I will create a business where smart people can make a lot of money if they are productive, but I will only hire people who have never attended college, and they will have to sign a contract promising to never ever attend college or apply to any job that uses standardized tests to recruit workers. Capitalism is a great experiment that allows us to see if intelligence tests can predict success in a relatively laissez-faire Darwinian struggle, but once we start using intelligence tests like the SAT to select the successful, we put our thumb on the scale, and the testers goes from being brilliant fortune tellers to tyrannical self-fulfilling prophets.
The analogy I always use is imagine you were trying to measures the predictive validity of running speed among cheetahs competing for survival, and you found out that someone was interfering with the experiment and giving food to the cheetahs that scored best on the speed test. That would increase the correlation between speed and survival among cheetahs, but the correlation would be less meaningful, because the game has been rigged in favour of the fastest cheetahs.
This is why I despise Ivy League schools. They are actively giving people who score high on IQ equivalent tests (i.e. the SAT) extra opportunities, and thus putting their thumb on the scale. If smart people get ahead, it should be because they figured out how to adapt to capitalism or because the marketplace values the goods and services they provide; it should never be because their test scores gave them extra opportunities. I would rather live in an organic kakistocracy than a socially engineered meritocracy. Thank goodness here in Canada we are free of the Ivy League caste system.
Pumpkin Person 
Please become a billionaire soon. I neve went college and I need a job.
The idea that there is a large, anti-meritocratic effect of elite universities acting as gatekeepers in the US economy is not born out by data. Studies show that students who are talented enough to go to Ivy schools but do not do just as well as those who do go. Therefore, the Canadian system does not differ meaningfully from the US one in terms of the effects of talent and university prestige on outcomes.
“But maybe the kids who got into Yale were simply more talented or hardworking than those who got into Tulane. To adjust for this, Krueger and Dale studied what happened to students who were accepted at an Ivy or a similar institution, but chose instead to attend a less sexy, “moderately selective” school. It turned out that such students had, on average, the same income twenty years later as graduates of the elite colleges. Krueger and Dale found that for students bright enough to win admission to a top school, later income “varied little, no matter which type of college they attended.” In other words, the student, not the school, was responsible for the success”
source: http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2004/10/education-easterbrook
Not saying it is a bad idea, but are you aware that the VC guy Peter Thiel (who happens to be batshit crazy) actually did something very similar: http://www.businessinsider.com/peter-thiel-fellowship-mixed-results-2015-2
The idea that there is a large, anti-meritocratic effect of elite universities acting as gatekeepers in the US economy is not born out by data.
Actually I’m saying elite universities make America more meritocratic, but for the wrong reasons. They cause high IQ people to get ahead because they were smart on a test (SAT) when I would prefer to see high IQ people get ahead only by being smart in life (life should be the test, not the SAT)
Studies show that students who are talented enough to go to Ivy schools but do not do just as well as those who do go. Therefore, the Canadian system does not differ meaningfully from the US one in terms of the effects of talent and university prestige on outcomes.
But the study found Ivy schools did benefit lower class people and minorities. George W. Bush would still have become president had he not went to an Ivy, but I’m not sure Obama and Clinton would have.
“They cause high IQ people to get ahead because they were smart on a test (SAT) when I would prefer to see high IQ people get ahead only by being smart in life (life should be the test, not the SAT)”
“If smart people get ahead, it should be because they figured out how to adapt to capitalism or because the marketplace values the goods and services they provide”
I like your idea ok, but I don’t agree that society as a whole should function according to the determinants of value in the market economy, as you seem to imply, because:
-the SATs can help make educational outcomes more equitable, which was their original intent. The point is to moderate the advantages that are inherited from the social status of parents and unless there is an enormous estate and income tax, these advantages would be even greater in a world where commercial success is more important that it is now.
– there needs to be somewhat arbitrary division of labor in order to have a functional economy, and the currently most effective, semi-meritocratic way to do this is to create arbitrary cutoff points for talent that are rewarded disproportionately to those even marginally below them. Unless you value fairness more than developing the best cheetah team, you would want to give more food to faster cheetahs because you don’t need every cheetah to be a racer at all: some will go to the petting zoo, just as some humans go to the trade schools and the factories. This food rationing isn’t going to be perfect, but it’s the best way to allocate limited resources to produce the best cheetah racing team.
-the skill set that enables scientific achievement is not the same that enables success in creating value in the marketplace, but the former can be just as important to the economy and the public interest. Research for cancer cures may not provide ROI quickly or consistently enough to merit investment within the paradigm of commerciality, which is why we depend on charities, university endowments, and government grants to do this work. Higher education is a tool for identifying highly intelligent but risk-averse people, and rewarding them based on their effort and ingenuity rather than success commercial success. The bureaucracies of charities, government investment panels, and universities are also way to spread out the cost of commercially uncompetitive but potentially beneficial research.
“But the study found Ivy schools did benefit lower class people and minorities. George W. Bush would still have become president had he not went to an Ivy, but I’m not sure Obama and Clinton would have.”
I would argue that fact that the poor and socially uninitiated alone get benefits from Ivies is actually a testament to their meritocratic value, as opposed to consistent with the hypothesis that they unbalance the academic meritocracy. Sure, other schools should also aspire to this, but it may be impossible to simulate the social benefits of Ivies at less prestigious schools.
Intelligence tests were one of the greatest inventions of the social sciences so I don’t dispute their utility, but I would prefer to see capitalism play itself out naturally and see where the chips fall, rather than make sure they fall in the right place just because it’s a fascinating experiment. If we could lessen monopolies and make markets more efficient, there’d be less need for social engineering.
Perhaps for some positions, testing is essential, but people often go to Ivy League schools, not to do research but to get rich, and a high IQ kids from a poor home is no more deserving of money than a retarded kid from a rich home, & charles murray might argue that ripping all the high IQ folks out of poor neighbourhoods has destroyed communities. If smart people want to get rich, let them figure it out on their own; the SAT shouldn’t be picking winners & losers in my opinion
Chartreuse will love this one I’m sure.
Have you heard of the Savannah Hypothesis Pumpkin? It seems to run counter to your claim that intelligence is the ability to adapt. According to the hypothesis, smart people do what’s “evolutionarily novel”, not what is prudent, or even self-preserving. Studies show smart people consume more drugs and alcohol (obviously bad for one’s fitness), prefer monogamy–and sometimes even celibacy–over polygamy (obviously bad for one’s reproductive fitness), and are night owls (which doesn’t seem all that helpful). In fact, higher I.Q. seems to be a hindrance, at least to some degree.
…and meant to say, “Smart people are MORE LIKELY to do those maladaptive things.” If I had a high IQ, I wouldn’t be composing mediocre blog posts; I’d be snorting cocaine with the one and only love of my life, at four in the morning.
Well considering that the hypothesis proposes that adaptations specific to the savannah environment are responsible for certain maladaptive traits, and IQ has been more selected for since *leaving* that environment as an adaption to new environments, it seems like it supports rather than challenges Pumpkin’s adaptation version of intelligence.
C: In some ways. People who’ve left the savanna are better computer programmers, for instance. But look at the first two proclivities I mentioned: they are HIGHLY maladaptive. IF you do herion, you may very well die before reproducing. If you prefer monogamy, you’ll have far less children.
Chartreuse commented on this once. He showed that elite German scientists have very few children, if any at all. How is that adaptive? And you see the same trend throughout the whole world.
Intelligence and fertility are negatively correlated. However, this is mostly due to a total lack of selection pressure in general in the modern world. A few hundred years ago those german scientists might have had significantly higher fertility than most men, because having children was a marker of high social status. Now it is a marker of low social status.
Egh…meant to say that having a high I.Q. seems to be maladaptive.
Yes I’ve heard of the Savannah Hypothesis. It doesn’t really contradict my definition of intelligence because it claims intelligence evolved to cope with evolutionary novel challenges which is another way of saying intelligence is the ability to adapt, because true adaptability is coping with change.
Yes high IQ can be maladaptive from the perspective of your genes, but it seems almost always adaptive from the perspective of the individual if you knew the individual’s goals. The problem is high IQ causes more challenging goals, so it’s a bit of a paradox: a good problem solving machine that creates a lot of problems. The analogy I would use is an air conditioner that generates so much heat to run that your home is actually hotter, despite the fact that it’s doing a great job cooling the air.
Look, I have no illusions Pumpkin. I know I’ll never disabuse you of this adaptability idea because it’s a political (social darwinist) position rather than a scientific position. But I’ll respond to this last comment before I throw in the towel for good.
You’ve only covered one half of the hypothesis. Remember…highly intelligent people do what’s EVOLUTIONARILY NOVEL, NOT WHAT’S NECESSARILY PRUDENT. If “evolutionarily novel” means drinking to excess, shooting up heroin, refusing (like Sidis) to have sex, etc. then the highly intelligent person may very well do these things even though they harm one’s reproductive fitness. In the Darwinian sense these things are highly maladaptive.
Speaking of which…
Sorry, but you’ve said countless times that intelligence is the ability to adapt in Darwin’s world, not the Abraham Maslowesque self-actualizing world. So I call foul. If you believed the latter then you’d be praising gurus living in caves, not rapacious politicians and businessmen.
I like that metaphor. But you you’ve missed the point. If intelligence presents you with intricate, exhausting problems, then it’s burdensome, not adaptive.
This is the last I’ll write about this. I still like you and will keep commenting on your blog, but it’s clear we’ll never see eye-to-eye on this issue, so I say drop it, eh?
Stenind, it’s fine that you disagree with me. Perhaps I’m not making any sense, but this seems to make sense to me
adaptive behavior consists of two parts:
part 1: The ability to adapt to your goals
part 2: Having goals that are adapted to the “goal” of your genes
Only part 1 is my definition of intelligence. So yes, I agree with you that many intelligent people hurt their reproductive success, and thus are maladaptive overall, but I would argue their behavior is still adaptive within a maladaptive system..Of course it’s a matter of semantics.
So I think we’re both right. The same behavior can be both adaptive and maladaptive, depending on whether you’re talking about the goals of the individuals or the “goals” of his genes.
.Now the reason I say intelligence is Darwinian is that through most of evolutionary history, the individual’s goals and the gene’s “goals” were the same. They evolved to be the same. But now cultural evolution has so outpaced biological evolution, that we see a decoupling, especially among the intelligent.
I praise capitalism because it’s a nice metaphor for the Darwinian competition for resources that caused intelligence to evolve in the first place, even though today evolution is no longer about who can survive. it’s now about who can most breed, and thus intelligence is selected against.
The last line of what I wrote seems rather self-important. I wasn’t trying to say, “Be honored, Pumpkin, that I shall comment on your blog.” Sorry if I gave that impression.
I agree with everything else you wrote.
The last line of what I wrote seems rather self-important.
No problem. It takes a lot more than that to offend me.
I agree with everything else you wrote.
Fantastic!
Of the three maladaptions I described, only one (currently) applies to me: a preference for monogamy. I’m not a player. In fact, I think “playing” is disgusting.
But here’s the funny part. By preferring monogamy, I’m being incredibly stupid, since no one *really* prefers monogamy. Earl Child Support’s views on sex are (apparently) less intelligent than my own, yet they are also far MORE prudent, in certain ways.
First sign of what I’d call wisdom in occasionally stopping by this blog. Amazing!
Yes, high IQ is a problem creating function, which is why nerds were rightly looked down on for ages. We’ve gained net nothing from this promoting of an outcast group. I like the air conditioner analogy well enough.
High IQ is nothing more than a caste system marker similar to priestspeak. It’s an in-group cabal creator, one that is as destructive to function and genuine intelligence as the Pharisees were to genuine revelation.
Nowadays computers suck up our time with their useless problems. Technology has not meaningfully advanced for decades. Facebook is known to create mental problems. The product of nerds has become a kind of sinkhole, sucking up energy and money that used to actually do something.
To keep this in perspective of how bad this is it’s only been 30 to 40 years since nerds went from outcasts to praised and very rich. In that short a time it’s been much neat-o toys to stupidly energy and time wasting, socially destructive tech!
Tell me the original social impulses towards nerds weren’t right and I’ll call you a cretin.
High IQ people are strangling innovation with their conformist inclinations in schools. It’s all about tests, not performance in the real world, or even understanding the real world. These trends have narrowed intelligence, not expanded it to even the baseline of average Westerners of the 50s!
In fact, high IQ types have pretty much redefined what it is to be smart, yet the problem is that it is stupid by any reasonably outside comparison. Aside from an in-grouping mechanism there is little left.
Nerds are not hated so much now because they’ve found a niche to get money, the wet dream of modernity. Yet still the correlation of money with IQ is far, far less than nerds want it to be.The lawyers, bankers, and owners pushed nerds down the moment they got some wind under their sails in the late 90s.
And they’ll never have another chance. EVER.
It would be useful to think about what the high IQ type of person is to get yet more insight.
Remember, Nature hates smart people! Proven by science, no less.
I enjoyed parts of this post. I saw a glimmer of wisdom. Well done!
And it seems a lot of these super rich nerds put special emphasis on test scores. People applying for high tech jobs are often horrified to be asked their SAT scores during job interviews. I wonder how much of the current backlash against the super rich is resentment from the cool kids that the autistics have taken over.
Well Pumpkin, I think you may be in trouble if this guy thinks you did well.
Dear The Professor, you have enough anecdote here for an entire Gladwell book, and an even lower fact/anecdote ratio than him. Impressive.
I would love some evidence for the following assertions that you’ve made:
-IQ reached an all time high importance in the last 30-40 years
-higher IQ people are more conformist
-nerds were formerly more “hated” but now they are not
-nature hates smart people, and this is “proven” by science
-technology has not advanced “meaningfully” for decades
-stigmatization of intelligent people is “right”, whatever that means.
To motivate you, here is actual evidence as opposed to comforting, bias-confirming “wisdom”, that each of these ideas is factually incorrect:
your unsupported claim: IQ has become much more important recently.
supported claim: the relationship between IQ and income is roughly the same today, in fact perhaps lower, than it was 100 years ago, when Terman did his famous studies:
see the enormous table of data from many studies starting on page 418:
Click to access gensowski_m6556.pdf
your unsupported claim: high IQ people are more conformist
supported claim: higher iq people are actually less conformist, not more:
http://www.medicaldaily.com/majority-rules-we-tend-conform-unless-we-have-high-iq-345222
http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/01/non-conformity-hidden-driver-behind-positive-relationship-between-iq-and-v
http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2466/pr0.1964.14.1.248
your unsupported claim: nerds were formerly more “hated” but now they are not
intelligence as measure by a high school test was barely (r=.04) but positively correlated with male attractiveness in this 1966 study of dating:http://elainehatfield.com/uploads/3/2/2/5/3225640/13._hatfield_aronson_abrahams__rottman_1966.pdf
In this 2006 study of dating, nearly identical attractiveness-intelligence correlations were found:
Click to access QJE06-gender_diffs.pdf
see page 682
your unsupported claim claim: nature hates smart people, and this is “proven” by science
supported claim: IQ is positively correlated with general health and fitness:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/95822/intelligence-and-body-symmetry.pdf; Also note that science doesn’t “prove” things
your unsupported claim: stigmatization of intelligent people is “right”, whatever that means.
supported claim: differences in intelligence cause jealousy, which results in what is known as tall poppy syndrome, wherein jealousy of intelligence causes a blacklash against talented individuals. A culture of this jealousy has been linked to a reduction in productivity by as much as 20%
Source: https://www.srl.to/u5e2dNha/Crab%20Mentality%2C%20Cyberbullying%20and%20Name%20and%20Shame%20Rankings.pdf
your unsupported claim: technology has not advanced “meaningfully” for decades
This claim is too vaguely worded to be falsifiable. If you would care to define meaningful advancement, your success rate indicates that it would probably be false as well.
In your defense, I found almost an entire sentence that could plausibly be true: “the correlation of money with IQ is far, far less than nerds want it to be.”. Congratulations!
Here is additional information showing that the minimal or nonexistent correlation between intelligence and popularity has not changed over time, if the two dating studies I mentioned aren’t enough by themselves.
Here is a 1943 study that showed no connection between intelligence and social competence:http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/edu/34/4/229/
And her is a 1982 study showing no connection between likability, sociability, and intelligence:http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01116210
Epic pwnage, C. But really, you shouldn’t acknowledge the jive turkeys. It only makes them jivier.
Pumpkin person, the closest thing to your experiment was already done in the aftermath of the breakdown of the ussr. Most people were on an equal footing economically. The only difference was the inequality in education but I’d assume communism was the most meritocratic system we’ve ever had because you can’t buy your way into status. The winners were disproportionately Jewish despite being a discriminated against grouup.
The second closest experiment was during the British raj, when parsis basically outsmarted hundreds of millions of Indians to become wealthy opium shippers and judges. Foreign traders don’t care much about the caste system.
The only difference was the inequality in education
In an ideal experiment, employers wouldn’t be allowed to know anyone’s education, but those with actual skills would just perform better at the job, and those who were incompetent could be fired.
I published a book titled “The Wizard of Gauze” date 2014. But a person who is over 60 and has an IQ of 125 told me that it was not a good idea because his friend wasted over ten thousand dollars publishing his book. So I did not make the last investment of my book which was the advertising part of the process. They were going to advertise it in the New York Times. Now I realize I made a stupid mistake.
I made some new videos on one of my YouTube channels. They are titled “Extroversion and Introversion” and “Virtual Intelligence”. I am really good at understanding higher level concepts and I can learn stuff like math if I have examples of them but it takes time because I need them step by step. A problem I have is that I am not that creative. It is a problem between synthesis and analysis. I know how the simplest elements combine. I love simplicity. Yet creativity is expansive. All I can do is recognize the quality and meaning behind creative works. I cannot produce them. I am sad most of the time because of existentialism. If I cannot create anything it seems that I have to rely on finding examples of transcendent representations. But they are only static representations. I have no way of interacting with them. I used to play video games which gave me a sense of unity between me and those worlds. That I could control the outcome and this gave me a sense of worth. I don’t play video games anymore. Most times it does not feel like where I am nothing is worth doing anything. I think that If I did not have aphantasia I could hold thoughts in my mind. I would feel better about myself. People who can hold thoughts in their minds have a form of telekinesis. Imagination is mental telekinesis. When I am alone in a waiting room my mind is blank. My thoughts are completely unconscious. My memories are unconscious as well. I still have them and am aware of them, they emerge as feelings and intuitions. In my video I explain this as how the cognitive type INTJ works. In Buddhism I think this is called the state of no mind or zen. I just know what to do when I am in the right state, otherwise I have to wait for it to come to me and during that time I pause and don’t do anything. People wonder why I pause so much, they think it is odd. I have nothing in my mind thus “no mind”.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34039054
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
Yesterday a fried helped me picked some fruits and vegetables. He said I should have a glass a day of aloe vera juice. I had a glass yesterday, it did not task to well. I decided I should take it at 6 PM. At that time feels right. I am not to busy at that time, it feels like I got everything done at that time. My brother on the phone said that it helps with internal hydration. Soda is bad for the liver. I bought some water with a ph level of 9. When I buy a new bottle of Omega-3 I am going to take 6 capsules a day instead of 2. My doctor said I have low vitamin D. I now take that in my pills pack.
I find the idea that we are made of atoms very fascinating. I do not think it is a good idea to become a cyborg. I think it is a good idea to have genetic modifications. In the matrix trilogy I know understand how they can download skills into their brain. It requires transmitting signals through the hippocampus. The neocortex stores memories holographically. A.I. will need to do it the same way. A.I. will not need mitochondria to produce energy for thinking. This will dramatically increase the A.I.s IQ because of simulated plasticity. Before A.I. can be a physical robot she/he will be a virtual Avatar. In the movie “I Robot” with will Smith the robot Sonny was a digital creation not a physical robot. I think Sonny would be a great Avatar in a simulated environment. He would have a digital brain to become intelligent. By the year 2020 Avatars will be as smart as humans. GPUs will be used not CPUs. GPUs can calculate matrix graphs allot faster. My Brain waves Java program has limitations because it is on a CPU. If I could I would use my computers GPU. I would use a premade Avatar because it would take me a long time to make one myself. Currently I do not know how to graph 3D objects on a CPU or GPU.
I hope that you Pumpkin person got to my YouTube channel through my email. If you have not what I said was that currently organizations are running simulation of the planet earth and that their predictions get better depending on the resolution of the simulations. Predicating the moons location require low resolution. Predicting humans is the same for A.I. requiring 3D nested loops. Face book graph and other online sources can be used to profile people. Ever since 2011 I have assumed that someone has created an A.I. that mirrors what I do online, a copy cat. It would be very easy to do for smart people. I even thought I has encountered it in 2011. It made me paranoid that that they were monitoring my computer when i was trying to hack it. When I hack it I realized that every computer with windows was connected to the Microsoft network. I am not that good at hacking but I knew enough that the system had internal settings. When I was messed with my firewall and permissions I got locked out and could not reset the password and had to tack it to the repair shop. I know have a new computer custom made in 2014. When virtual reality comes out soon I will be able to learn stuff from people in person. I live in a small town and cannot find someone to teach me. It is difficult to learn thing by myself. That is because of low processing speed and low working memory. I mostly only understand higher level concepts I read in books. Most book I read do not require huge amounts of variables. Higher level concepts are easier to grasp for me because I know how to interpret ambiguity and abstraction. When I try to communicate with people they think I am unscientific because they know more details than me. I realize that I am not good with details. This makes it hard to ask questions. Someone once said I would be more understandable if I did not add all the mystical stuff to my essays. Most people who know science do not understand metaphysics so they think I am a New Age sophist. Philosophy does not help you understand Engineering I guess. That same person also said I almost understood what meta reflection was in my easy. The theme / title was. Synchronicity of meta reflective artificial intelligence. I was trying to understand Ken Wilbers stages of development but now I realize what I said was really a medium level of sociology not meta reflection. I understand meta reflection better now. The person has an IQ of 140.
I hope you can see from this how good my general ability is even though chronometrics score might turnout to be low. I have a good memory for higher order concepts. I love simplicity.
Have you heard of executive function disorders and low processing speed, Pumpkin? Having one or both of those can disable even a highly intelligent person. Take this vlogger, Aspie Sean:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Dhomazhir/about
His FSIQ is 160, yet he’s basically unemployed and insolvent, since his processing speed is so low. (Though he does suffer from other problems, such as dysgraphia and a severe emotional handicap.)
http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/7051.html
http://www.2enewsletter.com/article_2013_05_slow_processing.html
I’ve heard of everything 🙂 Processing speed is measured by the Wechsler scales, but executive function is not. I actually think the correlation between IQ and money would be even higher if IQ tests measured executive functioning.