Thanks for posting this! I thought the charts on income vs. The Big 5 were particularly interesting. I'm very surprised that there's little relationship between neuroticism and income. As a man high in neuroticism, with a fairly high IQ, who has underachieved in life, I've tended to assume it was my neuroticism holding me back.
I don't think the people making offhand claims realize how rare the high IQs are. When I think "threshold IQ" I'm thinking something in the 130-150 range, your quote compares 150 to 180. I'm not sure if its possible to evaluate 99.7 against 99.99.
This certainly isnt a 90th or 95th percentile phenomenon, but I think most people have a vision of someone so smart they are unwilling or unable to participate normally in society which gives the idea tenacity.
That being said, there are misfits at every IQ. Maybe the smart ones are just more memorable.
Yes, because it's difficult to even measure upper 99.99%. For example, how does vocabulary discriminate between extremely high and super high intelligence when there are only so many words in the dictionary? We may turn to other measures like digit span or reaction time under then presumption that intelligence offers straightforward gains to performance on such measures, but it may not. At such extreme rarity, it's difficult even to be sure what we're talking about anymore.
I analyzed Cox' 1926 book "301 geniuses" and found a threshold effect. Probability of being a genius is an S-curve function of IQ, where the effect starts to rise around 120 and flattens around 180.
>"Jensen of course did not claim that, see prior post for digging into this false attribution."
Gladwell's quote of Arthur Jensen is accurate (Bias in Mental Testing, pp. 113-114). Maybe you mean Jensen's opinion was not expressed at the extreme of Gladwell's opinion, and I agree, but it is not so much of a false attribution. Where is that prior post?
Jensen directly contradicts Gladwell's thesis in the source, but he does say that for educational attainment of a certain level, after some level of intelligence, more won't be so helpful. That is true, but that's not something about intelligence, just the nature of a logistic function.
OK - no threshold effect. So, explain this: why no people with IQs of 200? Or 500? or 200,000? There MUST be a threshold beyond which higher IQ becomes a liability, not an asset, or such people would exist.
True, but this doesn't really address the question. And I think the answer is that IQ even at high-average levels can be an evolutionary liability--lower levels are often more reproductively successful of late.
I mean, the hardware and energy demands of such brain power would be an obvious limiter of IQ.
We are already at the upper limit of brain sizes that can possibly fit through a birth canal. And you may also be assuming evolution works faster than it does.
Intelligence is an extremely valuable trait NOW because of the technical nature of our society. But for most of history, there probably hasn't been much benefit to having even more energy-demanding brains, and much higher premiums on traits like physical strength.
There's no reason the birth canal couldn't have evolved to be wider if huge IQs conveyed a survival benefit. My best guess is, because the brain uses WAY more energy per kilogram than any other organ, humans have evolved to have the MINIMAL IQ necessary to have a survival advantage in their niche.
Social functions are more valuable for transmitting genes than IQ in the past. Social games determine how much resources you get. Technical ability and aptitude only comes in once there is surplus of labour for non-energetic needs like food. More free time and less time fending off mortality means more resources can be expended on civilizational expansion. The energy pyramid is logarithmic with respect to each tier of evolution with apex predators being the top. Now even if you had more energy, resources and wealth you may live more flagrant lifestyles but that doesn’t guarantee you maximal gene transmission with a monogamous society. The women in the present age still will mainly value top docile men. The distribution is pareto/power law distributed, so people are only going to do the minimal necessary to transmit their genes when all other factors are equalized as ability/permanent income personality genes aren’t equally distributed either. That being said, if our elites will pursue bigger brains and changing body physiologies to accompany this inclination, there’s no reason to think why we couldn’t have 300IQ entities in the future relative to the present day absolute intelligence of 200IQ people. Only generous strategies dominate in the long run because cooperation is a larger gain overall, I expect downstream effects when people see our Chinese counterparts being even 1SD higher from now in a generation or two. No one wants to be left behind in a desolate economic state.
Intelligence is the result of thousands of alleles adding or subtracting a very small genetic effect.
That is why it is normal distributed, the law of large numbers ensure that.
So, it is possible to breed an IQ 500 person, given enough time and a weak moral compass. But just by random chance and assortative mating, 200 seems like an upper limit
Thanks for posting this! I thought the charts on income vs. The Big 5 were particularly interesting. I'm very surprised that there's little relationship between neuroticism and income. As a man high in neuroticism, with a fairly high IQ, who has underachieved in life, I've tended to assume it was my neuroticism holding me back.
I’m pretty sure sure it is my own agreeableness, plus laziness a bit, that kept me out of the very successful league.
I don't think the people making offhand claims realize how rare the high IQs are. When I think "threshold IQ" I'm thinking something in the 130-150 range, your quote compares 150 to 180. I'm not sure if its possible to evaluate 99.7 against 99.99.
This certainly isnt a 90th or 95th percentile phenomenon, but I think most people have a vision of someone so smart they are unwilling or unable to participate normally in society which gives the idea tenacity.
That being said, there are misfits at every IQ. Maybe the smart ones are just more memorable.
Yes, because it's difficult to even measure upper 99.99%. For example, how does vocabulary discriminate between extremely high and super high intelligence when there are only so many words in the dictionary? We may turn to other measures like digit span or reaction time under then presumption that intelligence offers straightforward gains to performance on such measures, but it may not. At such extreme rarity, it's difficult even to be sure what we're talking about anymore.
I analyzed Cox' 1926 book "301 geniuses" and found a threshold effect. Probability of being a genius is an S-curve function of IQ, where the effect starts to rise around 120 and flattens around 180.
>"Jensen of course did not claim that, see prior post for digging into this false attribution."
Gladwell's quote of Arthur Jensen is accurate (Bias in Mental Testing, pp. 113-114). Maybe you mean Jensen's opinion was not expressed at the extreme of Gladwell's opinion, and I agree, but it is not so much of a false attribution. Where is that prior post?
Excuse me, you provided a link to the prior post:
https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2018/07/gladwell-the-threshold-effect-for-iq-and-jensen/
Jensen directly contradicts Gladwell's thesis in the source, but he does say that for educational attainment of a certain level, after some level of intelligence, more won't be so helpful. That is true, but that's not something about intelligence, just the nature of a logistic function.
OK - no threshold effect. So, explain this: why no people with IQs of 200? Or 500? or 200,000? There MUST be a threshold beyond which higher IQ becomes a liability, not an asset, or such people would exist.
There aren't enough people on earth for IQ 500. Do the math. 200 is near impossible, but maybe 1 or 2 such people exist somewhere.
True, but this doesn't really address the question. And I think the answer is that IQ even at high-average levels can be an evolutionary liability--lower levels are often more reproductively successful of late.
I mean, the hardware and energy demands of such brain power would be an obvious limiter of IQ.
We are already at the upper limit of brain sizes that can possibly fit through a birth canal. And you may also be assuming evolution works faster than it does.
Intelligence is an extremely valuable trait NOW because of the technical nature of our society. But for most of history, there probably hasn't been much benefit to having even more energy-demanding brains, and much higher premiums on traits like physical strength.
There's no reason the birth canal couldn't have evolved to be wider if huge IQs conveyed a survival benefit. My best guess is, because the brain uses WAY more energy per kilogram than any other organ, humans have evolved to have the MINIMAL IQ necessary to have a survival advantage in their niche.
Social functions are more valuable for transmitting genes than IQ in the past. Social games determine how much resources you get. Technical ability and aptitude only comes in once there is surplus of labour for non-energetic needs like food. More free time and less time fending off mortality means more resources can be expended on civilizational expansion. The energy pyramid is logarithmic with respect to each tier of evolution with apex predators being the top. Now even if you had more energy, resources and wealth you may live more flagrant lifestyles but that doesn’t guarantee you maximal gene transmission with a monogamous society. The women in the present age still will mainly value top docile men. The distribution is pareto/power law distributed, so people are only going to do the minimal necessary to transmit their genes when all other factors are equalized as ability/permanent income personality genes aren’t equally distributed either. That being said, if our elites will pursue bigger brains and changing body physiologies to accompany this inclination, there’s no reason to think why we couldn’t have 300IQ entities in the future relative to the present day absolute intelligence of 200IQ people. Only generous strategies dominate in the long run because cooperation is a larger gain overall, I expect downstream effects when people see our Chinese counterparts being even 1SD higher from now in a generation or two. No one wants to be left behind in a desolate economic state.
Also see Africa for proof that you don’t need IQ to maximally produce, only food which has been subsidized by higher IQ people.
Intelligence is the result of thousands of alleles adding or subtracting a very small genetic effect.
That is why it is normal distributed, the law of large numbers ensure that.
So, it is possible to breed an IQ 500 person, given enough time and a weak moral compass. But just by random chance and assortative mating, 200 seems like an upper limit