top | item 45993073

210 IQ Is Not Enough

177 points| surprisetalk | 3 months ago |taylor.town

279 comments

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[+] lordnacho|3 months ago|reply
People think of intelligence as some sort of magic. They ascribe all sorts of ability to intelligence, as if being smart should make you influential.

But why should that be? If you're a scientist, you are dependent on getting funding to do experiments, and the experiment showing something interesting. Neither of these things is very connected to intelligence, beyond that low IQ people will not be likely to get to the start line.

If you're an entrepreneur, you also have to do a bunch of things that are more social than smarts. Basically your life is going around meeting people and getting them to either invest or build something or buy something. Is it useful to be smart? Sure. But it isn't as useful as, say, having the right connections from school, or a family with a sensible budget so you can concentrate on building rather than finding food.

Pretty much the only area where being super smart works is pure maths, and even there you really want to be born in the parts of the world where the economy can support a young person on that path.

Then there's the transmission to suit your engine. A super smart person still needs to be mature enough to consume the intellectual royal jelly that develops them towards where they will make the greatest contribution. You won't just know what to do just because you're smart, you need to be shown what the interesting problems are. You need to have motivation, and motivation is often what you actually see when you meet someone impressive.

The way I think of it, the smart and useful people are plenty. Courses are taught so that universities can get a sensible number of people through some amount of content. Being smarter than your average student at a prestigious college is nice, but it mostly buys you some free time. Being at the cutoff is terribly stressful, but that guy is still pretty accomplished and useful for most things that we consider elite.

[+] stego-tech|3 months ago|reply
A really good litmus test of individual perspective and maturity, here. Already seeing comments nitpick specific arguments or points, which is itself the trap to shine a light on those individuals more obsessed with arbitrary external measures of their personal definition of success, rather than self-reflecting on said definition and asking whether or not this definition fits who they are or want to be as a person, or their desired achievements and goals in life.

It’s a sonnet of sorts about the curse of intelligence in an increasingly insane world, a reminder that brilliant people can be absolute monsters, and that the only person who can bring you contentment in life is yourself.

[+] tetris11|3 months ago|reply
Dunno - I think it's hard for a lot of us who rolled the dice on our interests early on, picked the winning combo of CS + Finance, and then just raced ahead in the career ladder over our peers as software work consumed the world.

Now it's ten years later, those ladders have disappeared, many of us seeing the writing on the wall, and wondering whether we were anything special at all.

(The answer of course is no, but it's a tough pill to swallow)

[+] nonethewiser|3 months ago|reply
The observation in this article is part of a more general principle: Happiness isn't a single variable equation. It directly parallels the observation that "money doesn't buy happiness." 210 IQ will never be enough. $20M dollars will never be enough.

This article is interesting to me because I see people falsely equivocating money with happiness all the time, and pretty much never see it with IQ. I didn't realize it was a thing.

[+] mattgreenrocks|3 months ago|reply
I always love the articles that end up holding mirrors to some of the commenters. :)
[+] gessha|3 months ago|reply
High int, dump stat wis
[+] srid|3 months ago|reply
> arbitrary external measures of their personal definition of success

You say 'external' meausures, but these do manifest as internal identities - all of which collectively form your social identity: https://srid.ca/identity/social

[+] koakuma-chan|3 months ago|reply
> According to Yoo, by the time he was 1, her son learned both the Korean alphabet and 1,000 Chinese characters by studying the Thousand Character Classic, a sixth-century Chinese poem.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ung-yong

Is that true? How is that even possible? Like, biologically.

[+] jimmygrapes|3 months ago|reply
Age reckoning in South Korea (and other east Asian countries) is quite different than what you might expect. Age 1 in this context could be up to 3; if year 1 is your birth date and you age up at the new year, you could be "2 years old" while being alive for only 3 days. It could also work the other way around if they follow one of the other methods. Pretty interesting and not yet fully standardized!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Asian_age_reckoning

[+] ip26|3 months ago|reply
Not sure it is, so I assume a lot of stretching of the truth is involved. Most twelve month olds struggle to support their head, are just learning to shape their mouths to form syllables, and have only had eyes capable of resolving letters on a page for a few months. IQ won’t make blurry images sharp, or your neck muscles stronger.
[+] swid|3 months ago|reply
My nephew was reading at age two… he is obviously a very special kid, but no one really pushed him to do that. Apparently this would kind of freak people out in public.

I’m not sure if reading before age one is biologically possible, but I have a surprising data point in my life, so who knows.

[+] nonethewiser|3 months ago|reply
Bullshit detectors are blaring. Asian parent embellish the intelligence of their child without any verification. From what I understand Kim Ung-yong himself said many of the stories about him when he was young were misunderstood or exaggerated.

I guess it's not clear what they mean by learned the alphabet. Could point to the character and say the sound I guess? Know their meaning (you couldn't verify this easily if they cant talk)?

It's considered prodigious to be able to read at 3. I guess recognizing characters is short of that, but barely. And at 1? Im open to more information but I see no reason to think its true.

[+] 827a|3 months ago|reply
The "world's smartest man" very recently predicted on X that Bitcoin would hit $220k by the end of the year. [1]

Here's the thing: IQ probably doesn't mean much of anything. But it is one of only a handful of ways we have to benchmark intelligence. The training of AI systems critically requires benchmarks to understand gain/loss in training and determine if minute changes in the system is actually winging more intelligence out of that giant matrix of numbers.

What I deeply believe is: We're never going to invent superintelligence, not because its impossible for computers to achieve, but because we don't even know what intelligence is.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/world-smartest-man-predicts-b...

[+] stavros|3 months ago|reply
> As World's Highest IQ Record Holder, I expect #BITCOIN is going to $220,000 in the next 45 days.

> I will use 100% of my Bitcoin profits to build churches for Jesus Christ in every nation.

> “For with God nothing shall be impossible.” (Luke 1:37)

Something tells me maybe he doesn't actually have an IQ of 276.

[+] raincole|3 months ago|reply
> his self-reported IQ of 276

In other words, this news is a completely irrelevant piece of information.

[+] r_lee|3 months ago|reply
This guy is a fraud, he isn't measured by any legit institute, only by some random one which stated he is intelligent and he claims he was measured at 276 IQ.

He's low-key just trolling at this point, aaying he wants asylum in the US and making videos about how jesus/God is real with some scientific methods etc.

Just go check out his YouTube you'll see what I'm talking about.

[+] Arch-TK|3 months ago|reply
This is a weird argument.

First off, we don't have a good way to actually measure an individual's intelligence. IQ is actually meant to correlate with g which is a hidden factor we're trying to measure. IQ tests are good insofar as you look at the results of them from the perspective of a population. In these cases individual variation in how well it correlates smooths out. We design IQ tests and normalise IQ scores such that across time and over the course of many studies these tests appear to correlate with this hidden g factor. Moreover, anything below 70 and above 130 is difficult to measure accurately, IQ is benchmarked such that it has a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. Below 70 and above 130 is outside of two standard deviations.

So, in summary, IQ is not a direct measure of intelligence. What you're doing here is pointing at some random guy who allegedly scored high on an IQ test and saying: "Look at how dumb that guy is. We must be really bad at testing."

But to say we don't know what intelligence is, is silly, since we are the ones defining that word. At least in this sense. And the definition we have come up with is grounded in pragmatism. The point of the whole field of research is to come up with and keep clarifying a useful definition.

Worth also noting that you can study for an IQ test which will produce an even less correlated score. The whole design and point of IQ tests is done with the idea of testing your ability to come up with solutions to puzzles on the spot.

[+] herval|3 months ago|reply
> IQ probably doesn't mean much of anything. But it is one of only a handful of ways we have to benchmark intelligence.

IQ means a lot of things (higher IQ people are measurably better at making associations and generating original ideas, are more perceptive, learn faster, have better spatial awareness).

It doesn't give them the power to predict the future.

[+] programjames|3 months ago|reply
> What I deeply believe is: We're never going to invent superintelligence, not because its impossible for computers to achieve, but because we don't even know what intelligence is.

Speak for yourself, not all of humanity. There are plenty of rigorous, mostly equivalent definitions for intelligence: The ability to find short programs that explain phenomena (compression). The capability to figure out how to do things (RL). Maximizing discounted future entropy (freedom). I hate how stupid people propagate this lie that we don't know what intelligence is, just because they lack it. It's quite convenient, because how can they be shown to lack intelligence when the word isn't even defined!

[+] __s|3 months ago|reply
tbf you started with what intelligence is in rejecting their claim of being the smartest: ability to predict the future
[+] voidhorse|3 months ago|reply
Exactly. We don't have a good definition of intelligence and I don't think we ever will. Like all social concepts, it is highly dependent on the needs, goals, and values of the human societies that define it, and so it is impossible to come up with a universal definition. If your needs don't align with the needs an AI has been trained to meet, you are not going to find it very intelligent of helpful for meeting those needs.
[+] klodolph|3 months ago|reply
> Langan has not produced any acclaimed works of art or science. In this way, he differs significantly he differs significantly from outsider intellectuals like Paul Erdös, Stephen Wolfram, Nassim Taleb, etc.

Paul Erdős is the only outsider intellectual on that list, IMO.

(Also note that ő and ö are different!)

[+] froh|3 months ago|reply
210 on a standard IQ scale (15 points per std dev) would mean more than 7 std deviations, order of 10^-12

it's hard for me to not reject the article already for it's click bait headline...

ps: 170 is 4.666 std dev, about 10^-6. that's very rare, hard to measure but at least real.

[+] crazygringo|3 months ago|reply
Yeah, IQ tests don't really go above 160 precisely because there's no way to statistically validate the result. There aren't enough people.

Someone can design a test and claim it determines IQ up to 210, but there's no way to statistically validate that so it's simply meaningless.

[+] user_of_the_wek|3 months ago|reply
If you just take the statistical definition of IQ and run with it, AFAIK the smartest person alive will be at something like 190 IQ. If you really run with it, the smartest person that has ever lived should be around 200.
[+] Lerc|3 months ago|reply
As a New Zealander, I have often wondered about the standard deviation of sheep intelligence.
[+] hackingonempty|3 months ago|reply
Chris Langan is a fraud, and not even a good one, he claims to have discovered a revolutionary new neural network architecture but lost the napkin he wrote it on.

This is my favorite video mocking Langan, made by someone smarter than him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57IN9sBhYyg

[+] Lerc|3 months ago|reply
Yes, but focusing on that is pretty much the opposite of the intent of the article.
[+] MrBuddyCasino|3 months ago|reply
PSA: Chris Langan has never achieved a super high score on a real IQ test.

Since the 90's he is feuding with Rick Rosner, when they both edited the Mega Society’s journal Noesis, over the title of smartest guy. They both took an untimed Richard Hoeflin test (that maybe only a few hundred people have actually taken and therefore impossible to norm) with completely arbitrary scoring criteria and self-assigned “record setting” IQs.

Neither has any outstanding intellectual contributions to their name. They are weirdos who have made "being smart" their identity.

[+] Aperocky|3 months ago|reply
There are no such thing as 210 IQ.

It correlates to 7.3 sigma, meanwhile 7-sigma event has a probability of approximately 1 in 390 billion. We only have 8 billion humans on Earth.

These absurd claims about IQ is almost evidence that the claimant are nowhere close. For starters, any IQ tests are not going to be normalized to that range because it is impossible to normalize to that range as there are 0 realistic samples.

[+] marginalia_nu|3 months ago|reply
That's not really how statistics works.

It is not impossible to roll two sixes on a single roll of two dies because it is more likely you won't.

[+] mr_mitm|3 months ago|reply
It's more likely that someone screwed up on the test, or that he cheated somehow. Maybe he's articulate and good at solving logic puzzles, but his Wikipedia article clearly shows that the guy has a screw loose.
[+] volkk|3 months ago|reply
> It correlates to 7.3 sigma, meanwhile 7-sigma event has a probability of approximately 1 in 390 billion. We only have 8 billion humans on Earth.

why can't you use historical population? like, the total amount of humans that ever existed? rough google shows around 100billion. seems legit that in the history of humanity, we could pop out someone so intelligent? But I do agree that IQ is probably a decent signal but entirely meaningless as sole measurement.

[+] Viliam1234|3 months ago|reply
Everyone who actually studied psychometrics has to upvote this.

(Which is why it stays at the bottom of the HN comment thread.)

[+] airstrike|3 months ago|reply
We only have 8 billion people on Earth _today_. Over 100 billion have lived through history, they say.

Also just because it's statistically unlikely doesn't mean it can't happen.

All else being equal, the very first human is just as likely to have had 210 IQ as the one born this morning.

[+] paulddraper|3 months ago|reply
That assumes a normal distribution.
[+] noirscape|3 months ago|reply
It keeps astounding me that people assign value to a score whose purpose was mainly intended to find outliers in the education system as being anything besides that.

Or to quote the late astrophysicist Stephen Hawking: "People who boast about their IQ are losers".

[+] blfr|3 months ago|reply
The fact that you can do poorly (by external measure) despite high IQ doesn't really mean much. It correlates well with a swath of positive outcomes and I'd still take legitimate 150 IQ (for myself, for my kids) over virtually any other real-world ability. I think only looks are even in the running here.

It's not just that IQ allows you to succeed. It allows you to navigate the modern world. I see people having trouble with pointers, simple abstractions, basic diagrams, or statistics and wonder: what am I missing? And I'm no von Neumann to not miss anything.

[+] erikerikson|3 months ago|reply
If I could choose for myself and family, I'd suggest something more like 120, maybe 125. More IQ is frequently worse for well being. The benefits from correlations with positive factors get overwhelmed by emergent negative factors. Consider the stupid statement many smart people make "people are so stupid" (when in fact they are normal and the smart person is saying that they are on the upper end of the distribution). It reflects a fact of aloneness; a lack of peers; exclusion from socially controlled circles of success; endlessly watching struggle and underperformance; being stuck in a world that is dysfunctional because making it more functional is "too hard" for others; unlocking "because you're smart you have to do it for them"; and so many more little tortures and asynchronous social bullshit.
[+] BurningFrog|3 months ago|reply
When I was at Google a long time ago, the hiring criteria were simple: Smart, and gets things done.

A lot of people are smart, but don't get much brilliant work done. Even more people do a lot of work, but aren't very smart about it.

To be a genius with important contributions, you need to have both the brains and the work ethic.

[+] gdubs|3 months ago|reply
Intellectual horsepower is just one element. If you're trying to build the world's fastest car, you can't just grab the world's most powerful engine and call it a day. If you can harness it, sure – it could provide an edge. But there are a lot of other elements that come into play.

I often think about exposure to music, and the fact that Einstein liked to play around on his violin. My suspicion is that this was more than just a hobby – and that these context switches, and exposure to different types of creative thought, all played into his discoveries.

[+] MichaelZuo|3 months ago|reply
It’s probably even simpler… they simply don’t have that much “intellectual horsepower” in the first place.

It just’s an artifact of testing methodologies that can’t resolve very lumpy or spiky intelligence.

And therefore ends up being confused with genuine supergenius which is more correlated to the total area under the curve, so to speak.

[+] neuralkoi|3 months ago|reply
This reminds me of Liu Zhiyu who won a gold medal for China at the IMO in 2006 and was offered a full scholarship to MIT but turned it down to become a monk.

I think wisdom and peace is more valuable than raw IQ and I think Zhiyu and Ung-yong and even Langan realized this, wanted nothing to do with "The Machine", and chose their life trajectories accordingly.

[+] nis0s|3 months ago|reply
Be wary of success measure games, a lot of people with a lot less intelligence/capability are doing so much. Luck and network effects trump intelligence, ability and so on. It’s better to always just reflect on yourself…unless you’re some unlucky schmuck that someone took time out of their precious life to personally disadvantage somehow.

The other thing that’s occurred to me lately is how some “impressive” resumes and experience just won’t be possible about nation state level backing. So yeah, if you’re going to talk about games, be aware that there’s always more than one at play.

[+] voidhorse|3 months ago|reply
The gauge I use for intelligence is how much stock a person puts into an IQ test.

In my view, people who are able to question the legitimacy or applicability of IQ as a general measure of "intelligence", an idea that is highly contextual, are probably intelligent. They are at least smart enough to question social conceptions and to recognize the contingent nature of such conceptions. People who uncritically view IQ as some kind of unassailable proof of "intelligence" may be good at solving certain classes of known problems but, I really am not surprised that they may lack the imagination to contribute meaningful things to society, as a blind faith in a measure developed by fallible human beings is indicative of limited thinking /creativity.

Obviously someone can score well on an IQ test and question its validity as a signifier of intelligence, just as one can score poorly and place a strong degree of faith in it—but the way someone approaches it, in either case, is a very telling indicator of their own intellectual biases and limitations.

[+] doe88|3 months ago|reply
With age and experience I learned that intelligence has a lot of axis, IQ test is only one of them, it is meaningful but narrow. My favorites questions I like to ask people I know or I don't see often are: what are you passions, what do you like in life? It's often much more interesting about what it reveals of the person, than their ability of solving logic puzzles.
[+] HardCodedBias|3 months ago|reply
Well of course it is not enough. This is well known.

"Success" is hard to nail down. Is it academic success? SES succes? Job performance? It's all over the map.

However we know that :

IQ is correlated with the above somewhere between 0.2 and 0.5, with many definitions and studies being near the top of that range.

Conscientiousness is correlated with the above somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3, with many definitions and studies being near the top of that range.

Low neuroticism is correlated with the above somewhere between 0.1 and 0.2, with many definitions and studies being near the top of that range.

And there are other "personality" metrics that have been studied. It is very easy for someone who has an exceptional IQ to be sert back by neuroticism for example and exceptional IQ is near useless if the person does not have the conscientiousness to follow through on tasks, these people will likely be exceptional a "shallow" tasks.

I think this is well trodden ground.

[+] pxc|3 months ago|reply
Kim Ung-yong (the one from the article with 210 IQ sounds like a good guy with a respectable career and a healthy self-conception. He even describes himself as happy!

It seems like 210 IQ has proven to be plenty for him, although measurement of his IQ and intense childhood pressure may not have been beneficial to him.

[+] froobius|3 months ago|reply
See also: "Major IQ differences in identical twins linked to schooling, challenging decades of research" [1] [2]

I.e. the idea that IQ is some innate fixed quality has evidence against it. It seems obvious that this is the case, given that people get their children tutors so they can do better at IQ tests to get into schools...

[1] https://www.psypost.org/major-iq-differences-in-identical-tw...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000169182...