So a rising IQ lifts all boats? You’re hoping the wealth will trickle down?
(Myself, I’m selfish. At my ~130 IQ, most of the world would be eligible to take this drug, utterly crushing my market value; and since at best they would reach 140, I can’t appeal to any arguments like ‘but the emsmartened masses will cure aging! Better to be an immortal janitor than a dying tycoon.’ So I wouldn’t be happy about it, even though abstractly I know it’d probably be a very good thing for humanity.)
I’m reasonably sure that high IQ (i.e. over 140) is not particularly well correlated with outstanding achievement. I am almost certain that extremely high IQ’s are not a prerequisite for extraordinary achievement, though there may be some specific fields where this does not hold true (say, theoretical physics).
If someone with an IQ of 180 has a thousand times the chance of making some incredible breakthrough compared to someone with an IQ of 140, shifting from 1% of the people having IQ > 140 to having 25%+ of the people having an IQ over 140 would still probably generate a great deal of breakthroughs.
There is one study that demonstrated that among top 1% SAT scorers investigated some years after testing, the upper quartile produces about twice the number of patents as the lower one (and about 6 times the average, if I remember right). That seems to imply that having more really top performers might produce more useful goods even if the vast majority of them never invent anything great.
Even a tiny shift upwards of everybody’s IQ has a pretty impressive multiplicative effect at the high end.
Interpersonal skills are more important for job success than IQ, but I doubt great skills will produce goods useful across society in the same way as an invention does. A high EQ person probably just makes the local social network better, which has a relatively limited overall effect.
There is one study that demonstrated that among top 1% SAT scorers investigated some years after testing, the upper quartile produces about twice the number of patents as the lower one (and about 6 times the average, if I remember right). That seems to imply that having more really top performers might produce more useful goods even if the vast majority of them never invent anything great.
This could just reflect winner-take-all dynamics. Only a few people can get into Harvard. Only a few people can become tenured professors, only a few mentored by major figures, only a few access to resources etc. Success builds on success; if you have a patent, it’s easier to get another. A small difference at the beginning (your ‘upper quartile’) can snowball.
I would bet that being in the upper quartile is only weakly correlated with being smarter than the rest of that 1%. No organized tests like college admissions uses straight IQ, but they do use SAT scores. That says something, I think.
I’m reasonably sure that high IQ (i.e. over 140) is not particularly well correlated with outstanding achievement. I am almost certain that extremely high IQ’s are not a prerequisite for extraordinary achievement, though there may be some specific fields where this does not hold true (say, theoretical physics).
I remember reading that the optimal IQ for success in life is actually about 130, but can’t find a source for that now. I did find this though, which seems to support your claim.
I think that having the general population’s IQ raised would have such wide-ranging effects that looking at society as it is now isn’t a very good indicator of what that would be like. Society as it is now isn’t set up to support people with very high IQs (or even get the most out of the IQs that people have to begin with), so I’m pretty sure there would be changes to all kinds of things to fix that.
The linked article is problematic. There is a pretty agreed on correlation between IQ and income (the image obscures this). In the case of wealth the article claims that there is a non-linear relationship that makes really smart people have a low wealth level. But this is due to the author fitting a third degree polynomial to the data! I am pretty convinced it is a case of overfitting. See my critique post for more details.
You don’t think someone with a new 140 IQ could do something useful to you with that intelligence level? I wasn’t thinking so much “cures aging in one fell swoop”. I’d settle for “works with a team on a cancer treatment that might save my life one day”. Or even something fairly tiny, like “reduces my odds of dying in a traffic accident by becoming a traffic light timer, using the IQ boost to do some research, and extending yellow lights”.
I’m sure they could do something useful. I say that.
But I don’t think they’ll do so much for me that it’d make up for it. As I said, consider the job market. This pill would put me into the bottom 30% of the population IQ-wise (I’m guessing, does anyone have the actual numbers? The only people I would still be above would be the 110-130 range.). Have you looked at how well the current bottom 30% does? From what I remember of the job statistics in The Bell Curve, the prospects are absolutely dismal, and seem likely to get worse over time thanks to automation.
This pill would put me into the bottom 30% of the population IQ-wise (I’m guessing, does anyone have the actual numbers?
In the scenario as specified, I think you’re in the 72nd percentile. The half of the population originally with <100 IQ jumps up to <130 IQ (still below you), and you’re still above the people in the 110-130 group who were also denied the drug.
Have you looked at how well the current bottom 30% does?
In the scenario as specified, I think you’re in the 72nd percentile.
Hm… OK, I think you’re right about that. Being in the 72nd percentile is not nearly as bad as dropping down into the 30s. Rereading the original formulation I see that I assumed that the <110 population would jump up past me, while as specified they would just have a 30 point boost which would put them much nearer me but not past.
On an absolute scale, they’re doing fine.
Unfortunately, real humans (such as myself) do not live on absolute scales. This is why we are happier to see our neighbor’s salary cut than the both of us receive a raise but his much larger, and this is why self-assessed happiness of nations is only weakly correlated with wealth & not perfectly correlated.
My understanding is that people lose jobs to automation because they can’t do the jobs which can’t be automated. If you can still do a job which can’t be effectively automated, you might experience short-term troubles (or you might not, assuming you already have the job), but jobs can be created which it will be economical to pay you to do.
Economical to pay me to do is likely not the same thing as what I or other people in my situation are/would-otherwise earn. I remember reading an expatriate remarking that one of the best things about living in Africa was that human labor was so cheap that he could do any bizarre thing that came to mind; a job just existing doesn’t say much.
(I’m interpreting your last line as saying that the market would create a job for me if I were rendered superfluous or no longer worth employing at my current job; if you mean by ‘can’ that something like the goverment could create make-work jobs using the wealth surplus, I’ll refer you to my reply to Alicorn—we haven’t done a great job in the past with helping people rendered redundant by progress or creating a ‘leisure society’, so I am pessimistic that this might change in the drug scenario.)
Yes, I agree. As I said, my better instincts tell me that for the good of humanity, if maybe not my own long-term interests (as I said, it’s plausible the drug would do me more harm than good), to be happy; but the rest of me dislikes being lowered in relative status & potential. Other people may incline more firmly one way or the other.
Smart people can be fun to be around—if you can follow them. If next to everyone was at least 10 points higher than you, then you’re always going to be the slow one trying to catch up & figure out what’s so funny. (The situation is even worse if the hypothetical situation shifts the whole bell curve out.)
If you think 10 points isn’t a big enough difference to matter socially, then I have an experiment for you: take on a similar handicap and see how much fun your favorite social group interaction is; I suggest that you put in some loose ear-plugs to approximate being hard of hearing.
(My experience is that a ~10 points deficit in the other people makes up for my bum ears as far as understanding & participating in the flow of conversation, so I reason that it should work the other way around.)
I find that a lot of joking around with smart people relies on shared experiences more than on-the-fly applications of intelligence, just as it does with less smart people. For instance, my Plato’s Republic class was chatting about how silly one of the translations we aren’t using is, because it translated something that our version renders as “baking cakes” to “managing pancakes” instead. If I want to crack up that particular group of people, I can do it by mentioning that I managed pancakes for breakfast; I don’t think that would have failed to occur to me if I were 10 IQ points dumber. (I might not have been in the class if I were 10 IQ points dumber, but that seems beside the point, which is more about how to interact with smart people than about how to get into situations where you can.)
You may have thought of it, you may not. (Verbal ability is one of the commonest sub-tests, after all.) But would you have thought of it in time? Conversations are like FPS or other action games; if you’re off by even a little, you’re off by a mile.
Suppose it had taken you 30 seconds to come up with that joke—by then the context is gone, the conversation has moved on. People would just squint confusedly at you, even if the topic is still putatively bad translations. (I have done this many times, and am always shocked at how narrow the window between ‘wit’ and ‘non sequitur’ is; the very belated version is called _l’esprit d’escalier_.)
It did take me more than 30 seconds to come up with that, and I think the people there will remember the conversation well enough that (if I’d had pancakes this morning) I could make it in class this afternoon to reasonably good effect.
It’d be a worthwhile experiment, although selecting the most memorable part of the conversation (as it seems to be) isn’t really what I was thinking of with regard to latency being very important to conversational prowess.
So a rising IQ lifts all boats? You’re hoping the wealth will trickle down?
(Myself, I’m selfish. At my ~130 IQ, most of the world would be eligible to take this drug, utterly crushing my market value; and since at best they would reach 140, I can’t appeal to any arguments like ‘but the emsmartened masses will cure aging! Better to be an immortal janitor than a dying tycoon.’ So I wouldn’t be happy about it, even though abstractly I know it’d probably be a very good thing for humanity.)
I’m reasonably sure that high IQ (i.e. over 140) is not particularly well correlated with outstanding achievement. I am almost certain that extremely high IQ’s are not a prerequisite for extraordinary achievement, though there may be some specific fields where this does not hold true (say, theoretical physics).
If someone with an IQ of 180 has a thousand times the chance of making some incredible breakthrough compared to someone with an IQ of 140, shifting from 1% of the people having IQ > 140 to having 25%+ of the people having an IQ over 140 would still probably generate a great deal of breakthroughs.
There is one study that demonstrated that among top 1% SAT scorers investigated some years after testing, the upper quartile produces about twice the number of patents as the lower one (and about 6 times the average, if I remember right). That seems to imply that having more really top performers might produce more useful goods even if the vast majority of them never invent anything great.
Even a tiny shift upwards of everybody’s IQ has a pretty impressive multiplicative effect at the high end.
Interpersonal skills are more important for job success than IQ, but I doubt great skills will produce goods useful across society in the same way as an invention does. A high EQ person probably just makes the local social network better, which has a relatively limited overall effect.
This could just reflect winner-take-all dynamics. Only a few people can get into Harvard. Only a few people can become tenured professors, only a few mentored by major figures, only a few access to resources etc. Success builds on success; if you have a patent, it’s easier to get another. A small difference at the beginning (your ‘upper quartile’) can snowball.
I would bet that being in the upper quartile is only weakly correlated with being smarter than the rest of that 1%. No organized tests like college admissions uses straight IQ, but they do use SAT scores. That says something, I think.
IIRC, the SAT doesn’t have enough questions to distinguish an upper 1⁄4 of 1%. At least, the reported scores don’t go higher than “99th percentile”.
I remember reading that the optimal IQ for success in life is actually about 130, but can’t find a source for that now. I did find this though, which seems to support your claim.
I think that having the general population’s IQ raised would have such wide-ranging effects that looking at society as it is now isn’t a very good indicator of what that would be like. Society as it is now isn’t set up to support people with very high IQs (or even get the most out of the IQs that people have to begin with), so I’m pretty sure there would be changes to all kinds of things to fix that.
The linked article is problematic. There is a pretty agreed on correlation between IQ and income (the image obscures this). In the case of wealth the article claims that there is a non-linear relationship that makes really smart people have a low wealth level. But this is due to the author fitting a third degree polynomial to the data! I am pretty convinced it is a case of overfitting. See my critique post for more details.
You don’t think someone with a new 140 IQ could do something useful to you with that intelligence level? I wasn’t thinking so much “cures aging in one fell swoop”. I’d settle for “works with a team on a cancer treatment that might save my life one day”. Or even something fairly tiny, like “reduces my odds of dying in a traffic accident by becoming a traffic light timer, using the IQ boost to do some research, and extending yellow lights”.
I’m sure they could do something useful. I say that.
But I don’t think they’ll do so much for me that it’d make up for it. As I said, consider the job market. This pill would put me into the bottom 30% of the population IQ-wise (I’m guessing, does anyone have the actual numbers? The only people I would still be above would be the 110-130 range.). Have you looked at how well the current bottom 30% does? From what I remember of the job statistics in The Bell Curve, the prospects are absolutely dismal, and seem likely to get worse over time thanks to automation.
Maybe smart people will build robots to do the crap jobs and move towards a leisure-oriented economy. Then you wouldn’t need to do an awful job.
Well, you’re certainly half-right...
In the scenario as specified, I think you’re in the 72nd percentile. The half of the population originally with <100 IQ jumps up to <130 IQ (still below you), and you’re still above the people in the 110-130 group who were also denied the drug.
On an absolute scale, they’re doing fine.
Hm… OK, I think you’re right about that. Being in the 72nd percentile is not nearly as bad as dropping down into the 30s. Rereading the original formulation I see that I assumed that the <110 population would jump up past me, while as specified they would just have a 30 point boost which would put them much nearer me but not past.
Unfortunately, real humans (such as myself) do not live on absolute scales. This is why we are happier to see our neighbor’s salary cut than the both of us receive a raise but his much larger, and this is why self-assessed happiness of nations is only weakly correlated with wealth & not perfectly correlated.
My understanding is that people lose jobs to automation because they can’t do the jobs which can’t be automated. If you can still do a job which can’t be effectively automated, you might experience short-term troubles (or you might not, assuming you already have the job), but jobs can be created which it will be economical to pay you to do.
Economical to pay me to do is likely not the same thing as what I or other people in my situation are/would-otherwise earn. I remember reading an expatriate remarking that one of the best things about living in Africa was that human labor was so cheap that he could do any bizarre thing that came to mind; a job just existing doesn’t say much.
(I’m interpreting your last line as saying that the market would create a job for me if I were rendered superfluous or no longer worth employing at my current job; if you mean by ‘can’ that something like the goverment could create make-work jobs using the wealth surplus, I’ll refer you to my reply to Alicorn—we haven’t done a great job in the past with helping people rendered redundant by progress or creating a ‘leisure society’, so I am pessimistic that this might change in the drug scenario.)
All that is quite fair enough—I expect the rest of our disagreement amounts to conflicting intuitions.
Yes, I agree. As I said, my better instincts tell me that for the good of humanity, if maybe not my own long-term interests (as I said, it’s plausible the drug would do me more harm than good), to be happy; but the rest of me dislikes being lowered in relative status & potential. Other people may incline more firmly one way or the other.
But aren’t smart people just more fun to be around? Superiority is boring.
Smart people can be fun to be around—if you can follow them. If next to everyone was at least 10 points higher than you, then you’re always going to be the slow one trying to catch up & figure out what’s so funny. (The situation is even worse if the hypothetical situation shifts the whole bell curve out.)
If you think 10 points isn’t a big enough difference to matter socially, then I have an experiment for you: take on a similar handicap and see how much fun your favorite social group interaction is; I suggest that you put in some loose ear-plugs to approximate being hard of hearing.
(My experience is that a ~10 points deficit in the other people makes up for my bum ears as far as understanding & participating in the flow of conversation, so I reason that it should work the other way around.)
I find that a lot of joking around with smart people relies on shared experiences more than on-the-fly applications of intelligence, just as it does with less smart people. For instance, my Plato’s Republic class was chatting about how silly one of the translations we aren’t using is, because it translated something that our version renders as “baking cakes” to “managing pancakes” instead. If I want to crack up that particular group of people, I can do it by mentioning that I managed pancakes for breakfast; I don’t think that would have failed to occur to me if I were 10 IQ points dumber. (I might not have been in the class if I were 10 IQ points dumber, but that seems beside the point, which is more about how to interact with smart people than about how to get into situations where you can.)
You may have thought of it, you may not. (Verbal ability is one of the commonest sub-tests, after all.) But would you have thought of it in time? Conversations are like FPS or other action games; if you’re off by even a little, you’re off by a mile.
Suppose it had taken you 30 seconds to come up with that joke—by then the context is gone, the conversation has moved on. People would just squint confusedly at you, even if the topic is still putatively bad translations. (I have done this many times, and am always shocked at how narrow the window between ‘wit’ and ‘non sequitur’ is; the very belated version is called _l’esprit d’escalier_.)
It did take me more than 30 seconds to come up with that, and I think the people there will remember the conversation well enough that (if I’d had pancakes this morning) I could make it in class this afternoon to reasonably good effect.
It’d be a worthwhile experiment, although selecting the most memorable part of the conversation (as it seems to be) isn’t really what I was thinking of with regard to latency being very important to conversational prowess.