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That standardised test administered by the US military has some history. The idea was that folks who were below an 85IQ would be harder to train. During the Vie

That standardised test administered by the US military has some history. The idea was that folks who were below an 85IQ would be harder to train. During the Vietnam war they tried abandoning the requirement and the results were sad. It cost the military a lot more in remedial training, but the real tragedy is that these folks died at 3 times the rate of people who would have passed the test. They weren’t cut out to be sent to a war zone. So intelligence is important for military service but a person’s completion of high school isn’t an indication of low intelligence. They may have dropped out for any other reason. It’s entirely possible that they may flourish in the structured environment the military offers. It’s fair to ask if the IQ test is a good measure of intelligence, or if it’s measuring something else. But in this context, it’s measuring something that is strongly correlated to success as a solider.

logicchains 3y ago
It would be really fascinating to see a graph of IQ vs chance of being killed in a war (normalised for people in the same role); would it continuously be increasing, or would there be diminishing or even negative returns to IQ beyond a certain point?
- John23832 3y ago
  There have been studies done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000
dmurray 3y ago
85 IQ really isn't that low. It's one standard deviation below average, so about 16% of people are below that. In your average high school class of 30 people, the 4 stupidest would be rejected by the military on these grounds (assume the bottom 1/31 have such severe developmental difficulties they can't even attend a normal high school). Doesn't that seem like quite a high bar?
- closewith 3y ago
  No, it probably should be higher given how complex even bog standard infantry roles have become.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Magridal 3y ago
  You’re overlooking a hidden pernicious effect, that IQ is a relative measure that does not identify a declining trend very effectively, i.e., any identified decline in IQ is both a momentary and transient indicator as the norm, i.e., 100 IQ, integrated; and the 100 IQ norm also does not say anything about the overall relative state to any other previous state. In other words, this is how we end up with Idiocracy where a low IQ person becomes the smartest person in the world right under everyone’s nose.
  - nindalf 3y ago
    IQ hasn’t declined though. The Flynn effect means that the median IQ has gone up steadily every decade since they started measuring. It’s unclear why. Maybe better nutrition, better schooling, less leaded petrol - hard to tell. So an 85 IQ person today is substantially more intelligent than an 85 IQ person in the Vietnam war. That said, the modern infantry man’s job is more complex. I would postulate that the job’s complexity has grown to keep pace with the Flynn effect.
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      Sadly not. The Flynn effect appears to be obsolete. In many countries it stopped in the 90s and IQs have actually gone down a bit since then. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#/media/File:Sundet_et_al_2004_fig_3.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#/media/File:Sunde...
      - mlrtime 3y ago
        For others interested, this doesn't seem to be fully accepted. A few studies in EU countries (and Australia)) have shown slight regressions from past increases. No studies done in the US which is the cohort here.
Gud 3y ago
A friend of mine I met while serving in Afghanistan, He was working for the Department of Agriculture, trying to get the Afghan farmers to grow saffron instead of poppy. He was a professor in agronomy and would help his students back home in the US with their assignments. He had signed up for the US army and ended up serving in the Special Forces in Vietnam for 2 years. He dropped out of school when he was 13. In my opinion, the military should be a second chance for a country’s citizens, who have for some reason slipped through the cracks.
- Magridal 3y ago
  You are making an assumption that a person dropping out of school at 13 in the ~1960s would have the same education level as someone dropping out of school at 13 today, let alone that the conditions and circumstances one would find themselves in having dropped out are equivalent to the 1960s. Frankly, especially with the crumbling and cracking discipline, order, and hierarchy in the U.S. military now, you are also making an assumption that they would gain the benefits you surely assume based on a historical perception.
  - nindalf 3y ago
    Two things. I didn’t say anything about school in the 1960s. I only said, they used they’ve used the IQ test for about a century to good effect. When they abandoned it for expediency, the results were tragic. That’s why they’ll stick to the IQ test, correct or not. You’re saying that the US military has issues and it may well have. I’m no expert on that. But I still believe that a person who has dropped out of high school has a lot to offer society. It seems like the US military is coming around to the same line of thinking, as long as the person passes the IQ test. I think that’s a reasonable compromise. The program might fail but if we never try then we’ll never know.
  - orwin 3y ago
    Do you have a source on the 'cracking discipline, order and hierarchy' of the US army? I know a 35 yo French artillery officer (now he's teaching new officers) who has worked with the US military for 15years, last year he told us that the US army is the only western army that didn't stagnate and became better, organization-wise, in the last 15 year.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
austin-cheney 3y ago
The only thing on the ASVAB the Army cares about is the GT score. When I took the test as a dumb high school kid I was only smarter than 79% of the population and had a GT score of 107, which is too dumb to become an officer. Many years later after almost 7 years programming full time in the corporate world I retook the ASVAB. Then I was smarter than 98% of the population and had a GT score of 129. The max is 130, so I may have had the highest GT score among test takers that year. The GT score is comprised of combinations of several different segments of the ASVAB of which the most important is applied arithmetic. Those are math problems in paragraph form that requires careful reading and multiple steps of very simple algebra like calculating pricing for a retail purchase and deduction of the coin denomination in return. The challenge there is just finishing the test because they, by design, do not provide enough time. EDIT I just want to point out that I did not become more intelligent as I got older. My ability to read and instantly formulate logic substantially improved as I got older through practice. Those, reading and logic, are skills and the performance improvement is permanent.
- alemanek 3y ago
  There are similar results for other IQ tests as well. You can study and practice to improve your score. Which shows that they aren’t really measuring raw intelligence. But, that doesn’t mean they aren’t measuring fitness for a task at least at that point in time.
  - epgui 3y ago
    Intelligence is a fuzzy concept, but it cannot really be separated from knowledge and experience.
  - figassis 3y ago
    We also seem to take it as fact that intelligence is an unchanging attribute you get at birth. Wouldn’t your brain upgrade itself as it optimizes for the world around it?
- maxerickson 3y ago
  It's probably more accurate to say that the skills are durable.
pimpampum 3y ago
I wonder how IQ higer than 85 relates to the chances of dying, maybe still relevant? There's probably a sweet spot not too dumb but dumb enough to join the military.
- dan-0 3y ago
  This was interesting to me as well. I'm assuming the more limited IQ resulted in more of those soldiers falling into inherently more dangerous roles such as the Infantry due to inability to qualify for more technical and safer roles.

logicchains 3y ago

It would be really fascinating to see a graph of IQ vs chance of being killed in a war (normalised for people in the same role); would it continuously be increasing, or would there be diminishing or even negative returns to IQ beyond a certain point?

John23832 3y ago
There have been studies done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_100,000

dmurray 3y ago

85 IQ really isn't that low. It's one standard deviation below average, so about 16% of people are below that. In your average high school class of 30 people, the 4 stupidest would be rejected by the military on these grounds (assume the bottom 1/31 have such severe developmental difficulties they can't even attend a normal high school). Doesn't that seem like quite a high bar?

closewith 3y ago
No, it probably should be higher given how complex even bog standard infantry roles have become.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Magridal 3y ago
You’re overlooking a hidden pernicious effect, that IQ is a relative measure that does not identify a declining trend very effectively, i.e., any identified decline in IQ is both a momentary and transient indicator as the norm, i.e., 100 IQ, integrated; and the 100 IQ norm also does not say anything about the overall relative state to any other previous state. In other words, this is how we end up with Idiocracy where a low IQ person becomes the smartest person in the world right under everyone’s nose.
- nindalf 3y ago
  IQ hasn’t declined though. The Flynn effect means that the median IQ has gone up steadily every decade since they started measuring. It’s unclear why. Maybe better nutrition, better schooling, less leaded petrol - hard to tell. So an 85 IQ person today is substantially more intelligent than an 85 IQ person in the Vietnam war. That said, the modern infantry man’s job is more complex. I would postulate that the job’s complexity has grown to keep pace with the Flynn effect.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    Sadly not. The Flynn effect appears to be obsolete. In many countries it stopped in the 90s and IQs have actually gone down a bit since then. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#/media/File:Sundet_et_al_2004_fig_3.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect#/media/File:Sunde...
    - mlrtime 3y ago
      For others interested, this doesn't seem to be fully accepted. A few studies in EU countries (and Australia)) have shown slight regressions from past increases. No studies done in the US which is the cohort here.

Gud 3y ago

A friend of mine I met while serving in Afghanistan, He was working for the Department of Agriculture, trying to get the Afghan farmers to grow saffron instead of poppy. He was a professor in agronomy and would help his students back home in the US with their assignments. He had signed up for the US army and ended up serving in the Special Forces in Vietnam for 2 years. He dropped out of school when he was 13. In my opinion, the military should be a second chance for a country’s citizens, who have for some reason slipped through the cracks.

Magridal 3y ago
You are making an assumption that a person dropping out of school at 13 in the ~1960s would have the same education level as someone dropping out of school at 13 today, let alone that the conditions and circumstances one would find themselves in having dropped out are equivalent to the 1960s. Frankly, especially with the crumbling and cracking discipline, order, and hierarchy in the U.S. military now, you are also making an assumption that they would gain the benefits you surely assume based on a historical perception.
- nindalf 3y ago
  Two things. I didn’t say anything about school in the 1960s. I only said, they used they’ve used the IQ test for about a century to good effect. When they abandoned it for expediency, the results were tragic. That’s why they’ll stick to the IQ test, correct or not. You’re saying that the US military has issues and it may well have. I’m no expert on that. But I still believe that a person who has dropped out of high school has a lot to offer society. It seems like the US military is coming around to the same line of thinking, as long as the person passes the IQ test. I think that’s a reasonable compromise. The program might fail but if we never try then we’ll never know.
- orwin 3y ago
  Do you have a source on the 'cracking discipline, order and hierarchy' of the US army? I know a 35 yo French artillery officer (now he's teaching new officers) who has worked with the US military for 15years, last year he told us that the US army is the only western army that didn't stagnate and became better, organization-wise, in the last 15 year.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

austin-cheney 3y ago

The only thing on the ASVAB the Army cares about is the GT score. When I took the test as a dumb high school kid I was only smarter than 79% of the population and had a GT score of 107, which is too dumb to become an officer. Many years later after almost 7 years programming full time in the corporate world I retook the ASVAB. Then I was smarter than 98% of the population and had a GT score of 129. The max is 130, so I may have had the highest GT score among test takers that year. The GT score is comprised of combinations of several different segments of the ASVAB of which the most important is applied arithmetic. Those are math problems in paragraph form that requires careful reading and multiple steps of very simple algebra like calculating pricing for a retail purchase and deduction of the coin denomination in return. The challenge there is just finishing the test because they, by design, do not provide enough time. EDIT I just want to point out that I did not become more intelligent as I got older. My ability to read and instantly formulate logic substantially improved as I got older through practice. Those, reading and logic, are skills and the performance improvement is permanent.

alemanek 3y ago
There are similar results for other IQ tests as well. You can study and practice to improve your score. Which shows that they aren’t really measuring raw intelligence. But, that doesn’t mean they aren’t measuring fitness for a task at least at that point in time.
- epgui 3y ago
  Intelligence is a fuzzy concept, but it cannot really be separated from knowledge and experience.
- figassis 3y ago
  We also seem to take it as fact that intelligence is an unchanging attribute you get at birth. Wouldn’t your brain upgrade itself as it optimizes for the world around it?
maxerickson 3y ago
It's probably more accurate to say that the skills are durable.

pimpampum 3y ago

I wonder how IQ higer than 85 relates to the chances of dying, maybe still relevant? There's probably a sweet spot not too dumb but dumb enough to join the military.

dan-0 3y ago
This was interesting to me as well. I'm assuming the more limited IQ resulted in more of those soldiers falling into inherently more dangerous roles such as the Infantry due to inability to qualify for more technical and safer roles.