'One study on nine groups of soldiers differing in job and reading ability found a correlation of .96 between the AFQT and reading achievement (Sticht, Caylor, Kern, & Fox, 1972)... Another study obtained reading scores for 17-year olds for those same ethnic groups and dates (Campbell et al., 2000) and found a correlation of .997 between reading scores and AFQT scores.' [1]
'Cognitive ability tests taken at age 11 correlate 0.81 with national school examinations taken at age 16.' [2]
Note that .96 and .81 are huge correlations. These results have been replicated across 100+ years of psychological research across cultural boundaries and across multiple disciplines.
Can you make up for lower IQ with higher work ethic? Yes, but like a shorter than average NBA player, you're going to be at a disadvantage. By no means does the existence of shorter than average NBA players suggest that you should expect shorter than average men to be just as likely to succeed as taller than average men.
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[1] https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED101297.pdf [2] https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Intelligence...
While I don't dispute that IQ tests correlate with smarts, the argument that "The WW1 military was very motivated, therefore their decisions must have been rational" isn't a particularly good one IMHO - because there are a great many counter-examples.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/iq-tests-are-fund...
βIt has always seemed to be odd that we like to call the human brain the most complex known object in the Universe, yet many of us are still prepared to accept that we can measure brain function by doing a few so-called IQ tests,β Dr Highfield said.
I wonder, what is your opinion on Murray's and Herrnstein's The Bell Curve?
But not really. You pulled those numbers out of the air, and they aren't very descriptive.
Will someone with a 140 IQ fair better academically and economically than someone with 130 90% of the time?
140 vs 100, sure. But as the # of standard deviations converges, it's less meaningful. And there are still other covariant factors you are failing to consider, as mentioned before.
On average, people raised in poor environments who have higher IQ do better than people raised in poor environments with lower IQ. More likely to be more upwardly mobile, more likely to be more whatever.
And on average, people raised in good environments who have higher IQ do better than people raised in good environments who have lower IQ.
If you're a person of color, on average, you're going to do better if you have a higher IQ than if you have a lower IQ.
Same if you're a woman.
And 140 vs 130 is a bit unfair. You're talking about looking for meaningful differences between less than 2% of the population as compared to less than 0.1% of the population.
And just because there are diminishing returns with something like IQ, doesn't make it useless.
That wasn't the point. I would say the same for 100 and 110.
Some MENSA members in this thread seem very attached to their scores.
That's the other thing, you do have to look at the whole. Because there is likely overlap. But the trend of note is that IQ tracks through it.
If you sort people by earning potential, you'll find that as average income goes up, so does average IQ.
When you sort by health outcomes. As average healthiness goes up, so does average IQ.
Even the outcomes that are colloquially contrasted with intelligence actually correlate well. In other words, if you sorted people by EQ, you'll find that better average EQ means better average IQ.
IQ is the aspartame of psychology. So maligned that it's been probably studied more than other things. And just like aspartame is perfectly fine, IQ does what it says on the tin.
100 vs 140 will be a very strong indicator. 100 vs 110 will not; I would not trust 110 to yield a better outcome 80-90% of the time, as GP claimed.
Which is why the comparison of IQ scores at that coarseness is plain silly.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3248886/
"Childhood IQ and achieved education level were significantly and independently associated with upward mobility between the ages of 5 and 49-51 years. Only education was significantly associated (positively) with upward social mobility between 5 and 25 years, and only childhood IQ (again positively) with upward social mobility between 25 and 49-51 years. Childhood IQ was significantly negatively associated with downward social mobility. Adult height, childhood housing conditions, adverse events in childhood and sex were not significant determinants of upward or downward social mobility in this cohort."
I can tell you exactly how to refute those studies. Perform a controlled scientific study that disproves those results. Let me tell you, if you really believe in it, you could be a superstar academic and you sell a lot of books. Disproving such a large body of research would be a big achievement, especially one as unpopular as IQ.
So let's consider it psychometrically:
1. Does it measure something? Yes it does. This something is consistent across time as people's IQs do not vary dramatically. It is "stable". So whatever it measures is not spurious.
2. Ok so we measure an actual thing. Is the thing it measures distinct? Yes it is. It's been controlled for against every conceivable variable like education, socioeconomic background, and family health. Whatever it is measuring, it is definitely an independent thing, not a representation of something else.
3. Is the real independent thing we're measuring even important? Maybe it's just like fingerprints, real but essentially random and inconsequential. It turns out it correlates with all kinds of things. It acts as a predictor in all kinds of outcomes. It is the strongest predictor available in psychometry. If you could only administer one test to a subject, testing this thing is the most revealing test.
So, regardless of what IQ is, we know what it isn't. We know it isn't fake, unimportant, random, or a combination of other factors.
This is deeply unpopular and goes against many people's core beliefs about society and education, but the science is well-founded.
It can be refuted but it has to be refuted with science, not quotes, metaphors, and anecdotes.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/iq-tests-are-fund...
The reviewers shared a 20-point critique of the paper prior to publication that was ignored by the publisher and researchers. In fact, their results clearly showed the existence of a general intelligence until they performed an unnecessary rotation which is mentioned in Appendix B point 7.
Whether or not IQ has human meaning, social value, or is the "end-all" are subjective arguments that are not within the scope of IQ study. Statistically we know that so far out of all the psychometric scores that have been invented it is the strongest one. Better measurements will most definitely be invented, but they haven't so far.
This is the point in the discussion where you should be rolling out some supporting evidence.