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I'll take the other side of that bet! What kind of odds would you give me that a group of people in the 10th percentile will have a higher average income than

I'll take the other side of that bet! What kind of odds would you give me that a group of people in the 10th percentile will have a higher average income than a group of people from the 90th percentile? If all IQ measures is your ability to take an IQ test, I think you'd be pretty confident that the bottom 10% will perform about as well as the top 10%. So, would you up up for 1:1 odds on that? If you're willing to bet consistently with your beliefs, please get in touch; my email address is in my profile.

Steko 15y ago
"If all IQ measures is your ability to take an IQ test, I think you'd be pretty confident that the bottom 10% will perform about as well as the top 10%." Unless the top 10% has some systemic advantage at taking IQ tests. Type words into a search engine for further inquiries in this area.
- byrneseyeview 15y ago
  Doesn't that seem kind of redundant? "People who do well on IQ tests have systematic advantages which allow them to do well on IQ tests, but IQ tests are meaningless." Obviously, it's possible to imagine a world in which IQ is not largely heritable, and in which rich people pay lots of money to game their kids' IQ numbers, and then the kids somehow use these IQ test numbers to get better jobs (even though IQ testing from employers is basically illegal). But we can adjust for that. I'd be happy to do the same bet controlling for parental socio-economic status.
  - Steko 15y ago
    "it's possible to imagine a world in which IQ is not largely heritable, and in which rich people pay lots of money to game their kids' IQ numbers, and then the kids somehow use these IQ test numbers to get better jobs" You don't need to imagine that world, we live in it. Kids who go to private schools with SAT prep classes and practice the test dozens of times are at a several hundred point advantage to kids who don't. This gets them into better colleges which gets them better jobs and gets them better income.
    - Retric 15y ago
      The SAT is not an IQ test, it goal is to measure the probability of someone finishing their freshman year of collage and when adjusted for the collage it's better at that than HS grades.
      - Steko 15y ago
        No it's the worst predictor of finishing freshman year. The claim is that SAT + high school GPA is stronger then GPA alone which is a pretty weak claim. As for what it actually measures (as opposed to what it trys to measure), opinions differ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#Correlations_with_IQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#Correlations_with_IQ "Frey and Detterman (2003) analyzed the correlation of SAT scores with intelligence test scores.[20] They found SAT scores to be highly correlated with general mental ability, or g (r=.82 in their sample). The correlation between SAT scores and scores on the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices was .483 (.72 corrected for restricted range). They concluded that the SAT is primarily a test of g. Beaujean and colleagues (2006) have reached similar conclusions.[21]" "Certain high IQ societies, like Mensa, the Prometheus Society and the Triple Nine Society, use scores from certain years as one of their admission tests. For instance, the Triple Nine Society accepts scores of 1450 on tests taken before April 1995, and scores of at least 1520 on tests taken between April 1995 and February 2005."
        Retric 15y ago
        It's seen many changes over time, but gave up the idea of being an intelligence test over 20 years ago. The name originally stood for "Scholastic Aptitude Test".[35] But in 1990, because of uncertainty about the SAT's ability to function as an intelligence test, the name was changed to Scholastic Assessment Test. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#History
        Steko 15y ago
        Spoilers: I don't think SAT measures "intelligence" any more then IQ tests do. That's what this sub-thread is about - IQ tests don't measure what they purport to either.
Homunculiheaded 15y ago
I think you're confusing measures X and correlates with X. Snowfall probably correlates very strongly with the number or people skiing on a weekend, but it does not measure the number of people skiing on a weekend. Let's say you win this bet (which I wouldn't take since I never argued that was the case in the first place), all you have shown is that the ability to answer questions on an IQ test has a strong correlation with income. How does this have anything to do with intelligence, which the test claims to measure? If you where to say that "well this means that intelligence is strongly correlated with income" this is tautological since the IQ test is your only way to measure intelligence in the first place. My assumption that IQ scores probably don't correlate that strongly to many things is based on the observation that we don't use it that much. If you look more thoroughly there are, as expected, obviously correlations between IQ and many things, but how strong those correlations are and the variance make many of them interesting but not fantastically useful. Correlating with the extremes is not that interesting, now if you where to show that the is a strong correlation between IQ test percentile and income percentile across the board that would be interesting. If you're really interested there has been research into the correlation between IQ and Income and it's about 0.4-0.5 [1] 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Income

Steko 15y ago

"If all IQ measures is your ability to take an IQ test, I think you'd be pretty confident that the bottom 10% will perform about as well as the top 10%." Unless the top 10% has some systemic advantage at taking IQ tests. Type words into a search engine for further inquiries in this area.

byrneseyeview 15y ago
Doesn't that seem kind of redundant? "People who do well on IQ tests have systematic advantages which allow them to do well on IQ tests, but IQ tests are meaningless." Obviously, it's possible to imagine a world in which IQ is not largely heritable, and in which rich people pay lots of money to game their kids' IQ numbers, and then the kids somehow use these IQ test numbers to get better jobs (even though IQ testing from employers is basically illegal). But we can adjust for that. I'd be happy to do the same bet controlling for parental socio-economic status.
- Steko 15y ago
  "it's possible to imagine a world in which IQ is not largely heritable, and in which rich people pay lots of money to game their kids' IQ numbers, and then the kids somehow use these IQ test numbers to get better jobs" You don't need to imagine that world, we live in it. Kids who go to private schools with SAT prep classes and practice the test dozens of times are at a several hundred point advantage to kids who don't. This gets them into better colleges which gets them better jobs and gets them better income.
  - Retric 15y ago
    The SAT is not an IQ test, it goal is to measure the probability of someone finishing their freshman year of collage and when adjusted for the collage it's better at that than HS grades.
    - Steko 15y ago
      No it's the worst predictor of finishing freshman year. The claim is that SAT + high school GPA is stronger then GPA alone which is a pretty weak claim. As for what it actually measures (as opposed to what it trys to measure), opinions differ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#Correlations_with_IQ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#Correlations_with_IQ "Frey and Detterman (2003) analyzed the correlation of SAT scores with intelligence test scores.[20] They found SAT scores to be highly correlated with general mental ability, or g (r=.82 in their sample). The correlation between SAT scores and scores on the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices was .483 (.72 corrected for restricted range). They concluded that the SAT is primarily a test of g. Beaujean and colleagues (2006) have reached similar conclusions.[21]" "Certain high IQ societies, like Mensa, the Prometheus Society and the Triple Nine Society, use scores from certain years as one of their admission tests. For instance, the Triple Nine Society accepts scores of 1450 on tests taken before April 1995, and scores of at least 1520 on tests taken between April 1995 and February 2005."
      - Retric 15y ago
        It's seen many changes over time, but gave up the idea of being an intelligence test over 20 years ago. The name originally stood for "Scholastic Aptitude Test".[35] But in 1990, because of uncertainty about the SAT's ability to function as an intelligence test, the name was changed to Scholastic Assessment Test. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#History
        Steko 15y ago
        Spoilers: I don't think SAT measures "intelligence" any more then IQ tests do. That's what this sub-thread is about - IQ tests don't measure what they purport to either.

Homunculiheaded 15y ago

I think you're confusing measures X and correlates with X. Snowfall probably correlates very strongly with the number or people skiing on a weekend, but it does not measure the number of people skiing on a weekend. Let's say you win this bet (which I wouldn't take since I never argued that was the case in the first place), all you have shown is that the ability to answer questions on an IQ test has a strong correlation with income. How does this have anything to do with intelligence, which the test claims to measure? If you where to say that "well this means that intelligence is strongly correlated with income" this is tautological since the IQ test is your only way to measure intelligence in the first place. My assumption that IQ scores probably don't correlate that strongly to many things is based on the observation that we don't use it that much. If you look more thoroughly there are, as expected, obviously correlations between IQ and many things, but how strong those correlations are and the variance make many of them interesting but not fantastically useful. Correlating with the extremes is not that interesting, now if you where to show that the is a strong correlation between IQ test percentile and income percentile across the board that would be interesting. If you're really interested there has been research into the correlation between IQ and Income and it's about 0.4-0.5 [1] 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Income