> Please don't misquote me. He said that he is not sure that women can coexist in the workplace. Yes, this is very conservative.
I quoted you exactly, but I misinterpreted what you're saying. I do recall him saying something to that effect. That basically there are dynamics between men and women that make it difficult for them to cohabit in the workplace. Keep in mind that expressing uncertainty is not the same as saying women shouldn't cohabit in the workplace, or that they can't cohabit in the workplace, or even that they can't perform more or less equally with men in the workplace. Personally I think he's making a bigger issue out of that than what it really is.
> The figure he quoted for software engineers IIRC was around 118, meaning that 80% of people can't be productive software engineers, which is completely bullshit.
You can be a software engineer with a lower IQ, but I might not hire you or want to work with you. There's not some magic number, and IQ is also just a flawed proxy for intelligence - which is just one of the real underlying prerequisites. In this job market you can definitely find work, but you likely won't be at Netflix or Google.
> He went as far as to say that people under 80IQ are simply not productive in society, which is what insane.
If that's what he said, obviously it's wrong. They're not likely to be as productive a member of society as people with an IQ of 100, generally speaking. That also seems pretty self-obvious. Without sources, I'm taking you at your word with all your recollections here, and they're out of context. It could just have been exaggerating for effect.
> But more to your point, IQ strongly correlates with academic performance. Actually, the SAT is basically an IQ test. They correspond to academic performance much more strongly than actual job performance in almost every field.
Yes, it's just a proxy for intelligence, and it's flawed.
> Knowing this, is the observation that fields which require high grades to get into have higher IQs as descriptive as it seems on the first take? Not really.
Makes sense.
> How about the fact that IQ is actually very variable on the individual level across time?
Like any test, you can improve your score with practice and preparation. But often that's also making you smarter - intelligence is not fixed at birth. There's some part genetic potential, some part epigenetic adaptions to your environment, and some part learning. You can definitely set the goal of becoming more intelligent. Even if I do that, I'll never match Einstein, no matter how hard I try. But I can rise closer to the limit of my genetic/environmental potential.
> But it's really stupid to say someone of average intelligence can't become a good programmer or even a good physicist.
I don't think it's stupid at all. I think it's quite unlikely an average person would be good in those fields. Let's say we define good as one standard deviation above the mean (if it were just the mean, then we would use the term average, not good.) And if someone does pull it off against the odds, they may well have done so by becoming more intelligent.