4 ms·

Disclaimer: Former Mensa member From personal experience it appears that high IQ is a horrible measure of success. On the other hand when you combine high IQ w

by Knufen 8y ago

Disclaimer: Former Mensa member From personal experience it appears that high IQ is a horrible measure of success. On the other hand when you combine high IQ with discipline you can come very far. With all that being said I wish Nassim would provide some actual data instead of anecdotes.

wmil 8y ago
The problem with discussing IQ is that people like to focus on the performance of very high IQ individuals where it's predictive power is weakest. But it's very strong in other areas. For instance say you have two groups of woodworkers, one group has an average IQ of 90 and another group has an average IQ of 100. It's a smart bet that the 100 group has more (total) fingers. "What can we do to help people with 90 IQs live dignified lives?" is a very important question that isn't discussed enough.
- iguy 8y ago
  It's true that some tests give little information about the top end of the range -- if your goal is to see whether Joe is smart enough to be a GI or not, then you're wasting everyone's time if you try to separate the top 0.1% from the top 1%, so you don't. But it's not true that measurable difference stop mattering. I'm lazy to find exact links but the big study to look up here is SMPY, https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/ https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/ . Part of the reason people are wrong about this is that, in many circumstances, they are used to observing a group which has already been selected on some finer measure. The sporting analogy is height in basketball, which is enormously beneficial... some large fraction of the world's 7-ft-plus population is in the NBA. But among NBA players, height does not predict performance very well... because to get hired, they were judged on a much finer metric of actually playing basketball. And the shorter players are selected from a vastly larger pool, and are extreme outliers in whatever other, non-height, talents are helpful.
- heptathorp 8y ago
  > For instance say you have two groups of woodworkers, one group has an average IQ of 90 and another group has an average IQ of 100. > It's a smart bet that the 100 group has more (total) fingers. Not without knowing the size of each group. More fingers per capita, sure.
  - sonofgod 8y ago
    Even if intelligence doesn't correlate with not chopping your fingers off with a chisel, it's well established that IQ is a bell curve with an average of approximately 100, so there'll be more IQ 100 people than IQ 90.
    - iguy 8y ago
      By definition it's a bell curve centered at 100, width 15. But what was clearly meant was that IQ 90 woodworkers would be more accident-prone than IQ 100 ones (on the same tasks etc). And while I'm sure nobody has done the exact study of counting carpenters' fingers, it would be extremely surprising if this were not true. Armies, especially conscript armies, have mountains of excellent data on pretty similar things, and it's good data in that they assign people to tasks, and get detailed reports of every subsequent screw-up.

by Knufen 8y ago

wmil 8y ago

The problem with discussing IQ is that people like to focus on the performance of very high IQ individuals where it's predictive power is weakest. But it's very strong in other areas. For instance say you have two groups of woodworkers, one group has an average IQ of 90 and another group has an average IQ of 100. It's a smart bet that the 100 group has more (total) fingers. "What can we do to help people with 90 IQs live dignified lives?" is a very important question that isn't discussed enough.

iguy 8y ago
It's true that some tests give little information about the top end of the range -- if your goal is to see whether Joe is smart enough to be a GI or not, then you're wasting everyone's time if you try to separate the top 0.1% from the top 1%, so you don't. But it's not true that measurable difference stop mattering. I'm lazy to find exact links but the big study to look up here is SMPY, https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/ https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/ . Part of the reason people are wrong about this is that, in many circumstances, they are used to observing a group which has already been selected on some finer measure. The sporting analogy is height in basketball, which is enormously beneficial... some large fraction of the world's 7-ft-plus population is in the NBA. But among NBA players, height does not predict performance very well... because to get hired, they were judged on a much finer metric of actually playing basketball. And the shorter players are selected from a vastly larger pool, and are extreme outliers in whatever other, non-height, talents are helpful.
heptathorp 8y ago
> For instance say you have two groups of woodworkers, one group has an average IQ of 90 and another group has an average IQ of 100. > It's a smart bet that the 100 group has more (total) fingers. Not without knowing the size of each group. More fingers per capita, sure.
- sonofgod 8y ago
  Even if intelligence doesn't correlate with not chopping your fingers off with a chisel, it's well established that IQ is a bell curve with an average of approximately 100, so there'll be more IQ 100 people than IQ 90.
  - iguy 8y ago
    By definition it's a bell curve centered at 100, width 15. But what was clearly meant was that IQ 90 woodworkers would be more accident-prone than IQ 100 ones (on the same tasks etc). And while I'm sure nobody has done the exact study of counting carpenters' fingers, it would be extremely surprising if this were not true. Armies, especially conscript armies, have mountains of excellent data on pretty similar things, and it's good data in that they assign people to tasks, and get detailed reports of every subsequent screw-up.