The highest score obtainable on an IQ test is achieved by realising it's complete nonsense to project the entirety of human intelligence onto a one dimensional value, and refusing to waste time on it.
IQ is itself a basically fluid intelligence - how quickly you learn something compared to the average. In jobs were problems are novel this is an indicator of success. In jobs where tasks are repetitive, it is not an indicator of success.
Overall, it one of the strongest if not the strongest statistically backed concept in modern psychology, so if you don't believe IQ means something you should also dismiss all of psychology as unscientific nonsense.
I have an iq of 80 yet somehow I published papers in physics, maths and computer science and I'm in the 1% of NY income.
Psychology is used to keep the working class down and disunited the same way religion was used in times past.
To me, intelligence means one's capability to contribute to human endeavour, whether it be in mathematics, music, art, writing, or anything else that you can apply your mind to.
For example, most people agree that Mozart was a very intelligent individual by virtue of his contributions to music.
Sure, IQ means something, it's just that the thing it means is not intelligence. It doesn't capture the amazing breadth of human capability, and intelligence is not an objective measurable property.
> In the case of IQ people seem to have forgotten whatever it was that they were trying to model in the first place
IQ was originally designed to determine mental development issues, i.e. sub-intelligence, so that those people could be helped. This is flagged by scores below 80. Ranking intelligence by scores above 80 is bunk. Nassim Taleb has written well on this subject [1], if you are interested.
[1] https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-...
As others have pointed out, the same can be said of height and success in professional basketball. If you come across a short person, you can practically guarantee they cannot make it in the NBA (i.e. height is a strong predictor). For someone who is very tall, You can't really know from that whether they are a successful pro basketball player (i.e. it is not a strong predictor).
This issue here, in both height and IQ, is that people who have more of some capacity have more options. Someone who is smart enough to be a brain surgeon still has the option to be a dish washer. Someone who is only smart enough to be a dish washer does not have the option to be a brain surgeon.
I think one of the points of intelligence research is that it seems to confirm intelligence (whatever it is) is largely a unified by a single dimension, even when that wasn't necessarily what was expected by the researchers.
> It's a fraud. Or at least, in this grossly extended use it became a fraud.
Hardly. IQ testing has been vigorously resisted for decades, and yet continues because of it's utility.
But if you're going to take that stance, let me ask you: are you willing to throw out the rest of the social sciences? Because that's the only logical result. IQ research is the gold standard of the social sciences. IQ is fraudulent, then so is the rest.
> Testing people for falling below a certain threshold on a test was an ok diagnostic for mental deficiency.
It is also useful at the higher end. Not all high IQ people are successfully working in complex jobs, but I expect all people who are successfully working in complex jobs are high IQ.
No, the 'logical result' is throwing out psychology, which I'm more than happy to do. Would also throw out 90% of economics. Happy to keep descriptive sociology, descriptive anthropology, descriptive human geography, descriptive linguistics, etc.
I mean yes, it is knowledge about our world, and useful knowledge at that, but it really doesn't fit into a Baconian framework.
I will admit that I'm bearish overall on the social sciences. In science you want to be able to make statements that are both a) general, and b) predictive. In the social sciences, generally what is predictive is not general (i.e. "market research") and what is general is usually not in fact predictive (i.e. "hogwash").
I guess I'm just curious why you think IQ is bunk. IQ researchers, perhaps more than any other discipline, have had to endure a considerable degree of scrutiny. Many objections have been raised, and over the decades they've put a lot of work into empirically addressing those objections.
I could not put it better or more rigorously than Nassim Taleb, so if you are curious I really do recommend a good read of the piece I linked above (and the technical paper he links at the top of that piece).
I: cognitive ability is a multi-dimensional thing. IQ erroneously tries to collapse all of those dimensions into a single dimension.
What are these dimensions? And how are they measured? People who make this assertion hardly ever go through the work of actually making a rigorous, falsifiable claim as to what these dimensions are. There have been theories along these lines (e.g. "multiple intelligences") and they are much shakier ground scientifically than IQ.
This claim is also just plain false, because if you look at the literature, you'll see that intelligence research does recognize the existence of many different types of cognitive ability. It just so happens that performance on tests of such abilities all strongly correlate with IQ! The correlation isn't perfect, which is why you see these different cognitive abilities acknowledged as distinct from each other, but they are still only aspects of some common factor (g).
Now, there are certain mental functions whose performance does not correlate (very much) with IQ. Things like creativity or reaction times. That's not really a problem for intelligence research since those things aren't a form of intelligence.
II: Real world success comes more from wisdom and conscientiousness than intelligence
I would agree about wisdom, although there's no real way to measure that. The way I think of it is: wisdom is where you are going, and intelligence is how fast you will get there. If you're going the wrong way, then speed will only hasten your destruction. That doesn't mean speed is irrelevant.
As for conscientiousness, we can measure how much that impacts life outcomes. Indeed it does have some predictive value, but not as much as IQ!
Also, if you're going to take some arbitrary collection of traits and say "this bundle of traits is more predictive than IQ" then you're engaging in a logical fallacy. It doesn't matter what bundle you choose, what matters is whether IQ is worth adding to that bundle.
III: IQ is only predictive on the lower ends of performance (because of it's use as a means for detecting mental defficiencies) but has no predictive value at higher levels of performance.
I think there's some stuff going on in the statistics that's going to require a lot more digging on my part, but I think the argument I made previously that having a greater intelligence merely gives you more options still holds.
IV: People who promote IQ research are racists.
Ad hominem. And bullcrap to boot. Whatever you think about another person's motives, it doesn't make their argument wrong. What really angers me about this argument is that in the same frigging paragraph he complains about people making ad hominem arguments against him. The lack of self-awareness is truly breath-taking.
V: IQ being "the best measure in psychology" doesn't matter if it's a bad measure
This argument is directed at people who want to cherry pick the parts of the psychology that fit their political preferences. It has no relevance in an argument with someone who's willing to toss out the entire enterprise.
Nonetheless, the limitations on the predictiveness of IQ should be considered. For instance, the fact that IQ correlates with performance in complex jobs by 50% means that it only explains about 25% of the variance in performance (I don't know where Taleb gets the 13% figure, perhaps from some math I'm not familiar with). All that means is that IQ shouldn't be the only tool you use to evaluate a candidate for such a job. It doesn't mean that there's no value in using it.
VI: IQ only measures performance in boring clerical jobs where the work resembles the test.
It does measure performance (to some extent) in software engineering. I presume it also does in medical professions as well. Are these "boring clerical jobs"?
VII: IQ isn't technically a measure
Um, what? It's a measurement of how well one performs a test relative to the average of some reference population.
VIII: Using national IQ averages as justification for excluding immigration from certain countries is irrational because it ignores the variance of IQ within populations.
Totally agree. For the record, I'm not on-board with such a simplistic policy. However, I do think nations have a responsibility to consider the effects their immigration policy will have on the native populace, especially with regard to issues like the strain placed on (or support given to) the welfare system. If IQ does predict a individual immigrant's likelihood of ending up on welfare, then it should be considered.
I haven't read that yet because the hosting entity wanted to download my google contacts for the privilege of reading it. How despicable.
One thing he tackles that I think is worth digging into is his approach to the claim IQ is psychology's "best measure".
First, I think he does the only logical thing you can do after you dismiss IQ, he dismissed the rest of psychology. However bad (or good) you think IQ, the rest of psychology is worse.
Second, he makes the point that "no measure is worse than a bad measure". I'm not entirely convinced. I mean yes, if you have a measure that only predicts (for example) 30% of the variance in some phenomenon and you treat it as if it explains 100%, then you're going to have a bad time[1]. However, if you recognize the limitations and you combine that with other measures, then you may have a chance at making reasonable predictions.
IQ may be the best psychology has to offer, but that doesn't mean it has to be used alone. And it's true that much of psychology is suffering from a reproducibility crisis, but that does not mean all parts of psychology are suffering equally.
[1] I think there's an interesting connection between this idea and the idea of legibility as touched on in the book Seeing like a State.
Do you not think that people who have such capabilities would also have a high IQ?
Everything is a model, but IQ is literally the most statistically significant idea in psychology.
Your strict resolution that IQ doesn't mean intelligence is just your own opinion not really backed by any fact, just an opinion that people are more complicated than numbers.
It's true, people are more complicated than numbers, but nonetheless they can be accurately rank ordered and IQ, as you said, means something. It doesn't say anything about accomplishments, or quality of character. But it does say something about fluid intelligence.
Nobody cares if it perfectly matches some arbitrary thing you decided it needs to match to count for you. The mozart comment doesn't even fit into the conversation. Nobody said anything about contributions to anything.
Fluid intelligence is a measurable property, even if its not measuring it to your personal satisfaction. The question becomes why are you more of an authority than those mathematicians and psychologists who did the research?
You're not. Your opinion doesn't invalidate theirs. It just says you didn't do the research.
And again, its completely true that IQ does not mean success. The world is full of poor geniuses. but as far as psychology goes, its the best predictor available.