Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Since we are in the community, that takes IQ very seriously, don't you think that being energetic is also a major factor of success? For example, under the post about Elon Musk, the majority of the comment section is a discussion of how intelligent he is, but there is little talk about his mental stamina, which is the most interesting for me. I'm quite clever, maybe not extremely smart, but somewhere between 120-130 IQ and I cannot imagine myself having a business, because it requires preparedness for constant struggle and ability to withstand many hard blows. I can imagine myself in a cozy office job, and making decent number of money, but never in any executive position, where I have to talk to people all the time and constantly think about my company, while everybody wants to take me out.
Similarly, in every small town, there is a couple of business owners that enjoy higher standard of living than their neighbors and are often envied by the community. People with academic background like provincial doctors or teachers sometimes mock them as dim-witted and uncouth, but this is rarely the case. I think they are quite smart, maybe not very smart but at least around 120 IQ. They just possess different set of capabilities than people who like intellectual challenges.
George Cochran calls it moxie, Steve Malina writes on his blog about energetic aliens. It's interesting what determines these abilities from biological point of view. Is this higher dopamine levels? Extreme emotional stability? Very efficient brain? All of these factors?
I know people who are smart, but those who run things are just on an entirely different level. Of course being clever is always beneficial, but there are places where pure intelligence cannot take you. I don't know where I'm going with this, just find this topic interesting and somewhat overlooked.
I'm just as smart as my dad, maybe even slightly smarter, and while I've never had a formal IQ test (only taking Raven's progressive matrices unofficially, which is a good test, but it's up to you how you want to weight it, getting a value of 130), I've literally scored 100th percentile in a prestigious international competition that tests your grasp of English, and usually get something around 99.9th, in more general aptitude tests that were widely administered when I was a kid.
So yes, I'm confident I'm around 130 IQ, but unlike my dad, who is an insanely hard worker, running a hospital while working as a Consultant, I am incorrigible lazy and have ADHD.
Put me in his shoes, starting off as a penniless refugee from Bangladesh arriving with his family as a teen, and I strongly doubt I could have gotten to where he has, becoming a comfortably wealthy consultant surgeon with modest but national renown. Maybe he'd be internationally famous if he spoke better English.
I feel like a car with a great engine but broken transmission, severely bottlenecked. I'd likely trade trade like 5 IQ points to go to merely average in terms of consciousness, because while I highly value and take pride in my intelligence, I have a hard time making the most of it.
It takes an enormous amount of energy and tenacity to run a business, especially in a corrupt and cut-throat environment like India. I have no wish to find out whether or not I can handle it myself, because I am doubtful that my dad passes away anytime soon, or at least not before AI makes even incredible cognitive talents in humans moot.
Having ADHD sucks, so I hope an extreme example illustrates your point. My dad has always been slightly disappointed that I don't apply myself the way he can, and it takes all my effort and meds to keep progressing in my career instead of being stuck where I am forever.
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Yes. This is obvious if you've known just a few very successful people well at all for a while and more obvious if you know some very unsuccessful people. Robin Hanson agrees.
If you spend more time on something, you're going to get farther, and people with more energy spend more time pursuing their long-term goals.
By the way, I don't think what Cochran meant by 'moxie' was energy, if that's what you were implying.
Yeah, I guess that by 'moxie' Cochran meant some sort of emergent quality, that combines all the factors impacting your social status. Nonetheless, energy is probably one of these factors. I was imprecise, but being 'energetic' is also kind of imprecise description. What kind of energy, kinetic energy? We have some intuitive understanding, but we lack any precise characterization. And that's why I find this factor overlooked, because we have quite precise measurement of IQ but it's difficult to compare 'being energetic' statistically.
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This gives me a thought - maybe there's a time-energy thing to it too.
So let's say that IQ is an expression of how much intelligence you are applying at the moment. Maybe it's at the maximum when you're doing some hard thing, but it probably isn't that high all the time. Most of the time, you're using much less intelligence. Even smart people do pretty dumb things once in a while. So then for every person, there is a "peak IQ", which is the maximum amount of intelligence you can ever conjure up. And there's also a measure for maybe "IQ minutes" for how long you can apply that level of intelligence and what level of intelligence you are capable of applying at other times throughout the day.
If you take an IQ test, presuming that you want to take it and want to score well, then you do what's needed to ensure you're at peak IQ, so that it measures your actual peak IQ. It is still a useful measure, but it's harder to measure how much you can actually apply that and how much intelligence you display when you aren't being tested.
Maybe the average smart person is really smart for like 3-4 hours total at work, and maybe 1-2 in their personal life. This is plenty to have a good job and make a good living and have an interesting hobby or two.
Maybe what Elon Musk really has is extraordinarily high IQ minutes. Thus, his peak IQ is generously high but not out of the league of smart people worldwide. But if he can apply all of that intelligence for, say, 18 hours a day, versus 6 max for the average person of that IQ, well then he can get quite a lot done. Like start and run a revolutionary electric car company and also a revolutionary rocket company, and like 4 other companies for things that seem a little wacky but could be revolutionary someday, and then I guess buy and run Twitter too just for kicks.
This is an interesting way of characterizing it and I feel similarly. I think about this in the following terms: usually I oscillate between 'lower states' and 'higher states' of mind, and when I work on a difficult task, I get bored or tired or stressed out quite fast, and then I have to stay for a while in the 'lower state' of my mind. People, who I find energetic tend to go into these 'higher states' more easily and concerning Elon, I don't know, maybe he even sleeps in such a state or goes into the flow as soon as he opens his eyes.
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Seems like it's more about interest than energy. Most days I can barely program for three hours, but easily spend many hours doing slightly easier things like strategy videogames. When something important comes up (a little while ago I had the opportunity to solve a few extremely difficult problems over the course of a day for $25,000) I can work at max possible intensity for 14+ hours, with short breaks to pace around in a panic.
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It definitely is, as is being outgoing.
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Yep there are many factors besides IQ that matter quite a lot. Unfortunately though because IQ is so denied as a useful characteristic by the mainstream, contrarians tend to see it as the most important thing ever.
By my lights, IQ is a useful predictor for someones potential in a narrow sense of what IQ is useful for measuring. But there are many more factors involved in being human that IQ doesn't directly involve, and for some tasks high IQ can even be a detriment.
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Yeah energy is hugely important. Intellect, management skills and energy are like multipliers to your overall effectiveness. All three should be high for best results.
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