Re: A study comparing 150 IQ+ persons to 180 IQ+ persons

From: Giu1i0 Pri5c0 (pgptag@gmail.com)
Date: Wed Aug 23 2006 - 12:13:45 MDT


Of course IQ matters but I still think that, once one has a
sufficiently high IQ, there are things that matter more for real
achievement. I will agree that the emotional intelligence mantra has
been used to justify some amount of BS, but the fact remains that how
you handle people matters more than how you handle symbols on a piece
of paper.
The real world is *complex* and one has to deal with complexity. I
trust you will agree that a person is more complex than triangles and
circles.
Sorry to put it in these blunt terms but I used to be one of those
high IQ kids who would have happily traded a few IQ points for some
more people skills. I did learn some people skills along the way, but
there are people who handle "emotional intelligence" issues naturally.
These tend to be the real achievers, of course if they *also* have a
sufficiently high IQ.
G.

On 8/22/06, Michael Anissimov <michaelanissimov@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 <pgptag@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > IQ tests are designed to measure some parameters related to abstract
> > problem solving skills in spatial and logic reasoning. They are not
> > designed to capture the full range of parameters that correlate to
> > practical achievement. I think one definitely needs a sufficiently
> > high IQ to achieve something in the real world, but over that treshold
> > what is frequently described as "emotional intelligence" counts much
> > more than a few IQ points. I guess this is more or less the same thing
> > Michael is saying.
>
> Not at all. I meant that, according to the study, IQ differences
> *over 150 or so* don't matter all that much, in the same way that IQ
> differences under 50 probably don't matter all that much. It doesn't
> matter if your IQ is 20 or 50, you're incredibly retarded either way.
> 150 is a very, very high threshold, just beyond the third sigma, and
> only corresponds to 1/1000 of the population. The difference between
> IQ 150 and IQ 140 is huge, and the difference between IQ 140 and IQ
> 130 is huge. This is why Eliezer writes about prospective seed AI
> programmers, "If we were to try quantifying the level of brainpower
> necessary, our guess is that it's around the 10,000:1 or 100,000:1
> level." The difference between 160 and 150 could also be huge, I just
> posted the article link to get some discussion started on it.
>
> Please, please, please at least skim this paper:
>
> http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatters.pdf
>
> The idea that IQ doesn't matter "all that much" is among the most
> frequently repeated myths with the greatest amount of available
> evidence to demolish it. The whole "emotional intelligence" thing is
> pop-psychological nonsense, considered fringe thinking by the
> mainstream psych community. IQ matters for social skills. IQ matters
> for real-life achievement. IQ matters for common sense. IQ matters
> for which people will be able to wrap their brains around what I'm
> arguing in this post and for which people it will go in one ear and
> out the other.
>
> And by the way, discussions of IQ are most definitely SL4.
> Conversations about intelligence and comparisons between intraspecies
> and interspecies intelligence differentials make up the core of the
> argument that most people on this list *still* don't understand: the
> Singularity is about smartness, not technology, and the second you
> build something smarter than you, everything we know flies out the
> window.
>
> --
> Michael Anissimov
> Lifeboat Foundation http://lifeboat.com
> http://acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog
>



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