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Comment by exterm | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, the "free IQ test" thing made me wonder too. I always thought that intelligent people would not be very likely to click on those ads.

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Furthermore, what would the usage of adblock be by IQ percentile? Opera's high showing may be due to it's adblock extension still not being as mature as those of Chrome and FF, and so the average Opera user might be less likely to use it. There's no doubt that Opera users would tend to be geeks and nerds anyway, but you could say the same thing of the top FF users. I'm not convinced that the methodology supports the apparent conclusion that the smartest people use Opera, just that of those who took the test, Opera users scored best.

I bet adblock usage peaks between 120-130 iq and drops off on either side.

This is a wild, completely speculative hunch for which I have no evidence.

So I get putting a lower bound on it, as it would take exposure to technical communities (even if it's just 4chan) that usually comes from inquisition and information-seeking, but what do you propose as the means by which there would exist an upper bound?

Experts in other domains who simply don't give a hoot about web browsers.

I imagine that people of high intelligence would be more likely to understand the greater implications of using ad blockers (driving the creations of paywalls, etc.) and so would be less likely to block ads, even when they know how to do so. It's hard to draw conclusions, though--who knows if this chain of speculation actually leads back to a significant confounding factor?

They would also be aware of game theory, and may choose to use adblock but not tell anyone, or even actively campaign against it while using it themselves.

I'm not suggesting smart people are unethical, but rather that ethicality and intelligence are fairly orthogonal, and that your proposed means seems to have more to do with the former than the latter.

As to the speculation, you are of course right. I'm just putting off studying. Speaking of which...

It's also potentially the case that intelligent people recognize that it's silly to be completely upset over ads and that few sides with really obnoxious ads have good content in the first place. Perhaps, to them, it's just not worth the trouble.

But neither is trying to convince anyone on the internet that you're smart in the first place.

So we're all just projecting what we do onto the smart people here, right?

I find that people with very high IQs tend to care less about practical computer usage skills. Anyone noticed that Math (or even CS theory) professors are terrible with computers?

To click or not to click...that is the test.

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