I call myself Pumpkin Person. All my life I’ve been fascinated by abnormal psychology, human evolution, IQ, and horror. I have another blog but it’s no longer active because it made more sense to blog from just this location.
Pumpkin Person
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What is the color of your eyes and of your hairs ?
Fuschia. She’s a feminist.
Hi Pumpkin Person
i found this cool link on facebook
http://en.nametests.com/test/how-high-is-your-iq/930/
they analyse all your data on facebook and who your friends are and how smart they are based on likes posts and book they have read. it seems that data analytics have have become advanced enough to measure crystallized intelligence with picture recognition through deep learning and text analysis. i post lots of science stuff on facebook and beautiful pictures and by doing 20 tests on this sight they are accurate to the degree that they have picture recognition and translation. one of my friend on facebook is Stefan wolfram and this increases my IQ score but just like certain tests only measure so high because of norming i think the highest score you can get on nametest is 155 which is what i got.
http://i782.photobucket.com/albums/yy102/JeremyRexWilson/My%20social%20IQ_zpsbtvc7tyl.png~original
my fluid intelligence is still really low at FSIQ 108 on ther wais 4 but i know you like to evaluate IQ methodologies so i though id post this message because i wanted to know if this nametest site has good methodology. i think this is a form of artificial intelligence.
I read the “about” page of your former blog, with this and our exchanges in the comment section, I got to understand you better.
First thing, I kind of appreciate you, you don’t pretend having universal and omniscient eyes and you are quite honest with respect to the extent of your knowledge of the world.
However, when I read about your fascination for IQ, how amazing this number appears to you with its ability to “predict” various life outcomes, you sound to me as someone who just met god. A world that was mysterious and obscure to you suddenly became limpid and self-evident thanks to IQ and genes (or rather heritability) much like god and the holy spirit are in other belief systems.
But have you ever thought of the possibility that life outcomes could predict IQ as they predict health, educational attainment, professional success and other things ? Have you ever considered studying what causes the life of each individual to turn as it does, from birth to death ? Have you also tried to put yourself in a different person’s shoes and figure out how different could be your perception of the world in a different context ? Do you really think your theories help you understanding others ? Do you feel comfortable judging other people’s intelligence when you did not even bother understanding their lives and the external factors they have to deal with ?
I searched your blog with the search function but no blog post are about CHC
“Emotional intelligence” is a mix of good personality traits and high IQ. Nothing more.
These are my scores from 2009 on the Wais 4
WMI – 103
VCI – 117
VIQ – 110
PRI – 120
PSI – 92
PIQ – 106
FSIQ – (110 + 106) / 2 = 108
GAI – 115
———————-
My PSI on the test was way to low. It could be higher because on the symbol subtests I could have used a technique to get into the 99 percentile. So for PSI I substituted my score with the score I got on the Stroop test and the coefficient of it.
WMI – 103
VCI – 117
VIQ – 110
PRI -120
Stroop test 99%*0.8 = 79.2% = 112
PSI – 112
PIQ – 116
FSIQ – (110 + 116) / 2 = 113
113 = 80th percentile
———————-
IQ is about metabolic efficiency which is the amount of energy it takes you brain to solve a problem. Every 5 point increase in IQ is double the metabolic efficiency.
metabolic efficiency = 2^((IQ – 100) / 5)
113 – 100 = 13
13 / 5 = 2.6
2^2.6 = 6
IQ 113 = 6x metabolic efficiency
Recently I have been taking cogentin and I think this has increased my IQ by 5 points so I should have an IQ of 118.
2^((118 – 100) / 5) = 12.12
IQ 118 = 12x metabolic efficiency
In the future we can give everyone smart drugs. A breeding program will not be necessary because drugs will be developed before designer babies. And nanotechnology will happen by 2025. We can improve everyone and this will happen soon.
I’m currently taking abnormal psych. My professor GUSHES over Freud and how he was “so important to the field of psychodynamics”. Here’s the funny part. I can say all the wrong things about something, someone can refute me, then people can say RACEREALIST WAS SO IMPORTANT TO THE FIELD! ALL THINGS IN THE FIELD EITHER COME FROM HIM OR ARE A RESPONSE TO HIM! See how stupid that sounds?
I find it so funny. Psychology is subjective, and you will get different things from different psychologists. We know that 80 percent of tests cannot be replicated, save for IQ tests.
She talked about ink blots last week and I said is there a book or something that shows examples of what each one may mean? She said no and it’s all subjective to the individual researcher. That is wild!! This is why the field of abnormal psych is a joke IMO. There needs to be an objective, not subjective, method to evaluate things.
Have you read what Kevin MacDonald says about Feud in the Culture of Critique?
I haven’t read Culture of Critique but I have mixed views on Freud.
What do you think of Freud? I think abnormal psychology is interesting, but it’s so subjective to the individual researcher that it’s pretty much useless imo.
You should read The Culture of Critique. It’s a great book. You. Should read all three of professor MacDonald’s books on the psychology of the Jews. They’re great reads.
I think psychology can be a good field, sans Jewish influence.
A lot of Freud’s ideas are so hard to prove or disprove that I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about them. They’re not really science.
Freud is pretty much a hack. Basing his theories off of his childhood experiences as well as his sample of patients, which consisted of mostly women, and some people still talk about it and gush over him.
Freuds sociological work is very impressive. His psychology is conjecture. His personal success as a psychiatirst with patients is not that good considering his acclaim in the 20th century.
Racerealist doesn’t understand that all science started from intuition.
Wanna ask Newton about whether he thinks the Bible is literal?
I know that. Just because we take things as literal doesn’t mean they are though. Freud is one of the biggest hacks of all time. Right up there with Boas.
Most of Freuds theories are trash, some of them have some utility though. Moreover, like 80 percent of his patients were women. That doesn’t carry over to men.
Like all field originators, most of it looks thrash with the passing of time. Field originators rely on intuition more than induction at the start.
He had very limited tools, and there was nobody else really writing about it. The statistics and analytics tools were nowhere near advanced. The idea his patients were not a representative sample size he wouldn’t accept, nor grasp, nor care.
Even physical medicine back then looks borderline quack now.
His sociology work is 1st rate though.
And some of his theories do stand the test of time.
Which makes me think Freud is kind of like me.
I don’t need to see my wife come home smelling like sex 5 times on Saturday morning before I beat her up. Its not a good way to create knowledge waiting around like that. For a psychologist to say anything with great replicability and external val, you’re talking multi-million dollar experiments and crazy luck with sampling. Strong observation and inferences from the guys taking data and as Aquinas says taking a logical leap and pretending there is a certain variables about people which always tend to be and do the best you can controlling everything else.
Psychology is bloody tough, if done ‘scientifically’. If done intuitively like Freud, sure 50% looks stupid, but the other stuff at least can be published and we have something.
I know about the test hierarchy, alpha/beta, reflexivity, and other stuff through observation in the first order. I prove it in the second. But that doesn’t mean what I observe is not reality in the first order perhaps. The question you would have then is whether it’s true or logical to say what I see makes sense.
And so we created a fairly autistic way to standardise ‘makes sense’ to the masses.
But, you know, me and Sigmund make some mistakes reading too much into things. And it can be embarrassing.
If Freud was alive today, he would be the world leader in the field, because he was a genius and thought systematically, and with stats and larger samples, he could make more robust claims.
https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/71684/RANDALL-THESIS.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
You would find the information on page 24 very interesting.
IQ and SAT data was pulled from students at Rice University who participated in this study.
Average SAT: 1420/1600 with an SD of 113.
Average Wonderlic: 30/50 with an SD of 7.
I was surprised by the result. 30/50 is an IQ around 120 or so. 7/50 is an SD around 14.
Comments:
1)SAT practice probably inflated the g-loading of the student’s scores. Nevertheless, they are really intelligent as a group. This becomes clear if you look at the fairly high mean and the very high standard deviation. 15% of students have IQ’s above 134. 5% of students have IQ’s above 144.
2) This report was published in 2010. The average SAT of Rice admits have increased greatly recently. The average IQ probably has too.
Interesting blog. I was somewhat surprised reading your summaries of average IQ for different races, given the negative response Dawkins got from making very similar observations. The focus on facts rather than concern over who you might offend is quite refreshing … and something I have an appreciation for as an Aspie. Speaking of Aspies, do you think there is a difference in prevalence according to race? There seems to be more Caucasian Aspies than Negroid or Mongoloid, but that could just be sampling bias.
Also on the topic of Aspies (or ASD in general), have you seen the RAADS-R?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3134766/
It’s a lot cheaper than a FMRI, has close to the same accuracy, and I found it was easy to self-administer.
p.s. you can add my 150 WAIS-IV IQ (administered 4 years ago by a psychologist) to your collection of IQ data.
What did Dawkins say about race and IQ? I know be accepts the taxonomic reality of race.
I think Aspergers follows Rushton’s rule. Asians seem to be more autistic and blacks less so.
How much was the WAIS – IV?
PP
Do you know what the correlation is between 8th grade achievement tests, ie the GEPA and IQ is? Or if there is a strong correlation at all?
Was reading your old blog and saw the poll attempting to guess your IQ. What did the correct answer turn out to be?
Hi, PP. Could you estimate Noam Chomsky’s IQ?
Yes I will
And soon
What about Ben Shapiro? goyta know
Yes, I promised to get to Shapiro too
Also, you did Franzen so maybe you have a sense of David Foster Wallace? Have always been curious about what his iq might be.
yes I’ve been planning to do an article on Wallace for years. Stay tuned.
P.P. what would be Marx’s IQ? I’d like to know what you estimate is the intelligence of the Left’s main deity.
Can you take on Ed Witten? I’d like to know in your estimate what’s his IQ.
What’s Charles Murray’s IQ according to you?
My ability to think.
Hold information and
manipulate it at speed
IQ 92
Verbal and Spatial/logic
IQ 130
Quote
“Intelligence is the ability to synthesize information usefully.”
Animekitty’s view:
Map reality, manipulate/change the map to change reality. (survival)
via GIPHY
In 2009 I took the WAIS-3 not 4
I found out 3 has picture arrangement but 4 does not.
WAIS-3 scores
VC – 117
PR – 120
WM – 103
PS – 92
FSIQ – 108
(g) 115
——-
2016
WAIS-4
FSIQ – 113
(g) 130
VC – 132
PR – 121
WM – 95
PS – 86
1 second = 1,000 milliseconds.
axons fire every 5 milliseconds is 200 impulses a second.
IQ 93 = reaction time of 300 milliseconds.
This is 60 of 200 impulses.
An increase of 2 milliseconds = 1 IQ point.
IQ 93 is 60 of 200 impulses. (300 milliseconds)
IQ 143 is 40 of 200 impulses. (200 milliseconds)
IQ 193 is 20 of 200 impulses. (100 milliseconds)
IQ 218 is 10 of 200 impulses. (50 milliseconds)
IQ 230 is 5 of 200 impulses. (25 milliseconds)
I doubt reaction time can go below 50 milliseconds.
But reaction time would only have to do with processing speed.
Brain structure would be important for WM, VC and PR.
Being fast you also have to do something significant.
Otherwise your an Autistic Savant.
Hey Pumpkin, is there a good way to combine the IQ scores/g-factors from two or more data points?
Averaging doesn’t seem to work very well.
For instance, let’s say you’re 2.5 SD above the mean on a test that correlates with g by 0.8.
So your g-factor can be estimated as 2.5*0.8 = 2 SD above the mean, right?
Then if you do another test that correlates 0.7 with g, you would expect to score 2*0.7 = 1.4 SD above the mean on that test, right? (Let’s assume the two tests only correlate because of the g-factor)
However, if you then tried to estimate a g-factor from the second test, you only get 1.4*0.7 = 0.98 SD above the mean.
So you got two data points for the g-factor: 2 SD and 0.98 SD.
Two data points should yield a better estimate than one.
However, even though the first indicated a g-factor of 2 SD above the mean and on the second test you got the score predicted from a g-factor of 2 SD above the mean, any sort of averaging between the two g-estimates will result in a g-factor of less than 2 SD.
That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
What about averaging the raw test scores?
The two tests together probably can’t have a g-correlation much higher than 0.9.
To get a g-factor of 2 SD from that, the average raw scores would have to be 2/0.9 = 2.2 SD
I can’t think of any sort of correlation weighted average of 2.5 SD and 1.4 SD that results in 2.2 SD.
And I think the problem would just get worse with a greater difference in the correlations between the tests.
What about averaging the raw test scores?
The two tests together probably can’t have a g-correlation much higher than 0.9.
To get a g-factor of 2 SD from that, the average raw scores would have to be 2/0.9 = 2.2 SD
I can’t think of any sort of correlation weighted average of 2.5 SD and 1.4 SD that results in 2.2 SD.
And I think the problem would just get worse with a greater difference in the correlations between the tests.
The problem is you’re using the average score when you should be using the composite score:
https://pumpkinperson.com/2018/10/03/combining-iq-scores-composite-standard-deviations/
Thanks a lot Pumpkin, I thought you if anyone would know how to do this!
Ah, the magic of numbers…
If anyone is curious about my example the calculation turn out thusly:
(2.5+1.4)/square root of (1+1+2(0.7*0.8)) = 2.21 SD above the mean IQ
Since we know how each test correlates with g and with each other, I think that means the combined test should correlate with g by (0.8+0.7)/square root of (1+1+2(0.8*0.7)) = 0.85
Hey Pumpkin, has anyone compared racial IQs the following way:
Listing the age at which high IQ groups have the same IQ as the adults of lower IQ groups.
For instance if the average adult african-american has the same IQ the average white 13.5* year old, it’s easy to intuitively understand what intellectual level they’re on.
*Assuming adult IQ is reached at age 16, a rough estimate gives 0.84*16 = 13.44 year old. Looking up at what age someone with 100 IQ on age approriate norms scores 84 IQ on adult norms would be much more accurate I assume.
Yes Rushton would do that a lot
I couldn’t find anything like that from Rushton with a quick googling, so I estimated an alternative ethnic group IQ list myself:
Adult Equals Ashkenazi Age
East Asian 15.2
White 14.4
Black 11.5
Aboriginal Australian 6.9
Calculated assuming Ashkenazi have an average IQ of 110 and that IQ is more or less stable after age 16 and using the table at http://miyaguchi.4sigma.org/BloodyHistory/ratioiq.html
Feel free to check the accuracy of this by for example looking at what age someone someone with 110 IQ would score 84 IQ on the 16-year WISC norms.
Story that might interest you Pumpkin:
https://nextshark.com/genius-physics-brothers-carson-huey-you/
P.P., now that the last season of GoT is being broadcasted, it would be a good moment for you to give your estimate of George R. R. Martin’s IQ.
Hi Pumpkin Person,
I was very intrigued by your extrapolation of the WAIS-IV scaled scores with Jesse Watters, and was wondering if you’d do the same for my scores? I only took the 10 core subtests (limited budget), and I’ve included raw scores for the subtests I hit the ceiling on.
Test: score (raw)
Block Design: 19 (66)
Similarities: 19 (36)
Digit Span: 19 (58/48 — asked a family member to “extend” the ceiling, though I don’t know how valid this was; I ended up sequencing 12 digits forward and 10 digits backward)
Matrix Reasoning: 18
Vocabulary: 19 (55)
Arithmetic: 19 (22 — felt like it could’ve been at least 22 scaled; the questions all felt extremely doable)
Symbol Search: 19 (100/60 — finished in 72/120 seconds and had time to check all of my answers [I didn’t end up changing any], so this is another extrapolation)
Visual Puzzles: 17
Information: 19 (26)
Coding: 16
I was 19 years old at the time of the test.
Thanks!
Interesting. I’ll take a look and respond in more detail within the next several days.
Conan O’Brien’s head seems pretty big:
The most sophisticated idea about native intelligence (“IQ”) was a late Soviet idea, which showed up in a Dictionary of Psychology there whose exact name is not longer with me. It claimed, with complete seriousness, that intelligence is THE ABILITY TO WORK ALONE. Naturally, by “work” one means PRODUCTIVE WORK, whose objective measure is, of course, strictly social and communal, based on the long-term cultural effect of the intellect in question. I do believe this is the correct view and consider my own abilities, if any I have, in that light. Unlike most IQ measurements, nothing of worth on this view is COMMUNAL except by implication, both in origin and prospect. An interesting thought from communists, no? The best idealist context to keep in mind is the famous remark of great Plotinus (d. 270 A.D.) to the effect that all of life is THE FLIGHT OF THE ALONE TO THE ALONE.
Are you familiar with Karl Pilkington, Pumpkin?
He’s this unintentionally hilarious British guy with an IQ of 83. Literally any anything with him and Ricky Gervais is hilarious, for example:
Also, there’s a HBD subreddit in case didn’t know: https://www.reddit.com/r/HBD/top/?t=all
Apparently there’s a site that lists the known ancestries of celebrities, for example:
https://ethnicelebs.com/oprah-winfrey
https://ethnicelebs.com/bill-gates
https://ethnicelebs.com/boris-johnson
They should really get a “sort by popularity”-feature though.
This is the HoF page of your blog, Pumpkin. I’m honored to be part of the club.
Everyone has different ideas about what is smart. Everyone’s perception of you will be different and will rely on their worldview. That is why u cant impress everyone, unless youre the chosen one!
Let’s say virtually all the IQ differences between races are caused by (additive?) genetic factors. Let’s also say we have a polygenic score that’s equally accurate for all races.
Then polygenic scores, which exclude non-genetic causes of IQ variation, should have less variation and therefore less overlap between races than IQ test scores do, right?
In other words, phenotypic IQ measurements include non-genetic sources of variation that doesn’t favor any race but which increases the size of the standard deviation as compared to genotypic measurements.
So if polygenic scores were used as entrance exams for example, even fewer blacks would get in than by using IQ-like tests, even if the polygenic scores were more predictive? The opposite of what people would expect to happen by taking environment out of the equation.
With a polygenic score that captures all the additive heritability(0.6?), would that mean the black-white polygenic score gap would be 1SD/0.6 = 1.67 SD?
where did you get the 0.6 figure from?
I read somewhere that additive or narrow heritability was between 0.5-0.7. But the specific number doesn’t matter, feel free to use your own best estimate.
What I’m really wondering is if the general math and logic of my previous post is sound?
This study that takes into account assortative mating apparently puts additive heritability at 0.44: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10519-011-9507-9
Would that mean the black-white 1 SD IQ gap / 0.44 = 2.27 SD black-white polygenic score gap? That would mean only 1% of blacks would have polygenic score higher than the average white.
When everyone is walking around with access to accurate polygenic scores on 23andme or wherever, that’s going to be VERY noticeable. Of course they’ll probably do something like only compare people of the same race, so the average IQ of every race becomes 100.
Not sure why you’re using narrow as opposed to broad herritability. But either way the logic is not right. You should be dividing by the square root of heriitability, not heritability. Rushton & Jensen made the same mistake I once noticed.
Because the current methods of constructing polygenic scores are based on genetic variants that work additively, no?
Ok, so if the additive heritability is 0.5, then the polygenic scores gaps between races will be 1 / √( 0.5 ) = 1.41 times as large as the IQ gaps between those races? I’ve never heard anyone mention that racial polygenic gaps will end up bigger than racial IQ gaps, very interesting I think!
I don’t really get why you’re supposed to take the square root, but if even Rushton and Jensen got it wrong then I’m not going to feel too badly about not understanding that 🙂
I’ve never heard anyone mention that racial polygenic gaps will end up bigger than racial IQ gaps, very interesting I think!
That’s only under the scenario that it’s 100% caused by additive genetics, a scenario not even Rushton or Jensen endorsed. Richard Lynn & Lion of the Blogosphere claimed it was 100% genetic, but never heard anyone claim it was 100% additive genetic.
As to why you take the square root, heritability is measured by sibling reared apart studies under the assumption that they only correlate because of shared DNA (whether that assumption is true is another topic). Since shared DNA is the proposed cause of the correlation, the phenotype-genotype correlation is going to be higher than the sibling reared apart correlation, because your separated sibling’s phenotype is just a proxy for your genotype.
“That’s only under the scenario that it’s 100% caused by additive genetics”
If you take the broad heritability of IQ is 0.8, that means there’s still non-genetic variation being removed by looking at racial polygenic gaps rather than racial IQ gaps. Variation like: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/03/16/non-shared-environment-doesnt-just-mean-schools-and-peers/
For example, consider blacks with IQs of exactly 100. They’re 15 points above the black average. With a heritability of .8, that means they average 15*0.8=12 IQ points above the average black person genetically, right? In other words, their polygenic scores would only indicate IQs of 85+12=97, given accurate polygenic scores. Meanwhile whites with IQs of 100 will average polygenic scores of 100.
And vice versa whites with IQs of exactly 85, will average polygenic scores of 88.
Therefore there will be less overlap in polygenic scores between races than there is in IQ scores.
In other words, races will regress towards their mean on polygenic scores relative to their IQ scores.
“heritability is measured by sibling reared apart studies”
Isn’t heritability measured in all kinds of ways, including twin studies for example?
“phenotype-genotype correlation is going to be higher than the sibling reared apart correlation”
Yeah, but heritability estimates already take that into account, right? They’re not just reporting the sibling reared apart correlation and calling that the heritability estimate, right?
For example, consider blacks with IQs of exactly 100. They’re 15 points above the black average. With a heritability of .8, that means they average 15*0.8=12 IQ points above the average black person genetically, right? In other words, their polygenic scores would only indicate IQs of 85+12=97, given accurate polygenic scores. Meanwhile whites with IQs of 100 will average polygenic scores of 100.
You would multiply by the square root of the within race heritability (whatever it may be), not by the within race heritability. And the mean you regress to depends on your assumption about the cause of the BW gap.
Isn’t heritability measured in all kinds of ways, including twin studies for example?
yes
“phenotype-genotype correlation is going to be higher than the sibling reared apart correlation”
Yeah, but heritability estimates already take that into account, right? They’re not just reporting the sibling reared apart correlation and calling that the heritability estimate, right?
The pheontypic correlation between MZ twins raised apart is itself a measure of heritability. If the correlation is 0.7, broad heritability is reported as 0.7. But note that broad heritability is symbolized H2. That’s because heritability is defined as the percentage of phenotypic variation associated with DNA, and the percentage of the variation is a correlation squared. In this case, it’s the square of the phenotype-genotype correlation (when environment is assumed to vary randomly).
Oh right, I guess sibling studies also includes twin studies.
“The pheontypic correlation between MZ twins raised apart is itself a measure of heritability. If the correlation is 0.7, broad heritability is reported as 0.7. But note that broad heritability is symbolized H2. That’s because heritability is defined as the percentage of phenotypic variation associated with DNA, and the percentage of the variation is a correlation squared.”
If heritability is correlation squared, why is both correlation and heritability 0.7? Wouldn’t broad heritability be 0.7*0.7 = 0.49 then?
Man, why is there always so much squaring with this stuff? 🙂
Anyway, if heritability is 0.7, then 1 / √( 0.7 ) = 1.2. In that case, racial differences not caused by environmental factors will be 20% larger in polygenic scores than in phenotypic measurements, if I’m understanding right?
Yes assuming that were the case (which we can’t assume) your math makes sense
I get hella clout off this page. Lol.
Arthur Jensen 1980 Donahue Talk Show Appearance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtoqK1gsmHI
OMG two of my heroes in one discussion. I had no idea Jensen ever went on Donahue! Thanks for finding this!
No problem!
How would you deal with having a low IQ?
By trying to befriend some high IQ people to help guide me through life
That will make you dependant on that person.
By the way is there any interesting studies that suggests IQ can be increased?
I hate myself so much because I’m probably in the below average range.
The usefulness in IQ is in predicting life outcomes. If you have a good life outcome, why worry about it? If you have a bad life outcome, you’re better off trying to focus on improving that directly.
Improve what exactly? If fluid intelligence is fixed, then I don’t see any point in trying to improve it.
By the way, what would respond to people who’d say I.Q is not useful to predict an individual future?
Hey Some Guy,
If intelligence is fixed, then what would you try to improve?
And how’d you reply to people to reject the idea that IQ predicts individuals success in life?
I meant working on whatever is bad about your life directly. As an analogy, if you’re depressed about your basketball skills, it’s better to practice more basketball instead of moping about your height.
For the second question: https://www.iq-tests.eu/images/800-2.png
Dear some guy,
Practising math and trying to improve your mathematical reasoning and abilities is limited by your fluid intelligence. and our intelligence is hugely influenced by our genetics, and through observation I can see that the odds are against me.
I’m from north africa, my parents are simple people, my father is an elementary teacher, and mom is a household. There is three people in our familly that had good mathematical skills. And two of them are my father’s brothers, the younger is an engineer. He is the supeiour one. Maybe my father wasn’t that lucky. My engineer uncle is married with a smart woman and they have three boys now, and they’re really smart. The eldest one is 10 years old, and he’s already good with numbers, and a trouble maker 🙂
I hope they do something great with their abilities and not waste them. In fact it fires my curiosity to see that people who have superiour intelligence in our familly are males. Females in our familly aren’t that bright, but our social and cultural ideas are probably the ones to blame here. From IQ stasitics it should be the opposite because males are more likely to be really stupid or really smart. Oh wait, mabye we inherited stupidity, that explains things.
The implications of my observations are clear. Given how intelligence is affected by things out of our control and it’s increasing importance as jobs gets more complex and Automation improves, I will be jobless and maybe without any worth to the world economy. And even without that, I had many aspirations to give the world something, to contribute positively especially like how many great people did. But the fact is, I won’t ever be able to do that. I don’t have the power to contribute to anything. I can’t help humanity through increasing our scientific knowledge. I can’t help find solutions to many great problems that affects humanity.
Another thing that’s interesting,the top students in my schools don’t think about intelligence in the right way. I mean they don’t even know the effect of genes and how intelligence is affected by everything from your mom’s achievements in life to the fetus stage developements. They see intelligence as something you develop through practicing skills more, but their parents have good status in our society and they both mistake my love for knowledge and science for intelligence. They keep telling me I’m smart, which is dangerous, I can’t afford to have wrong self-image and false hopes, only to be crushed. But again given our coutry IQ of 84, they’re probably aren’t that smart compared to japanese smart people.
And in my former comment, I used LanguageTools. It’s an open source software that alerts you when you have grammatical errors, and if you have bad writing it tells you something is wrong. I then figure out a better way to write, and all this is to make my writing a bit clear. This time I didn’t use it, so now you can see how bad my writing is. I probably repeat things and this could be much better. I give attention to my writings and read it. If something can be done in a better way I edit it.
In other words I probably can’t write in a good way if I don’t read and edit. Which again reflects my low intelligence.
But your idea about direct practice is cool, really. Even though I’m stupid I guess I can improve. But to what degree? Will I improve enough to get a job? Will I improve enough to be great in that thing?
-Elias
I think what they meant is that if you have an IQ of 75, you don’t have to be in the 55% of HS dropouts. Or in 32% of women who get pregnant with an illegitimate baby.
So if you have an IQ of 90, that doesn’t mean your chances of becoming a university professor is 0.
The original idea is from Scott Alexander in his now-closed blog, Slate Star Codex.
By the way, just from the way you write you seem smarter than average to me.
“I think what they meant is that if you have an IQ of 75, you don’t have to be in the 55% of HS dropouts.”
Well yes, but I linked that info as an answer to your question “And how’d you reply to people to reject the idea that IQ predicts individuals success in life?”.
Math isn’t everything, Scott Alexander for example says he struggles with math. He probably has the best piece on this very topic actually: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/31/the-parable-of-the-talents/
I used math just as an example.
And thanks for that link. It’s a great blog post.
One of the commenters said people know that intelligence is the most important thing that separates humans from other animal, so it follows that the more intelligent you are the more human you are. I think he endorses the idea. But that would mean a SAI will the most human of all of us. And a dog with an IQ of 130 will be then a human. It’s absurd. But I guess it’s also true. In religious holy texts and in ancient philosophy you can see how people believed and still believe God creates humans and made them superior to other animals through the gift of intelligence. What do you think?
-Elias
“But that would mean a SAI will the most human of all of us.”
Yes, or if a more intelligent alien race showed up they would be more “human”. Is an octopus “more human” than a stupider monkey, even though the monkey is much more human-like in every other way?
I would say all humans are equally human until we invent cyborgs or something, but being of average intelligence is by definition more typically human 🙂
“I would say all humans are equally human until we invent cyborgs or something, but being of average intelligence is by definition more typically human ”
I agree with you on that, and there are other important traits that separates humans from other animals, such as self-awareness and the continuous struggle between our rational and animal sides, our social nature etc…
A cyborg is a human/machine blend, so that’s a tough one to interpret.
To get back to the original subject. A man who is genetically very skinny and weak may try to train hard and eat more calories to get bigger and increase his strength etc…, but he won’t be able to become a powerlifter or surpass someone who is genetically stronger. You can become better at almost anything, but you can’t be good except at few things. Some people can become the best, and some people can never be good at anything.
Try to imagine this scenario: You’re in a programming company, you’ve been trying your hardest to solve a problem, it’s been two weeks now, and you’re still stuck. Your co-worker is a fairly intelligent person. You’ll ask for their help, you will watch painfully how they solve your ‘hard’ problems in a matter of seconds. It’s not just about being able to do a job, it’s about being aware of your inferiority and what that means for your dreams and hopes. Sometimes even a modest life can’t be attained.
“You’ll ask for their help, you will watch painfully how they solve your ‘hard’ problems in a matter of seconds.”
That could happen even to a genius physicist.
“Sometimes even a modest life can’t be attained.”
Sometimes, but I don’t see any sign that your IQ would prevent that.
“That could happen even to a genius physicist.”
Of course. But it could happen once in a while. It’s not the same as someone who would struggle with what others see as basic stuff.
“Sometimes, but I don’t see any sign that your IQ would prevent that.”
I’m officially out of my mind. Just days before I wished just to attain a modest life, find a job, buy a little house, buy a thousand book… But now I feel “Why should I just get an average life? I deserve more!”.
My friend read this. He told me that I’m just finding excuses not to improve myself. Maybe he’s right, from my comments I can see that I’m egoistical. All I think about is myself “Why can’t I have that?”, “Why would they have it and I don’t?”, “Why can’t I”.
I feel extreme envy for those who have superior intellect. This in itself is a disease.
If you feel disgusted, or you want to end this discussion, just tell me.
This discussion was fun regardless of its conclusion.
-Elias
I don’t mind, but all I can really tell you is what Jordan Peterson would tell you: https://youtu.be/i-rifSRcO1A
Have you seen the study: “Born to Lead? The Effect of Birth Order on Non-Cognitive Abilities”?
Don’t be fooled, it covers cognitive ability too 🙂
For example, in five child families, the IQs are this many points lower than the firstborn child:
Second child -2.4
Third child -4.2
Fourth child -5.7
Fifth child -7.0
N = 39000 Swedes from five-child families.
“The sample is restricted to men in families with at least two males born 1952-82 with valid draft records. Cognitive abilities are measured at approximately age 18 and standardized by year of draft in the full sample of draftees. Each column represents a separate regression. All regressions control for family fixed effects and dummy variables for child’s year of birth. Omitted category is first child. ”
Anyway, there’s specific data for different family sizes, for different sex of older siblings and for biological vs social birth order(“Social birth order is the birth order of the child excluding older siblings who have been put up for adoption, who were still born or who died within two months of birth”). Apparently, the decreased IQ is entirely due to social birth order, while later biological birth order actually increases cognitive ability. Not sure if there could be some problem with the representativity of the biological birth order cohort.
Not sure how all that fits with the low shared environmental influence on adult IQ in heritability studies?
Not interested, pumpkin?
I’ve long known that birth order is negatively correlated with IQ. There are several possible reasons: 1) low IQ people have bigger families, 2) more genetic mutations when parents are older, 3) prenatal damage with each child etc.
Within family designs like this get around 1). 2) and 3) are supposedly ruled out by looking at biological and social birth order like I mentioned this study does.
Anyway, the sample size of half a million allows for better estimations of effect size than you’ve previously used IIRC.
how does it get around 2? Even within families, parents have more mutations when they conceive their later born kids. What’s social birth order? When a first born is adopted and raised as a third born? But then his IQ might be low not because he’s socially third born but because his biological mother was some unwed pregnant teen who was too dumb to use birth control.
“Social birth order is the birth order of the child excluding older siblings who have been put up for adoption, who were still born or who died within two months of birth”
According to this study, children whose older siblings are missing for those reasons actually have higher IQ.
Well the people in the study are still relatively young (18) so shared environment may still loom large.
I suppose so.
By the way if you’re looking for another way you could estimate the IQ of your readers, you could make a poll asking about people’s birth order without telling them why, and compare it to other examples: https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2020/07/birth-order-effects-and-achievement-autism-hormonal-model/
wash away my sins Pumpkin 🙂
This month was the tenth anniversary of Steve Jobs’s death. Care to estimate his IQ? You have some relevant information in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs that could assist you.
After Halloween.
When will you estimate Jobs’s IQ?
Hey pumpkin, I found this in reddit:
https://www.psytoolkit.org/lessons/experiment_simple_choice_rts.html
maybe some way to norming? Greetings.
i got 304 ms as my average.
i did it another time got 279 ms as my average! wow a tremendous reduction with no errors!
i wish i were more active than reactive. proactivity allows for people to take control of a moment. i cant do that. wish i was better.
“All my life I’ve been fascinated by the abnormal psychology, human evolution, IQ, and horror that goes on in my comment section” 😉
Maybe you should write a horror short-story with those colorful characters, with Oprah as camp counselor or something.
LOL! Maybe
Theoretically Pumpkin, could you mass delete all the comments of a certain commenter or does this site not have that kind of tool?
Good question
there has to be at least one rap song on this page (for all the smart ones here are the lyrics instead of the video for once):