Comment by mikemotherwell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikemotherwell | Hacker News Reader

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IQ is an EXCELLENT measure of "value, contribution, quality of thought". The idea it isn't is weird to me. What IQ fails at is being an ABSOLUTE measure of those things, e.g. John Nash is a genius, but his schizophrenia likely made a lot of what he did and said questionable. Just taking IQ and ignoring other factors would lead you awry. Even then, John Nash came up with the Nash Equilibrium.

I think the mistake is thinking that one measure will be absolutely predictive. Nassim Nicholas Taleb's point is that IQ is a great measure of stupid people, almost absolute at < 70 IQ levels, but as you progress upwards it's predictive power wanes.

Which is GOOD. Success is defined by many parts. Genetics, culture, training, hard work, timing aka luck. That there is no one metric that predicts everything is a good thing. However, while we should be clear on the limits of each of our measures, and not over state their individual value, that is not to say that these metrics are useless.

I think it’s often understated what you say in your last paragraph:

If success has multiple parts with a non-linear relationship (“more than the sum of its parts”), then we’d expect to see decreasing utility for IQ relative to having a strong secondary or tertiary talent — eg, strong leadership skills and EQ, so you can build momentum around your idea. In many senses, this is what we mean by a “well rounded person”.

I’m not sure how that translates into the rant that IQ is useless, pseudoscience, etc. that Mr Taleb makes, though.

Let’s look at height and NBA success. I think most of us agree distance is a measure, but it doesn’t explain NBA success. Just like IQ, it only really explains NBA non-success with much strength: there are very few successful short NBA players, and no midget ones; however, there are many non-NBA playing tall people.

Naively, Mr Taleb seems to be arguing that height isn’t a real measurement because it doesn’t account for basketball skill.

Or, more subtly, once you focus on star basketball players, height ceases to be a useful differentiator. Beyond a certain point, increased height will not lead to increased success at basketball.

> IQ is an EXCELLENT measure of "value, contribution, quality of thought".

Actually, it is not. At best, IQ is correlated with intellectual potential.

However, having potential is not the same as being able to perform.

Even a V8 without gas fails to perform on par with a filled 2-stroke motor.

> However, having potential is not the same as being able to perform.

But having no potential is virtually the same as not being able to perform.

You can find high IQ people in the highest places in human society and in the lowest places. But you don't find low IQ people in the highest places.

> But having no potential is virtually the same as not being able to perform.

That's true, but that refers to people with a low IQ. Thise with average IQ are quite able to outperform people with a high IQ if they have able to put in the legwork or even simply have an opportunity to improve their performance when some with a higher IQ does not.

The old addage that the brain is like a muscle is very orelevant: it makes no difference if a talented athlete does not train, because that only means he js squandering his talent. Meanwhile, least capable athletes that put in the hours do end up improving their performance and eventually outperform more talented athletes.

Potential means nothing if it's wasted.

> Thise with average IQ are quite able to outperform people with a high IQ if they have able to put in the legwork...

Yes, average can beat high with work. But still, high can beat high with work with higher probability than average can.

Average Kalenjin with just few trainings will outrun most average runners even if they were training for years.

You do find low IQ people in high places — they’re the low IQ people who have inherited wealth and social connections to those places.

I would be fascinated to know the IQ scores of all the US presidents, but I assume no such dataset exists.

Being the president would seem to be a good example of a form of success in which IQ would not be that important relative to other personality attributes, like understanding what people want and how to (re)phrase it well, persistence, bravery, being able to spot strategic mistakes of opponents etc. It's not clear any of these attributes would be classically considered "intelligence" in the IQ sense, but they're all clearly valuable for politicians to have.

You can estimate that by looking at their SAT/ACT scores (which are intelligence tests to a large degree) and converting the percentile to IQ norming (mean 100, std dev 15). For Obama you get IQ 130, for George W. Bush 123.

Not to mention, narcissistic sociopaths that rise to high positions of power because of confidence, hubris and taking a cavalier approach on life. Not all of them are genius.

> I think the mistake is thinking that one measure will be absolutely predictive

And I agree. I believe I said that I think IQ isn't an absolutely predictive measure. I didn't say I thought there was one.

Another commenter talks about "taste" being an essential ingredient. That's what I mean about meta-analysis of focus: applying intelligence to the topic of what you're applying intelligence to.

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