“Q: Has anyone described a simple IQ capability table?”– Plenty of people have.

–“Q: Has anyone described a simple IQ capability table?”–

Plenty of people have. This one is readable:

I.Q. ranges and real-life functioning.

As a general rule, IQ affects rate and therefore cost of learning, but also affects everything else like longevity, health, accidents, and income.

And I find it most helpful to speak in those terms. For about every ten points in IQ we dramatically change the ability of people to learn.

BELOW AVERAGE

60’s are mildly retarded. May still function with supervision. usually socially inept

70’s are borderline retarded. They have problems with basic literacy and instructions, and require supervision.

80’s are problematic. Because the ‘evil 80s’ are where most violence comes from, and the average intelligence of most backward communities is in the 80’s. This is because people in this range are unable to compete but still able to plot and execute simple crimes.

AVERAGE

90 is the minimum for following written instructions, and operating machines. This is the minimum employability for routine work.

100 to learn from written materials and 105 capable of repairing machines. (Arguably 106 to articulate your own ideas). 106 appears to be the minimum median IQ for the formation of a high trust polity.

ABOVE AVERAGE

110 to manage one’s learning from instructors (college format). The closer we get in median IQ to 110 the more likely we are to have a golden age.

120 to investigate and learn on one’s own (graduate format) and 125 capable of designing machines. It is probably impossible to achieve a median IQ in this range.

130 capable of synthesizing ideas and communicating them (low level phd in soft subjects). The good to great authors are in this range.

INTELLIGENT

140+ capable of discovering and inventing new ideas using highly structured reasoning. (PhD in hard subjects)

RULES OF THUMB

One standard deviation is 15 points. We can usually communicate within one standard deviation of one another. By two standard deviations we cannot generally communicate successfully.

If we look at loose averages, our social and economic classes roughly reflect this distribution.

In my experience, and according to most professionals, 140 is the limit of IQ tests, and over that we must test specific abilities. Some would say that 130 is the limit of meaningful testing. Above those levels we start to see dispersion of traits so that while we might demonstrate exceptional ability in some area or other, we tend not to possess the full suite of abilities in balanced form.

(more in followup tweet)