> It's been shown to be strongly correlated with success in general
Has it? I was under the impression we could hardly define, much less measure that.
Has it? I was under the impression we could hardly define, much less measure that.
> Has it? I was under the impression we could hardly define, much less measure that.
IQ has a strong positive correlation with life outcomes. Economic and otherwise. Whether IQ is a good measure of "intelligence" remains debated but there's no question that high scores in that measure correlate with high scores in life outcome measures: Life expectancy, economic success, relationship success, etc. Every single thing you can measure about a person's life trends upwards with IQ.
Some (maybe much) of the effect can be attributed to privilege and other covariants, so we don't know if IQ is causal for life outcomes but we have strong evidence that it's correlated.
one study of many: https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=74943
And since IQ is just a proxy for intelligence (however good), it also correlates to some greater or lesser degree with the other factors.
Yeah it turns out having positive multipliers on your inputs leads to better outcomes. Who knew!
I worked at a (very well known) test publishing company, for some time.
You would not believe how often someone would hear where I work and lecture me about intelligence measurement being nonsense. Almost like they were offended that the test batteries exist.
But also, they had absolutely no idea how those tests were developed and validated. They weren’t even aware of the language and cultural work involved in making test variations that validate across different people.
I would mostly shrug and keep my mouth shut. I’m not an expert on the subject. But I saw a bit of what those many smart people did at work, and I’m confident that they were better informed.
Maybe it was just silly defensiveness, but for a while I started to think all the delightful, “You’re all special in your own way.” messaging of our youth had been extrapolated into more unreasonable notions.
It can't possibly be intelligence (would be inconvenient if it were) but there's something there. Maybe we can call it "shminshmellishence".
"Intelligence doesn't exist" is just a defense mechanism for above-average intelligence people to feel like they earned all their good outcomes.
But here's the thing: even if it was all hard work and not that you were born of above-average intelligence, it's pure luck that you were born someone who works hard.
But also intelligence exists and it's wildly discrediting to insist it doesn't.
That sounds... suspiciously convenient.
No, there's actually nothing convenient about the fact that most people are accidents of their genetic, geographic, and environmental roll of the dice.
The convenient view is: I worked hard because I chose to work hard. I achieved hard things because I worked to be smart. People who did not achieve the same things did not do so because they chose not to work hard or they chose not to be smart.
Very self-serving and transparently wrong.
I will grant you that there are some people who, due to handicaps or other things beyond their control, do not have the option of choosing to work hard. But I claim (without statistical proof, I admit) that by far the majority of those who do not work hard, still have the real option of choosing to work hard, but do not.
For most of those who won't, "I can't" is also "very self-serving and transparently wrong."
"Go look up twin studies" is a very strange thing to tell someone on a message board in 2026. It's like saying "go look up phlogiston".
Fraternal twins reared together: .55 correlation in IQ
Identical twins reared apart: .75 correlation in IQ
And the genetic correlation grows as children age.
No, genetic studies did not "demolish" heritability estimates, they set a floor on them. Genetic studies do not and cannot (currently) predict all phenotypic outcomes, they set the floor on how much variation can be caused by genetic differences.
The genetic predictions don't even directly contradict, never mind demolish, the twin study findings.
The "missing heritability problem" is only a problem if one believes our genetic analysis techniques are comprehensive, but we already know they're not. For example, current methods are extremely limited in detecting gene-gene interactions, which we have good reason to suspect are widespread (otherwise making new genetic drugs would be trivial).
This has come up a bunch on HN and I don't want to rehash dozens of earlier comments, but the search bar will give you plenty of cites.
I'm not sure what you mean by "hereditarian" given that even the genetic studies obviously point to significant heritability.
This is always a funny conversation because on the one side you have people saying "intelligence is both heritable and correlated with nearly every outcome we care about."
On the other hand you have people saying "nuh uh! It's only... medium-high heritability and medium-high correlation with other positive outcomes," as if it makes any material difference to any downstream question.
Again, the search bar will avail, but the answers you're giving here are very early-90s.
Why don't you just share what your estimate is?
Is it zero?
It's totally OK if we're just not going to persuade each other or develop any productive ideas in this thread! I've said all I originally wanted to say.