5 ms·

The elephant in the room is that whatever IQ is measuring, it is strongly correlated with all of the things people would generally agree correlates with intelli

The elephant in the room is that whatever IQ is measuring, it is strongly correlated with all of the things people would generally agree correlates with intelligence. It is a strong predictor for what is generally considered success: financial, health, achievements, career. It is a strong predictor for how fast people learn things or become competent in roles generally associated with intelligence. You can nitpick it, you can be right, but you are also preaching to the rocks and trees. The fact is people with low IQs are going to struggle more and people with high IQs do not need to struggle as much, in all areas of life. The exact number, or accuracy, or whether it is really intelligence does not change the reality.

Arthanos 2y ago
The ZIP code you're born in is a stronger predictor of all those things than IQ.
- oidar 2y ago
  Do you have a citation for that?
  - regularjack 2y ago
    Do you even need one?
- singularity2001 2y ago
  smart people love to stick together
  - kavouras 2y ago
    rich*
- threatofrain 2y ago
  And there are other people living in the same zip code as you. A single family may even have more than one child living under the same roof. Naturally the question will arise anyway as to why there are differences in learning speed or fluency.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago
  [flagged]
- naijaboiler 2y ago
  Your parents income is an even stronger predictir
kstenerud 2y ago
The author spoke to this: "I would definitely never say something like “IQ doesn’t matter at all.” I wouldn’t even say “IQ is unimportant.” I think it is important, in that it’s one of the only measurements we have that does an okay job at capturing intelligence, in that it’s not too bad at this when it comes to the center of the distribution, although it gets increasingly bad at it at the tails. And, from a practical perspective, there is a sense in which I’m actually very pro-IQ tests!"
- mrandish 2y ago
  > although it gets increasingly bad at it at the tails. In my experience, typical measures of intelligence become less meaningful with those who have a combination of unusually high and unusually low abilities on different dimensions of intelligence. With the majority of people most abilities tend to correlate but in a significant minority they don't.
  - kstenerud 2y ago
    And that's fine. IQ tests aren't designed to be comprehensive (and rightly so).
randomNumber7 2y ago
Yet I have high IQ and life is a struggle.
- kbrkbr 2y ago
  "Throwing a die, a number higher than 1 is very likely." - "And yet I threw a 1." That is no contradiction. That being said I hope you can overcome the issues that make your life a struggle.
- scotty79 2y ago
  IQ is just an ability to often (but not always) process things faster. It's useful for some people and things. Useless for others. Useless for most.
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  I hear you. Imagine I give you a Ferrari and it's your only car. It gets 4 MPG, tires need replacing at $15,000 every 4 months and you live in the city with hills and stop and go traffic, and you don't really know how to drive stick (when you were in driving training they said 'I'm sure you can figure it out' and focused on the other people). Sweet car, but it's not really the 'gift' that it seems. You got this. I'm sure you can figure it out ;)
sureglymop 2y ago
How does the conclusion "The fact is people with low IQs are going to struggle more and people with high IQs do not need to struggle as much" logically follow? I would urge you to explain how you came to this conclusion (logically speaking). Just a thought but often times people who score very high on IQ tests face much more adversity in their lives if they also have autism, adhd or comorbidities. Children who undergo an adhd diagnosis often also do an IQ test as part of that procedure; this seems to be standard practice.
ttoinou 2y ago
What can you logically do with those correlations ? They’re just correlations How can it be a predictor when we don’t know the value ? Ive never taken a test and I dont know anyone who’s ever made a test
- scotty79 2y ago
  How can a temperature be a predictor of getting burned if I don't have a thermometer and no one I know does either?
  - ttoinou 2y ago
    If you dont have those you can’t really relate the sensation of cold / warm to the scientific concept of temperature. Unless you blindly trust what someone else does
    - scotty79 2y ago
      > If you dont have those you can’t really relate the sensation of cold / warm to the scientific concept of temperature It doesn't make it less of a fact. > Unless you blindly trust what someone else does I don't have to blindly trust. I can just plainly trust. The same way I do with many things in my life. If I limited myself to what I can perceive myself I would be limited severely. And also wrong many times because personal perceptions are sometimes flawed and misleading.
      - ttoinou 2y ago
        > And also wrong many times because personal perceptions are sometimes flawed and misleading. For example what you perceive others say and do, they're just perceptions, n=1, but somehow, for some reasons, you think they're above others experiences you have in life, and you can qualify them as "good facts"
        scotty79 2y ago
        I value research of people that spent their lives on it more than my personal illusions. Reading someone's research has way less opportunities for lying to yourself than trying to form an opinion on this subject from your own experiences only. Sure, my perceptions of reading someone's research are burdened with errors just like everything else I perceive in life. But since the knowledge is distilled and condensed then there's less opportunities to mess it up, compared to the alternative of "doing my own research". I don't see how that's controversial for you. That's how science works. You read what other people wrote first. Then you try to make some contribution if you are so inclined.
golly_ned 2y ago
The author doesn’t dispute that at all. The author disputes that high intelligence is necessary for genius.
- Vecr 2y ago
  An IQ of 125 isn't low by any standard.
citadel_melon 2y ago
I think people read too much into IQ tests. IQ tests will test what sub skills you have and don’t have currently. They do not test your innate abilities and one can improve their sub skills within your lifetime. Moreover, people assume having a higher IQ means you are definitely smarter than someone with a lower IQ. However, IQ does not measure how much rigorous thinking you have done in your lifetime — a metric that would better score how many useful insights you have gathered in your life — nor does it measure what domain-knowledge connections you have in your brain that are useful. It just measures a subset of cognitive subskills that makes it easier for one to pickup ideas: not that you actually have used them for such purposes nor that you have used these subskills to their full abilities. Additionally, these subskills can also be a hindrance to your learning. Neurodivergent people — who typically perform worse on IQ tests — can often be forced to learn MORE effective systems and will outperform high-IQ neuro-typical people’s performances as they were forced to adapt around their subskill insufficiencies: analogous to a blind person learning how to echo-locate and can see in 360 degrees with their clicks bouncing off walls and objects (something seeing people typically can not do). IQ tests are misleading because people believe they measure a person’s life-long cognitive ceiling and that it tests more than it actually does. IQ does not test intelligence nor learning abilities. It tests a subset of subskills that are the most common tools that most people use to learn. The test does not measure all the possible learning tools one can use to learn. IQ does not test how much one’s organization and scheduling abilities can help overcome IQ insufficiencies. IQ does not test one’s ability to pick which learning tactics is best to use when studying a given subject. IQ does not test how well one can update their priors — which is probably one of the most important items when measuring how intelligent/informed a person will become in their lifetime. IQ also does not test how well a person can reframe an issue/discussion to be more constructive and accurate. IQ measures much less about intelligence than the complete set of subskills that are relevant to a person’s cognitive ceiling. IQ measures enough to draw a regression line on a graph between it and perceived intelligence. Any stronger statement one could make about IQ’s implication on measuring intelligence is simply conjecture.

Arthanos 2y ago

The ZIP code you're born in is a stronger predictor of all those things than IQ.

oidar 2y ago
Do you have a citation for that?
- regularjack 2y ago
  Do you even need one?
singularity2001 2y ago
smart people love to stick together
- kavouras 2y ago
  rich*
threatofrain 2y ago
And there are other people living in the same zip code as you. A single family may even have more than one child living under the same roof. Naturally the question will arise anyway as to why there are differences in learning speed or fluency.
jxjnskkzxxhx 2y ago
[flagged]
naijaboiler 2y ago
Your parents income is an even stronger predictir

kstenerud 2y ago

The author spoke to this: "I would definitely never say something like “IQ doesn’t matter at all.” I wouldn’t even say “IQ is unimportant.” I think it is important, in that it’s one of the only measurements we have that does an okay job at capturing intelligence, in that it’s not too bad at this when it comes to the center of the distribution, although it gets increasingly bad at it at the tails. And, from a practical perspective, there is a sense in which I’m actually very pro-IQ tests!"

mrandish 2y ago
> although it gets increasingly bad at it at the tails. In my experience, typical measures of intelligence become less meaningful with those who have a combination of unusually high and unusually low abilities on different dimensions of intelligence. With the majority of people most abilities tend to correlate but in a significant minority they don't.
- kstenerud 2y ago
  And that's fine. IQ tests aren't designed to be comprehensive (and rightly so).

randomNumber7 2y ago

Yet I have high IQ and life is a struggle.

kbrkbr 2y ago
"Throwing a die, a number higher than 1 is very likely." - "And yet I threw a 1." That is no contradiction. That being said I hope you can overcome the issues that make your life a struggle.
scotty79 2y ago
IQ is just an ability to often (but not always) process things faster. It's useful for some people and things. Useless for others. Useless for most.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
I hear you. Imagine I give you a Ferrari and it's your only car. It gets 4 MPG, tires need replacing at $15,000 every 4 months and you live in the city with hills and stop and go traffic, and you don't really know how to drive stick (when you were in driving training they said 'I'm sure you can figure it out' and focused on the other people). Sweet car, but it's not really the 'gift' that it seems. You got this. I'm sure you can figure it out ;)

sureglymop 2y ago

How does the conclusion "The fact is people with low IQs are going to struggle more and people with high IQs do not need to struggle as much" logically follow? I would urge you to explain how you came to this conclusion (logically speaking). Just a thought but often times people who score very high on IQ tests face much more adversity in their lives if they also have autism, adhd or comorbidities. Children who undergo an adhd diagnosis often also do an IQ test as part of that procedure; this seems to be standard practice.

ttoinou 2y ago

What can you logically do with those correlations ? They’re just correlations How can it be a predictor when we don’t know the value ? Ive never taken a test and I dont know anyone who’s ever made a test

scotty79 2y ago
How can a temperature be a predictor of getting burned if I don't have a thermometer and no one I know does either?
- ttoinou 2y ago
  If you dont have those you can’t really relate the sensation of cold / warm to the scientific concept of temperature. Unless you blindly trust what someone else does
  - scotty79 2y ago
    > If you dont have those you can’t really relate the sensation of cold / warm to the scientific concept of temperature It doesn't make it less of a fact. > Unless you blindly trust what someone else does I don't have to blindly trust. I can just plainly trust. The same way I do with many things in my life. If I limited myself to what I can perceive myself I would be limited severely. And also wrong many times because personal perceptions are sometimes flawed and misleading.
    - ttoinou 2y ago
      > And also wrong many times because personal perceptions are sometimes flawed and misleading. For example what you perceive others say and do, they're just perceptions, n=1, but somehow, for some reasons, you think they're above others experiences you have in life, and you can qualify them as "good facts"
      - scotty79 2y ago
        I value research of people that spent their lives on it more than my personal illusions. Reading someone's research has way less opportunities for lying to yourself than trying to form an opinion on this subject from your own experiences only. Sure, my perceptions of reading someone's research are burdened with errors just like everything else I perceive in life. But since the knowledge is distilled and condensed then there's less opportunities to mess it up, compared to the alternative of "doing my own research". I don't see how that's controversial for you. That's how science works. You read what other people wrote first. Then you try to make some contribution if you are so inclined.

golly_ned 2y ago

The author doesn’t dispute that at all. The author disputes that high intelligence is necessary for genius.

Vecr 2y ago
An IQ of 125 isn't low by any standard.

citadel_melon 2y ago

I think people read too much into IQ tests. IQ tests will test what sub skills you have and don’t have currently. They do not test your innate abilities and one can improve their sub skills within your lifetime. Moreover, people assume having a higher IQ means you are definitely smarter than someone with a lower IQ. However, IQ does not measure how much rigorous thinking you have done in your lifetime — a metric that would better score how many useful insights you have gathered in your life — nor does it measure what domain-knowledge connections you have in your brain that are useful. It just measures a subset of cognitive subskills that makes it easier for one to pickup ideas: not that you actually have used them for such purposes nor that you have used these subskills to their full abilities. Additionally, these subskills can also be a hindrance to your learning. Neurodivergent people — who typically perform worse on IQ tests — can often be forced to learn MORE effective systems and will outperform high-IQ neuro-typical people’s performances as they were forced to adapt around their subskill insufficiencies: analogous to a blind person learning how to echo-locate and can see in 360 degrees with their clicks bouncing off walls and objects (something seeing people typically can not do). IQ tests are misleading because people believe they measure a person’s life-long cognitive ceiling and that it tests more than it actually does. IQ does not test intelligence nor learning abilities. It tests a subset of subskills that are the most common tools that most people use to learn. The test does not measure all the possible learning tools one can use to learn. IQ does not test how much one’s organization and scheduling abilities can help overcome IQ insufficiencies. IQ does not test one’s ability to pick which learning tactics is best to use when studying a given subject. IQ does not test how well one can update their priors — which is probably one of the most important items when measuring how intelligent/informed a person will become in their lifetime. IQ also does not test how well a person can reframe an issue/discussion to be more constructive and accurate. IQ measures much less about intelligence than the complete set of subskills that are relevant to a person’s cognitive ceiling. IQ measures enough to draw a regression line on a graph between it and perceived intelligence. Any stronger statement one could make about IQ’s implication on measuring intelligence is simply conjecture.