increase of 0.6 IQ points is statistically significant.
    - paulpauper 9y ago
      agree...IQ correlates with a lot. It's not just a measure of "how well someone does on IQ tests".
    - DamonHD 9y ago
      My mum, after getting her PhD (and having taught herself through A-levels because her Yorkshire school stopped at O-levels, and got into Oxford) decided to take her first-ever IQ test. She rated mentally subnormal. Astonished, she thought about what it was trying to test and took another test: now genius. None of us think that either was right...
      - hinkley 9y ago
        Up until I was eight they thought I might be deficient. So they poked and prodded and eventually some people came to school and took me to the library and gave me an IQ test. Then they came back and gave me another one. And I believe another one after that, by which point I was a little disgruntled. Didn't I already take one of these? Did you lose my answers? Turns out that the test can be tuned to a range. If you take the wrong one it loses some accuracy at the low and high end of the range, so they had to retest me. They had assumed I might be dim and gave me the wrong one. The real problem was that I was so insufferably bored all the time that I wouldn't engage. But I liked puzzles and the test had a bunch I'd never seen before, so by the last one I was taking it in the spirit it was given. My guess is in two parts. Either your mother took the wrong one(s), or took a bogus one, or you're thinking of elements of a successful adult that the test can't measure, like common sense and social graces. In any group of peers at that level there are bound to be people who can certainly do the work, possibly better than you, but who are painfully, even cringingly, bad at certain other life skills. It gets a little uncomfortable to acknowledge these people as geniuses. And there are people who seem not to be all that, but on occasion surprise the hell out of you by coming through in a clutch.
  - Gauc2 9y ago
    My impression is that IQ test roughly measures g [0], which does correlate with intelligence.Note that this is not my research area by any stretch. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
- walterstucco 9y ago
  I'm quite sure Van Gogh's IQ wasn't that high...
  - lgas 9y ago
    Why?
    - walterstucco 9y ago
      because... history? he was a Genius, but his IQ was probably average, according to what we know about him
      - dang 9y ago
        Hard to say. He was nearly as good a writer as a painter and presumably wasn't even trying at that craft. He would be remembered for his letters even if he never painted a thing, and they were purely accidental because Theo wasn't always in town. But you still have a point.
      - lgas 9y ago
        I don't know the history, that's what I was asking. I googled before I asked but everything I could find seemed relatively split with many sources implicitly or explicitly referring to him as a genius.
  - dando 9y ago
    And who said Van Gogh is a genius?
    - walterstucco 9y ago
      basically everybody
Splatter 9y ago
> Genius has nothing to do with IQ. Genius is a level of creative thought that appears magically simple once you behold it, but yet was beyond people up to that point. Not sure why the downvotes. While discounting the relationship of genius with IQ is specious in light of their point, this person offers a possible nugget of truth on an alternative understanding of genius.
freyr 9y ago
In one sense, I think you're correct: the term "genius" should be reserved for people who produce extraordinary output in some field -- whether that's math or science, literature, music, visual art, etc. Even if we restrict ourselves to scientific geniuses, the idea that everyone who gets above a certain score on an IQ test should be labelled a genius seems, frankly, small-minded. Not everyone with an IQ >= X should be labelled a genius because not everyone with a very high IQ has the other qualities required to produce genius-level work. But in many fields, such as mathematics, high IQ seems to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for genius. This makes sense -- doing well in mathematics courses requires the same logical and analytical skills required to score high on an IQ test. In that sense, it obviously has some predictive value.
- tacomonstrous 9y ago
  I agree with everything you say, but if >140 IQ accounts for the 99.5 percentile and true genius (in my estimation) is closer to 1 in 100000, then, even if every genius is within that IQ percentile, the predictive value is still essentially worthless.
  - freyr 9y ago
    Using those numbers, a random person has a 0.001% chance of being a genius. After they score >140 on an IQ test, this improves to a 0.2% chance. That's a big increase, but it isn't high enough to predict that an individual is a genius with any degree of certainty. But, we can use the IQ test to predict who isn't a genius, or to make large scale predictions. For example, if a state has 100,000 students entering middle school per year, there's approximately one genius in that group. If you can afford an intensive math program for 7,500 students, the IQ test would let you predict that any potential geniuses get enrolled with high probability. That raises issues of fairness, discrimination, etc., but that's another topic.

sanxiyn 9y ago

> I'd be very surprised if high IQ has any predictive ability to detect genius. This is the most ridiculous thing I have read for a while.

f055 9y ago
Why? High IQ means you are very good at solving the IQ test problems, not that you are intelligent or genius. I don't think these problems represent anything else, or if there are examples of high IQ people that made actual, genius contribution to humanity. Do you?
- sanxiyn 9y ago
  Are you familiar with modern intelligence research? IQ test is reliable (get the same score when you test multiple times) and valid (correlate with things we actually care about, not just being good at solving IQ test problems). Intelligence: All That Matters by Stuart Ritchie is a good summary of modern intelligence research. https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-That-Matters-Stuart-Ritchie/dp/1444791877 https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-That-Matters-Stuart-Ritc... To quote: "The scientific evidence is clear: IQ tests are extraordinarily useful. IQ scores are related to a huge variety of important life outcomes like educational success, income, and even life expectancy, and biological studies have shown they are genetically influenced and linked to measures of the brain. Studies of intelligence and IQ are regularly published in the world's top scientific journals."
  - lainon 9y ago
    http://www.pnas.org/content/109/2/425.full.pdf http://www.pnas.org/content/109/2/425.full.pdf (Schooling in adolescence raises IQ scores)
    - sanxiyn 9y ago
      Summary: "The quasiexperimental results suggest that the reform increased the average IQ score for Norwegian men by a statistically significant 0.6 IQ points." This paper shows two things, although only one is surprising enough for publication. The surprising part is that "schooling in adolescence raises IQ scores", which is the title of the paper. Another is that IQ is so reliable that increase of 0.6 IQ points is statistically significant.
  - paulpauper 9y ago
    agree...IQ correlates with a lot. It's not just a measure of "how well someone does on IQ tests".
  - DamonHD 9y ago
    My mum, after getting her PhD (and having taught herself through A-levels because her Yorkshire school stopped at O-levels, and got into Oxford) decided to take her first-ever IQ test. She rated mentally subnormal. Astonished, she thought about what it was trying to test and took another test: now genius. None of us think that either was right...
    - hinkley 9y ago
      Up until I was eight they thought I might be deficient. So they poked and prodded and eventually some people came to school and took me to the library and gave me an IQ test. Then they came back and gave me another one. And I believe another one after that, by which point I was a little disgruntled. Didn't I already take one of these? Did you lose my answers? Turns out that the test can be tuned to a range. If you take the wrong one it loses some accuracy at the low and high end of the range, so they had to retest me. They had assumed I might be dim and gave me the wrong one. The real problem was that I was so insufferably bored all the time that I wouldn't engage. But I liked puzzles and the test had a bunch I'd never seen before, so by the last one I was taking it in the spirit it was given. My guess is in two parts. Either your mother took the wrong one(s), or took a bogus one, or you're thinking of elements of a successful adult that the test can't measure, like common sense and social graces. In any group of peers at that level there are bound to be people who can certainly do the work, possibly better than you, but who are painfully, even cringingly, bad at certain other life skills. It gets a little uncomfortable to acknowledge these people as geniuses. And there are people who seem not to be all that, but on occasion surprise the hell out of you by coming through in a clutch.
- Gauc2 9y ago
  My impression is that IQ test roughly measures g [0], which does correlate with intelligence.Note that this is not my research area by any stretch. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
walterstucco 9y ago
I'm quite sure Van Gogh's IQ wasn't that high...
- lgas 9y ago
  Why?
  - walterstucco 9y ago
    because... history? he was a Genius, but his IQ was probably average, according to what we know about him
    - dang 9y ago
      Hard to say. He was nearly as good a writer as a painter and presumably wasn't even trying at that craft. He would be remembered for his letters even if he never painted a thing, and they were purely accidental because Theo wasn't always in town. But you still have a point.
    - lgas 9y ago
      I don't know the history, that's what I was asking. I googled before I asked but everything I could find seemed relatively split with many sources implicitly or explicitly referring to him as a genius.
- dando 9y ago
  And who said Van Gogh is a genius?
  - walterstucco 9y ago
    basically everybody

Splatter 9y ago

> Genius has nothing to do with IQ. Genius is a level of creative thought that appears magically simple once you behold it, but yet was beyond people up to that point. Not sure why the downvotes. While discounting the relationship of genius with IQ is specious in light of their point, this person offers a possible nugget of truth on an alternative understanding of genius.

freyr 9y ago

In one sense, I think you're correct: the term "genius" should be reserved for people who produce extraordinary output in some field -- whether that's math or science, literature, music, visual art, etc. Even if we restrict ourselves to scientific geniuses, the idea that everyone who gets above a certain score on an IQ test should be labelled a genius seems, frankly, small-minded. Not everyone with an IQ >= X should be labelled a genius because not everyone with a very high IQ has the other qualities required to produce genius-level work. But in many fields, such as mathematics, high IQ seems to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for genius. This makes sense -- doing well in mathematics courses requires the same logical and analytical skills required to score high on an IQ test. In that sense, it obviously has some predictive value.

tacomonstrous 9y ago
I agree with everything you say, but if >140 IQ accounts for the 99.5 percentile and true genius (in my estimation) is closer to 1 in 100000, then, even if every genius is within that IQ percentile, the predictive value is still essentially worthless.
- freyr 9y ago
  Using those numbers, a random person has a 0.001% chance of being a genius. After they score >140 on an IQ test, this improves to a 0.2% chance. That's a big increase, but it isn't high enough to predict that an individual is a genius with any degree of certainty. But, we can use the IQ test to predict who isn't a genius, or to make large scale predictions. For example, if a state has 100,000 students entering middle school per year, there's approximately one genius in that group. If you can afford an intensive math program for 7,500 students, the IQ test would let you predict that any potential geniuses get enrolled with high probability. That raises issues of fairness, discrimination, etc., but that's another topic.