IQ Test

[7Wannabe5]

@zbigi:

No, I'm saying that "If you're so smart, why don't you figure out how to be wealthy?" is not entirely unlike "If you're so smart, why don't you figure out how to be popular?" Some humans with high IQ are either simply not very interested or "allergic" to the topic of Finance. Although, it likely is the case that "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" is the stupidest book in the bibliography supporting ERE.

[Henry]

I think Rich Dad Poor Dad and Millionaire Next Door share a key takeaway -smart people i.e. doctors are notoriously incompetent with money because they think because they are smart in one discipline it applies to all disciplines. It's the Noam Chomsky halo - exactly why is a world class linguist to be listened to as an expert on geo-politics? Douglas Murray goes even further by using the phrase "genius amnesty". Woody Allen, Picasso, Einstein, Marlon Brando and their treatment of family members. Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro can get away with having kids as elderly man.

[chenda]

It's the Noam Chomsky halo - exactly why is a world class linguist to be listened to as an expert on geo-politics?

Why do we listen to a Danish physicist about household management ?

[Henry]

Because he owns a house.

[jacob]

It's the Noam Chomsky halo - exactly why is a world class linguist to be listened to as an expert on geo-politics?

For someone who doesn't like acronyms defining who/what people are, you sure seem to ...

Anyhoo, Chomsky has written a rather large amount of books/articles on world politics.

[Henry]

I do not see the correlation between my opinion on personality traits and the idea that high IQ individuals possess a halo effect when they move to other disciplines.

[black_son_of_gray]

I don't think there's a magic cut-off number in terms of adjusted and not adjusted. (Also see guitarplayer's plot above.) Rather, it's all a matter of statistical distribution with individuals differing. Samples with higher means have a correspondingly and increasingly much higher incidence of the not-adjusted at the tails of the distribution. Compare to climate change and how an increase of a few degrees of average temperature leads to a much higher incidence of adverse extreme temperature events than the relatively small shift of the mean implies.

Sorry, I don't think I was being very clear. As I reread it, there is a little bit of muddiness in The Outsiders. First, there is the social adjustment distributions from the Terman study. I agree with you above about that. My 150 reference was to the rather headscratchingly specific allusion by Wechsler to a kind of threshold IQ at which people self-identified as "outsider"/"difference-in-kind-of-human":

Wechsler is saying quite plainly that those with IQs above 150 are different in kind from those below that level. He is saying that they are a different kind of mind, a different kind of human being.

This subjective impression of a difference in kind also appears to be fairly common among members of the super high IQ societies themselves. When Prometheus and Triple Nine members were asked if they perceived a categorical difference between those above this level and others, most said that they did, although they also said that they were reluctant to call the difference genius. When asked what it should be called, they produced a number of suggestions, sometimes esoteric, sometimes witty, and often remarkably vulgar. But one term was suggested independently again and again. Many thought that the most appropriate term for people like themselves was Outsider.

So there are a couple of things that seem to be going on at the same time. Higher IQs are correlated with social maladjustment, defined from Terman as something like excessive feelings of inadequacy or inferiority, nervous fatigue, neurosis, anxiety, mental depression, personality maladjustment, or psychopathic personality. Seemingly distinct from that, Wechsler is say that higher IQs, particularly above a certain level, specifically experience estrangement, alienation, "outsider" feelings from society at large.

I'm not sure to what extent those two issues are related to each other (or they could both be influenced by some other, hidden variable), and the presence of one shouldn't necessarily imply the other. They could be orthogonal, which could explain a socially gregarious, well-adjusted, mentally healthy individual who nonetheless feels like something is missing in most relationships.

I am skeptical of a hard threshold for outsider feelings*, but if it exists, one wonders how/when that manifests developmentally. There are the giga-people who are so incredibly precocious and prodigious that I can only assume they felt "different" their whole lives, but the mere ~150 people (and there are a lot more of those), I'm really curious about timelines... Or if there is no hard threshold, what is different between a 150 that feels like a different kind altogether and one who doesn't have the feeling at all? e.g. is that where a critical period or environment is super important? To what degree is the outsider feeling reflect a real "different-kind-of-human" brain hardware, or does a lot of that feeling result from an ingrained mindset of just being the (sometimes much) smarter person in almost every relationship (software)? Or maybe developmentally, the software turns into hardware...

*Also, there seem to be plenty of artists who feel/self-identify as Outsiders who do not necessarily have exceptional IQ, but nonetheless seem to have radically different ("difference-in-kind") ways of perceiving/navigating the world. Are they a different kind of Outsider?

As for the strategies, then, while the article frames it in terms of social adaptation, it's a worthwhile exercise to reexamine each through the lens of whether the individual self-identifies as an Outsider specifically, regardless of their anxieties, neuroses, feelings of inadequacy, etc. In this way, it could be argued that Committed = (mostly) socially-adjusted, non-Outsider / Marginal = either socially-maladjusted non-Outsider or socially-adjusted Outsider, or some blend / Dropouts = (mostly) socially-maladjusted and Outsider. Or some other scheme, that's just an example.

It’s the isolation that does the damage, not the IQ itself.

In this sense, both the Outsider status and social maladaptation increase isolation, to varying degrees, by themselves or in combination.

[horsewoman]

High IQ is heritable, and runs in families like mine (my 4th sister is also very high IQ, my 3rd sister is above average IQ, very socially popular jock type, or as she has expressed it with great good humor "In any normal family, I would be the smart one." )

Haha, I can relate to that! Whenever people make remarks about me being "so clever/smart/intelligent" I suffer from some kind of dissonance because while yes, I know I'm reasonably smart, both of my siblings are much more intelligent than me, so I'm used to being the stupid one.
Like Sherlock in the BBC series, it is so funny to me that he his "the stupid one" in the family, while everyone else is in awe of his gifts.

[zbigi]

I do not see the correlation between my opinion on personality traits and the idea that high IQ individuals possess a halo effect when they move to other disciplines.

Chomsky's halo effect was probably large 50 years ago, when he started dabbling in political commentary, but since then he's proved that his take can stand on its own and needs not to be propped by a halo.

[guitarplayer]

@xmj, interesting info under that link (and the website in all)!

Also, from the 3 Ladder Social Systems thread, a retrieved article why I am no longer skeptic

Relevance:

The average skeptic has little time for spreading the word of reason to the educationally or intellectually lacking. His superior reason is what separates him from the chumps around him, and he has no interest in closing the gap. For him, the appeal of the skeptic clique is its exclusivity. It's a refuge from the stupid masses, and a marker of his own special privileges. It's Mensa rebranded.

However I have not read it all yet. Bookmarked both the skeptic article and xmj's linked website for sometime from tomorrow afternoon onward as I should really be doing something a bit different for the next 24h!

[7Wannabe5]

I think Rich Dad Poor Dad and Millionaire Next Door share a key takeaway -smart people i.e. doctors are notoriously incompetent with money because they think because they are smart in one discipline it applies to all disciplines.

It may be the case that arrogance is positively correlated with high IQ, and it is definitely the case that the algorithm for accumulating wealth doesn't require a terribly high IQ, but that wasn't my take-away from "Rich Dad, Poor Dad." It's a relatively "stupid" book, because it is short-sighted in its rejection of the values of the G-Ladder. It only makes sense as a partial antidote to the paradigm that the purpose of an education is to have a career and the purpose of a career is to make money. ERE (FI version), in my opinion, is more in alignment with the purpose of acquiring capital is to provide yourself with a passive stream of income which will grant you the free time to continue to educate yourself. However, especially over the long run or at societal scale, there is a limit to the possibilities for self-education. Some structure is required, and this structure is largely provided by those on the G-Ladder. This became very clear to me when I witnessed how my multi-multi-millionaire friend fretted about leaving a multi-generation legacy of wealth in the hands of his adopted daughter (born in jail to the drug-addicted prostitute who was his female companion due to his belief that marriage interferred with the acquisition of individual wealth) who had not mastered Algebra.

*Also, there seem to be plenty of artists who feel/self-identify as Outsiders who do not necessarily have exceptional IQ, but nonetheless seem to have radically different ("difference-in-kind") ways of perceiving/navigating the world. Are they a different kind of Outsider?

Yes. As I noted above, my second sister and I have very similar IQs (she tests a bit higher on mathematical reasoning, I test a bit higher on verbal reasoning), probably just over the line for being socially maladjusted as a female. However, she is also an INFP "artist", so identifies more strongly as an outsider than I do. And, this was only partially compensated for by the fact that after the terrible years of middle school, she was also in some top percentile for "beautiful." (Luckily, I loved her too much to be miffed by how often in our youth people would ask her if she was a model while ignoring me.) She recently graduated from law school (got free ride on tuition due to stellar LSAT), but can't sit for the bar, because she went completely cuckoo-bananas a few years ago and actually landed in a jail in Detroit. As my youngest sister (who is also a lawyer and award-winning documentary film maker) said when she came into town to help with the rescue, "To end up in jail for disturbing the peace as a middle-class, middle-aged, white woman, you have to be doing something VERY socially unacceptable."

Anyways, based on my own experiences with feeling like an "outsider", I would conjecture that the "difference in kind" is somewhat related to the developmental scales of Kegan etc., because there is often a sense of your experiences being abstracted. For example, you recognize that you are having a "coming of age" experience while you are having a coming of age experience. Also, there can be some "genius amnesty" even if your level of "genius" is only relative. For instance, it has been my experience that you don't get "slut-shamed" for making out with two cute burn-out boys (one resembled John Travolta and the other Mick Jagger) at the same time if you are also "the smartest girl in your grade."

I know I'm reasonably smart, both of my siblings are much more intelligent than me, so I'm used to being the stupid one.

Yes, breaking out of all these relative roles we inhabit in family of origin become tasks towards growth in adulthood. However, I never felt sorry for my relatively lower IQ third sister, because she was always so much "cooler" than the rest of us. The first time I ever heard the expression "Get a life." was when this sister said it to me, as she was walking past my lunch table when I was a Senior and she was a Freshman in high school. Also, as might be predicted, she is currently the top income earner of the 4 of us.

[jacob]

So there are a couple of things that seem to be going on at the same time. Higher IQs are correlated with social maladjustment, defined from Terman as something like excessive feelings of inadequacy or inferiority, nervous fatigue, neurosis, anxiety, mental depression, personality maladjustment, or psychopathic personality. Seemingly distinct from that, Wechsler is say that higher IQs, particularly above a certain level, specifically experience estrangement, alienation, "outsider" feelings from society at large.

I'm not sure to what extent those two issues are related to each other (or they could both be influenced by some other, hidden variable), and the presence of one shouldn't necessarily imply the other. They could be orthogonal, which could explain a socially gregarious, well-adjusted, mentally healthy individual who nonetheless feels like something is missing in most relationships.

Talking back and forth tends to be shite for resolving issues with multiple variables and abstractions ... a limit of the human genotype if there ever was one given how our communication is cursed being constrained to talky-talky for most practical purposes. If only there was a way to see people's complex ideas imprinted on their foreheads in some visual way. As it is ... that function is only available for emotions via expressions but not for neocortex connections. And so we do art and writing and so on. Anyhoo, ...

A suggestion would be to consider absolute IQ on one axis and IQ relative to one's environment on the second axis. Certainly, the individual and the social are hard to disentangle since they are somewhat influenced by each other.

FWIW, I take it as self-evident that just looking at fluid IQ is overly simplifying the tension of the situation anyway. Instead look at hyperobjects. The axes are 1) the difference between the phenotope and the genotype; and 2) the difference between the ego-type and the socio-type.

I am skeptical of a hard threshold for outsider feelings*, but if it exists, one wonders how/when that manifests developmentally. There are the giga-people who are so incredibly precocious and prodigious that I can only assume they felt "different" their whole lives, but the mere ~150 people (and there are a lot more of those), I'm really curious about timelines... Or if there is no hard threshold, what is different between a 150 that feels like a different kind altogether and one who doesn't have the feeling at all? e.g. is that where a critical period or environment is super important? To what degree is the outsider feeling reflect a real "different-kind-of-human" brain hardware, or does a lot of that feeling result from an ingrained mindset of just being the (sometimes much) smarter person in almost every relationship (software)? Or maybe developmentally, the software turns into hardware...

I think this is where the MHC comes in and why it's useful to use a software/hardware metaphor. Better hardware (higher CPU, more registers) makes it possible to run better software, but this is not guaranteed, because the software needs to either be developed endogenously or installed exogenously. This has been my experience. I had good hardware, but only had access for average software for much of my childhood, leaving me frustrated running at below capacity.

The hardware is only different in degree, but the software is different in kind due to MHC. MHC says more about HOW humans spontaneously think than IQ.

Without the software/hardware framework, it may also be difficult to tell the difference---especially when it comes to output for SIMPLE tasks. High intelligence does not necessarily lead to introspection or being obsessed about understanding why one is different. High intelligence does not necessarily lead to complex thoughts; it just leads to faster thoughts. High intelligence (fast hardware) is not sufficient to start installing software with high MHC. This [software] installation depends on temperament, personality, and path-dependent [childhood and adult] development. AND THE ENVIRONMENT!

*Also, there seem to be plenty of artists who feel/self-identify as Outsiders who do not necessarily have exceptional IQ, but nonetheless seem to have radically different ("difference-in-kind") ways of perceiving/navigating the world. Are they a different kind of Outsider?

Yes. This is why it's so unfortunate that this discussion is running along the one-variable fluid intelligence test result rather than the mind-as-a-hyperobject+how-it-matches-with-society which is a much more interesting and accurate way to grok the issue.

ETA: As such, the most pertinent point for maladjusted, which I somehow managed to not mention, is an incompatibility between: a) one's own software and one's own hardware (trying to be someone you're not, e.g. an introvert believing they should be more extroverted ... or a warrior who thinks they should be more of a scholar---probably why so many highschool and college kids are on adderall due to society in its infinite wisdom decided that everybody needed to be a scholar ); and b) one's software and other people's software (chess vs checkers).

[white belt]

A lot to unpack here.

First off, I took the MENSA IQ test that Jacob linked and scored 111 with maybe a 90% effort. This jives with previous IQ tests I've taken in that my score tends to fall between 110-115 depending on the test (I tend to score higher on tests with verbal components). So for simplicity's sake, I'll say I have an average score of 115 which is 1SD. This seems to jive well with my life experience in that I am one of the smartest in a room of average people, but basically average if the room is also composed of smart people. This also means I am fortunately able to connect relatively easily to those of average IQ up to those who have 2SD IQ, which puts me in a pretty privileged spot compared to the issues described by those with >2SD IQ. Maybe this is just me projecting, but I suspect this could be a sweet spot in terms of happiness/life satisfaction with IQ because you are smarter than the average, but not so much smarter to not be able to fit in.

I would note that my work experience makes a lot of sense given this score. The time in the military where I felt like I found my tribe was in special operations, which likely skews higher in IQ than the conventional forces. I felt pretty average in special ops, which tells me that the average IQ is probably in the 110-115 range compared to conventional forces, which likely sit around 100 given that they come from the general population. I also found myself most effective/fulfilled in a role akin to product owner/project manager; basically I bridged the gaps between the customers, my less technical bosses, and my uber-technical engineers*. Although technical skill doesn't perfectly align to IQ, there was definitely some correlation as the highest IQ individuals in my office generally sat as network architects and server architects. They also had a lot of trouble communicating what they were doing to our bosses and customers, which is where I came in. Similarly, they had trouble understanding the requirements of the customer, and the demands of my bosses who were working under managerial frameworks rather than technical frameworks. I was often reminded of the Office Space clip about not letting the engineers talk directly to customers. The engineers probably thought I was a dumbass compared to them, but I at least had the intelligence and technical know-how to understand what they were doing and the feasibility of different technical requirements. This meant it took them much less energy to translate what they were doing to my level compared to if they had to do that for our bosses and customers.

* = I think the highest IQ person I served with in my entire career was a warrant officer. He spent his whole career in special operations, first in the infantry, then transitioning to IT. He was almost certainly (undiagnosed) autistic too. In his departing speech, he said something like "I joined the Army when I was 18 thinking I was going to kill a bunch of people. But I think God meant for me to work on computers. So that's what I ended up doing and was much better at that."

[7Wannabe5]

@white belt:

Don’t underestimate yourself. Verbal intelligence may actually be more indicative of fluid general intelligence. I’ve dated quite a few PhD engineer types and they can be pretty weak outside of narrow range. Like could a single one of them grok why Rachel Cusk is probably the most brilliant novelist I’ve recently encountered? Nope.

[white belt]

High IQ is heritable, and runs in families like mine (my 4th sister is also very high IQ, my 3rd sister is above average IQ, very socially popular jock type, or as she has expressed it with great good humor "In any normal family, I would be the smart one." ) but it is also very "sporty", so it will pop up even in the underclass realms where I sometimes teach, and these kids will often be mislabeled by "normie" teachers as behavior-disordered, because their tendency towards opposition defiance will come out as @%$&*@#$&. Maybe one of these days I will try to organize a garden-based mathematics tutoring program for low income, disagreeable, IQ gifted children and try to get all of you tightwads to chip in towards the funding.

FWIW, the line between jock/nerd has been blurred a lot in the past 15 years or so. The sports world is made up of plenty of "nerds" in position of coach, general manager, or analyst. In some cases you have coaches that didn't play the sport beyond the high school level. Every pro organization employs quants and uses analytics extensively. See Moneyball for the tension this caused in the early years.

Additionally, Fantasy sports has taken off in popularity and is essentially DnD for jocks. You draft a team, pour over statistics, then each week you predict who will play well given myriad variables. My group of smart jock friends is much more into wracking their brains over fantasy sports these days compared to going outside to play an actual sport. That's a pattern I've seen across society; more so as sports become even more consumerized over time.

[7Wannabe5]

@white belt:

Cross-post.

Yeah, my jock father tried to interest me in sports through gambling. Also, for reasons that can only be speculated, quite a few quite serious jocks have wanted to date me over the years. If I had a penny for every time somebody made me hang upside down and refused to release my ankles until I somehow managed to activate my core muscles one more time, and then suggested that we might share shower facilities...or variations on that theme.

[white belt]

Also, for reasons that can only be speculated, quite a few quite serious jocks have wanted to date me over the years. If I had a penny for every time somebody made me hang upside down and refused to release my ankles until I somehow managed to activate my core muscles one more time, and then suggested that we might share shower facilities...or variations on that theme.

Well, if you think they were high IQ jocks, then I can perhaps some perspective as someone who also thinks of himself as a high IQ jock. I think your observation about high IQ women being in high demand is accurate. The highest in demand are high IQ women who are also very physically attractive. For normies, there is no shortage of tropes about the airhead trophy wife and I think ultimately the average man will settle for someone who is comparable or slightly lower IQ if they are physically attractive. There is also the complex that many men have of feeling that in order to be dominant in the relationship, they need to be smarter/make more money in all domains. Another variation of this is men saying they are intimidated by women in certain (traditionally male) career fields. FWIW a lot of my dating success has come with such women because much of the male competition is too scared to pursue them.

As discussed in this thread and in the research, you can make someone smarter in specific areas with education/training, but you can't improve their IQ. Or with Jacob's hardware/software analogy, you can't do much to change hardware. Physical fitness on the other hand, can be changed with certain habits, although it is still influenced by numerous factors. There is also the jock perspective that physical fitness is simply an equation akin to do x activity, yield y results which is what sports practice boils down to. So I posit that in your situation, the jocks (in a perhaps inappropriate analogy) see you as having good "bones" in the same way someone might see an old house that needs minor cosmetic renovation. You have good IQ/intelligence which is pretty much set in stone and you have good baseline physical attractiveness, while the minor cosmetic stuff is easy to improve in their eyes (by making you work out so your body more closely aligns with their beauty standards). Note this that can be taken even further with things like cosmetic surgery. How many men pay for their wives to get breast implants? Or pay for facelift, nose job, hair coloring, waxing, nails, etc etc. Or the expensive trainer, exercise bike, pilates class, workout clothes, etc if it means it will keep her in shape. I'm not aware of a cosmetic procedure or class that can boost IQ in the same way.

[chenda]

There's likely a strong positive correlation between high IQ and autism. I wonder if there's also positive correlation between physical attractiveness and IQ ?

[white belt]

Don’t underestimate yourself. Verbal intelligence may actually be more indicative of fluid general intelligence. I’ve dated quite a few PhD engineer types and they can be pretty weak outside of narrow range. Like could a single one of them grok why Rachel Cusk is probably the most brilliant novelist I’ve recently encountered? Nope.

It's possible. I did excel at music and learning Mandarin Chinese, which I suspect uses the part of the brain that requires verbal intelligence.

Talking to DF, it seems likely she has higher IQ than me. She is a year away from being a surgeon and excelled all the way up to include medical school despite having untreated ADHD for her entire life. According to her, she has exceptional spatial intelligence, as demonstrated by the fact she builds things just based on the visualization in her head, meanwhile I'm all about using a blueprint/planning ahead first. She also has exceptional memory and can remember every conversation she has had in her life, which she describes as a curse because most people remember things differently than how they actually happen. She remembers all details about patients without needing to write things down. Needless to say, I don't win any arguments when it comes to things that I said in the past . She says she struggles with verbal intelligence and feels like she can't translate the things she sees in her mind's eye into words.

To tie things into my last post, she also says I am much smarter than her previous boyfriends. Since her sister was sorority president (popular jock type), she found herself stuck with dull frat boys for most of college. I think she would empathize a lot with you in being interested in both muscles and brains, which she says is a hard combination to find. DF is in shape, but would you be surprised to find out that I have been known for motivating her to eat healthier and exercise more frequently?

[7Wannabe5]

So I posit that in your situation, the jocks (in a perhaps inappropriate analogy) see you as having good "bones" in the same way someone might see an old house that needs minor cosmetic renovation. You have good IQ/intelligence which is pretty much set in stone and you have good baseline physical attractiveness, while the minor cosmetic stuff is easy to improve in their eyes (by making you work out so your body more closely aligns with their beauty standards). Note this that can be taken even further with things like cosmetic surgery. How many men pay for their wives to get breast implants? Or pay for facelift, nose job, hair coloring, waxing, nails, etc etc. Or the expensive trainer, exercise bike, pilates class, workout clothes, etc if it means it will keep her in shape.

Well, I would note that my baseline physical attractiveness during the years I was most actively dating (42-51) was not all that high*. I let my photos be statistically scored on OkayCupid one time, and I think I got around a 7 from my age peers, and a 5.5 over whole spectrum. However, it is the case that the situation you describe has happened to me many times, more or less, in various forms. Sometimes the requests for alteration have been very particular. For instance, one man I dated for around 6 months wanted me to always maintain a fake tan. One whom I dated for around 9 months requested that I not shave my legs. etc. etc. etc. Maybe it has more to do with the fact that I am superficially fairly easy-going and agreeable. Or the fact that prior to menopause I was pretty hyper-sexual and sexually empathic. I'm just positing high IQ as high in demand, because some men wanted to date me just because they liked the humorous written part of my dating profile, and 3 out of 4 men I have dumped** mention "conversation with me" as a top thing they miss.




*And I am currently at age 58 definitely in a state of decrepi-pudge to the extent that I recently had the thought that my discovery that the hourly charge for personal trainer at my local YMCA is exactly what I net from tutoring my private math students per hour might be a sign from the Goddess.

**When my easy-going agreeableness reaches its limit. I truly have a very long fuse, and I offer very clear warning notices, but when I do go off, you are pretty much already toast in my rearview mirror.