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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 emo

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.

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.