# At what level does IQ become meaningless? I heard a genetics professor... **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 18, 2004, 9:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658 "2004-04-18T09:58:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2004, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/21 "2004-04-19T13:46:02Z")
> [@KP](#): > > I think it is important to note that IQ is meaningless, period. > > That’s not a slam. It’s inherent in the definition of IQ [Mental age/Chronological age]. Mental age is fatally a flawed construct. There are substantial and irreconcilable differences between the mental capacities and predilections of a ten-year old with an IQ of 180 and an 18 year old with an IQ of 100. The two are only comparable in the crudest of fashions, and even then, only if you don’t look too closely. I could be wrong, but I think that IQ is no longer (or at least not usually) defined in this way any more. It doesn’t make any sense to judge adult intelligence in relation to “mental age”, and it doesn’t even work all that well with children. To the best of my knowledge, all the major IQ tests in use today determine score by comparison to the performance of a sampling of the general population. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2004, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/22 "2004-04-19T14:05:07Z")
Whoops, sorry for the fairly redundant post…I wandered away to make a cup of tea before posting, and didn’t preview. In re the OP, I think at some point the law of diminishing returns has to kick in. I have never seen anything to indicate that people with _very_ high IQs are more successful in their careers or happier than people with “merely” above-average IQs. I think a person who would currently test at, say, 1.5 or 2 standard deviaions above the norm would be plenty smart enough to hold any kind of job or to do anything they could ever reasonably want to do. There might be other obstacles like lack of money, education, or special skills/talents, but I doubt a lack of intelligence would hold them back. ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2004, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/23 "2004-04-19T14:10:48Z")
IQ [chart](http://members.shaw.ca/delajara/IQtable.html). Anyone with a moderately high IQ knows they’re almost meaningless. ---
**Author:** ![Tigers2B1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@Tigers2B1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tigers2B1)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2004, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/24 "2004-04-19T14:34:01Z")
> [@II Gyan II](#): > > IQ [chart](http://members.shaw.ca/delajara/IQtable.html). > > Anyone with a moderately high IQ knows they’re almost meaningless. Man I wish I had the intelligence to understand what that means. Anyway, it’s my understanding that IQ tests measure logical reasoning, analogies, and verbal ability very well. IQ tests also predict acheivement in school and in later life with a fairly high correlation. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2004, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/25 "2004-04-19T19:55:41Z")
> [@](#): > > But what does that really have to do with intelligence? If it’s impossible to determine the outcome, it’s impossible to determine the outcome, right? It gets worse. Consider the halting problem again. For every single program that halts, it’s possible to prove that it halts. The way you prove it is just to run the program for a long time until it does halt, and then point at it and say “See? It halted!”. So a “perfect” question-answerer, when presented with a program that halts, should give the output “Yes, it halts”. But if it always gives this output, in a predictable amount of time, given a program which halts, then it can also identify every program which will not halt. But that’s impossible. If you have a program which hasn’t halted yet, then there is, in general, _no way_ of knowing if it’s going to run forever, or if it’s going to halt, but just hasn’t gotten around to it yet. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2004, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/26 "2004-04-19T20:17:16Z")
> [@Tigers2B1](#): > > Man I wish I had the intelligence to understand what that means. > > Anyway, it’s my understanding that IQ tests measure logical reasoning, analogies, and verbal ability very well. IQ tests also predict acheivement in school and in later life with a fairly high correlation. Cite? The reason I ask is that I am involved with a support group for the parents of gifted children in my district, and we are told that the dropout rate for gifted kids is equal to or even greater than average. One of the big myths that the GATE coordinator worries about is that gifted kids can be left alone, since they’ll do fine anyway. It is not true. As far as high IQ not making a big difference, I agree. Most fields require some specialized talents, not generalized intelligence. For instance, while I am good in math, I don’t have the visualization skills to become a topologist say. I’d be awful at organic chemistry. I’m very good at the things that IQ tests (and SATs) measure though. ---
**Author:** ![Tigers2B1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@Tigers2B1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tigers2B1)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/27 "2004-04-20T03:22:07Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Cite? The reason I ask is that I am involved with a support group for the parents of gifted children in my district, and we are told that the dropout rate for gifted kids is equal to or even greater than average. One of the big myths that the GATE coordinator worries about is that gifted kids can be left alone, since they’ll do fine anyway. It is not true. > > As far as high IQ not making a big difference, I agree. Most fields require some specialized talents, not generalized intelligence. For instance, while I am good in math, I don’t have the visualization skills to become a topologist say. I’d be awful at organic chemistry. I’m very good at the things that IQ tests (and SATs) measure though. This paper (LINKED) describes a large number of correlations including these - [http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/iku.html](http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/iku.html) > [@](#): > > \*\*II INTELLIGENCE TESTS AND THEIR CORRELATES > … > > Tests as Predictors > > School Performance.\*\* Intelligence tests were originally devised by Alfred Binet to measure children’s ability to succeed in school. They do in fact predict school performance fairly well: the correlation between IS scores and grades is about .50. … > > **Years of Education**. Some children stay in school longer than others; many go on to college and perhaps beyond. Two variables that can be measured as early as elementary school correlate with the total amount of education individuals will obtain: test scores and social class background. Correlations between IQ scores and total years of education are about .55 … > > **Social Status and Income.** How well do IQ scores (which can be obtained before individuals enter the labor force) predict such outcome measures as the social status or income of adults? This question is complex, in part because another variable also predicts such outcomes: namely, the socioeconomic status (SES) of one’s parents. Unsurprisingly, children of privileged families are more likely to attain high social status than those whose parents are poor and less educated. These two predictors (IQ and parental SES) are by no means independent of one another; the correlation between them is around .33 (White, 1982). … > > **Job Performance.** Scores on intelligence tests predict various measures of job performance: supervisor ratings, work samples, etc. Such correlations, which typically lie between r=.30 and r=.50, are partly restricted by the limited reliability of those measures themselves. They become higher when ris statistically corrected for this unreliability: in one survey of relevant studies (Hunter, 1983), the mean of the corrected correlations was .54. This implies that, across a wide range of occupations, intelligence test performance accounts for some 29% of the variance in job performance. … > > **Social Outcomes.** Psychometric intelligence is negatively correlated with certain socially undesirable outcomes. For example, children with high test scores are less likely than lower-scoring children to engage in juvenile crime. in one study, Moffitt, Gabrielli, Mednick & Schulsinger (1981) found a correlation of -.19 between IQ scores and number of juvenile offenses in a large Danish sample… ---
**Author:** ![Roland\_Deschain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/73ab20/32.png) [@Roland\_Deschain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roland_Deschain)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/28 "2004-04-20T03:45:59Z")
with hundreds of planets involved in some sort of “federation” (or at least free trade alliance) and WIDELY ranging intelligence, how could we quantify the intellectual disparity? Let’s say for instance that the “average” Vulcan could do advanced, differential equations in their head. In my “scenario” there might even be an “Asgard” type race (see Stargate SG1 on Sci-fi) who was an “order of magnitude more intelligent” than the Vulcans. To take it even further, there might be “Ancients” (who invented the Stargates/ wormhole system millions of years ago on the same series) who were orders of magnitude more intelligent than the Asgard. With this hypothetical scenario lets say you are assigned to be the Secretary of Intergalactic Skills Accessment and to design a test capable of giving SOME relative idea of the intelligence useful in all species (translated into the relevent language of course). How might you go about designing such a test (understanding that it would be imperfect, but would give some general idea of where things stood). ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/29 "2004-04-20T03:57:53Z")
There’s no reason to think that alien races would even be able to communicate with each other, let alone be able to compare their intelligence. ---
**Author:** ![Roland\_Deschain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/73ab20/32.png) [@Roland\_Deschain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roland_Deschain)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/30 "2004-04-20T04:22:00Z")
the purposes of this question. Also, it’s not hard to imagine that OUR civilization might create advanced “translation technology” within the next few hundred years, let alone those which are centuries ahead of us. We are probably within a hundred years of mastering fusion, nanotechnology, and quantum computers. Therefore, we are probably not even qualified to speculate about the ability of technologies that might be thousands of years ahead of us and rely upon scientific principals that we haven’t even yet described. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/31 "2004-04-20T04:36:30Z")
Those of us with IQs between 200 and 300 are very different from the rest of you. We understand things most people think are impossible or unknowable. For instance, we can know the exact location and and momentum of a particle at the same time. We know what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. We know what women want, and what “diddy wah diddy” means. But dealing with you ordinary people is generally rather painful for us. When you talk, it sounds like an annoying buzzing. (This is sometimes even the case with a people with IQs as high as 210 or 215.) We know what you’re going to say before you open your mouths, and if it weren’t so pitiful, we’d laugh. We generally avoid contact with you, which is why so few of you realize we exist. My IQ is 285 and my friend George’s is 287. He is soooo smug and self-righteous about that 2-point difference. The other day I happened to mention that the formula for Liddicoatite is Na (Li,Al)[sub]3[/sub] Al[sub]6[/sub] B[sub]3[/sub] Si[sub]6[/sub] (OH)[sub]4[/sub]. Now, I _know_ that that’s the formula for Elbaite (Liddicoatite is **Ca** (Li,Al)[sub]3[/sub] Al[sub]6[/sub] B[sub]3[/sub] Si[sub]6[/sub] (OH)[sub]4[/sub]), but I had been up late the night before working on my Grand Unified Theory. It was just a slip of the tongue, but George gave me a pitying look like he’s doing me a favor by just being in the same room as me. He’s such a jerk. But he’s really good at D&D. And he knows _everything_ about _Star Trek._ ---
**Author:** ![Roland\_Deschain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/73ab20/32.png) [@Roland\_Deschain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roland_Deschain)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/32 "2004-04-20T05:00:47Z")
standard IQ tests, BUT my wife scores from 145 to around 155 (she joined MENSA just to annoy me further). However, she STRUGGLES with her nursing classes in terms of getting A’s, while I’ve never scored less than an “A” since high-school (plus she is more disiplined and studies more). In addition, when I was pre-med I was able to get A’s in all the standard preperation classes, O-Chem, Physics ect. Does she perhaps have a “hidden” learning disability that is hurting her scholastic performance? ---
**Author:** ![Eleusis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Eleusis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleusis)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/33 "2004-04-20T10:52:47Z")
> [@Roland Deschain](#): > > Does she perhaps have a “hidden” learning disability that is hurting her scholastic performance? It’s called the Y-chromosone. d&r ---
**Author:** ![Eleusis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Eleusis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleusis)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/34 "2004-04-20T10:54:00Z")
I swear the super intelligent alien 4000 IQ FEMALE hamptsters changed my X to a Y ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Eleusis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Eleusis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleusis)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/35 "2004-04-20T10:58:03Z")
No! I meant LACK OF Y! YEAH! Y-chromosomally deficient! Please excuse me while I crawl under a rock. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/36 "2004-04-20T13:12:19Z")
Start a thread on “what’s your IQ?” in IMHO, and 200-300 IQs will come out of the woodwork like termites. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2004, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658/37 "2004-04-20T15:05:04Z")
> [@Eleusis](#): > > No! I meant LACK OF Y! YEAH! Y-chromosomally deficient! Hush up, it’s just a Freudian slip. What you’re doing wearing a slip is anybody’s guess, though. To (hamfistedly) tie this back into the discussion, I’ve never understood why really smart people are fascinated by really dumb jokes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/at-what-level-does-iq-become-meaningless-i-heard-a-genetics-professor/240658.md?page=1)