‘Record IQ is just another talent’ (2010)
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We decided that a person capable of at least 10% above human maximum (or human average, I can't really remember) in at least two or three areas or 25% in one would count as "Super human". This excludes most hyper-specializers like Olympic Sprinters, or professional chess players.
Here's a fun video of the kind of deltas we were thinking of with professional American football players http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8tYqT9GDd8
10% isn't all that much, but we felt like a person who could run an under 9 second 100 meter and had an Eidetic memory for example, would qualify as a classic super human.
But IQ, IQ was hard. We couldn't decide about IQ. IQ is normalized at 100, fussy to test, and has questionable meaning. But suspending all those questions for a bit, given an "average" IQ of 100, a 10% or even 25% delta isn't really all that impressive at 110 or 125, not even Mensa levels. But let's take the top .1% of IQ, around 145, a 10% increase there is about 160 and a 25% increase is just north of 180 and now we're talking. Kim Ung-yong definitely qualifies as a single ability super human.
Somebody with an IQ >160 should qualify for certain. After all a 60 point delta from mean the other way leaves you with an IQ of 40 and we're talking about pretty severe disability.
So somebody who could run a sub-9 second 100 meter and had an IQ of say...170 would be super human by this completely arbitrary thinking.
In the comics, people with these kinds of abilities, even as limited as this definition suggests, wear oddball costumes with the underwear on the outside and capes and either try to take over the world or try to save it.
But in the real world, what people with abilities even close to these kinds of metrics end up doing is decidedly banal and often somewhat narcissistic.
Fast runners just...run fast against other fast runners...they don't generally patrol cities and run down purse snatchers like the flash. Heavy lifters see who can lift the heaviest thing, they don't generally crack open burning buildings and fight thugs saving orphans like the Thing. People with both talents get organized into groups and end up seeing who can move a ball towards one end of a field over another. The really clever ones will parlay their fame into side businesses and open a burger restaurant or a theme bar or a line of sports oriented active wear.
These folks aren't curing cancer, or stopping Fascism, or ending poverty, or worse, even trying to take over a moderate sized piece of real-estate and become Emperor of the Bronx or something.
For the super smart, there's definitely work for them to do, but it's pretty limited stuff and you really have to like physics or math to do it. And let's be honest, Mensa and Mega aren't exactly wowing the world with a prolific output of revolutionary world changing ideas.
I think partially because it's hard to go off and do the kinds of fantastic exceptional things that the general populace thinks you could do if you were super powered. Running a little bit faster still doesn't absolve you vigilante laws, but it can get you a Gold medal and some cereal advertising deals. Being ultra-smart doesn't mean you don't have to deal with averagely smart people to get anything more complex than tinkering done. Nobody so far is so smart than they can hack their way through the rest of dim-witted humanity like Ozymandias from the Watchmen.
History has shown that people with exceptional intelligence (at least as measured by IQ) also go on to do rather hum-drum things.
- Marilyn vos Savant writes a 2 inch high weekly column where she gives advice and helps people solve Supermarket brain teasers and Freshman probability problems.
- Scott Adams created a mildly observant comic strip about working in a professional office environment
- Asia Carrera made a career of getting filmed while having sex and playing videogames
- and on and on, a look at some lists of known ultra-IQ folks shows a list of comedians, some more porn actresses and models, actors, some pro-wrestlers, a bunch of fiction writers etc.
There's very, painfully, few people who occupied their time with something that really moved humanity up a notch and even most of those are debatable.
Hell, HN is full of people who I'd guess are in the 90+ percentile and most of what we do here is pontificate and build chat apps so people can share pictures of their cats.
Or another way to put it is that IQ isn't a measure of intelligence but rather a measure of indicators that could indicate intelligence.
In other words, having high cheek bones and big lips doesn't mean you're beautiful but simply that you have high marks on the indicators of beauty that we currently use.
Any definition of great intelligence or genius would have to include its output, its product. (If you're the only person in the world, are you beautiful? If you have the greatest mind but you only use it to take IQ tests, are you smart?)
You can be a genius in any endeavor, in any field, but never on paper.
But I thought it was interesting that the same list wasn't an intersection of notable AND did something you'd expect smart people to be doing. A list of Stephen Hawkings for example.
> There's very, painfully, few people who occupied their time with something that really moved humanity up a notch and even most of those are debatable.
You'd expect/hope it to be filled with scientists and great thinkers, wouldn't you? You'd expect Einsteins and Hawkings or something. But a lot of scientists don't actually have excessively high IQs. Above average, sure, but not super high. Turns out IQ and science are corelating skills, but not the same thing.
IQ corelates with lots of other intelligence-related skills, but in the end, it's just a skill like any other.
Anecdotally, I grew up in a poor rural area, and of my gifted class (of kids with 130+ IQ), 15% didn't even finish high school. And, I'll estimate that 50% didn't go to college. In fact, of my immediate family (6), all have been gauged as having high IQ. However, I'm the only one that had finished college without help (by 90% luck). And, a couple of my other siblings have now finished college with my financial help. In my experience, location and family are much more important to potential achievement.
EDIT: As a non-biologist, but someone who can't read enough about science, I recommend the writings of either Richard Dawkins or Stephen Jay Gould. Both, actually, since they disagree on a number of points.
That said, I want to clarify something. When I speak of evolutionary fitness it is not a judgement of the individual regarding their actual value to the species or society. Evolutionary fitness is, really, a cold thing. It only matters whether the individual/species reproduces/survives. The dodo was an evolutionary dead end, even though the cause of extinction was humans, a pressure was applied that the species could not overcome. An individual that does not reproduce is another dead end. We, as a society, may look upon a Harrison Bergeron as the epitome of fitness (mental, physical), but if he's shot down before he can reproduce evolution doesn't care about him, his fitness is nil.
Is there any reason to believe that genetic issues obey a distribution where they are either very extreme, or have no effect at all? i.e. if everyone not classifiable as having a really extreme disease is equal? I don't think so.
I think it's much more likely that there is a normal distribution of breakdowns in fitness - a few very severe problems which manage to survive to birth, then many, many more variants with negative fitness, or ones which are good but very picky, and which may be left over from environments where they were +fitness. Then there are probably variants which are all-around good.
So the idea that we're all born with the same fitness level is a pretty extreme example of invalid "blank slate" type thinking.
Are you sure? Who's to say the super-smart couldn't help us with other more mundane problems like understanding each other better, being more productive, thinking more rationally, etc.? I've had useful insights on these three topics that seemed very clever to me and I know of friends who have also had such useful, clever insights.
At the top of any HN comment thread, you're likely to see some clever, apt insight on a topic unrelated to science & math.
Regarding your examples, Marilyn vos Savant's IQ seems pretty sketchy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant#Rise_to_fam... I don't know what evidence you have that Scott Adams is supersmart; he's a Mensa member, but I suspect many HN users could become Mensa members if they wanted to (an acquaintance reports that the intellectual caliber of a Mensa meetup is around that of a science fiction convention; the top 2% of the population is simply not that high of a bar).
I do agree that after you reach a certain IQ, determination, habits, ambition, rationality, etc. become larger determining factors in your level of success. But if you are smart enough you can optimize those manually for yourself ;)
Now IQ. Let's look at the test. What you see is many different kind of questions. Pattern matching for language, geometry and numbers generally. What does it mean that you answer those questions correctly? It means you are good at matching patterns in words, shapes and you know math a little. That's it. It doesn't show anything more than that. Those skills does not even directly transfer to other areas.
Your exclusion of hyper-specialized people like professional chess player is actually hitting the spot on the point here - high IQ people are just hyper-specialized on IQ tests (I bet many of them practiced to solve them multiple times) and generally tasks that require pattern matching. It doesn't mean you can do math, that you know chemistry, politics, that you know how to communicate with people or what to do with money. Those are all learned.
If you can make analogy of brain as car, and the "life achievement" as distance traveled, then IQ would just be the speed, or power of the car. What flows from this is that you don't magically appear from NY to LA when you get a faster car (you are of higher IQ) than other people. It just means that if you go to LA with it, you might come there a little faster. This also means that anyone with lower IQ can achieve same things, it just takes a little more time.
Now, same as driving further even with slower car, or running faster (if you are more skilled runner) than stronger runner, people can also be more intelligent even while having lower IQ just by knowing more, having more experience and having more skill. Because they have spent much more time excelling these skills. That's why I don't even think it should be called IQ, I think it should be changed to PMC (Pattern Matching Coefficient), because it doesn't measure intelligence at all. Besides, when talking about intelligence, one must specify what narrow area you are talking about, otherwise it doesn't even make sense on it's own.
> This also means that anyone with lower IQ can achieve same things, it just takes a little more time.
One thing that is interesting is that a person with a low-IQ and one with a high-IQ seem to actually have different capabilities, not just speeds. A person with an 80 IQ, for example, would likely not be able to understand advanced philosophy or mathematics or some such at all -- even given infinite time. There's some ability to hold complex models, and weave, wind and connect through them that requires a certain level of intelligence that simply doesn't exist at lower levels.
Kind of? I mean at the cognitive level rather than the neurological one.
Yes, I wanted to write similar thing too, but felt that post was too big already. Besides, I am not completely convinced by the idea itself - having enough memory, you can actually slowly link the most complicated concepts even when you can link only relatively "similar ideas" (brain of higher IQ has a tendency of creating longer physical neuron links, which some relate to the ability to understand seemingly unrelated concepts). The impossible part probably comes from the fact that the time and effort required would be inadequate.
Incidentally, this is my gripe with 'intelligence' based selection systems in universities or companies. We conveniently forgo assessing people (and weighing) people's scores on categories other than intelligence.
Honestly, that does actually sound like the cleverest answer to me. Get people to pay you for things you'd enjoy doing anyway. It's at least as smart as those "follow your passion!" speeches we give to encourage people into tech-start-ups.
>There's very, painfully, few people who occupied their time with something that really moved humanity up a notch and even most of those are debatable.
Just because you're not in the Conspiracy doesn't mean there isn't a Conspiracy ;-). huehuehuehuehuehuehue
Also, correlate: there's an abnormally low number of people trying to "really move humanity up a notch" because, frankly, it doesn't pay very well.
>These folks aren't curing cancer, or stopping Fascism, or ending poverty, or worse, even trying to take over a moderate sized piece of real-estate and become Emperor of the Bronx or something.
Like I said, the incentives simply aren't there for the level of effort required to actually cure cancer, stop fascism, or conquer and run a functioning city-state.
Personally, I'm not so good on IQ, just a mere 130, but my superpower is determination. At least, I'm determined to make it so. That said, with my mere 130 intelligence, it's not like I can see so much better than everyone else where the workable paths forward are, the ones that are both rewarding and feasible.
But there is a fundamental angle that I find odd about people's perception of intelligence. People expect intelligence to be always found alongside ambition.
When I watched "Limitless", it did hit me in an odd way. If I suddenly could out-think 99% of humanity, I wouldn't be running for president or becoming a stock trader profiting off the market. Actually, I don't know because I'm not that intelligent - but is that kind of ambition pasted over by Hollywood on top of intelligence?
In comparison, everything from Thor, Dark Knight, Iron Man and even the new Wall Street movie was about clean power - hell, even Inception has got the guy with the windmills. That I felt like was an ambition that could occur with genius (i.e "First thing you do, is find the biggest problem on your planet and beat it").
But government official or company executive?
That feels odd.
The amusing thing is, ambition is seen as more "inherent" than intelligence--part of your personality, rather than just a skill--and yet, improving general intelligence (by more than 5-10 IQ points) is nearly impossible, while improving ambition just requires taking some dopamine agonists.
I would think it would be rational, given extremely high intelligence, to self-modify toward larger ambitions. I mean, if the ambitions you have are basically cached thoughts that stick around due mostly to inertia, from the limits you were unable to surmount while you were younger and had fewer resources... then why not challenge them? Ask yourself what you'd truly want, if you had every tool available? In fact, why not ask that now?
Of course, the answer you arrive at, after this self-awareness comes, can still be an ambition that's limited in scope. But it'll be limited by choice by your current self, rather than imposed on you by your limited past self.
I say that as an ambitious person (I can't really understand "safe" people motivations either) - it's outside our capability to understand by ourselves a completely orthogonal mindset because you basically can't really simulate it to reach conclusions.
What does he feel like doing? Well, in one stint he studied Philosophy and watched movies at the Cinémathèque Française and generally milled about in Paris (I can think of worse ways to spend 4 years). He also plays golf, writes a bit, and crashes parties.
If I was able to use my intellect to get a huge paycheck virtually on demand, I'd probably live a similar life-style.
I would possibly say that it is rational to modify towards having your own set of goals, but whether those goals are ambitious or not I think depends on what you value in life? As in - I think the "intelligence" part probably allows you to realise that it is possible to have many different types of goal in life and that working towards a set of goals that work for you personally is important, but that those goals can be defined by what you yourself value.
The most intelligent guy I know wants to have a family, work on somewhat interesting problems (in chemistry if it matters) but not work huge amount of hours, so he has set himself up to have a regular consulting gig that he can do from anywhere and still focus on spending time with his family.
Thus, I'd expect an extremely intelligent, rational person to be very concerned for the future welfare of humanity and earth-borne life in general... and then all the goals that come from that would just happen to be extremely ambitious ones.
And by "it's entirely possible", I mean "speaking from experience". Our culture largely just caches the ambitions that keep capitalism running, not the ones people would actually find it satisfying to achieve.
In many cases these don't go side by side. People with higher intelligence don't have to work hard in school, and skate by. The people who work hard their entire life later on appear to be smarter.
It's truly a shame that the Korean news pan and label him as a 'failure'. It can only suggest what kind of a culture they have (as well as the majority of Asians). The man is spot on -- he is living a happy life as defined by himself, not anyone else.
Finally, you can argue whether IQ is a suitable metric or not, whether whatever metric should be considered, but the more important question is why is he being labelled as a failure for not turning out the way society expects of a person with high IQ?
Highest IQ in the world, 10 years of experience at NASA, and he wasn't drowning in job offers? South Korean companies need to think seriously about what they're looking for in an employee.
Figuring out what to do with him wasn't what was holding them back. He got a job offer after completing his high school and college degree.
"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always
assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins
because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York,
wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done
was muck about in the water having a good time. But
conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they
were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same
reasons."There is an unimaginable amount of suffering in this world. Around 150,000 people die each day. About 5 million children die each year. Millions of people are maimed or killed by accident, disease, and violence. Considering this man's talents, I would much rather live in a world where he devoted himself to solving important problems. I realize he wouldn't be as happy, but the expected value in lives saved is quite high.
Before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy: I follow my own advice. I've chosen a career geared toward maximizing my benefit to others, not my own happiness. This quote from Circular Altruism[1] reflects my views:
You know what? This isn't about your feelings. A human life, with all its joys and all its pains, adding up over the course of decades, is worth far more than your brain's feelings of comfort or discomfort with a plan. Does computing the expected utility feel too cold-blooded for your taste? Well, that feeling isn't even a feather in the scales, when a life is at stake. Just shut up and multiply.
If enough people choose to do this, who knows what might happen? Maybe one day humanity will have its shit together.
“At that time, I led my life like a machine ― I woke up, solved the daily assigned equation, ate, slept, and so forth. I really didn’t know what I was doing, and I was lonely and had no friends,”
His choices now are the result of how NASA as an institution treated him.
Having the highest IQ is great for problem solving. But why should he empathize with the problems of the world when no one did the same for him?
Most human suffering isn't just solved by smart people thinking hard about solving some problems. Most human suffering is caused by missing compassion for people.
> I've chosen a career geared toward maximizing my benefit to others, not my own happiness.
Sorry, but I don't think that's the case. You're doing what you do, because it feels right for you, so in a way you can't get happier by doing something else.
You might not follow the hedonistic path, but you're still doing what makes you most happy.
To me it is not sad that he has chosen to figure out what his own goals are and find a way to meet them. To you it is sad. Both those things are ok.
If you were to try to tell me that it is not ok for someone to figure out what their own goals are then I would have a problem with that.
If you want to apply that argument you need to show that your individual, marginal contribution to the world's problems is large enough to justify burning up your life and soul for everyone else's benefit.
>Considering this man's talents, I would much rather live in a world where he devoted himself to solving important problems. I realize he wouldn't be as happy, but the expected value in lives saved is quite high.
I'm sure you have some problems in mind :rollseyes:.
>Considering this man's talents, I would much rather live in a world where he devoted himself to solving important problems.
How do you realistically see this going down? Which specific problem should he work on?
If this were World's Strongest Man, it'd be laughable to ask them to cure something like malaria. Yet you expect it of this World's _____est Man?
>I realize he wouldn't be as happy, but the expected value in lives saved is quite high.
I'm glad you recognize the sacrifice. Perhaps he did the cost analysis, found an expected +0.7 human life experiences net gain, and settled for the guaranteed +1.0?
NOt that i am saying that what he decided to do with his life isnt that great
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_%28psychometrics%29
If you're interested in the math, it's all about this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factor_analysis
In simplified and imprecise terms, your IQ is a statistical construct, i.e. not something that can be observed or measured directly, but an imagined variable that (by definition) correlates with a bunch of things that can be measured. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_stratum_theory
Popular culture fixates on people with very high IQs, but the real importance of intelligence testing in society is identifying people who qualify for interventions or benefits due to low intelligence, usually IQ < 70 (two standard deviations below the mean). There are literally regulations in some jurisdictions that basically say "If you can produce an IQ score of 69 you qualify for X, Y and Z; if you score a 71 you qualify for nothing."
Just saying: IQ is definitely fuzzy, but it's not meaningless or just a measure of how good you are at puzzles. Intelligence testing involves actual science and has real stakes in society.
I think this is spot on. Plus the scope of IQ tests seems to be limited to a very small part of the intelligence spectrum forget about assessing talent in general.
Let's see which Wikipedia articles have been revised to fight the myths about high IQ scores, and which merely perpetuate them. Let's see, "High IQ society"[1] correctly reports that "The highest reported standard score for most IQ tests is IQ 160, approximately the 99.997th percentile (leaving aside the issue of the considerable error in measurement at that level of IQ on any IQ test).[2] IQ scores above this level are dubious as there are insufficient normative cases upon which to base a statistically justified rank-ordering.[3][4] High IQ scores are less reliable than IQ scores nearer to the population median.[5]" all of which is true. I can remember when that article was much more misleading about how IQ scores work.
The Wikipedia article "Marilyn vos Savant"[2] correctly reports "Alan S. Kaufman, a psychology professor and author of IQ tests, writes in IQ Testing 101 that "Miss Savant was given an old version of the Stanford-Binet (Terman & Merrill 1937), which did, indeed, use the antiquated formula of MA/CA × 100. But in the test manual's norms, the Binet does not permit IQs to rise above 170 at any age, child or adult. And the authors of the old Binet stated: 'Beyond fifteen the mental ages are entirely artificial and are to be thought of as simply numerical scores.' (Terman & Merrill 1937). ...the psychologist who came up with an IQ of 228 committed an extrapolation of a misconception, thereby violating almost every rule imaginable concerning the meaning of IQs."[12]
"The second test reported by Guinness was Hoeflin's Mega Test, taken in the mid-1980s. The Mega Test yields IQ standard scores obtained by multiplying the subject's normalized z-score, or the rarity of the raw test score, by a constant standard deviation, and adding the product to 100, with Savant's raw score reported by Hoeflin to be 46 out of a possible 48, with a 5.4 z-score, and a standard deviation of 16, arriving at a 186 IQ. The Mega Test has been criticized by professional psychologists as improperly designed and scored, "nothing short of number pulverization."[13]"
But, yeah, if we get beyond the premise that the man in Korea ever had such a high IQ score (he may have been told the number, but the person who told him made some kind of mistake), then we can reflect on the issue of what we expect from children after they are told they have high IQ scores. Is it a failure simply to make an honest living and take care of a family? I think not. Very high IQ or moderately high IQ, the path to genius also involves a lot of hard work, opportunity, and not a little luck.[3] I think the man profiled in the article has done just fine and has nothing to be ashamed of.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_IQ_society#Entry_requirem...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant#Rise_to_fam...
From the article's introduction: What will people think of 16-month-old wonder child Jonathon Rader, able to play various musical instruments, if he decides not to pursue a career as a musician?
...
“I was famous for having a 210 IQ and being able to solve intricate math equations at the age of four,” Kim said, adding, “Apparently, the media belittled the fact that I chose to work in a business planning department at Chungbuk Development Corporation.”
Kim says the media denounced him as a “failed Genius” but he has no idea why his life, which he considers a success, had to be called a failure.
Intelligence of the type that is approximated by IQ (pattern identification, relationship modeling and whatnot) is like most things just another ability.
It's a useful ability in that you can use it to mimic some other useful abilities if you so choose, but it is just another ability. Any implications of it being something else is just outside expectation applied by people who want to further their own agenda, goals, world view or values etc.
Expecting someone with that type of intelligence to conform to any specific set of values or goals is like expecting someone who is tall to conform to the idea of being a sports star etc.
"I quit because baseball was sacred to me until I started getting paid for it. The more that “baseball” became synonymous with “business,” the less it meant to me, and I saw less of myself in the game every time I got a check from the Philadelphia Phillies Organization, the Oakland Athletic Company, or the Chicago Cubs, L.L.C. To put it simply, other players were much better than I was at separating the game of baseball from the job of baseball."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sportingscene/2013/10/...
Social expectations ruin everything because everyone disagrees on the details.