Re: A study comparing 150 IQ+ persons to 180 IQ+ persons

From: Michael Anissimov (michaelanissimov@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Aug 22 2006 - 03:03:58 MDT


On 8/21/06, Giu1i0 Pri5c0 <pgptag@gmail.com> wrote:

> IQ tests are designed to measure some parameters related to abstract
> problem solving skills in spatial and logic reasoning. They are not
> designed to capture the full range of parameters that correlate to
> practical achievement. I think one definitely needs a sufficiently
> high IQ to achieve something in the real world, but over that treshold
> what is frequently described as "emotional intelligence" counts much
> more than a few IQ points. I guess this is more or less the same thing
> Michael is saying.

Not at all. I meant that, according to the study, IQ differences
*over 150 or so* don't matter all that much, in the same way that IQ
differences under 50 probably don't matter all that much. It doesn't
matter if your IQ is 20 or 50, you're incredibly retarded either way.
150 is a very, very high threshold, just beyond the third sigma, and
only corresponds to 1/1000 of the population. The difference between
IQ 150 and IQ 140 is huge, and the difference between IQ 140 and IQ
130 is huge. This is why Eliezer writes about prospective seed AI
programmers, "If we were to try quantifying the level of brainpower
necessary, our guess is that it's around the 10,000:1 or 100,000:1
level." The difference between 160 and 150 could also be huge, I just
posted the article link to get some discussion started on it.

Please, please, please at least skim this paper:

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997whygmatters.pdf

The idea that IQ doesn't matter "all that much" is among the most
frequently repeated myths with the greatest amount of available
evidence to demolish it. The whole "emotional intelligence" thing is
pop-psychological nonsense, considered fringe thinking by the
mainstream psych community. IQ matters for social skills. IQ matters
for real-life achievement. IQ matters for common sense. IQ matters
for which people will be able to wrap their brains around what I'm
arguing in this post and for which people it will go in one ear and
out the other.

And by the way, discussions of IQ are most definitely SL4.
Conversations about intelligence and comparisons between intraspecies
and interspecies intelligence differentials make up the core of the
argument that most people on this list *still* don't understand: the
Singularity is about smartness, not technology, and the second you
build something smarter than you, everything we know flies out the
window.

-- 
Michael Anissimov
Lifeboat Foundation      http://lifeboat.com
http://acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog


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