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Could be because the people who even know what those extremes are tend to be high IQ. It could still be true that self selecting into these beliefs conditional

Could be because the people who even know what those extremes are tend to be high IQ. It could still be true that self selecting into these beliefs conditional on knowing they exist predicts lower IQ. E.g, people who knows what ararcho-syndicalism is have a mean IQ of 125. People who believe it's a good idea are a subset of this group with an IQ of 115. So it appears that the belief predicts IQ but it's actually the knowledge that it's even an option.

thwayunion 4y ago
This is a good point. Additionally, IQ measures a very specific type of cognitive ability. I am not so sure that those cognitive abilities are perfectly correlated with the sort of social and emotional intelligence required to assess the likely effectiveness of a political system.
- solveit 4y ago
  If only there were half a century of research into exactly what IQ does and doesn't correlate with! Anyhow, my lukewarm take is that no level of "social and emotional intelligence" will allow you to assess the likely effectiveness of a political system, because why in the world would the built-in intelligence for interacting with a couple of hundred people be any good at predicting the aggregate behaviour of billions of people. Instead, we have more general problem-solving skills that allowed us to develop things like statistics and economics and political theory. I leave it to the reader to determine how much social and emotional intelligence is required to excel at those. (As opposed to the merely analytical intelligence that IQ measures, I suppose. I have yet to see a definition of social/emotional intelligence that is coherent enough to be measured, and also actually meaningfully exists when measured.)
  - thwayunion 4y ago
    > If only there were half a century of research into exactly what IQ does and doesn't correlate with! Nice quip, but what's your point? ;-) > Anyhow, my lukewarm take is that no level of "social and emotional intelligence" will allow you to assess the likely effectiveness of a political system, because why in the world would the built-in intelligence for interacting with a couple of hundred people be any good at predicting the aggregate behaviour of billions of people. I at least have a high degree of belief in the contrapositive -- if one doesn't have a high degree of social and emotional intelligence then they won't be able to assess the likely effectiveness of a political system.
  - bulatb 4y ago
    High IQ with low EQ, whatever they are, is someone who thinks "feed the homeless to the hungry" is an elegant solution to an irritating problem and is baffled why we haven't done it yet. We don't need to rigorously quantify the cause to notice an effect, whatever it turns out to be.
    - solveit 4y ago
      Yes, you need a very high EQ to understand why that wouldn't work./s
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - bulatb 4y ago
        That's a purposely absurd example of a mode of thinking I see almost every time I'm here. Whatever EQ is, if anything, maybe some amount of it is needed to avoid that.
  - awesomeMilou 4y ago
    I'm very curious to what that research looks like. The only IQ-Tests I know of are the ones alike to the Mensa Online Tests, and maybe my IQ is too low (rimshot) but I can't fathom it being anything other than an indicator on how well someone can solve these matrix association problems. Since you seem knowledgeable in it, what would be a rigid definition of IQ? As opposed to the vague definition of social intelligence?
    - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
      The colloquial definition is pattern recognition. The rigorous definition is whatever IQ tests measure (I wish I were joking about this).
    - Viliam1234 4y ago
      > The only IQ-Tests I know of are the ones alike to the Mensa Online Tests All online IQ tests are fake, no exception. Most "Mensa online tests" are unrelated to Mensa; they just say so, because it makes people more likely to click on them. A serious IQ test would look like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices > I can't fathom it being anything other than an indicator on how well someone can solve these matrix association problems. Well, this is one of the interesting findings about intelligence. Turns out that how well people can solve these tests, correlates strongly with many other things. At some moment in history, there was a competing theory of "multiple intelligences", assuming that the kind of intelligence for doing math is independent from the kind of intelligence for solving verbal problems. But when people were given different tests, it turned out that the people who score high on one kind of test are also likely to score high on the other kind of test. So the reason why the "matrices" tests are so popular is that it doesn't matter much what kind of test you use, and the matrices are less culturally sensitive (i.e. in English verbal test, it would matter a lot whether English is your first or second language). > what would be a rigid definition of IQ? Approximately: That thing that allows you to do better in a wide range of problems. (As opposed to a talent or learning disability, which is that thing that allows you to do better/worse in one specific thing.)
  - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
    You could take the existence of really large provider variability in therapists as some evidence that social/emotional intelligence exists. We definitely won't be measuring it with a self report questionnaire though.
openfuture 4y ago
My hot take is that people who believe in IQ have low IQ.
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  What does it mean to not believe in IQ? Does that mean these high IQ people don't think IQ exists. It obviously exists. It's a real measure that people use. It's not like midichlorian count which is a measure from Starwars. Which doesn't exist because it only exists in the movies and doesn't measure something real (the force).
  - altruios 4y ago
    I would say (it has been a while), the common complaint that I've heard is the tests for IQ are not standardized - there are a million snake-oil pitches for free and paid online IQ tests - or that the real tests have a bunch of cultural bias that might skew the results... Or that IQ is inadequate as a measure of general intelligence (if IQ measures pattern matching effectively and it misses other kinds of reasoning entirely)... lots of complaints I've heard - can't say one way or the other if there is any salt to them. I haven't heard the complaint before that IQ is imaginary, that's a new one... I think through reading the exchange I see where the semantics shifted between people's thoughts, I doubt that's what the the poster above you meant - likely they meant a combination of the many complaints to dismiss the general usefulness of IQ tests as a predictor of intelligence.
    - solveit 4y ago
      That sounds like a complaint that online IQ tests are bad, which is obviously correct but also not really relevant to IQ as studied in psychometrics. The complaints I hear about IQ are completely opposite! People dislike standardized exams, including IQ tests, because of their standardization! That is, the need to assess everyone the same way precludes assessment specific to the individual being assessed. Detractors of IQ, insofar as they would like assessment at all, would prefer a more holistic procedure where the characteristics and capabilities of the assessee are analysed with due attention paid to the specific life history of said assessee.
kiliantics 4y ago
Yeah but Noam Chomsky thinks anarcho-syndicalism is a good idea so it's clearly the superior choice of the true intellectual :p and if that's not convincing enough, how about Alexander Grothendieck
lliamander 4y ago
I think there's also a (small) correlation between IQ the personality trait of "intellect", a sub-trait of openness that measures not so much how smart you are, but rather how interested you are in intellectual pursuits. My guess is that people who score higher on "intellect" are more likely the kind of people who "take ideas seriously". That is, they tend to follow ideas to their logical conclusions.

thwayunion 4y ago

This is a good point. Additionally, IQ measures a very specific type of cognitive ability. I am not so sure that those cognitive abilities are perfectly correlated with the sort of social and emotional intelligence required to assess the likely effectiveness of a political system.

solveit 4y ago
If only there were half a century of research into exactly what IQ does and doesn't correlate with! Anyhow, my lukewarm take is that no level of "social and emotional intelligence" will allow you to assess the likely effectiveness of a political system, because why in the world would the built-in intelligence for interacting with a couple of hundred people be any good at predicting the aggregate behaviour of billions of people. Instead, we have more general problem-solving skills that allowed us to develop things like statistics and economics and political theory. I leave it to the reader to determine how much social and emotional intelligence is required to excel at those. (As opposed to the merely analytical intelligence that IQ measures, I suppose. I have yet to see a definition of social/emotional intelligence that is coherent enough to be measured, and also actually meaningfully exists when measured.)
- thwayunion 4y ago
  > If only there were half a century of research into exactly what IQ does and doesn't correlate with! Nice quip, but what's your point? ;-) > Anyhow, my lukewarm take is that no level of "social and emotional intelligence" will allow you to assess the likely effectiveness of a political system, because why in the world would the built-in intelligence for interacting with a couple of hundred people be any good at predicting the aggregate behaviour of billions of people. I at least have a high degree of belief in the contrapositive -- if one doesn't have a high degree of social and emotional intelligence then they won't be able to assess the likely effectiveness of a political system.
- bulatb 4y ago
  High IQ with low EQ, whatever they are, is someone who thinks "feed the homeless to the hungry" is an elegant solution to an irritating problem and is baffled why we haven't done it yet. We don't need to rigorously quantify the cause to notice an effect, whatever it turns out to be.
  - solveit 4y ago
    Yes, you need a very high EQ to understand why that wouldn't work./s
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - bulatb 4y ago
      That's a purposely absurd example of a mode of thinking I see almost every time I'm here. Whatever EQ is, if anything, maybe some amount of it is needed to avoid that.
- awesomeMilou 4y ago
  I'm very curious to what that research looks like. The only IQ-Tests I know of are the ones alike to the Mensa Online Tests, and maybe my IQ is too low (rimshot) but I can't fathom it being anything other than an indicator on how well someone can solve these matrix association problems. Since you seem knowledgeable in it, what would be a rigid definition of IQ? As opposed to the vague definition of social intelligence?
  - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
    The colloquial definition is pattern recognition. The rigorous definition is whatever IQ tests measure (I wish I were joking about this).
  - Viliam1234 4y ago
    > The only IQ-Tests I know of are the ones alike to the Mensa Online Tests All online IQ tests are fake, no exception. Most "Mensa online tests" are unrelated to Mensa; they just say so, because it makes people more likely to click on them. A serious IQ test would look like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven%27s_Progressive_Matrices > I can't fathom it being anything other than an indicator on how well someone can solve these matrix association problems. Well, this is one of the interesting findings about intelligence. Turns out that how well people can solve these tests, correlates strongly with many other things. At some moment in history, there was a competing theory of "multiple intelligences", assuming that the kind of intelligence for doing math is independent from the kind of intelligence for solving verbal problems. But when people were given different tests, it turned out that the people who score high on one kind of test are also likely to score high on the other kind of test. So the reason why the "matrices" tests are so popular is that it doesn't matter much what kind of test you use, and the matrices are less culturally sensitive (i.e. in English verbal test, it would matter a lot whether English is your first or second language). > what would be a rigid definition of IQ? Approximately: That thing that allows you to do better in a wide range of problems. (As opposed to a talent or learning disability, which is that thing that allows you to do better/worse in one specific thing.)
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  You could take the existence of really large provider variability in therapists as some evidence that social/emotional intelligence exists. We definitely won't be measuring it with a self report questionnaire though.

openfuture 4y ago

My hot take is that people who believe in IQ have low IQ.

JamesBarney 4y ago
What does it mean to not believe in IQ? Does that mean these high IQ people don't think IQ exists. It obviously exists. It's a real measure that people use. It's not like midichlorian count which is a measure from Starwars. Which doesn't exist because it only exists in the movies and doesn't measure something real (the force).
- altruios 4y ago
  I would say (it has been a while), the common complaint that I've heard is the tests for IQ are not standardized - there are a million snake-oil pitches for free and paid online IQ tests - or that the real tests have a bunch of cultural bias that might skew the results... Or that IQ is inadequate as a measure of general intelligence (if IQ measures pattern matching effectively and it misses other kinds of reasoning entirely)... lots of complaints I've heard - can't say one way or the other if there is any salt to them. I haven't heard the complaint before that IQ is imaginary, that's a new one... I think through reading the exchange I see where the semantics shifted between people's thoughts, I doubt that's what the the poster above you meant - likely they meant a combination of the many complaints to dismiss the general usefulness of IQ tests as a predictor of intelligence.
  - solveit 4y ago
    That sounds like a complaint that online IQ tests are bad, which is obviously correct but also not really relevant to IQ as studied in psychometrics. The complaints I hear about IQ are completely opposite! People dislike standardized exams, including IQ tests, because of their standardization! That is, the need to assess everyone the same way precludes assessment specific to the individual being assessed. Detractors of IQ, insofar as they would like assessment at all, would prefer a more holistic procedure where the characteristics and capabilities of the assessee are analysed with due attention paid to the specific life history of said assessee.

kiliantics 4y ago

Yeah but Noam Chomsky thinks anarcho-syndicalism is a good idea so it's clearly the superior choice of the true intellectual :p and if that's not convincing enough, how about Alexander Grothendieck

lliamander 4y ago

I think there's also a (small) correlation between IQ the personality trait of "intellect", a sub-trait of openness that measures not so much how smart you are, but rather how interested you are in intellectual pursuits. My guess is that people who score higher on "intellect" are more likely the kind of people who "take ideas seriously". That is, they tend to follow ideas to their logical conclusions.