The problem of measuring intelligence is that most of these techniques reveal more about what we think intelligence is in a specific cultural context. Which means that individuals who rank higher in these tests are those who conform the most to a society expectancies. High level of literacy, proper nutrition during their childhood, proper education, help foster better IQ. Which of course leads to a better understanding of how your own society works, hence to a better evaluation of probabilities. If you have grown up in a family with money, you have a much better understanding of how to benefit from your investments.
It's interesting how people always try to find some kind of number to race against.
Here's a simple theoretical situation. A brilliant mathematician with very high IQ crashes in the jungle, but is unhurt.
Not far from the crash site, there's a tribesman who lived in the jungle all his life. He doesn't know how to read or write.
The jungle is filled with predators, spiders and snakes. The sun is setting, the night starts soon.
Who has bigger chances of surviving ? I guess most people would bet on the tribesman. Why does nature select the person who would most likely score lower on the IQ score ?
The point is - intelligence is contextual and circumstantial. It's not one number, like width or length. Not sure why people still try to squeeze some sort of conclusion from it..
> from a nationally representative English sample of participants aged over 50 (N = 3,946), we test whether IQ is associated with calibration.
> In line with MR studies, we leverage the randomness of genetic variants—captured by individual polygenic scores (PGSs) for IQ, a single quantitative measure of an individual’s genetic predisposition to IQ—as a plausibly valid IV for phenotypic IQ.
I'm uncomfortable about generating strong generalized conclusions based on such methodology.
If this is true, then I suppose that smarter people are also richer.
..because they're smarter.
Two things that strike me about this study are:
1. Comparing the bottom 2.5% to the top 2.5% is a vast range and not really applicable to just about anybody who's able to read. So the effect may be real but irrelevant for 95%+ of humanity.
2. It doesn't look like they controlled the expected longevity to the actual longevity and instead compared it to projected longevity. It seems flawed.
0. Since it comes from sociology type research, odds are that it is pure bunk. I would like to see it replicated before it actually got any air time in any serious conversation.
(Yes, I know I have trouble counting but the last one is applicable to almost all modern research)
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I think IQ is an incredibly bad measure of anything. So many IQ smart people I know make bad decisions and it's always because they don't judge other people well.
Personally I think IQ and practical intelligence differs for a person. I have know many IQ smart people that can solve complex problems but fail to solve or foresee everyday basic problems
I prefer to think of "smart" as a vector, I'm more interested in the dot-product with the situation at hand.