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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28005 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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I don't think it is that interesting a question because there's so much missing information. I'm on the record as thinking that IQ is a useful metric, but I think it stops being useful past the 150/160 mark - I'm not entirely sure what exactly it means to have an IQ of 180 or how dramatic of an impact it would have. The only individual with an extremely high IQ I'm aware of is Chris Langan, and that extremely high IQ appears to have led him to become an anti-semite and develop a very convoluted theory of everything that was so important that the 9/11 attacks had to be staged by the Bush administration to prevent the public from learning about it (according to his wikipedia article). There's a decent possibility that the human brain experiences diminishing returns from absurdly high levels of IQ that lead to problematic outcomes which we haven't actually developed solutions for.

The second problem is that while IQ is a great metric, it in no way comes close to explaining every difference in outcome between populations. There are countless heritable differences in cognition that aren't directly related to IQ - levels of neuroticism, extraversion, inclination to left/right wing politics... Would those differences be equalised among the various different competing ethnic groups in Liberia by the same magic that uplifted their IQ? It's extremely easy to make the case that the 180 IQ Liberia in the absence of any other changes would be largely equivalent to real world Liberia except with much nastier and more effective violence and ethnic strife - just look at the population breakdown by ethnic group.

I'm on the record as thinking that IQ is a useful metric, but I think it stops being useful past the 150/160 mark - I'm not entirely sure what exactly it means to have an IQ of 180 or how dramatic of an impact it would have.

I see this stated a lot with the implication that IQ no longer matters above the level of (myself / my smartest friend / the smartest person I can conceive).

But why wouldn't a person's expected accomplishments go up exponentially as IQ increases with no limit. We can certainly observe that pattern up into the top 1 or 0.1%. Why would there be a cutoff beyond that?

The only individual with an extremely high IQ I'm aware of is Chris Langan,

Terrance Tao or John von Neumann would seem to fit the bill as well and are much more accomplished.

I'll admit that the number of people with an IQ of 180 is so vanishingly small we can't make concrete statements about them, and that there is not a robust way to test either.

Von Neumann was very accomplished, but didn't he support preemptive strikes against USSR? Lower IQ people disagreed, and history has proven them right. At least, I prefer our timeline to trying out the one where he got his way. Math has a very high IQ skill cap, but in most other fields the cap is much lower.

Let's not forget Marilyn vos Savant, whose career revolved around answering logic questions in Parade magazine.

Loved her column as a kid.

Her IQ was bullshit though. It was based on having a "mental age" of 22 at age 10, therefore an IQ of 220. This makes no sense.

An IQ of 180 is more than 5 standard deviations above the norm. Fewer than 1 in 10 million people have this. I think it's safe to say that vos Savant was not one of those people, even if she was quite intelligent.

Locating the ~750 people with that IQ should give enough sample size to answer some questions.

I see this stated a lot with the implication that IQ no longer matters above the level of (myself / my smartest friend / the smartest person I can conceive).

But why wouldn't a person's expected accomplishments go up exponentially as IQ increases with no limit. We can certainly observe that pattern up into the top 1 or 0.1%. Why would there be a cutoff beyond that?

My favorite example for adapting IQ to achievement is comparing raw NFL combine type stats to performance in sports. Obviously strength, speed, endurance are valuable traits in athletes. And obviously if you take two equally skilled or unskilled competitors, the stronger/faster/tougher will have an advantage. But there's a point at which the correlation breaks down, just drafting the guy with the best deadlift will not produce the most athletic team.

Intelligence is non-linear.

Usain Bolt is only like 50% faster than an average 20 year old man. But how many midwits working in concert would it take to come up with the theory of relativity?

So... what if there was a guy who ran a 0.1 second 40 yard dash?

In this case, John von Neumann didn't just have top tier intelligence, he also had top tier education. Being smart, on its own, doesn't make you study differential calculus at 8.

This hypothetical scenario may end up having a Meiji style dynamic where they invite foreign experts to transfer skills and technology. Though with the internet being a thing, that may be less relevant.

Most effect from education goes from making smart people meet each other. Steve Jobs wouldn't have been what he became without Steve Wozniak. Copying best curriculum to a place with low IQ people would do nothing.

I just do not agree. I think extremely smart people do benefit from a classical education. They also benefit from meeting other smart people, but that is not in contention.

Comments in this thread make me cringe. Over half of commenters write from point that people are passive receptors of their environment. Meiji Japan borrowed from societies that at that time had higher phenotypic IQ. Eight million people of 180 IQ will reinvent much of 100 IQ world technology quicky and go beyond.

Being super smart doesn't magically translate into knowing how to build turbofans or how to do nuclear reactor metalworks.

If you'd ever worked in the semiconductor industry you'd realize that being surrounded by brilliant people doesn't automatically make you competitive.

I understand the idea is that the number makes these hypothetical people almost magically smart, but intelligence still has to contend with logistics and more than half of them do not know how to read, let alone have a basic education.

In that situation you'd want to catch up as quickly as possible, which is precisely what Meiji was about. What exactly is passive about actively modernizing your country to compete on the world stage?

If you'd ever worked in the semiconductor industry you'd realize that being surrounded by brilliant people doesn't automatically make you competitive.

because you're competing with another team of brilliant people, not with midwits that were somehow sitting on a pile of factories and IP.

but intelligence still has to contend with logistics and more than half of them do not know how to read, let alone have a basic education.

Logistics? Do they need to import brand new learning boards (or whatever is in fashion now) from Netherlands to get education? Half of them are illiterate because they are ~65 IQ, not because their soil is poor in education micronutrients and their government refuses to import these education micronutrients. It takes much more effort to hammer literacy into heads of 65 IQ people rather than IQ 180 people. By the way, the younger generation of Liberians has much higher literacy rate, it's shifting even without hypothetical IQ boost. 180 IQ people will build everything needed for literacy quickly, it's not AMSL machine for 3 um fab plants.

In that situation you'd want to catch up as quickly as possible, which is precisely what Meiji was about.

Precisely, you handwaived my objection that Meiji Japan imported knowledge from societes whose phenotypic IQ with higher (at the time) rather than 80 points below! Several millions of 180 IQ Liberians won't import knowledge -- they'll steal it faster than you notice. Better pray that conflicts of competing 180 IQ clans don't involve undermining your country or making it to go at war with another.

It reminds me Russia xenophiles who say that Russia never did anything by itself. But then, Sergei Korolev didn't say "USSR needs to wait for a western country, like USA or France to launch sattelite and man into space, and then USSR can license technology from them".

Genghis Khan wasn't literate and were none of his generals, and never sieged any fortified cities. But they found a way to defeat many enemies who had read Sun Tzu and the likes.

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