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Personally I think IQ and practical intelligence differs for a person. I have know many IQ smart people that can solve complex problems but fail to solve or for

Personally I think IQ and practical intelligence differs for a person. I have know many IQ smart people that can solve complex problems but fail to solve or foresee everyday basic problems

msgodel 1y ago
Right, IQ measures some abstract mental capacity, not knowledge. It's not very useful on its own.
- tptacek 1y ago
  It's probably more accurate to say that IQ is a useful indicator of many specific cognitive deficits, and basically unuseful within or above 2SD of the center.
  - msgodel 1y ago
    No. even within 1SD there are huge qualitative differences in what people are capable of.
    - tptacek 1y ago
      There are huge qualitative differences between cognitive ability between pairs of people within that range, but IQ stops accurately selecting the more capable of the two. It gets worse as the scores get higher. IQ is not a ranking of cognitive ability.
      - msgodel 1y ago
        My understanding is that people 75% of a standard deviation bellow average tend to struggle with basic thought experiments. Yeah when you get into the upper tail it starts to get hard to find things to differentiate people.
kubelsmieci 1y ago
My amateur theory is that basic problems are boring for them and they don't try enough to solve everyday problems
api 1y ago
Intelligence isn't one dimensional, but the parameters do tend to have a correlation on average. Higher IQ usually means higher other forms of intelligence -- on average. That being said, the caveat "on average" must always be added. On average, on average, on average. Same goes with anything about average tendencies of different genders. On average, on average, on average, averages across large groups do not map to individuals in that group. Emboss that on a mallet and bash people over the head with it until they get it. I do wonder if there might be some conservation at play in some individual cases -- which kinda matches what you said. There is only so much brain tissue. If you're hyper-good at some narrow kind of analytical intelligence (coding!) maybe some of that brain tissue is borrowed from other things it might be doing like understanding other meat sacks.
- milesrout 1y ago
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- dgfl 1y ago
  It could also be that their brain is somehow just more optimized. Some extreme outliers (e.g. Von Neumann or Tao) don’t seem to have any significant gaps in their abilities. Although Von Neumann did die of a brain-related issue, so perhaps what was gained in efficiency was lost in reliability. Kind of like tuning an engine. But this is biology after all. Most likely, plain improvements with zero downsides, very narrow improvements at the expense of something else, and improvements at the expense of life expectancy, are all possible mutations.

Personally I think IQ and practical intelligence differs for a person. I have know many IQ smart people that can solve complex problems but fail to solve or foresee everyday basic problems

msgodel 1y ago

Right, IQ measures some abstract mental capacity, not knowledge. It's not very useful on its own.

tptacek 1y ago
It's probably more accurate to say that IQ is a useful indicator of many specific cognitive deficits, and basically unuseful within or above 2SD of the center.
- msgodel 1y ago
  No. even within 1SD there are huge qualitative differences in what people are capable of.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    There are huge qualitative differences between cognitive ability between pairs of people within that range, but IQ stops accurately selecting the more capable of the two. It gets worse as the scores get higher. IQ is not a ranking of cognitive ability.
    - msgodel 1y ago
      My understanding is that people 75% of a standard deviation bellow average tend to struggle with basic thought experiments. Yeah when you get into the upper tail it starts to get hard to find things to differentiate people.

kubelsmieci 1y ago

My amateur theory is that basic problems are boring for them and they don't try enough to solve everyday problems

api 1y ago

Intelligence isn't one dimensional, but the parameters do tend to have a correlation on average. Higher IQ usually means higher other forms of intelligence -- on average. That being said, the caveat "on average" must always be added. On average, on average, on average. Same goes with anything about average tendencies of different genders. On average, on average, on average, averages across large groups do not map to individuals in that group. Emboss that on a mallet and bash people over the head with it until they get it. I do wonder if there might be some conservation at play in some individual cases -- which kinda matches what you said. There is only so much brain tissue. If you're hyper-good at some narrow kind of analytical intelligence (coding!) maybe some of that brain tissue is borrowed from other things it might be doing like understanding other meat sacks.

milesrout 1y ago
[dead]
dgfl 1y ago
It could also be that their brain is somehow just more optimized. Some extreme outliers (e.g. Von Neumann or Tao) don’t seem to have any significant gaps in their abilities. Although Von Neumann did die of a brain-related issue, so perhaps what was gained in efficiency was lost in reliability. Kind of like tuning an engine. But this is biology after all. Most likely, plain improvements with zero downsides, very narrow improvements at the expense of something else, and improvements at the expense of life expectancy, are all possible mutations.