All the Ways That IQ Is Relevant to Society

Intelligent Mouse: By “relevant for society” i meant relevant for economics. IQ can matter for many reasons, like for example just being interested in any form of scientific rigor in understand behavior could make it relevant to an individual as the person would seek for all (or at least most) alternatives in models. But lets investigate some of the potencial usage of intelligence meassurments and see how IQ tests meassure up. Measuring potential school performance: Some small amount of years in school will already give the teachers or parents ample information about their prospects, but also traits that make IQ more productive in synthesis: https://books.google.se/books?id=SCyEAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=Layzer+(1973:+238)&source=bl&ots=9Rf9sy0Jd6&sig=WjWMXZsLTGLGy7SS7JSZQ9RLmNE&hl=sv&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjl0q7t78fdAhUQpIsKHXb7AFsQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Layze Job performance: Well, IQ correlates around 0.3 with job performance, but the measurement is subjective so it might capture some things that correlate with social-class and therefore IQ. Eugenics: Pleitropy and polygenic structures makes eugenics by swapping SNPs impractical. Breeding programs can only do so much without further molecular biology knowledge. Twin studies seem kinda ridiculous: Twin Studies, Adoption Studies, and Fallacious Reasoning And i also agree with: Behavior Genetics and the Fallacy of Nature vs Nurture and (which is what GWAS interested behavioral geneticists like Steven Hsu agree on): Height and IQ Genes making eugenics very hard. If we already knew the mechanisms behind Testing mental health: This is actually the best use of IQ, as decreasing IQ is indicative of loss in brain stuff. Criterion validity and correlation: I also think that IQ´s criterion validity lies on shaky grounds when its founded on correlations that are only tested in narrow environments, essentially just creating the same correlation again and again without testing the methodological validity by testing the correlation appropriately. to test correlation appropriately would find anomalies in the pure environmentalist approach (or any level of conviction to environmental explanations) or finding causal IQ relationships (which Environmentalists have done). I’m not really an IQ denier though, i think there probably is an range of IQ that any given person can inhabit, but the fact of individuals sticking around the mean makes it hard to know who could be where, especially in such large and genetically similar groups like economic classes and races. Some people are obviously extreme, but as previously stated, we don’t need IQ tests to know that. And whats to say that smart people have high IQ? IQ is contingent on G, but all of my criticisms on IQ are pretty much equally (for better or worse) valid against G. I see no use in IQ if not for future developments. Its an unfinished project at best.

  I do not think that people realize what they are criticizing when they attack IQ. For IQ is simply the best measure we have for measuring intelligence in human beings. No better test has ever been devised. So when you criticize IQ as a concept, you are actually criticizing human intelligence itself. Do you IQ critics who say IQ is not that important really want to say that human intelligence is not important for human beings? Because that is exactly what you are saying. You realize IQ correlates very well with all sorts of things, right? Percentage of country that are college grads. Grades in college, SAT. Good correlation between college grades, SAT scores and IQ. Wealth of society. As IQ rises, societies tend to become more wealthy. As IQ falls to a low level, you can end up with extreme poverty, a lot of crime and chaos, rampant disease, and sometimes even a failed state. State of the infrastructure of society. Infrastructure of society improves as IQ rises. People and society are more likely to maintain things. When IQ falls to a low level, people often do not know how to fix broken infrastructure and there is a tendency to jerry rig or do temporary quick and dirty fixes to problems that last for a bit but then fail again. Civilizational level of society. As IQ rises, societies appear more civilized. As it drops to a low level, countries can appear downright barbarous. Crime rate of society: As IQ rises, the nation’s crime rate falls. Whether or not you will go to jail or prison and how long: As IQ falls,  you are more likely to be imprisoned and for longer. Whether you will go on welfare programs. As IQ falls, welfare use increases. Whether you will get an advanced degree. As IQ rises, advanced degrees become more common. Income (up to a certain level). Income rises in tandem with IQ up to 125-130, after which it falls Accident rate. As IQ falls, people get into many more accidents, some fatal. Includes car crashes, recreational accidents, accidents at home, etc. Hospitalization rates. As IQ rises, people are hospitalized less often. Rates of alcoholism and serious drug abuse. As IQ rises, rates of drug and alcohol abuse fall. The environment you create for your children. As IQ rises, parents create better environments for their children. Stability for chaotic nature of your surroundings. Even if you look at it on a neighborhood level, as IQ rises, the neighborhood becomes calmer, sometimes nearly to the point of being boring. Yet only three miles away, a large group of apartment complexes housing many low wage workers has a lot of noise, a general chaotic atmosphere, frequent police calls, a lot of yelling and screaming coming from homes, more frequent and more chaotic parties, more violence, more residential crime, and more drug and alcohol abuse. Domestic violence rates. Domestic violence falls precipitously as IQ rises. Men at the highest IQ levels seldom beat their wives. As IQ falls down to a low level, domestic violence becomes commonplace to the point where most men are beating their wives.

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17 thoughts on “All the Ways That IQ Is Relevant to Society”

  1. “Grades in college, SAT”
    The SAT is an IQ test. With grades it gets a little more complicated as it correlates with class and has extremes altering the correlation where i suspect an 94 IQ guy isnt that much worse than an 107 IQ guy.
    “Percentage of country that are college grads.”
    Correlates with class, causiality has not yet been established to be of any particular strengh.
    “Wealth of society”.
    Correlates with class, causiality has not yet been established to be of any particular strengh.
    “State of the infrastructure of society.”
    “Crime rate of society”.
    Correlates with class, causiality has not yet been established to be of any particular strengh.
    “Whether or not you will go to jail or prison and how long”
    Correlates with class and people prone to do things that decrase their iq despite not inherently being dumber. It might also be spurius as all criminals might not get caught. Confounding variables makes it so the strengh of the cause not established.
    “Whether you will go on welfare programs”
    Both IQ and welfare use correlates with class and the extreme ends of class probably makes the correlarion more drastic than what it would be if one took away the poorest and wealthiest.
    “Whether you will get an advanced degree.”
    At this point we are talking about such smart people that their example is too rare to be extrapolated to the general populous, as well as there for some reason are normal IQ people achieving somewhat advanced degrees. It also correlates with class.
    “Income (up to a certain level)”
    correlates with class (especially when it isnt in the super high iqs as most people cant be learned to reach super high iqs without training in the IQ tests themselves),
    “Accident rate, Hospitalization rates, Rates of alcoholism and serious drug abuse”
    Class.
    “Stability for chaotic nature of your surroundings”
    Probably correlates with traits that increase IQ by creating better environments while not being intrinsically higher IQ, as well as class.
    “Domestic violence rates”
    Probably correlates with an shitty job and naggy wife to lol. Or in other words, class, but also culture.
    I saved the best for last:
    “I do not think that people realize what they are criticizing when they attack IQ. For IQ is simply the best measure we have for measuring intelligence in human beings. No better test has ever been devised. So when you criticize IQ as a concept, you are actually criticizing human intelligence itself. Do you IQ critics who say IQ is not that important really want to say that human intelligence is not important for human beings? Because that is exactly what you are saying.
    You realize IQ correlates very well with all sorts of things, right”
    ill qoute myself:

    I also think that IQ´s criterion validity lies on shaky grounds when its founded on correlations that are only tested in narrow environments, essentially just creating the same correlation again and again without testing the methodological validity by testing the correlation appropriately. to test correlation appropriately would find anomalies in the pure environmentalist approach (or any level of conviction to environmental explanations) or finding causal IQ relationships (which Environmentalists have done).
    I’m not really an IQ denier though, i think there probably is an range of IQ that any given person can inhabit, but the fact of individuals sticking around the mean makes it hard to know who could be where, especially in such large and genetically similar groups like economic classes and races. Some people are obviously extreme, but as previously stated, we don’t need IQ tests to know that.
    And whats to say that smart people have high IQ? IQ is contingent on G, but all of my criticisms on IQ are pretty much equally (for better or worse) valid against G.”
    My criticism was fundamentally against the idea of G, which is what IQ is to begin with. G has little evidence in my opinion as it doesnt correlate greatly with physiological traits. More reasons G is flawed is becuase IQ tests are made to meassure tacitly trained (and sometimes things that only trainable for few, still trained though) things that increases the amount of class one has, and espcially increases amongst the, lets call them, “IQ capable” people that also are rich. IQ therefore correlates with class and its benefits (social-class) which makes the studies not “meassure correlations appropiately” and not give its true impact on traits, which i think is lower than what most people claim.
    So yes i guess i am dissreagarding the best meassure, as it doesnt teach us anything new, what it teaches us is that there are people at the extremes, but we already knew that with other tests better at meassuring the extremes, especially meassuring them in their most productive profile. We all know theres something like different types of smarts or whatever, but to rigidly operationalize it is hard, especially when common sense is already meassured on other traits.
    It all boils down to that i dont think small differences in IQ matter and that its impact on traits are dimished when taking true environment into account. I also dissagree that IQ gives us any large insight into “generalized intelligence” as brain structures and knowledge are/is wierd. I still think that iq works but only when people differ around 1,7 SD or some other large deviation.

    1. You realize in attacking IQ you are saying that the entire concept of human intelligence is not important, right?
      The 107 guy can graduate from college with a bit of work. The 94 guy will have a very hard time, and he might not make it. There’s your difference right there.
      Right, but IQ creates those class differences that you discuss.
      Nothing you do in life will decrease IQ much. If you are a criminal long enough, you will get caught.
      Accident rate correlates with class? Whether or not you crash your car? Whether or not you hurt yourself dirt biking? Whether or not you cut off your finger chopping onions? Crazy.
      You just said that human intelligence lacks criterion validity.
      G IS human intelligence, even more than IQ. So human intelligence doesn’t exist? Actually IQ and G measure raw human brain speed. That’s all an IQ test is. You can’t train your brain to go faster than it goes.
      Ok you don’t think IQ measures human intelligence. Well, here is where we will differ then.

      1. “You realize in attacking IQ you are saying that the entire concept of human intelligence is not important, right?”
        I am dissreagarding the best meassure as important, as it doesnt teach us anything new, what it teaches us is that there are people at the extremes, but we already knew that with other tests better at meassuring the extremes. We all know theres something like different types of smarts or whatever, but to rigidly operationalize it is hard, especially when common sense is already meassured on other tests.
        An analogy to your argument is that im denying attractiveness when theres no decent modell for how different cultures value different things. But thats not what im doing. Please read: https://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2018/09/19/98646/#comment-345541
        Im not even saying that IQ doesnt meassure conventional notions of intelligence, only that the value of each point is smaller (while increasing the further from the mean they reach awa from the mean) than what the flawed studies indicate, and that the standard deviation is bigger (and perhaps the whole distribution tilted more to the right as environment inmporves).
        G has minimal evidence in brain structure studies, none else outside of the extreme. The relationship between generalized regions and specialized regions are not known, the reaseach is still in its infancy.
        “Right, but IQ creates those class differences that you discuss.”
        Correlates with class, causiality has not yet been established to be of any particular strengh (which means it might be true, but to an lesser degree than what Intelligence researches say).
        “The 107 guy can graduate from college with a bit of work. The 94 guy will have a very hard time, and he might not make it. There’s your difference right there.”
        I dont think theres any reasearch for that and the research saying that theres an high correlation has alerady been criticized.
        “Nothing you do in life will decrease IQ much. If you are a criminal long enough, you will get caught.”
        But much will increase it, especially when you consider that the power of an environmental variable depends on the other environmental variables being arrenged correctly.
        “Accident rate correlates with class? Whether or not you crash your car? Whether or not you hurt yourself dirt biking? Whether or not you cut off your finger chopping onions? Crazy.”
        Its my least supported statement, but it isnt crazy. Being in an low income area has other people not take accountability from you as important, especially in school, and it makes you stressed to have an shit job. So who knows?
        “You just said that human intelligence lacks criterion validity.
        G IS human intelligence, even more than IQ. So human intelligence doesn’t exist? Actually IQ and G measure raw human brain speed. That’s all an IQ test is. You can’t train your brain to go faster than it goes.
        Ok you don’t think IQ measures human intelligence. Well, here is where we will differ then.”
        My attractiveness analogy and text on the top of the post still stands.
        Some things id like to add is that i would belive in IQ if not for better tests. G my view on G is in the link on this post.

  2. “(or any level of conviction to environmental explanations) or finding causal IQ relationships (which IN MY OPINION ONLY Environmentalists have done).
    I’m not really an IQ denier though, i think there probably is an range of IQ that any given person can inhabit, but the fact of individuals sticking around the mean makes it hard to know who could be where, especially BETWEEN such large and genetically similar groups like economic classes and races.”
    Fixed some sentences

  3. Nice that you call me intelligent becuase…
    I FAILED MY MATH TEST 🙁 (not really i just didnt get high grades)
    Now, it was only becuase my bitch teacher didnt teach us enough stuff in detail and that i didnt pay enough attention to the easy questions. The schoool will do a new test with the same requirments and different questions, so ill try that. But if i dont succed at the new test, it will be my bad.
    So if this is just one anomaly that isnt related to my capacity, why am i so butthurt?
    Becuase it might give me an idea of things to come. You see, the test could be done with my knowledge if one was really smart and reinvented the wheel, but is that what will be expected of me in the future? or is this an anomaly where the lessons where not enough for the test?
    Basically, do i meassure up in IQ to the new curriculum?
    Scary question.
    Good news is that i was on the right track on solving the hard question despite not knowing the right laws of math to do it. I was on my way to reinvent the wheel, maybe, as i would have to retest and speculate a lot to reach the goal which might take too much time.
    🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁

    1. Mathematics is one of those subjects that cumulatively builds on coursework. My direct experience was doing very well on mathematics subjects until my freshman undergraduate year of college. I entered college in 1969. I attended a very competitive science and engineering college named Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. At the time, the college only recommended that students take calculus in their senior year in high school. As a consequence of my parents’s alcoholism, I was a year behind my classmates in math, so I did not take calculus in my senior year, nor during summer school between high school and college. As a result, I went from being in the top of the class to being absolutely “snowed” because Harvey Mudd’s first year calculus course assumed the student already had a year of calculus. I faced similar problems in calculus-based physics. As a result, I flunked out of Harvey Mudd at the end of my freshman year. (Harvey Mudd now requires one year of calculus prior to admission.) I aggressively worked to cure my academic deficiencies – and maintain normal academic progress – while holding a full-time job during the two sessions of summer school and my sophomore year at two other colleges. As a result, I was readmitted to Harvey Mudd College, was on the Dean’s list for the first semester of my junior year, and graduated with my entering class in 1973. I went on to take higher level math courses while in graduate school, earning my natural science Ph.D. after 11 years of full-time graduate work. I’ve served as a professor at three colleges and a university since then. I share my experience on the first day of class so that students understand the importance of mastering any prerequisites. I share the principle that if a student masters the prerequisites, learning in the course should be EASY – particularly in science and engineering coursework. (The course may still be challenging from the perspective of requiring the completion of considerable homework.)
      Thus, I ask you a question “Thinking Mouse.” Have you mastered all of the prerequisites of the math course that you most recently took?

      1. Wow, what an priviledge to get your attention. Interresting and noble intorduction.
        My awnser to your question is that the teacher didnt make the substance of the prerequisites clear, but that we atleast got partial information of the whole set of requirements needed. the rest of the requirements would be needed to be figured out, so an emphasis on comming up with the right questions before the test is needed, which is why i complained about the teaching as getting access to the right questions from ones unconcious isnt neacessarily reliable all of the time.
        Still right now I think that I know all of the prerequisites for the test, so ill so the new test soon.
        I wonder, in what way is coursework easier than homework when the prerequisites are in check. Is it becuase coursework has an detailed explenation of the deductions while homework requires to think about creating appropriate structures for the given context in an question? How isnt learning requirements not part of the coursework? Am i missing something from the meaning of prerequisites in your sense of the word? How do you think intuition or more accurately intelligence plays into success in schoolwork?
        Thanks again.

        1. I’m not sure regarding the grade level of the mathematics course you are in. Typically, a well-designed college curriculum has clearly-indicated set of prerequisite courses for a given course. In fact, one may draw a “tree diagram” that shows the inter-relationship of the individual courses.
          Prerequisites are important from the perspective of understanding abstract (or concrete) concepts that serve as the factual foundation for more complex abstract (or concrete) concepts. Another factor is quick recall of those facts, as those facts provide insights into the solution of more complex problems. As an example, there is a “Pythagorean identity”
          square (sin (theta)) + square (cos (theta) = 1, where theta is an angle. https://www.themathpage.com/aTrig/trigonometric-identities.htm
          that is extremely handy in solving many more complicated problems. However, if you don’t have the quick recall of the Pythagorean identity, those same problems become incredibly frustrating to solve.

  4. There is an element that was left out of this commentary: Partner selection. Given that there is a high level of interaction necessary for a successful long-term relationship, I believe it makes sense to have a partner with a similar IQ. In summary, a high IQ person is unlikely to be interested in maintaining a long-term relationship with someone who does not have a high IQ. Long-term interaction becomes challenging if one person has a lower IQ – or in the alternative loses IQ as a consequence of an accident or diseases such as alcoholism or Alzheimer’s Disease. As a high IQ person, I’ve had long-term direct experience with the latter two diseases – Alcoholism of my father, who died at age 57 and Alzheimer’s Disease of my stepfather, who died at age 92. His Alzheimer’s Disease became apparent over a decade before he died.

    1. With the amont of integration and the probable polygenic structure of the Brain makes quantifying the effect of assortative mating Hard, especially when it correlates with class and other non-IQ traits. I think that there are some effect on avarage working as an “additive genome” even though i dont belive in additive genetic effects, how much is unsure and probably not that large. With selective beredning you might be able to increase IQ with like 4-9 points would be My best Guess as heritability tends to be low in most non-humans. It wasnt left out, its right there in my paragraph on Eugenics.

      1. The problem of heritability of intelligence is challenging. It is a polygenic trait. I was fortunate to have two high-IQ parents, so it increased the probability of me having a high IQ. I believe that high IQ is likely a product of the interactions of many genes – and also having a good well-maintained cardiovascular system, since high IQ brains require more oxygen and nutrients.
        The first college course that I taught was human genetics. I introduced my students to the statistical concept of “regression toward the mean” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean using the concrete historical example of the “Hessian Guards.” There was a royal decree in that nation that all tall people only marry other tall people with the expectation being that they would produce many tall offspring for the next generation of Hessian Guards. The surprising result was only a minuscule shift in the height of the offspring of two tall parents relative to the offspring produced by normal height parents. Human height is also polygenic.

  5. Robert, there are professors with IQs in the 90s out there. There are scientists too, and many other professions.
    You are being very IQ deterministic. IQ does carry some merit, but it’s not the only thing. Also, intelligence can span from many different things. Intelligence is the ability to learn. People with Low IQs are very street smart, more so than high IQ folks. Musical intelligence exists too, many low IQ blacks are excellent rappers. Mechanical intelligence, not every high IQ fella can fix shit with their hands.
    There’s this article on Grey Enlightenment on illusory superiority. It’s a phenomenal article.
    Also, you can increase your IQ, it’s not fixed at all. Just because most people don’t increase it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. Some people get pretty big gains too.
    For a degree, you only need an average IQ. For a masters too, only an average. Even for a PHD, you only need average. Hell, for the Nobel, you probably don’t need a monstrously high IQ either.

    1. Isnt the avarage IQ of stem graduates like 115-128? And the standard deviation might be smaller than 15 points.
      the anomalies of 90-110 iq proffersors seems interessting.
      I think that training in stem fields to the degree needed doe reaching such academic hiegts probably inflate the iq to an extent, so that makes things more complicated.
      My view on IQ is essentially that exceptionall people exist, and their interaction with 1st world culture (and in many cases nutrition) makes their IQ´s high becuase of their tendency to train IQ indirectly through their life, the same is true for untrained people, being in the lower quintiles in IQ. The reason exceptionall people train on IQ tests more is becuase its valued in our school culture, and they are more likely to succed training to train more.
      The fact that G is correlated education is what gives it criterion validity, but the validity is weak as G´s correlation to performance on other tasks outside of shcool activities is low or has confounding variables. I think the status of G being only correlated to school is proof that its made to correlate to class as upper class children get better school regardless of their intelligence. I suspect that G´s correlations with things would drastically diminish if you took away the exceptionall people, meaning that an small increase in IQ means nothing for most people. These random “activated normal IQ people” robert talks about are people who have other mental traits outside of conventionall IQ and manage to become better acadamically through those. The accumalation of knowlegde and brain stuff in general seems too complex to boild down to just “a gradient”.
      High and low IQ are therefore somewhat accurate, but iqs around 85-125 ( and especially those around 90-115) seem a little fishy, as environment can make an whole class have an higher IQ. meaning that IQ is kinda useless for most people. And we have tests better at meassuring the traits of high IQ people, and the fact that you can just see when someone is capable of academics, atleast teachers can.
      I do think that IQ tests probably underestimate the amount of smart people as not all smart people are nerdy. And it might also underestimate the amount of dumb people as they can still be studious. Smart people being defined how well everyone would do if environment was equal, or even certain brain traits that get their social use (any sort o performance) varies thanks to its synthesis with the rest of the persons traits, maybe not fitting our convential notion of intelligence.
      IQ tests are common sense (that people good in school tend to have certain traits) but G is not.
      P-FIT seems to show that different aptitude tests are associated with certain regions of the brain, as well as some regions seeming to work on all the tests. and some of the reasearchers posit that sets of brain regions act to work on everything, resembeling G. Maybe an part of our performance is really an gradient based on the structure of the generalized intelligene sets.
      Ill look more into it but brain structure is tied to environment and small differences in performance can not be meassured yet, so this might be totaly congruent with my view that IQ tests are irrelevant for most people.

  6. Human nature is evil – no matter the IQ. Basically what happens in a high IQ society is the crimes become easier to hide – and also the criminals become so arrogant, they don’t believe they cause crimes! Just a theory!

    1. I have a person in my family and he’s upper middle class. But honestly, I don’t think he plays by the rules. If he’s pushed, he’s more ruthless than Stalin – and due to the clean criminal record, respectable job etc.., cops won’t hassle him.
      In fact, the only way these creeps go to jail – is if they do something they can’t cover up – like say child porn. Of course, my family member doesn’t do that.
      OK, I do know the story of this dentist near me who went to jail for prescribing pain pills. I couldn’t believe it – because I didn’t think doctors etc. could go to jail!

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