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> because actual grit varies between 0 and +Infinity. The article itself mentions that we measure it in a scale from 1 to 5. Also, that’s a whole lot of asser

> because actual grit varies between 0 and +Infinity. The article itself mentions that we measure it in a scale from 1 to 5. Also, that’s a whole lot of assertions you got there, and most of them look very wrong. IQ (to quote the most obvious) is pretty much always good to have, and the more the better.

slver 6y ago
Yeah I'd say "1 to 5" is a "log, discretized scale". :-) Anyway, I don't mean all my assertions to be correct, the scale was tongue in cheek for example. I hope to promote interesting debate. IQ, BTW, is a fundamentally flawed characteristic. It exists in public consciousness as some universal measure of intelligence. It isn't. Intelligence is multidimensional, not a line. And second, the tests are culturally specific, and somewhat arbitrary in retrospect. Buuut, anyway, that's a debate for another time :)
- xondono 6y ago
  However flawed our current measurement systems of IQ are, IQ is a monotonic predictor (i.e. its correlation with several measures of success is strongest with lineal functions that with functions with local minima). That is to say, better results on any IQ tests are good news.
  - slver 6y ago
    Is it really. I'd love to see the data. You see, I find it incredibly unlikely you can flatly correlate IQ across all its range with "measures of success". I totally buy that having IQ below, say, 95, is bad news for you in life in general. But is having IQ 130 guaranteed good news over someone who has 105 for ex.? That's the key, which would differentiate my model from the model you cite. Case in point, for some reason Mensa is full of people who seem entirely unremarkable, except for the fact they are in Mensa. You can find 140 IQ truck drivers etc. there (not to malign truck drivers, but we have to be objective you wouldn't put them in the top 0.1% of success despite in the top 0.1% of IQ).
    - xondono 6y ago
      > I totally buy that having IQ below, say, 95, is bad news for you in life in general. But is having IQ 130 guaranteed good news over someone who has 105 for ex.? As others have said in the comments, there’s no guarantee, we are talking statistics here. The data of the several IQ studies that you can easily find online show correlations between IQ and other factors that people think of as measures of success. > You can find 140 IQ truck divers etc. And homeless, and everything in between. And the last time I checked, here were I live (catalonia) the data showed that about 70% of people with high IQ would not finish high school without repeating a full year. And yet, things like future income positively correlate with IQ. Success is a very personal concept, but for most people it shares some similarities, and there’s factors that always help, whatever your definition (like having income to cover your needs). My point is that if you try to fit a convex curve to the data, you’ll see that it’s not as good as a linear fit, meaning that there’s no specific place in the IQ scale where you’d be better off with a lower score, even if a lot of people with high IQ wish they were (which is understandable). As for your comment about Mensa (or any other high IQ association), the problem is a rather common one. In all kind of associations (school parents, political groups, etc..) the people most involved tend to be the ones that have less going on with the rest of their lives, that’s why they are so involved in the first place. It’s just way weirder with Mensa because of the meaning of the “entry requirements”.

slver 6y ago

Yeah I'd say "1 to 5" is a "log, discretized scale". :-) Anyway, I don't mean all my assertions to be correct, the scale was tongue in cheek for example. I hope to promote interesting debate. IQ, BTW, is a fundamentally flawed characteristic. It exists in public consciousness as some universal measure of intelligence. It isn't. Intelligence is multidimensional, not a line. And second, the tests are culturally specific, and somewhat arbitrary in retrospect. Buuut, anyway, that's a debate for another time :)

xondono 6y ago
However flawed our current measurement systems of IQ are, IQ is a monotonic predictor (i.e. its correlation with several measures of success is strongest with lineal functions that with functions with local minima). That is to say, better results on any IQ tests are good news.
- slver 6y ago
  Is it really. I'd love to see the data. You see, I find it incredibly unlikely you can flatly correlate IQ across all its range with "measures of success". I totally buy that having IQ below, say, 95, is bad news for you in life in general. But is having IQ 130 guaranteed good news over someone who has 105 for ex.? That's the key, which would differentiate my model from the model you cite. Case in point, for some reason Mensa is full of people who seem entirely unremarkable, except for the fact they are in Mensa. You can find 140 IQ truck drivers etc. there (not to malign truck drivers, but we have to be objective you wouldn't put them in the top 0.1% of success despite in the top 0.1% of IQ).
  - xondono 6y ago
    > I totally buy that having IQ below, say, 95, is bad news for you in life in general. But is having IQ 130 guaranteed good news over someone who has 105 for ex.? As others have said in the comments, there’s no guarantee, we are talking statistics here. The data of the several IQ studies that you can easily find online show correlations between IQ and other factors that people think of as measures of success. > You can find 140 IQ truck divers etc. And homeless, and everything in between. And the last time I checked, here were I live (catalonia) the data showed that about 70% of people with high IQ would not finish high school without repeating a full year. And yet, things like future income positively correlate with IQ. Success is a very personal concept, but for most people it shares some similarities, and there’s factors that always help, whatever your definition (like having income to cover your needs). My point is that if you try to fit a convex curve to the data, you’ll see that it’s not as good as a linear fit, meaning that there’s no specific place in the IQ scale where you’d be better off with a lower score, even if a lot of people with high IQ wish they were (which is understandable). As for your comment about Mensa (or any other high IQ association), the problem is a rather common one. In all kind of associations (school parents, political groups, etc..) the people most involved tend to be the ones that have less going on with the rest of their lives, that’s why they are so involved in the first place. It’s just way weirder with Mensa because of the meaning of the “entry requirements”.