Do you have a measurement for any of those traits that you are trying to foist off as predictive? Intelligence, (not IQ), is certainly relevant, but examining the whole will probably give a better prediction than relying on a flawed test.
You are quite wrong. The scores are relevant because they are one of the factors.
Who is more likely to make it in the NBA, someone who is dedicated, loves the sport, practices every day, and is 5’6", or someone else who is dedicated, loves the sport, practices every day, and is a foot taller?
Regards,
Shodan
So you have to go to the extremes to make your point? 5’ 6" would be extremely short in the NBA.
So, all other things being equal, is relative height an important factor, or not? If it is, then you understand that relatively higher IQ can be a factor elsewhere even if it is not the only factor.
If you don’t think it is, then why is 5’6" a rare height in the NBA?
Regards,
Shodan
I think both of you are confusing intelligence with accomplishment. Accomplishments depend on a whole range of factors, including parental status and just pure luck. One of them is intelligence. We can correlate intelligence and accomplishment, but we certainly cannot predict one from the other.
We talk about how a good work ethic can influence success. We may not be able to measure that, but it certainly exists. Our measurement of IQ is imperfect, of course, but it does measure something.
That’s all I’m saying, which should not be as controversial as it seems to be.
IQ certainly mesures something. Unfortunately, no advocate of it can actually identify what it measures but appear to want to hang onto it for undetermined reasons.
Since we do not know what it genuinely measures (beyond the ability to takes the tests that “measure” it), I would prefer to stop misusing it to pretend that it has great meaning, particularly when it is misused to label people.
Khan from Star Trek 2 would like to have a word with you.
How is that not accomplishment? Pick a random sampling of 857 people with an IQ of 100 and see how many scientific and technical papers they have. How many are in the NAS, or listed in ‘whos who of america’.
The socioeconomic status of their parents likely played a role I’m sure. They were probably almost all white. And notice they only mention men, most of the high IQ and extremely high IQ women went on to become homemakers.
So again, IQ isn’t everything but it is something. It matters and we should be looking for ways to increase it.
Also both Alvarez and Shockley earned PhDs in hard scientific fields, so their IQs were probably 120-130 minimum even if they didn’t hit the cutoff. So that argument still doesn’t undermine the validity of high IQ when you say people in the top 2% of cognitive skills earn more nobel prizes than people in the top 0.1%. Both groups are still the far right end of the bell curve.
Also, how many people tested and failed to become termites? Tens of thousands (as a guess)? Out of tens of thousands of high IQ people who have a very above average IQ, but are below the ~150 cutoff, I’m sure quite a few would go on to become successful.
Apparently the IQ cutoff for Terman’s group was 135, not 150.
However I don’t know how many people took tests to apply to the group. You’d assume if you took the test to apply, you are already above average.
My point was that the test was predictive of certain types of accomplishments. I think the whole subject is fascinating because of all the unknowns. In the vacuum of significant settled science on the subject, we are left to speculate about what exactly it all means.
Just to be clear, I believe there are certain innate abilities and talents that exist in some people and not others - I certainly do not believe we are all equal blank slates at at birth.
But the real question that is controversial is if one achieves a high score on this test, exactly how compartmentalized is this ability? For example, is it compartmentalized in the way savantism is? To take one example, Derek Paravacini is a highly gifted musician and is able to do easily and innately what many would spend a lifetime trying to achieve:
*“They instinctively and innately know the rules of music, which most people spend a lifetime trying to learn,” he said.
Treffert said those rules of music are what draws savants to master it. Music is often repetitive and has a specific structure that savants master easily. Even the design of the instrument can make a difference. Treffert said that most savants are drawn to the piano.
“I think it has to do with the symmetry of the keys,” he said.
Many scientists have noted that music, math and other skills that come easily to savants are associated with the right side of the brain. Some autism research has linked that disorder to dysfunction in the left side of the brain, which also is associated with the control of language and communication.*
According to the article quoted above, there are about 100 such people alive today. While they have great talent, do they have the same talent as Mozart, Miles
Davis, Beethoven, the Beatles etc.? Do these two groups have distinctly different strengths?
Or do IQ tests measure differences in ability akin to a child and an adult - such as a general overall superior functioning?
Or is it like trying to measure a person’s football playing ability by adding up how well they each play every position; even though a great running back would make a terrible lineman based on the different characteristics required for success in each of those positions?
Is it like using height to predict basketball playing success? Is it even more tangential than that - for example using weight(which is correlated with height) to try to predict basketball playing ability?
Will computers some day show us that even the most talented among us are just gnats on the ass of true intelligence?
This thread could go on for another 10 pages and I still don’t think we’d come any closer to any sort of consensus on the subject so for I’ll just stick to my own preconceived notions on the subject which lie somewhere between points 1 & 3.
I have a rash on my upper thigh.
Let me put it this way:
There is a vast excluded middle between the alternatives of:
Denying that IQ exists
and
Believing IQ is the major determinant of success in any intellectual pursuit and/or A high IQ is a pre-requisite for success in many jobs or pursuits
My opinion is in that excluded middle. I think IQ is a thing, but it’s massively overvalued in Western culture.
To go to the basketball analogy, it’s like most people on the bell curve are within a few inches height of each other, and while being 6’1 is better than 6’0, that advantage is easily washed out by other factors.
If I want to pick players for my team, I need them to prove they can play; just measuring their height is largely useless.
If we’re saying IQ is like height in basketball and we have the same distribution of height as we have in the real world, then I think it’s a bad and misleading analogy.
I agree 100%. I think you lost sight of the original premise of this tangent of the general discussion. I was just comparing like with like - Wesley Clark was using the career success of the test subjects to prove that the test had meaningful predictive quality. I was just pointing out what it missed.
But really the discussion, if it were more structured, should separate features from benefits.
To an extent, the test is predictive of success in school. It isn’t always, but you will find people with higher scores getting Ph.Ds in much higher numbers than people with lower IQs, even though anyone who is not actually retarded may display other things that measure success besides academic accomplishments, such as being high earners, or having long and successful marriages.
Meanwhile, there will always be outliers of both types; there will be people with IQs over 130 who never do anything academic, nor go into a field that requires an advanced degree, and there will be people with low IQs who make scientific breakthroughs.
But, still, you mentioned your IQ online? In your profile? On a dating site?
Okay, maybe you did it to frighten off the tasteful. This way you’ll get a higher percentage of superficial dates to choose from.
(On a serious note, that is my reaction if anyone mentions their IQ either online or in person.)
Let me nitpick here - we should be looking to increase intelligence. If IQ scores increase also, that is a side effect. We should improve nutrition, make sure more homes have books, have better pre-K education, instead of teaching kids to take the test better.
I’m sure you agree, but I just wanted to head off the naysayers.
I was reading that as a correlation, which strongly argues that IQ is more than just test taking. Even if it is predictive, I doubt anyone would argue it is perfectly predictive.
The race may not go to the swift, after all, but that is the way to bet.
Establishing a team is like hiring an employee - you would look at accomplishments instead of raw ability.
But say you were running a basketball camp with restricted space, and had teams waiting for your trainees. Whether a kid is 6’ 1’ or 6’ 2’’ is not going to make much of a difference in your decision. But you are sure going to pick the 6’ 6" kid over the 5’ 6" kid. You might be wrong, but it is the way to bet.
I’m way past outliers man. It’s the soft gushy middle where everything gets hazy. For example, according to this chart, the median IQ for a college professor is about 114; slightly less than one standard deviation. I’m not really sure how to interpret that; but oftentimes people believe certain professions, such as the one just mentioned, consist of a population of high IQ types when in reality they mostly consist of high average IQ scoring individuals, and actually have a not insignificant number of below average individuals. I’m not sure how well the IQ’s of professors extrapolate to Phd holders as a whole, but I would imagine it wouldn’t be too far off. To be perfectly honest with you I don’e really have much of a point now that I think about it, I just thought that chart was neat.
Who here is misusing IQ again? The Bell Curve sure did, but it also misused statistics and a lot of other stuff.
There is a lot about human behavior we can only measure, not define. I’m glad that you at least accept intelligence as a thing. And I heard a psychologist describe the characteristics of very gifted students (IQ > 140) which sure matched my anecdotal experience. (Not all of these things were good, by the way.) So there is something there.
Or indeed they *could *be successful academically and become great doctors, lawyers, engineers, mathematicians, whatever.
I reject the notion that a high-IQ is a pre-requisite for anything, but it just keeps getting repeated in this thread matter-of-factly.
So I’ll just say: “cite”. Cite for the fact that someone with an average IQ would be incapable of academic success (and should focus on their marriage :rolleyes:)