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this is just a guess but I'm betting that if you take the best Nobel Prize Winners, and the best Mathematicians and give them IQ tests their average will be hig

this is just a guess but I'm betting that if you take the best Nobel Prize Winners, and the best Mathematicians and give them IQ tests their average will be higher than the average of the general population (or the mean if you will) the best sports players and best musicians I would also suppose were higher IQ on average than normal sports players (I suppose this term means professional athletes) and normal musicians (professional musicians) In the musicians category I wouldn't be surprised if the best musicians were also smarter than the general population. In short I think IQ tests are a lousy metric, sure, but it is not a completely useless measure - just nearly useless. On edit: clarification, fixed wrong capitalization.

zer00eyz 3y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/05/fact-check-ben-carson-claim-pyramids-store-grain https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/05/fact-check-b... The funny thing about specialists is that they can easily embarrass themselves when outside their field. Watching your average politician talk about technology is a pretty great example of people speaking with zero context. Some of them clearly aren't dumb but they can get in over their heads with ease.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  The funny thing about this conversation here though is I was talking about means and averages and you gave me an example of a single guy, also I said outliers in their fields might have higher than average general ability - I don't know why anyone would assume that higher than average general ability would equal expertise in unstudied specialties?
shiroiushi 3y ago
>In the musicians category I wouldn't be surprised if the best musicians were also smarter than the general population. I seriously doubt that, actually. Are they more musically gifted? Sure. Smarter overall? I'm not so sure. It would be an interesting study. I imagine the ones who are both successful musicians and businesspeople (i.e., they run the business themselves mostly, in addition to being musicians) probably are very intelligent, because that requires a broad range of skills. The ones who are just good at playing an instrument or singing some lyrics that someone else wrote? Not so much.

zer00eyz 3y ago

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/05/fact-check-ben-carson-claim-pyramids-store-grain https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/05/fact-check-b... The funny thing about specialists is that they can easily embarrass themselves when outside their field. Watching your average politician talk about technology is a pretty great example of people speaking with zero context. Some of them clearly aren't dumb but they can get in over their heads with ease.

bryanrasmussen 3y ago
The funny thing about this conversation here though is I was talking about means and averages and you gave me an example of a single guy, also I said outliers in their fields might have higher than average general ability - I don't know why anyone would assume that higher than average general ability would equal expertise in unstudied specialties?

shiroiushi 3y ago

>In the musicians category I wouldn't be surprised if the best musicians were also smarter than the general population. I seriously doubt that, actually. Are they more musically gifted? Sure. Smarter overall? I'm not so sure. It would be an interesting study. I imagine the ones who are both successful musicians and businesspeople (i.e., they run the business themselves mostly, in addition to being musicians) probably are very intelligent, because that requires a broad range of skills. The ones who are just good at playing an instrument or singing some lyrics that someone else wrote? Not so much.