5 ms·

I don't think people on HN need more intelligence. After 120 IQ points, it doesn't make much of a difference to winning a Nobel Prize. I think what people nee

by chegra 15y ago

I don't think people on HN need more intelligence. After 120 IQ points, it doesn't make much of a difference to winning a Nobel Prize. I think what people need here is an increase in their willpower to see boring stuff through to the end.

adaml_623 15y ago
I disagree totally. I find it annoying to have a limited short term memory. When coding multiple files I wish I had a little more space in my brain.
barry-cotter 15y ago
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-iqs-of-eminent.html http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-i... [Review] Anne Roe: The Making of a Scientist After 120 IQ points, it doesn't make much of a difference to winning a Nobel Prize. Not true Test (Low / Median / High) Verbal 121 / 166 / 177 Spatial 123 / 137 / 164 Mathematical 128 / 154 / 194
- xutopia 15y ago
  Still though the correlation with making money and intelligence is really low (I think I read it was 0.2%). And what if wether or not you are happier might be inversely proportional to how intelligent you are? I'm just saying that being happy with your life should not be based on winning a Nobel prize.
- ArbitraryLimits 15y ago
  If you follow that link, you'll find that in the study referenced the researchers made up their own more or less ad hoc tests of "ability" precisely because "most IQ tests are not good indicators of true high level ability (e.g., beyond +3 SD or so)." It seems to me this study supports the idea that IQ is irrelevant to winning a Nobel Prized past a threshold instead of refuting it.
  - barry-cotter 15y ago
    In the blogpost "Roe devised her own high-end intelligence tests as follows: she obtained difficult problems in verbal, spatial and mathematical reasoning from the Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT, but also performs bespoke testing research for, e.g., the US military. Using these problems, she created three tests (V, S and M), which were administered to the 64 scientists, and also to a cohort of PhD students at Columbia Teacher's College. The PhD students also took standard IQ tests and the results were used to norm the high-end VSM tests using an SD = 15. Most IQ tests are not good indicators of true high level ability (e.g., beyond +3 SD or so)." Seems a decent try at it to me. But a better indicator that IQ is predictive of success is http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/01/horsepower-matters-psychometrics-works.html http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/01/horsepower-matters-psyc... Can psychometrics separate the top .1 percent from the top 1 percent in ability? Yes: SAT-M quartile within top 1 percent predicts future scientific success, even when the testing is done at age 13. The top quartile clearly outperforms the lower quartiles. These results strongly refute the "IQ above 120 doesn't matter" claim, at least in fields like science and engineering; everyone in this sample is above 120 and the top quartile are at the 1 in 10,000 level. The data comes from the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), a planned 50-year longitudinal study of intellectual talent. Ability Differences Among People Who Have Commensurate Degrees Matter for Scientiﬁc Creativity http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/ParkPsychScience2008.pdf http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/ParkPsychScience2008....
    - wisty 15y ago
      OK, so "Most IQ tests are not good at sorting out people above 120". So yes, intelligence is important. But many tests are useless at quantifying it above a certain threshold.
TeMPOraL 15y ago
I think people need to use their willpower and intelligence to automate boring stuff out of existence.
- lloeki 15y ago
  In French the fields known as Computer Science and Information Technology are called Informatique, a portmanteau between information and automatique. I think it captures the goal of the field pretty well: automate the boring stuff to let humans focus on the interesting side of problems.
StuffMaster 15y ago
Willpower is a different subject though. No reason not to go for both.
curiousepic 15y ago
This is where I am. All of the techniques in the article sounded familiar to me because, thankfully, I do them intrinsically. What I need are ways to stay interested in a given project. Any suggestions?

by chegra 15y ago

adaml_623 15y ago

I disagree totally. I find it annoying to have a limited short term memory. When coding multiple files I wish I had a little more space in my brain.

barry-cotter 15y ago

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-iqs-of-eminent.html http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-i... [Review] Anne Roe: The Making of a Scientist After 120 IQ points, it doesn't make much of a difference to winning a Nobel Prize. Not true Test (Low / Median / High) Verbal 121 / 166 / 177 Spatial 123 / 137 / 164 Mathematical 128 / 154 / 194

xutopia 15y ago
Still though the correlation with making money and intelligence is really low (I think I read it was 0.2%). And what if wether or not you are happier might be inversely proportional to how intelligent you are? I'm just saying that being happy with your life should not be based on winning a Nobel prize.
ArbitraryLimits 15y ago
If you follow that link, you'll find that in the study referenced the researchers made up their own more or less ad hoc tests of "ability" precisely because "most IQ tests are not good indicators of true high level ability (e.g., beyond +3 SD or so)." It seems to me this study supports the idea that IQ is irrelevant to winning a Nobel Prized past a threshold instead of refuting it.
- barry-cotter 15y ago
  In the blogpost "Roe devised her own high-end intelligence tests as follows: she obtained difficult problems in verbal, spatial and mathematical reasoning from the Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT, but also performs bespoke testing research for, e.g., the US military. Using these problems, she created three tests (V, S and M), which were administered to the 64 scientists, and also to a cohort of PhD students at Columbia Teacher's College. The PhD students also took standard IQ tests and the results were used to norm the high-end VSM tests using an SD = 15. Most IQ tests are not good indicators of true high level ability (e.g., beyond +3 SD or so)." Seems a decent try at it to me. But a better indicator that IQ is predictive of success is http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/01/horsepower-matters-psychometrics-works.html http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/01/horsepower-matters-psyc... Can psychometrics separate the top .1 percent from the top 1 percent in ability? Yes: SAT-M quartile within top 1 percent predicts future scientific success, even when the testing is done at age 13. The top quartile clearly outperforms the lower quartiles. These results strongly refute the "IQ above 120 doesn't matter" claim, at least in fields like science and engineering; everyone in this sample is above 120 and the top quartile are at the 1 in 10,000 level. The data comes from the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), a planned 50-year longitudinal study of intellectual talent. Ability Differences Among People Who Have Commensurate Degrees Matter for Scientiﬁc Creativity http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/ParkPsychScience2008.pdf http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/ParkPsychScience2008....
  - wisty 15y ago
    OK, so "Most IQ tests are not good at sorting out people above 120". So yes, intelligence is important. But many tests are useless at quantifying it above a certain threshold.

TeMPOraL 15y ago

I think people need to use their willpower and intelligence to automate boring stuff out of existence.

lloeki 15y ago
In French the fields known as Computer Science and Information Technology are called Informatique, a portmanteau between information and automatique. I think it captures the goal of the field pretty well: automate the boring stuff to let humans focus on the interesting side of problems.

StuffMaster 15y ago

Willpower is a different subject though. No reason not to go for both.

curiousepic 15y ago

This is where I am. All of the techniques in the article sounded familiar to me because, thankfully, I do them intrinsically. What I need are ways to stay interested in a given project. Any suggestions?