Iodized salt made Americans smarter

[garbon]

Yeah, we did stuff like that too.  It was fun, but I'm not sure how much it 'helped' us, really.

That's fair. If anything it probably underlined how boring traditional school aspects were.

That said, I did like being able to use it as a free pass to get out of some class time in elementary/middle school.

[merithyn]

So basically, yeah, any IQ over 100 is pretty much worthless. It has no real value.

The good old liberal confusion between statistics and binary math is in play again.  If R^2 of predictor variable is not 1, it must be zero. 

Ah, good ole' DG condescension is in play again. 

My point was that there is no legitimate value to a high IQ in terms of whether one is a success in life or not. It was created as a tool to help those with low IQs, not to assess those with high IQs, because once you show an IQ in the normal range or higher, you will succeed or not based more on your drive to succeed than on your intelligence.

[MadImmortalMan]

Yeah the high-IQ failure is about as ubiquitous as it gets. You see them everywhere.

[DGuller]

Ah, good ole' DG condescension is in play again. 

I really did try to conceal how poorly reasoned I found your statement to be.  Evidently I did not completely succeed. 

My point was that there is no legitimate value to a high IQ in terms of whether one is a success in life or not.

I understood that point, which is why I took exception to it.

It was created as a tool to help those with low IQs, not to assess those with high IQs, because once you show an IQ in the normal range or higher, you will succeed or not based more on your drive to succeed than on your intelligence.

Assuming that is true for the sake of the argument, that still in no way supports your argument.  Just because there is a more powerful predictor out there does not mean that every other predictor from second-powerful on down is useless.

[KRonn]

In my experience gifted programs are pretty much a waste of time and money.  I was in one, and I have at least some idea about how most of the kids in my program have turned out in life (thanks, Facebook!), and I don't really see that we are any more successful than the 'non-gifted' students as a group.  The kids in the gifted program who goofed off and didn't work hard are losers today just like the kids who were not in that program, and the kids who worked hard who weren't in that program are equally successful as the kids who were.  It seems to me like the proportion of losers to non-losers is pretty much the same whether or not you were in our program, too.

That said, the most successful kids of all in my class and the classes around it were all in the program, unless you count the one kid who is a Hollywood actor now and Kermit Cintron, who is a world champion boxer.

Yeah, I'd think that besides being smart a person needs to have ambition, focus, and desire towards a goal to be successful, to do well.

[garbon]

Ah, good ole' DG condescension is in play again. 

I really did try to conceal how poorly reasoned I found your statement to be.  Evidently I did not completely succeed. 

My point was that there is no legitimate value to a high IQ in terms of whether one is a success in life or not.

I understood that point, which is why I took exception to it.

It was created as a tool to help those with low IQs, not to assess those with high IQs, because once you show an IQ in the normal range or higher, you will succeed or not based more on your drive to succeed than on your intelligence.

Assuming that is true for the sake of the argument, that still in no way supports your argument.  Just because there is a more powerful predictor out there does not mean that every other predictor from second-powerful on down is useless.

I would say that I think for the purposes they are being used that there are probably more negatives that stem from IQ tests among those not on the struggling end (people feeling smugly superior and the negative consequences of that) than positive.  Not that it has to be that way, but I'm not sure of anything that IQ is used for as a positive indicator on the high end. I don't count MENSA as a positive.

[merithyn]

I really did try to conceal how poorly reasoned I found your statement to be.  Evidently I did not completely succeed. 

That's because it's impossible for you to hide when you're being a dick. You've proven that time and again.

I understood that point, which is why I took exception to it.

Okay.

Assuming that is true for the sake of the argument, that still in no way supports your argument.  Just because there is a more powerful predictor out there does not mean that every other predictor from second-powerful on down is useless.

So how is it that most people have no idea what their IQ is and do just fine? Not only do just fine, but actually thrive and succeed?

And how about the fact that the IQ test is KNOWN to be wildly inaccurate the further from 100 you get? So, you've got this test that no one ever needs to know the results of for any real-life application and that offers wildly inaccurate scores, and you think that it's not uselesss?

It's a number people use to talk about how brilliant they/their spouse/their children are, and nothing more. You feel free to believe whatever you want about it.

[DGuller]

So how is it that most people have no idea what their IQ is and do just fine? Not only do just fine, but actually thrive and succeed?

WTF does that have to do with anything?  Why do you need to know your own IQ in order for IQ to be predictive of one's success in life?  How are the two things related in any way?

And how about the fact that the IQ test is KNOWN to be wildly inaccurate the further from 100 you get?

So?  Metrics don't need to be 100% reliable to be useful.  And I think the word you're looking for is "imprecise" rather than "inaccurate", and you can leave off "wildly" entirely because it's just fluff.

So, you've got this test that no one ever needs to know the results of for any real-life application and that offers wildly inaccurate scores, and you think that it's not uselesss?

Of course it's not useless.

It's a number people use to talk about how brilliant they/their spouse/their children are, and nothing more.

A lot of tests are strong proxies for IQ.  Like SATs, for example.  Those are used somewhere important, I'm sure.

You feel free to believe whatever you want about it.

I prefer to reason rather than believe.    Since studies show correlation between IQ and various metrics that make up one's success in life, I have to reason that it is stupid to claim that IQ is useless.  You're free to believe things that are untrue, you've proven yourself more than capable of that time and again, but I'll opt to stick with rational thinking and reason when I can. 

[The Brain]

If I invent a method that gives me a 1% chance every week to predict the lottery numbers, would that be useful or useless?

[merithyn]

blah blah blah

Okay

[Jacob]

It is concerned with changes in people born in 1924.  When would they be recruited? 

 

[jimmy olsen]

This reminds me of a map I saw once that tried to give each nation an IQ score, I think based on the average estimated IQ of its citizens.  IIRC China and Japan had the highest scores, and there were some nations in sub-Saharan Africa where the average IQ was in the mentally retarded range.

According to wikipedia, using today's value the IQ of the US in 1932 would have been 80.

It could be that whatever social or environmental factors that have caused the raise  in American IQ since then, have simply not yet happened there.

[DGuller]

blah blah blah

Okay

I may have been wrong about you not reasoning your positions out. 

[Neil]

You know, it's also possible that, for some reason, in 1942 the Army started recruiting from a much broader base than they did prior to that.  I wonder what could have happened in late 1941 to cause bright young men to enlist in the army?

Would that account for why IQ went up in low-iodine areas though? Presumably you'd also get an influx in stupid young men too.

See, but the key was the social change.  Stupid young men had always joined the army, but it wasn't until the war that educated young men really entered the army en masse, not just in the elite officer corps.  That pushes the average up.

[garbon]

I'm not sure I'd agree with that.