I’m reading it now; it is fascinating, because the idea that it’s possible to measure intelligence and used it to predict probabilities for individual and group

I’m reading it now; it is fascinating, because the idea that it’s possible to measure intelligence and used it to predict probabilities for individual and group outcomes is one of the most useful, strongest-supported ideas in all of the social sciences, yet many people either misunderstand the state of scientific consensus (“IQ doesn’t really measure anything, intelligence tests are largely bogus”) or actively try to deny that this is possible for political purposes (“many people are disadvantaged because of low socioeconomic status, but we can equalize everything with more government spending“). Understanding something other people don’t should allow you to gain an economic advantage somehow; there should be sort of arbitrage opportunities to profit from the knowledge differential. For example, many people think having a four-year college degree adds x amount of value because the average college graduate earns y more dollars over their lifetime than the average non-college graduate, and this means that everyone should go to college. But if you understand that a large part of x actually comes from the inherent value in being intelligent, and a large part of the reason students of top universities make better workers is that they were really smart even in high school, not necessarily because a university education is worth what students are paying, perhaps instead of hiring only from top universities, you can hire students straight out of high school based on their SAT scores (yes, the SAT measures intelligence) and train them yourself? Universities use a multitude of signals when deciding who to admit (test scores, essays, reference letters, extracurriculars), so in addition to trying to determine intelligence, they’re also trying to determine other character traits, but The Bell Curve (at least I think this is where I read it) presents some data related to job hiring that shows intelligence is the trait that’s most measurable and provides the most predictive power.