Eh... > If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number people would think you're mad I wouldn’t think you’re m

Eh... > If you tried to claim that a person's physical strength could be measured with a single number people would think you're mad I wouldn’t think you’re mad. Many others wouldn’t either. Powerlifting competitions are already close to this. Take your performance across the four major lifts (benchpress, squat, shoulder press, deadlift) and devise a formula to combine it into a total number measuring the “general” strength of a person. You can compete on individual lifts, and if you break out that score some will be better than others at individual lifts, but the larger number remains indicative of well-rounded achievement in orthogonal areas. That being said, I don’t think physical strength is comparable in any case. > probably most people in the world would think the concept of "IQ" is mad, and yet, in some countries, so many people believe in it. I think most people either “believe” in IQ or don’t think about it often enough to have an opinion. In fact skepticism about IQ is, in my experience, a distinct phenomeon on message boards and not at all representative of society in general.