(continued…)
HEDGING A BIT
But let me qualify it a bit and say that while the theory of multiple intelligences is nonsense, intelligence is just one property of personality that affects demonstrated behavior.
The combinations of low impulsivity, high conscientiousness, and high intelligence need to go together. One can be less intelligent, but highly disciplined, conscientious, and work very hard, and someone can be highly intelligent, impulsive, and devoid of conscientiousness.
A lot of things must ‘go right’ for high intelligence to produce positive outcomes in life. (the good stuff kicks in at 115 and above). A lot of things can ‘go wrong’ and we end up with dim(90’s), dangerous (80’s), and untrainable (70’s and below).
For example, I read Neal Ferguson and I realize he has a better memory than I do and is more organized. I read Hayek and identify myself almost perfectly in every way – even speech pattern. I read Chomsky and it’s obvious he’s more intelligent than I am. But of those people the most ‘whole’ or ‘balanced’ person is definitely Ferguson.
There are people I can tell are quite a bit faster than I am especially at mathematical operations, or maintaining sets of states in short term memory. And others who have higher reading comprehension than I do – and greater patience with it. But what I see most often is that people with increasingly high ‘scores’ tend to possess side effects. Not all of them (Norman Schwartzkopf).
So this is why being smart isn’t enough. And this is why the ‘great families’ control reproduction and marriage so carefully, and only hand down assets to those that demonstrate performance. It’s hard work to make things ‘go right’ for generations.
Thankfully we tend to marry and reproduce within genetic classes if not within social and economic classes, and this tends to limit the damage done by the lower classes to the gene pool. That was until redistribution which took rates of reproduction from the working, middle, and upper classes and replaced it with reproduction and immigration from the lower classes.
It matters more for a society to have the smallest possible number of people at the bottom than it does to increase the number of people at the top. Context in everything affects everything else.
And in real life, it matters more that you have few “bads”, than that you have tremendously outlying “goods”.
FWIW: the evidence is clear that average people are almost always far happier than smart people. Mostly, we’re frustrated. The world doesn’t exist for us. We’re tools for the majority. And the world exists for them.
Curt Doolittle
The Natural Law Institute
IN REPLY TO:
Unknown author
–“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)
Original post: https://x.com/i/web/status/1641845326020476933