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You are fixed on that IQ stat, talking about it as some kind of metric and even doing math with it, but you fail to understand what the metric means. Even such a simple thing as running speed is not that simple. One might say it measures muscle strength, or "the capability of your body", while really it measures a combination of muscle strength, tendon elasticity and nervous system fitness (or running skill). Now we see that if you don't know HOW to run, you might be even stronger and still run slower than more skilled weaker runner.

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.

You're absolutely right, IQ is fundamentally flawed as a measure for Intelligence, but it's a convenient one to use as a proxy because it seems to generally correlate for many other measures of specific aptitudes and intelligence.

> 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.

Now if we could just test and deduce what intelligence actually is, those facts would be useful!

At least for me intelligence is brain fitness for anything in particular. For example running, or writing.

This is a very common conception. The problem is that this requires me to set you a task before we can deem you intelligent. In nature, whatever it is we're deeming innate intelligence comes before any task, and then builds upon itself based on tasks.

You mean brain plasticity? Because it is one of the only things that the brain starts with. Among very few others are vital reflexes and, examples from a little higher level, fears like fear of snakes and fear of spiders. Skills like logic, pattern matching, analogy building and others are acquired while observing world for many years before they can be used for tasks.

>You mean brain plasticity?

Kind of? I mean at the cognitive level rather than the neurological one.

> 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.

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.

Additionally IQ to understand different fields varies as well. One who is able to understand math quickly will not be able to understand language or emotions quickly. Even saying that one has higher IQ in math is not correct, one able in set theory or may not be good in calculus or statistics since those fields may involve different mathematical skills.

Very true. Except that you can be both understand math quickly and understand language or emotions well, it's just that they are not directly linked and need to be worked on separately.

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.

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 ;)

Maybe I don't understand evolution completely, but aren't we all born with the same fitness level? Maybe high IQ makes one fractionally higher in fitness in a particular aspect, but presumably there are lots and lots of other aspects (running speed, etc.) which overall balance out.

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.

We aren't all born with the same fitness level. Nature is not as well balanced as modern MMORPG character classes.

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.

Certainly there's enough genetic variation that some will have better fitness within their given environment. But, that's after the fact. It would be presumptuous to think that we can understand all biological and environmental aspects beforehand. Right?

It would be presumptuous to think we can understand all those aspects, yes.

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.

The idea that everyone is born with the same fitness level is rather crazy to me. For one thing there's things like fetal alcohol syndrome, malnourished mothers, radiation damage before birth. But much more than that there are recognized genetic disorders, which at the extremes nobody would say confer the same fitness - down's syndrome etc.

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 talking about physical fitness? Or, reproductive fitness? Based on what you're saying, it seems that "fitness" you're referring to is different than what I'm guessing.

Maybe list of known ultra-IQ folks consists those people precisely because they've chosen something that gives 'knownability'? And a lot of scientists or teachers aren't mentioned just because they didn't get 'famous' job?

You're right of course. I know plenty of people who are in the same pack who work, buried away in the bowels of a company somewhere who'd never make a notable list of smart folks.

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.

History has shown that people with exceptional intelligence (at least as measured by IQ) also go on to do rather hum-drum things

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.

Or another way of looking at it ... We (should) do what we are interested in, rather than what others perceive we should do, or others may perceive as worthy. My son is exceptionally smart (and I deal with a lot of kids, so I have a reasonable basis to compare). He's only young ... But his strong suit seems to be very involved stories that he makes up. If I were to guess (yes, I'm crystal ball gazing), he'll be a writer. Despite being one of the most academically gifted children I know, he is looking to "only" amount to a writer. If he does, I'll fully encourage that as it has been his keen interest since he was about 2. Mind you, I'll support any constructive interest he has :)

I couldn't agree more. I'm not saying intelligence is reserved for accepted professions; Joyce was a genius just as surely as Einstein. I'm saying that our attempts to measure indicators of intelligence are based on outdated notions of what intelligence is. We shouldn't be looking for prodigies and mental agility: that brings us nothing. Being able to do a Sudoku in your head is meaningless. It's certainly a mental talent, but what is it compared to what Einstein contributed? Can you imagine a world where they said, "Sure, Einstein was smart, but John Smith was smarter -- he could do a Sudoku in two minutes!" When we say someone is smart because of their IQ score, we're saying almost exactly that.

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.

> 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.

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.

IQ is just the measure of how well you do on an IQ test.

Exactly. And it's something you can train by doing and studying IQ tests.

You can't do math on IQ scores like that. They are proxies for standard distribution measurements. For example, a town with 1 million 100 IQ people and 1 million 130 IQ people does not have an average IQ of 115. It is closer to 122.

You are looking for two things, not one, I think. You are looking for people who are abnormal in a select few categories (intelligence, physical ability), but also normal in all the others, say sociopathy or anxiety.

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.

>- Asia Carrera made a career of getting filmed while having sex and playing videogames

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.