6 ms·
I've always thought the Flynn Effect was yet another Moore's Law, and both demonstrate Goodhart's Law. We didn't get transistor density doubling year over year
by advael 2y ago
I've always thought the Flynn Effect was yet another Moore's Law, and both demonstrate Goodhart's Law. We didn't get transistor density doubling year over year because this was a natural tendency of some physical law, we got it because of mountains of money and engineering effort poured into doing that. Similarly, we didn't get rises in a measure of what society considers intelligence because of some genetic or uncorrelated environmental factor, we got it because what we're actually measuring with IQ, since it was invented by Binet, is education and selection of minds toward a particular category of reasoning tasks. I think Binet did something impressive when he distilled the priorities of the entire education system into a psychometrically-evaluable quantity that's relatively stable across individuals, but the way people overstate the generality and broad applicability of this metric baffles me. Like people will point out that IQ correlates with lifetime income and also SAT scores. But those two things not only correlate with each other for a much clearer reason (We gate educational outcomes with standardized tests that resemble IQ tests, and also gate economic outcomes with educational credentials), but that reason also is a causal explanation that mostly amounts to a decision made by human institutional policy, rather than some grand enduring fact about the nature of intelligence
Like look, I get how people get so attached to this stuff. I've got a high enough IQ score to be beyond the statistical sensitivity of Raven's Progressive Matrices which mostly seems to mean that I'm great at test-taking and puzzle-solving, and I get that IQ seems like this really powerful explanation of variance on vibes from an internal perspective. It feels like people above a certain point on the curve are just so much more vibrant and curious sometimes! But I've come to believe that this is more an artifact of how we shunt certain people within the education system than some deep difference between people on some generally-applicable measure of capability. Lots of social science theories about assortative mating and such seem to observe that people with brains that work similarly will also tend to like each other more, and we have vast edifices that determine other socialization-determining factors based on these kinds of heavily-correlated metrics.
- mannyv 2y agoExcept that data says you're wrong. As a classic example, look at (1) the effects of adding iodine to salt and its impact on IQ, and (2) the withdrawal of leaded gasoline and it's impact on IQ. And in general, IQ goes up as nutrition goes up (to a point). It's hard to be smart if you're calorie-reduced. That said, is IQ important? To an extent, yes. In general a higher IQ means someone can hold more things in their head, which means they can handle more complexity. Is it important? It depends. I would rather have a high-IQ doctor than a low-IQ doctor, for sure. I would rather have a high-IQ network engineer than a low-IQ network engineer.
- advael 2y agoNeither of your examples really contradict my point. If we are measuring a subset of things you need a brain for, of course factors that make your brain generally less effective are going to show up on them. Lead poisoning and inadequate nutrition also decrease libido for example, and I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that this provides strong evidentiary support that libido should be our proxy for people's general capabilities and declare it equivalent to "intelligence", though there are certainly those who would try to make that case too
- _yb2s 2y agoVery well stated
- nutrie 2y agoI’d argue emotinal intelligence is at least as important. The most successful people in business I’ve met are exceptionally good in empathy and highly social. Hard IQ is just a piece of the puzzle.
- advael 2y agoYea, like I'd rather have a doctor who actually listens to what I'm saying than one who got top marks in medical school, and honestly network engineers I've worked with who strike me as "higher IQ" often fall into the pitfall described by the adage "the perfect is the enemy of the good" (which I empathize with, because I am also a high-IQ person with this kind of bias, but it's actually quite counterproductive at times)
- tourmalinetaco 2y agoI would agree, but about 1/5th of CEOs are psycopaths, as opposed to the 1/100 in the general population[0]. While emotional intelligence may help in some fields, such as employee retention, it’s not universally related to success. Additionally, EI doesn’t map well to psychopaths and similar disorders due to EI being a measure of how well you conform rather than a measure of what you truly feel[1]. [0] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/2016/09/16/gene-marks-21-percent-of-ceos-are-psychopaths-only-21-percent/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-small-business/wp/201... | https://archive.is/3jHZV https://archive.is/3jHZV [1] - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-else/201209/emotional-intelligence-not-relevant-psychopaths https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-els... | https://archive.is/Z2Oif https://archive.is/Z2Oif
- awesomeMilou 2y agoThank you! What you are saying resonates with me and I really want to believe it. Though I wish I could find such a good argument to ward off the incoming people that cite publications that proves this wrong.
- advael 2y agoMy education has equipped me quite adequately to fend off such critiques, and frankly I think it's a misuse of terminology to claim that studies "prove" anything, because the nature of empirical evidence even under the most generous assumptions is that a body of evidence can support or contradict conclusions, but "proof" as a concept comes from logical modes of inference, which only work within contexts where the conclusions drawn pertain to assumptions that are defined in a stricter sense than any of these fuzzy real-world questions permit
- drcwpl 2y agoScience should seek to provide "good explanations" in the Deutsch sense, proof is rather questionable.
- drcwpl 2y agoVery well put, I agree with you wholeheartedly that "It feels like people above a certain point on the curve are just so much more vibrant and curious sometimes!" It's unfortunate some measures are deemed to be necessary, but resilience, curiosity, tenacity and cooperation with others are essential traits, maybe even more important than test taking - and certainly difficult to measure..