“Half the population is below the 50th percentile of intelligence.”
That’s transparently not equivalent to people in this study binning less than 50% of people in less than average bins.
Looking at how the question was framed, with 5 bins, the natural bins would be 20%, below average would be bin 1 or 2, and so <40% would be less than average.
And what’s the bias about stupid people overestimating their own intelligence? Likely the smart people accurately identified intelligence, and the interviewers estimated anyone in the same bin as they were as average (the ultimate in availability bias—their own intelligence is available).
Put those two together, and you’ve gone pretty far toward this curve.
If people didn’t bin linearly by population percentile, but linearly by IQ score, which is distributed as a gaussian, then you get a lot closer to this curve.
The next questions are whether the interviewers are a representative sample.
Basically, while Caplan may have a point, it’s look more to me like he went to find data to confirm his theory, instead of refute it.
I actually agree that there seems to be a weird bias against people saying that some people are dumb. There’s a general bias against being a “meanie” and saying that someone is below average in anything—looks, humor, fitness, etc. But to say that a person is dumb, and worse, that some identifiable group of people are dumb, is a huge taboo.
I think it has to do with humans being the smartest animal. If you plot the IQs of all mammals, the “less than average intelligence” humans lie between the average human cluster and the other animals. Just to think in these terms could make it feel like the less intelligent are more like animals, and less like humans. Alert! Alert! Dangerous feeling!
That’s transparently not equivalent to people in this study binning less than 50% of people in less than average bins.
Looking at how the question was framed, with 5 bins, the natural bins would be 20%, below average would be bin 1 or 2, and so <40% would be less than average.
And what’s the bias about stupid people overestimating their own intelligence? Likely the smart people accurately identified intelligence, and the interviewers estimated anyone in the same bin as they were as average (the ultimate in availability bias—their own intelligence is available).
Put those two together, and you’ve gone pretty far toward this curve.
If people didn’t bin linearly by population percentile, but linearly by IQ score, which is distributed as a gaussian, then you get a lot closer to this curve.
The next questions are whether the interviewers are a representative sample.
Basically, while Caplan may have a point, it’s look more to me like he went to find data to confirm his theory, instead of refute it.
I actually agree that there seems to be a weird bias against people saying that some people are dumb. There’s a general bias against being a “meanie” and saying that someone is below average in anything—looks, humor, fitness, etc. But to say that a person is dumb, and worse, that some identifiable group of people are dumb, is a huge taboo.
I think it has to do with humans being the smartest animal. If you plot the IQs of all mammals, the “less than average intelligence” humans lie between the average human cluster and the other animals. Just to think in these terms could make it feel like the less intelligent are more like animals, and less like humans. Alert! Alert! Dangerous feeling!