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Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

Yet one another person with 130 IQ who thinks he's 150 IQ.

The problem is also shared, unfortunately, by you as well on the first point: that IQ is a meaningful measure and a comprehensive signal of ability. The field of microvascular neurosurgery is orthogonal to stock trading and orthogonal again to international intellectual property law. There are occasions for intersection but there is no substitute for accumulated domain experience that takes time and energy to deliberately follow each path towards mastery. This is why someone similar to an entrepreneur is usually best served by adopting an attitude of inquisitive curiosity and deference to subject matter experts.

They're not orthogonal. People who are very good at one thing are usually very good at a lot of things.

This idea of "IQ is meaningless, he's good at X doesn't mean is good at Y" is what dumb people tell themselves.

> naaah

no surer sign that a defensive middlebrow poser is about to hold forth.

I would've said "know-it-all bullshit artist" but you were much more tactful. You're hired for all of my external communications that I suck at. ;)

I don't think it's reasonable to argue that IQ isn't a meaningful measure of ability. IQ tests appear to measure how complicated a pattern is immediately obvious to a person. All else being equal, why wouldn't a person who is able to immediately recognise more complicated patterns, do better?

What "ability" are you talking about or conflating with other abilities? Correlation cargo culting goes nowhere useful except making the card-carrying MENSA people feel self-assured of their own arrogance.

I’m talking about effectiveness in any complex domain. It shouldn’t be controversial to suggest that someone who notices fewer details/patterns won’t (on average) be as effective at complex work.

High ability to immediately recognize complex patterns might not correlate with high ability to navigate systems more complex than what you can recognize immediately.

edit to add: I think most interesting systems are more complex than what a person can understand immediately.

The point is that for every moment that a high IQ person is observing, they are learning more than a lower IQ person. For the same amount of time invested, a high IQ person is going to have built a more complete picture to work with. It’s not the only factor, but it’s obviously a significant one.

it's called g factor. it means ability at one task is highly correlated with ability on another task. block assembly is highly correlated with vocab. I personally have observed that people who are good at math also tend to be above average at writing/verbal too despite not practicing it much. i don't think it's a coincidence.

I'm not even sure he's above average, it seems to me like he could have closed down Alameda, hired some compliance professionals to bring FTX into compliance with the law, and been a) a billionaire and b) not in jail for his trouble. He seems to be really pretty thick

I'm not even sure he's above average...He seems to be really pretty thick

He got into MIT where he excelled and then a job at Jane Street. Even really smart people get rejected from MIT and Jane Street. he may be a fool and delusional but he's not thick .

You don’t question his family connections being the reason he got into these places rather than merit?

Yes, exactly, that's why he's 130 IQ (okay, probably a bit more) and not 150 IQ. While 130 IQ wouldn't ordinarily be good enough to get into MIT for a non-affirmative action applicant, he's the son of two prominent Stanford professors. They will have encouraged him to have academic interests and given him all the resources to appear precocious during his teenage years - research during high school is an obvious way his parents could have burnished his college application, and most research doesn't require especially high levels of intelligence, particularly at the lab assistant level that a high schooler would be employed at. Easy enough for his parents to call in some favors to get his name added to a paper. In a pinch, SBF probably indicated somewhere on his application who his parents are - not in a bombastic way, but something that the application committee would pick up on. Academics at HYPS-level schools tend to help each other out.

As for Jane Street, it is a hard place to get into, but MIT is one of the few places where there's an established interview pipeline, which definitely makes it possible for a non-genius to have some a chance of passing. Before Cracking the Coding Interview, it was much harder to learn how FAANG interviews worked ahead of time - same thing applies.

Saying that SBF is "average", if that means 100 IQ, is ludicrous, but SBF is merely very bright, not a genius.

130 a long way from 'pretty thick'.

Yet, he can't stop running his mouth incriminating himself further. They had a chat group literally named wire fraud ..

A first semester law/finance student from a bottom tier university would know to shut your mouth and not document your crimes..

It’s not an intelligence thing, it’s a function of psychology. He’s in denial about how much trouble he’s in. Who wouldn’t be? It’s hard to admit to yourself you’re facing years of jail time.

Running his mouth is his way of living in a reality where he still has a measure of control over things.

This is more on the spectrum of delusion and delusion has nothing to do with intelligence. Very intelligent people can be highly delusional.

Unlikely - there is no non-fraudulent ‘meat’ in those businesses.

Hey!

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