Yikes. If your lunatic sensor didn’t go off reading this, you should get it adjusted.
From a theoretical standpoint, democratic meritocracies should evolve five IQ defined ‘castes’, The Leaders, The Advisors, The Followers, The Clueless and The Excluded.
If that doesn’t bother you, notice that this guy is putting a lot of weight on really simplistic statistics about the edge cases (the half-percent or less of the population which is very smart and/or is “successful in” one of his preferred “intellectually elite professions”). Oh, I see Gwern actually commented about this in a comment.
Basically, this is a lovely irony of a presumed-high-IQ author jumping to a pretty ridiculous conclusion because he’s not willing/able to try to dissolve his questions and do the hard work to be rigorous in his research.
If your lunatic sensor didn’t go off reading this, you should get it adjusted.
A funny comment at LW.
Even lunatics can be right.
Gwern said
The assumption here is that both the general population and elite professions are described by a normal distribution (N(100,15) and N(125,6.5), respectively)
Is it? I didn’t see that. assumption stated. Problem is, they didn’t explicitly specify where they got their distributions. At least I don’t see it.
Looking again at some of their conclusions in the preceding paragraph, it does look like they’re assuming gaussians based on mean and sd a small sample, then projecting that out to the tails. Clearly malpractice.
They don’t come out and say it, but the “This means that” below shows that they are extrapolating to the tails.
This means that 95% of people in intellectually elite professions have IQs between 112 and 138 99.98% have IQs between 99 and 151.
Funny that an article talking about how hard it is to be smart can be so dumb.
Still, my question remains—is there real data out there to support the contention that P(elite career|IQ) has a local max and then decreases for higher IQ?
Still, my question remains—is there real data out there to support the contention that P(elite career|IQ) has a local max and then decreases for higher IQ?
No. As I point out in my comment there, the evidence is strongly the other way: TIP/SMPY. To the extent that measures like wealth hit diminishing returns or even fall (eg Zagorsky), it has as much to do with personal choices & values as ability: the physicist who could make money on Wall Street but chooses to continue studying particles, the person who chooses to become an influential but poor writer, etc. (There are many coins of the realm, and greenbacks are but one.)
Yikes. If your lunatic sensor didn’t go off reading this, you should get it adjusted.
If that doesn’t bother you, notice that this guy is putting a lot of weight on really simplistic statistics about the edge cases (the half-percent or less of the population which is very smart and/or is “successful in” one of his preferred “intellectually elite professions”). Oh, I see Gwern actually commented about this in a comment.
Basically, this is a lovely irony of a presumed-high-IQ author jumping to a pretty ridiculous conclusion because he’s not willing/able to try to dissolve his questions and do the hard work to be rigorous in his research.
A funny comment at LW.
Even lunatics can be right.
Gwern said
Is it? I didn’t see that. assumption stated. Problem is, they didn’t explicitly specify where they got their distributions. At least I don’t see it.
Looking again at some of their conclusions in the preceding paragraph, it does look like they’re assuming gaussians based on mean and sd a small sample, then projecting that out to the tails. Clearly malpractice.
They don’t come out and say it, but the “This means that” below shows that they are extrapolating to the tails.
Funny that an article talking about how hard it is to be smart can be so dumb.
Still, my question remains—is there real data out there to support the contention that P(elite career|IQ) has a local max and then decreases for higher IQ?
No. As I point out in my comment there, the evidence is strongly the other way: TIP/SMPY. To the extent that measures like wealth hit diminishing returns or even fall (eg Zagorsky), it has as much to do with personal choices & values as ability: the physicist who could make money on Wall Street but chooses to continue studying particles, the person who chooses to become an influential but poor writer, etc. (There are many coins of the realm, and greenbacks are but one.)
Had no idea what TIP/SMPY were.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talent_Identification_Program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_of_Mathematically_Precocious_Youth