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IQ Matters Less Than You Think
- programminggeek 8y agoThe real fallacy is thinking that it is ONLY one factor and hoping that by isolating that one fact that you can prove and predict all things. That is foolish in my experience.
- tomglynch 8y agoVery interesting piece. Really shows standardised testing is not beneficial, especially as it usually narrows the scope of teaching anyway.
- throwanem 8y agoOf course IQ isn’t a measure of success. Success is a measure of success.
- bad_user 8y agoThis remark is either really smart, or really dumb, depending on how you interpret it.
- noname120 8y agoI think that this comment refers to Goodhart's Law[1], so I would place my money on smart. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EbFABnst8LsidYs5Y/goodhart-taxonomy https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EbFABnst8LsidYs5Y/goodhart-t...
- Dirlewanger 8y agoRight, but IQ is still one of the best predictors of success.
- unstuckdev 8y agoBut what is the best predictor of IQ?
- Dirlewanger 8y agoOff-the-cuff, I'd probably say either a stable and supportive family environment and/or above-average family wealth, in which case one could just cut out the IQ middleman and say those are the best predictors.
- WillPostForFood 8y agoYour parents' IQ, maternal IQ more so.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 8y agoSuccess is an abstraction, not a measure (or even unambiguously measurable.)
- empath75 8y agoI always tested in the 99th percentile, went to gifted and talented classes, was a merit scholarship semi finalist, etc. I think by any measure I had a high IQ. I also barely graduated high school, flunked out of junior college and spent most of my 20s going to raves instead of accomplishing anything worth while. Meanwhile my sister, who had an utterly average iq by any measure has a masters degree and is a hospital executive. The answer is she just worked harder than me. I gave up as soon as anything was difficult for me because I was so used to learning everything easily. She assumed that learning was supposed to be hard and put the work into it.
- jlawson 8y agoTalent without effort will get you nowhere. Effort without talent will get you somewhere. Effort with talent will get you anywhere.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoIt sounds different from that: she worked at all. It didn't take particular persistence after all - you can get a degree by simply showing up.
- tossermcgee22 8y agoSimilar setup albeit perhaps a different (or just earlier?) outcome. Failed a bunch of classes in high school and flirted with dropping out. Two misdemeanor arrests for underaged drinking and pot. Graduated in bottom quintile of my high school class, one failure shy of being held back. Managed to get into a far away college with a scholarship on the basis of a letter of recommendation from one of those once-in-a-lifetime teachers for whom I'll be forever grateful. Did fine in college, got a 1600 on the GRE, went into dev work at startups and have since had a quite successful career. I feel like being smart saved my butt multiple times over. I don't think I would have gotten that LOR if I hadn't made an impression on that HS teacher, wouldn't have been able to self-teach CS as a non-programmer as easily without smarts to fall back on, etc. Maybe being smart was not a prerequisite for getting where I did, but I think it was a prerequisite for taking the winding path I took. And also a gigantic, heaping helping of luck as well.
- MrEfficiency 8y agoCan someone do a test for willpower/hardwork? I think that would be a useful indicator. I was a B student, but I've accomplished more than A students now that I'm approaching my 30s.
- js8 8y agoI just started one for you. Now it's up to you to figure out, what has to be done and do it. Let me know when you think you have finished the test, and we will evaluate it.
- MrEfficiency 8y agoInteresting. I have no incentive to do the test, so I wont. My willpower is based on consequences?
- js8 8y agoThe evaluation of the test is simple. Your willpower is measured by the amount of hard work you dedicated to the problem of your own choice during the time interval of the test (which is your choice as well). So if you truly have no incentive to do the test, then you have no incentive to do anything that you choose to, and zero willpower.
- folli 8y agoEven though it's controversial, I think this comes close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
- ben_w 8y agoWillpower has a standard test, at least in kids: put a sweet in front of them, tell them to not eat it, leave them alone with it, and see how long it takes them to eat it anyway. For adults, I propose giving them a mobile phone and a Twitter account, and seeing how long it takes for them to “just check it one more time”.
- melling 8y ago“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” ― Calvin Coolidge
- yhoneycomb 8y agoDepends in what field. Being persistent will never give you the facial features to become a male model.
- hokua3 8y agoyou could be the before picture
- brightball 8y agoI laughed way too hard at this
- raverbashing 8y ago"But why male models" But at this day and age of modern cosmetic surgery, yes it does. (At least you need persistence to get the money to afford it)
- taneq 8y agoBecause they're obedient! >>> Being persistent will never give you the facial features to become a male model. >> Yes it does! > Okay. nods
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoPlenty of not-handsome actors out there, even historically.
- thoughtexplorer 8y ago
- sidcool 8y agoI want to believe that my perhaps above average IQ won't matter and I could be in a league of PhDs. But practically it seems very difficult and there is a glass ceiling which seems too difficult to break. A feeling that there is something which my mind cannot probably grasp.
- rusticpenn 8y agoPhD is almost never about high IQ, its about perseverance.
- dagw 8y agoIf you're smart enough to get a bachelors or masters in a subject, you're smart enough to get a PhD in the subject. What will make or break you is your tenacity and willpower and not giving up when it becomes a dull hard slog. And realistically the difference in quality/difficulty level of work people do to get their PhD is massive. Some people revolutionize their field for decades to come and some do a slightly more drawn out bachelors level thesis. Yet they both end up with the same degree.
- everdrive 8y ago>difficult >cannot probably grasp I think a lot of PhDs find their study very difficult too, and simply have to persist.
- dEnigma 8y agoI personally know a number of people with PhDs who never did well on IQ tests, but simply persevered and did their thing.
- testuser66 8y agoIt's all about learning more things, which in turn expands what you could possibly think - the human mind's ideas are limited to what it already knows or has experienced. Learning new things expands that, allowing you to make new and unique connections between ideas. Knowing more will help your future learning too - many ideas from separate fields are similar. Once you have learned one, your brain can easily learn the other ones, as it just maps the concept. Many people have said it's about perseverance, My take on that is that it is perseverance in learning. I don't know what the IQ fuss is about. It's about as useless as all the other categorisations such as the Myers Briggs Personality Types. Don't let yourself be categorised by a made up number, based on the ideas of the 1900s that have nowadays been mostly proven wrong or, at the very least, unreliable at best. Learning and doing will break any glass ceilings you may think there are. The people who are at the top of their fields got there by years of excruciatingly hard work that is often forgotten. (forgotten not as in that it didn't matter, but as in people looking at them often think they just became top of their fields in a fortnight, and forget their actual life's journey that led them there)
- k__ 8y agoI know a few people with >130 IQ and they all have executive disfunction and anxiety problems. So yes, the best CPU doesn't help if the IO is constantly blocked.
- TomMarius 8y agoI wonder if there is an online community focused on dealing with this issue.
- SolaceQuantum 8y agoMENSA?
- TomMarius 8y agoThey work mostly with children in my country.
- teilo 8y agoMeh. Not really, at least not in the US. I mean, I suppose you could treat it as sort of a support group if you want to, but for the most part, it's a big social club and not much more. I stayed in for two years, and then didn't bother to renew. But then, I already have a group of friends, and a family, so there really wasn't anything for me there.
- petercooper 8y agoI'm not at the level required for MENSA (140 in the UK) but all I heard when I looked into it is it's a bunch of pretty dysfunctional people trying to one-up each other. I already have Reddit and HN for that :-D
- raverbashing 8y agoCouldn't have thought of a better description
- jarfil 8y ago
- RickJWagner 8y ago"If you think your IQ is 160 but it's 150, you're a disaster. It's much better to have a 130 IQ and think it's 120." - Charlie Munger
- dEnigma 8y agoCould you please explain the meaning of that quote to me?
- breitling 8y agoDon't think you're smarter than you are.
- zakm 8y agoI don't know what the meaning is, but I'm pretty sure that's not it.
- gargarplex 8y agoPeople with really high IQs get themselves into real trouble because they think they're capable of handling it. This makes me think of Long Term Capital Management and geohot with his self-driving cars.
- hackinthebochs 8y agoIt's about expected necessary effort vs actual necessary effort. It's better to wrong that you needed more effort than be wrong that you needed less effort.
- dEnigma 8y agoThank you! I misread the quote and thought it talked about having a lower IQ than one thinks in both cases. This cleared everything up.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tyingq 8y agoThere's supposedly some correlation between high IQ and mood/social disorders. One example article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-news-for-the-highly-intelligent/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bad-news-for-the-... Perhaps that accounts for some of this.
- nomel 8y agoRelated, I have (had?) an above average IQ, am on the spectrum, and have many symptoms of ADHD...then I had a transient ischemic stroke. Everything calmed down after.
- tyingq 8y agoIt sounds like you're saying your quality of life is better on the whole post stroke. Is that right? Pretty interesting if so.
- hokua3 8y agoIQ measures intellectual ability. Intelligence is a necessary, not a sufficient condition for success.
- jlawson 8y agoAbsolutely. It's not that complicated. Usain Bolt obviously has incredible sprinting talent. But if he sat around at home playing video games and eating potato chips all day, nobody would expect him to be an amazing sprinter. Everyone knows this. Yet for some reason there's this weird idea that intelligence without effort can yield results, where the same obviously doesn't apply to any other kind of natural talent. It's strange.
- slx26 8y agoI always like to point out that a problem here is that people don't always recognise it when intellectual effort happens. Most people talk about someone being intelligent because they can get good grades without studying or similar. But not studying doesn't mean there's not an intellectual effort. In fact, most intelligent people are intelligent or stay that way because they are constantly listening, analyzing, learning and thinking in their day to day. Then maybe they don't need to separately study a subject that much. They are used to learn and they already got it. (you get the point) So, I don't think it's strange, it's usually very different to the "physical training" example, because people don't see it directly.
- mgkimsal 8y ago> weird idea that intelligence without effort can yield results In my experience, that 'weird idea' comes from early schooling. Highly intelligent (gifted?) kids generally don't have to exhibit any effort on school work, at least up to a certain time. I can tell you that, in my case, I coasted up until around 11th grade, then I hit a bit of a mental wall. I'm sure other physiological changes impacted, but at core, I didn't know how to study or exert effort in 'learning' - everything had just fallen in to place for so long that I didn't have the skill or experience to learn how to get better. This was a confounding factor in college as well. I've shared this with other folks, and had more than a few people share similar experiences. If Usain just ran really fast, and people said "wow, you're fast", but he wasn't trained at how to get better, he probably wouldn't have become a world champ. But with 'raw intelligence', that often doesn't receive the same sort of coaching and support as specific sports or other identifiable talents.
- jacquesm 8y agoI know plenty of people for whom their high IQ is actually a hindrance rather than a help. So even for them it matters (greatly) but not in a positive way. The best determinants for being successful, in spite of a high IQ or lack thereof are the ability to focus and to have stamina.
- smt88 8y agoI see luck (family you're born into, being in the right place at the right time, etc.) as far more of a determinant than focus or stamina.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoIts important of course - Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell were all the same guy - family situation, education, opportunity. Yet there were thousands just like them, that didn't succeed. The difference? Persistence, I think.
- HiroshiSan 8y agoIs there any way to train focus and stamina?
- debacle 8y agoThe general advice is: know when take breaks. Small + often.
- WillPostForFood 8y agoHigh IQ Low Focus is going to be better than Low IQ Low Focus. Where it is going to be unclear is High IQ Low Focus vs Low IQ High Focus. Unfortunately, focus and IQ generally correlate, so the genetic winners get even more inherent advantage.
- lonelyscarf 8y agoI agree that it matters less. One thing is to have a high IQ, the other is to apply that IQ to your every day life. However, it is not sufficient to base your success on IQ alone, effort matters too and those who have a high IQ tend to put less effort into things
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- account2 8y agoI wonder how many IQ test misclassify intelligence? Feynman had a score of 125 and many people here have a high score than that. I bet no one here with a higher score of 125 are actually smarter than Feynman though. I think this is just one of many possible such examples where IQ test miss the purported people they were suppose to capture. Feynman’s score wouldn’t even qualify him for MENSA. I wonder how many IQ exams misclassify the intelligence of smart people with disabilities of some sort or high functioning autism. Not saying any of this applies to Feynman, he is just an example of where the test didn’t accurately capture his intellect.
- neffy 8y agoI think it´s fairly well accepted that Feynman deliberately blew off his IQ test.
- account2 8y agoYour comment doesn’t address my question of how many people are misclassified by IQ test. I suspect smart people with high functioning autism and the like are not accurately measured. Not saying any of this applies to Feynman by the way. Just used him as an example of where an IQ exam underestimated someone.
- neffy 8y agoIt´s fairly well known that people from impoverished backgrounds get lower grades for several reasons - not ever having practiced similar questions and vocabulary issues: there have been some quite notorious questions, especially over in England that were dependent on different social classes having different vocabularies, etc.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- csa 8y agoIt is relatively easy for a good IQ year to deliver a “false negative” — that is, a significantly lower score than a theoretical true score. This could be as simple as something like not sleeping well the night before or just simple ambivalence. It is relatively difficult for a good IQ test to deliver a false positive — that is, a significantly higher score than a theoretical true score. I personally don’t think that this issue is taken into consideration enough when discussing IQ.
- avryhof 8y agoAnyone who knows that their D&D Character with a 20 INT isn't invincible. You have to have a combination of scores in all of the attributes to succeed. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't apply this to real life. That being said, I often find that I over-think tasks, and end up never completing them because I try to make them perfect, and find out at some point that I can't. What's more important than "perfect" is "good enough", and sometimes a high IQ won't allow you to accept that. It's one of the things I hate about myself at times.
- zimbatm 8y agoIt's possible to play a 20 INT character if the rest of the cast is adjusted accordingly. I have a theory that a lot of highly successful people have either a partner or a team that is willing to do the grunt work. They basically have/created a surrounding that allows them to focus on what they do best. The media will picture how that person is so smart and great, but without the proper environment they wouldn't be able to thrive. Smart people have a tendency to think they can do everything on their own because they are so smart, which is quite stupid actually.
- titanomachy 8y agoThe brilliant mathematician Erdos was famously incompetent at the basic requirements of life. There are many exasperated stories from the colleagues who hosted him throughout the years, but it was worth it for the insights he could provide on their work.
- pixl97 8y ago>Anyone who knows that their D&D Character with a 20 INT isn't invincible. Isn't this some kind of circular logic? A character with high intelligence is just that a charade of the user playing it. So it doesn't matter if the INT is high, if the player is a moron bad things will still happen.
- ShlomoGrinberg 8y agoIt's purely socioeconomic factors.
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- closed 8y agoIt's funny, the article says that none of Terman's Termites became examplars of genius, but Lee Cronbach is definitely in the top 1% of most influential psychologists. To name a few accomplishments.. * If wikipedia is correct, he was the "48th most cited psychologist as of 2002". * He has an extremely popular metric named after him (Cronbach's alpha) * President of American Psychological Association. Maybe what he is missing to the author is the popular media appeal Feynman has. However, I'm not sure that's a good criterion for genius, since I'm not sure it's something Cronbach wanted. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Cronbach https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Cronbach
- Miltnoid 8y agoYeah, the article talked about "only" becoming Stanford professors... maybe the author doesn't realize how incredibly hard and rare it is to be a professor at a tier 1 research institution, not to mention being as prolific as Cronbach. The kids didn't become Nobel laureates but... so? That's an insane expectation for high achievement.
- iguy 8y agoI believe that Shockley just missed the cutoff for this study. Because it had a fairly high weight on verbal score.
- harry8 8y agoThere's an unspoken assumption in this discussion that ability, however it is defined, leads inevitably to success, whatever that means. Then you're looking at whether IQ is a good measurement of ability in the first instance (is it often wrong in what it is trying to measure it not?) And whether it is trying to measure the right thing or is ability elsewhere unmeasured? Nowhere in all of it is dumb luck considered a factor. Lottery winners are successful. What can you infer about their personality attributes? It's obviously risible. At the other end of the scale is there ability so profound that considering the role of luck is uninteresting? Or are there N others with comparable ability who weren't so fortunate and did not succeed? How big is that N? Is it possible to answer such questions with anything more than prejudice? Do you have to get lucky with your research to get a Nobel? Eg would Feynmann have got one for something else if QED was published by someone else a couple of years before he got there? Don Bradman was lucky to achieve what he did in sports, really? My own prejudice is that IQ is total bullshit. I believe in my ability and was once told as a child that my IQ was impressive (whatever that meant - I don't know). I know I mirror my parents reaction to that news: "We think you're clever and always did, just not because of this nonsense." Maybe I'm not super remarkable too and who cares? Life is too short. All of us should rise early, work hard and strike oil.
- sureaboutthis 8y agoI started to write a much longer response but don't have time. My IQ was tested at 142 some decades ago and, from what I've read, would be higher cause the tests have changed. I was always very successful in my jobs but, when it came to starting my own business, I needed a lot of active encouragement or I would give up too quickly. However, in two cases, a business clicked with me, for some reason, which made me excited and driven. While others commented on my innovative approach to those businesses that made them successful, it was the enthusiasm that kept me going, followed by the excitement of success. You might say it's the difference between being a good player on a bad sports team versus a good player on a first place team. My IQ, perhaps, helped me see things most did not but it's the enthusiasm that keeps me going and, especially helpful, encouragement and support from others, not my IQ.
- alfonsodev 8y agoDisclaimer, I'm not a psychologist. I think IQ is a measure on how good you are manipulating abstractions and detecting patterns. For this other part >> when it came to starting my own business, I needed a lot of active encouragement or I would give up too quickly For that abstraction and patterns doesn't help, this is about your temperament, I'd look on how you score in the big five of personality traits. If you don't want to rely on being encouraged all the time. I think you could learn a set micro skills to compensate for those aspects that your natural temperament falls into 'need encouragement' pattern. Note there might not be known micro skill for some of traits, but at least you will have a model that explains your tendencies.
- jessaustin 8y agoSomeone successful enough could just hire an employee for encouragement. In fact lots of people do that, with executive coaches etc. Lots of others steal that service from their firms, by demanding lots of ass-kissing from subordinates.
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- cm2187 8y agoThe title is a bit misleading. The study is basically comparing the path of the top 1% to the top 2% of the IQ distribution and arguing that it doesn't matter that much in term of extraordinary achievements (nobel prize, etc). If you compare the top 20% to the bottom 20% of the distribution I bet there will be a strong correlation to professional sucess.
- toasterlovin 8y agoAnd there's also probably a big difference between the top 0.01% percent and the top 1%. The difference between the top 1% and top 2% isn't very important for most types of talent. Being in one of those categories for athletic talent, for instance, wouldn't get you into a professional sports league of any kind.
- cm2187 8y agoTrue but you are assuming the IQ test is inifinitely precise which I doubt it is. It is only a measure of intelligence.
- jojoo 8y agothey are very not precise. Most give a 80% confidence interval of +- 8 Points (or 1/2 STD). Also the different tests measure slightly different types of intelligence/put emphasis on other things. There's only ~0.8 correlation between modern IQ tests.
- toasterlovin 8y agoI'm not really assuming it's very precise. It's more that there's a huge difference between 99th percentile levels of talent and 99.99th percentile levels of talent. For instance, I am easily better than 99/100 males at basketball. I'm 6'6", reasonably athletic, and I played semi-competitively when I was young. But I am nowhere near being better than 9,999/10,000 males. And no amount of hard work or persistence is going to change that.
- 8y ago
- Alex888 8y agoIntelligence doesn't matter much when you have it. It matters quite a lot when you don't. Like in basketball - being 2.50m tall doesn't mean you'll beat everyone on the court. But being 1.50m pretty much guarantees you're out of luck.
- tzs 8y ago> But being 1.50m pretty much guarantees you're out of luck 1.60 m, though, is apparently good enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues
- mactrey 8y agoBogues is really the exception that proves the rule. He had to be incredibly talented and athletic to make up for his lack of height, but even then he was only a good, not great, NBA player. If you are 1.60m tall and your dream is making the NBA, well, unless you are literally one of the most athletically talented people on the planet, you should probably give it up.
- solarkraft 8y agoEnough with - i suppose - lots of other gifts. I would assume anyone with his height is less likely to even try basketball.
- gmiller123456 8y agoYou're really just reaching the edge of where his analogy breaks down. There are actually advantages to being shorter in basketball, but his analogy did not account for it.
- ultraforce 8y agoThen perhaps a test that measures intelligence better than the IQ test which is known to not be the best would be better at evaluating the situation.
- 2_listerine_pls 8y agoAnd a billion dollars doesn't really matter when you have a billion dollars. Also, red shoes are red when they are red.
- zachruss92 8y agoI have an interesting take on this article. I had an IQ > 150 when I was originally tested when I was a teenager. Later in my teenage years, I experienced trauma that resulted in my IQ dropping by 20+ points, permanently. This means that my IQ is currently in the higher end of the normal range. Here is what I noticed: 1. I feel less "sharp". By this I mean I feel slower to react to things and it takes longer for me to formulate thoughts. Words "caught on the tip of my tongue" happen more often. 2. It takes longer for me to learn. This applies to things like reading comprehension all the way up to learning new technologies. I need to read more slowly and practice more often before I can master a topic. 3. My concentration has decreased. I have ADHD, even as an adult, but following the trauma, it became worse. What it didn't affect: 1. My motivation. I've always considered myself an entrepreneur. If anything, I am more motivated to be successful - even if I have to work harder. 2. My dedication to lifelong learning. I am a strong proponent of learning new things is important to being successful. TLDR; IQ has its advantages, but it isn't the only factor.
- majidazimi 8y agoWell, I like to think persistence matters more but getting into top 1% of everything requires more than determination. 1. Going from bad to good requires x amount of effort/persistence. 2. Going from good to best requires 1000x amount of effort. When you've put 800x amount of effort, you'll realize this harsh bitter fact. You have already given up on your hobbies, family, social life, ... and you are still considered as "good+" not "best-". To bypass being-best-barrier you need more than persistence. Things like IQ, family wealth, great coach, ... matter when you are approaching near top of the hill.
- madeuptempacct 8y agoVery much this - average genes, hard work, and sacrifice can generally guarantee upper middle class (barring accidents). Basically, all you need to get there is being a good cog in the machine. That is to say - you come in groomed, you do your job, you study or take night classes, you don't spend your money on having a life, you don't make mistakes which come with fun. Eventually, you will get to your $100,000/year and your 1 mil networth. The sad part is that I have met some really low IQ people who are unable to even prep for a college exam, or the SAT, ACT, MCAT, whatever. So, their innate intelligence or upbringing denies them even the shot at an average comfortable life.
- babymuffin 8y agoyou are very naive. plenty of these 'really low IQ people' eventually do make it to 100,000 as a result of deception, coercion, wacky HR not understanding anything, etc. think trump. the vast majority of jobs are bullshit and play acting.
- annabellish 8y agoDo you have any research backing up this position? It seems to fly in the face of every reputable study I've seen, which suggests the opposite is true - average genes, hard work, and sacrifice is not enough to "guarantee" anything.
- bpatel576 8y ago
- quadcore 8y agoDo they make the assumption that everybody want to be eminent? I mean, the way I interpret the article is that IQ is not the only thing you need to achieve success. Of course, you have to want success in the first place isn't. So I guess I would be more interested in a study done on determined people (for example YC founders). I bet suddenly IQ will play some big role but who knows.
- honestoHeminway 8y agoSome intelligence forms are really hard to test and judge quality wise. Recombination seems a useless quality, untill it creates a breakthrough- but for this it need either a internal or external intelligence to judge the output of the random generated recombinations. Best of all, the process is not documenting itself as thought- so you can not produce a step by step judgement. Its just noise and the recognition as a pattern.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- codingdave 8y agoThe smartest people I know discover what is important to them in life and set up their life to pursue those interests. They may or may not be interests that make them famous in their fields, but if you define success as living a happy, satisfying life, they are succeeding at their top capacity.
- GaryNumanVevo 8y agoI appreciate this little nugget of wisdom
- IkmoIkmo 8y agoThe key is not to confuse IQ as an isolated effect, but rather study it as an interactive effect, e.g. taken together with grit / perseverance, IQ likely becomes one of the best explanatory variables for success. IQ is not a definitive 100% accurate predictor for intelligence, people expect that, and it doesn't work like that. But it doesn't mean it's not a predictor. i.e. a lot of people say 'Feynman had an IQ of 125, I had an IQ of 140, but I'm not smarter than Feynman, thus I question IQ as a predictor for intelligence'. But that's a bit like saying 'Tyson was a small heavyweight boxer, but he's a more successful boxer than I am while I'm twice his size, thus I doubt size as a predictor for boxing success'. Same with things like getting a college degree, and comparing your degreed success with that of Bill Gates who dropped out. It doesn't rule out education as a predictor. Similarly, you can look at BMI and say that it is a predictor for being overweight (e.g. as a proxy for health, having too much fat, dietetc). But bodybuilders have high BMIs, the proxy doesn't work for them. The key to all these edge-cases are interactive effects. Education works, but not when interacted with forgoing a billion dollar entrepreneurial opportunity like Gates or Zuckerberg. BMI works, but not interacted with a low-fat, high-muscle training goal. Size as a predictor works in combat sports, but can be overcome when low size is interacted with talent factors. Similarly, IQ works, but not in isolation, and not in every single case, but it is one of the more useful predictors with a lot of explanatory powers. Lastly, estimating any predictor for a small subset of geniuses (the focus of this article), is hardly an effective metric when it's based on an IQ test that is designed for the general population. Lastly, some bayesian perspectives... the article's premise is based on: how many high-IQ people go on to become a genius. Well, very few. Perhaps that's not because IQ doesn't matter, but rather that there's just very few geniuses. Instead if you look at geniuses and look at what their IQ is, it's virtually all substantially above average. Insomuch as he's speaking to a rare strawman individual who holds the belief that IQ is the end-all metric of being a genius then yes, IQ doesn't matter as much as he thinks. Most other people however are much more nuanced about IQ and understand you can be unsuccessful with a high IQ and successful with a low IQ, but that it's a very strong predictor for success nonetheless.
- Shekelberg 8y agoFunny how HN is full of people with >120 IQ claiming that IQ doesn't matter. If that's really true, than why is pretty much everyone here in the top 10-15% of the population? Where are all the <100 IQ people here claiming to have successful careers in the tech industry despite their IQ scores? Remember, the average IQ is 100 by definition, so roughly half the general population is <100. What are the odds of this happening by chance if IQ is truly irrelevant?
- cirgue 8y agoa) Most people here probably don't actually know their IQ scores, and claiming that most of the people here are >120 iq is silly. No one has any way of knowing that. b) Most people here also probably know people who are every bit as intelligent as they are who have repeatedly had really shitty luck and zero success. Similarly, most people know someone who is successful, but at the end of the day is pretty stupid. Regardless of IQ, I think most people here recognize intellect as really helpful, but also as neither necessary nor sufficient for success, wealth, happiness, etc.
- debacle 8y agoa. Most people here are programmer or programmer-types. Assuming there's a strong correlation between "could attend college" and "could be a programmer," that likely implies an IQ of 115 or more. b. Those instances tend to stand out (especially the people smarter than you with miserable outcomes), but also tend to not be statistically relevant.
- baccheion 8y agoAverage IQ among intuitor types (xNxx; MBTI) is said to be one standard deviation above the norm (115+ SD15). They are also very overrepresented online. Having an IQ 2 standard deviations above the norm (130+ SD15) tends to attract problems/difficulty/friction in corporate environments. That is, companies are biased toward Te users (xxTJs) and extroverts + judgers (ExxJs) with IQs in the 115-125 range. Synthesis usually starts at 130+. Companies either don't like it, or want it cheaper. 115-125 is also most common among students enrolled in big-name universities. They also get an edge in high school, as they are smart enough to be better, and yet, not smart enough to get bored or be seen as a threat.
- francasso 8y agoThe author should have a chat with Jordan Peterson
- ratsimihah 8y agoWith Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
- ChicagoDave 8y agoIt doesn’t take a genius to understand that birth geography, parental income/wealth, health, luck, and temperament all contribute to success.
- ummonk 8y agoIt is well earablished that iq tests don’t work that well until adulthood. E.g. identical twins raised seperately have very different iq test scores during childhood but the scores converge in early adulthood.
- gweinberg 8y agoGiven how often we've been told that IQ tests don't measure anything but the ability to take tests, the title is obvious bullshit. I think it is fair, though, to say IQ tests tend to become less accurate as the test takers approach the intelligence of the test designers. An they're when the test takers are much smarter than the test designers, the tests are really no good at all at determining how much smarter.
- amelius 8y agoI'm starting to suspect that society is set up to make IQ matter less than we think.
- sdinsn 8y agoAKA diminishing returns. Unsurprising.
- debacle 8y agoThere's a cutoff around 135. After that point, most people will squander any additional intelligence.
- candiodari 8y agoI love the opening statement: "People too often forget that IQ tests haven’t been around that long. Indeed, such psychological measures are only about a century old." Yeah, because other metrics of human mental performance, or any kind of psychological property of humans for that matter are so much older than a century, right ? A century in psychometrics, is 13.5 billion years in physics, to make the "dog-years" analogy. Reality: IQ is the oldest, best, and most solidly established predictive metric of success. In fact it's pretty much the oldest metric anyone bothered keeping at all (presumably exactly because it works, it seems very unlikely to me that it just happened to be the first one they tried. I remember studies that tried to quantify "nobleness" and "noble blood" in people and correlate that to intelligence for example). Back to the article. The source for all this wisdom ? https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Checklist-Paradoxical-Become-Creative-ebook/dp/B07H8WFY9S/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1538619915&sr=1-1&keywords=the+genius+checklist https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Checklist-Paradoxical-Become-C... (This book essentially makes the point that there is a lot or variability at the extreme outliers of genius. Even then, it is forced to conclude that while those extreme outliers weren't the very top geniuses at a young age, they were very smart. The just weren't top of the top early in life, even though they did become the top of the top later in life. It points out the corollary: genius increases the odds of success, which is very different from guaranteeing it)
- oblib 8y agoI'll offer that many of those with a high IQ are not all that interested in becoming "highly successful" or obtaining "professional or graduate degrees". Those are really only importance to those who are inclined to hold value in those and they're not necessarily something everyone with a high IQ values. So, the results they're measuring don't account for what the subject group (high IQs) deems important to them. For example, if your family is struggling to make ends meet one might work hard to solve that problem by doing what's necessary, including digging ditches if that's all they can find to make ends meet. If you follow them you might find they come up with a way to make digging ditches much easier, faster, and better. And you'll most likely find that they didn't get any credit at all for that, and that they didn't care.
- rbrbr 8y agoHeadlines like this are tedious. The obvious question without even reading the article is "for what". Obviously IQ does only matter in some contexts. If you don't see that you might lack some of it.
- clubm8 8y agoI think maybe a better way to think of "smarts" leading to success is to not look only at IQ, but also attention An oversimplified example from electrical engineering: Watts are units of power. Amperage * Voltage = wattage. Amperage refers to how much current (width of the pipe) and voltage refers to the speed of the current (how fast the water flows). I think that we focus so much on intelligence testing, but neglect to focus on attention. I think that making use of your smarts, intelligence, or whatever term you want to give it needs a combination of intelligence and attention. If you are very smart (180 IQ) but can't focus for long, you will be outdone by the woman or man who "only" has 130 IQ but has persistence. IIRC studies of Nobel winners (a good measure of "smarts" and achievement) confirm my theory - finding that after a certain cutoff, there are diminishing returns for IQ alone in terms of obtaining a nobel.
- ryanjmills 8y agodamn
- imtemplain 8y agoIQ is the best measure we have, sorry to disappoint you, but it's here to stay.
- nothingtodo 8y agoThe discussion here is interesting, and I think it might be worth it to consider that despite any real differences in IQ, everyone is suffering from the same miserable dysfunctions that are rooted in systems that affect your life. For example, there's another post on the HN front page today about a Nobel laureate who sold his medal to pay his medical bills. At the end of it, there's seems to be an ingrained futility to anything. It seems luck is a more important factor than genetics.
- throw2016 8y agoIQ tests have been plagued with controversy including cultural markers and yet many continue to be obsessed with attaching more meaning to them that they can deliver. How can we design tests and make definitive judgements about the best way to test intelligence when we do not fully understand it or even define it? What about things like curiosity, passion, emotional intelligence and team work? Are we testing abstract thinking, visual thinking, language skills? What do they measure and how exactly do the scores translate into the real world? Without any comprehensive studies, data or evidence this quickly becomes a pseudo science. Is there any guarantee and precision that a person with IQ of 140 is more 'intelligent' than a person with an IQ of 120? In what? In the IQ tests yes, but beyond that in what? The real world is much more than a single test in a controlled environment. This is like claiming a student scoring higher than classmates in an english test will write a better novel or compose better prose. Does not follow, in the same way ascribing value in the real world to an IQ test does not follow.