How high is “high-IQ” and how low is “low IQ” in your book?
Someone with an above-average IQ of 115-120, like your average undergrad, visibly struggles with 101 / 201 level work and is deeply resistant to higher-level concepts. Actually getting through grad school takes about a 130 as previously mentioned, and notable scientists tend to be in the 150+ range. So somewhere from 84-98% of the population is disqualified right off the bat, with only the top 2-0.04% capable of doing really valuable work.
And that’s assuming that IQ is the only thing that counts; in actuality, at least in the hard sciences, there is an enormous amount of technical knowledge and skill that a person has to learn to provide real insight. I cannot think of a single example in the last 50 years which fits your narrative of the smart outsider coming in and overturning a well-established scientific principle, although I would love to hear of one if you know any.
No, I don’t want laymen to trust in a process they cannot understand.
So no more trusting chemotherapy to treat your cancer? The internet to download your music, or your iPod to play it? A fixed wing aircraft to transport you safely across the Atlantic? Must be tough even just driving to work, now that your car is mostly computer-controlled and made of materials with names that sound like alphabet soup.
Almost every aspect of modern life, even for a polymathic genius, is going to be at least partially mysterious; the world of our tools and knowledge is far too complex for the human mind to fully grasp.
Someone with an above-average IQ of 115-120, like your average undergrad, visibly struggles with 101 / 201 level work and is deeply resistant to higher-level concepts. Actually getting through grad school takes about a 130 as previously mentioned, and notable scientists tend to be in the 150+ range.
Not reality. 41% of people in the US are enrolled in college (in 2010) Source. If we assumed that the US has representative IQ and use a 15 SD IQ scale, then the top 41% of IQs are all people with IQ of at least 103.41. I calculated that average IQ of a the top 41% of the population on wolfram alpha. (It is easy, because by definition, IQ follows a normal distribution.) I got 114.2.
If US citizens between 18 and 24 are representative of the entire population in terms of IQ, it is literally impossible for the average IQ of an undergrad student to be 115 or higher.
Hmm. I’m not 95% confident of then number I gave, but I haven’t been able to turn up anything disconfirming.
I did a bunch of research on the heritability of IQ last year for a term paper and I repeatedly saw the claim that university students tend to be 1sd above the local population mean, although that may not apply in a place with more liberal admissions practices like the modern US. More research below, and I’ll edit in some extra stuff tomorrow when my brain isn’t fried.
Surprisingly, at least looking at science / engineering / math majors, it looks like people are smarter than I would have guessed; Physics majors had the highest average at 133 with Psychology majors pulling up the rear with 114, and most of them are clustered around 120 − 130. For someone who deals with undergrads, that is frankly shockingly high.
Outside of the sciences, even the “dumbest” major, social work, managed a 103 and a lot of the popular majors are in the 105-115 range. Another big surprise here too; Philosophy majors are really damn bright with a 129 average, right up under Math majors. Never would have guessed that one.
Still, it’s obvious that the 115-120 figure I gave was overly optimistic. Once I look at some more data I will amend my initial post so that it better reflects reality.
Naive hypothesis: Given the Flynn effect, and that college students are younger than the general population, could that explain the difference? That Coscott’s conditional “If US citizens between 18 and 24 are representative of the entire population in terms of IQ” is false?
IQ tests are at least supposed to be normed for the age group in question, in order to eliminate such effects, but I don’t know how it’s done for the estimates in question.
How high is “high-IQ” and how low is “low IQ” in your book?
I don’t have specific ranges in mind, but I think I’d call grad-student level sufficiently high-IQ.
smart outsider coming in and overturning a well-established scientific principle
Not necessarily overturning a principle, but rather opening up new directions to expand into. How about Woz, Jobs, Gates, all that crowd? They were outsiders—all the insiders were at IBM or, at best, at places like Xerox PARC.
Almost every aspect of modern life, even for a polymathic genius, is going to be at least partially mysterious
Of course, but you don’t trust a process you don’t understand. You trust either people or the system built around that process. If your doctor gives you a pill to take, you trust your doctor, not the biochemistry which you don’t understand. If you take a plane across the Atlantic, you trust the system that’s been running commercial aviation for decades with the very low accident rate.
How about Woz, Jobs, Gates, all that crowd? They were outsiders
They were outsiders of business companies, not of science. It’s not like Gates never learned math at school, and then miraculously proved Fermat theorem in his dreams. It’s more like he took mostly some else’s work, made a few smart business decisions, and became extra rich.
How high is “high-IQ” and how low is “low IQ” in your book?
Someone with an above-average IQ of 115-120, like your average undergrad, visibly struggles with 101 / 201 level work and is deeply resistant to higher-level concepts. Actually getting through grad school takes about a 130 as previously mentioned, and notable scientists tend to be in the 150+ range. So somewhere from 84-98% of the population is disqualified right off the bat, with only the top 2-0.04% capable of doing really valuable work.
And that’s assuming that IQ is the only thing that counts; in actuality, at least in the hard sciences, there is an enormous amount of technical knowledge and skill that a person has to learn to provide real insight. I cannot think of a single example in the last 50 years which fits your narrative of the smart outsider coming in and overturning a well-established scientific principle, although I would love to hear of one if you know any.
So no more trusting chemotherapy to treat your cancer? The internet to download your music, or your iPod to play it? A fixed wing aircraft to transport you safely across the Atlantic? Must be tough even just driving to work, now that your car is mostly computer-controlled and made of materials with names that sound like alphabet soup.
Almost every aspect of modern life, even for a polymathic genius, is going to be at least partially mysterious; the world of our tools and knowledge is far too complex for the human mind to fully grasp.
Where did you get those numbers?
Not reality. 41% of people in the US are enrolled in college (in 2010) Source. If we assumed that the US has representative IQ and use a 15 SD IQ scale, then the top 41% of IQs are all people with IQ of at least 103.41. I calculated that average IQ of a the top 41% of the population on wolfram alpha. (It is easy, because by definition, IQ follows a normal distribution.) I got 114.2.
If US citizens between 18 and 24 are representative of the entire population in terms of IQ, it is literally impossible for the average IQ of an undergrad student to be 115 or higher.
Hmm. I’m not 95% confident of then number I gave, but I haven’t been able to turn up anything disconfirming.
I did a bunch of research on the heritability of IQ last year for a term paper and I repeatedly saw the claim that university students tend to be 1sd above the local population mean, although that may not apply in a place with more liberal admissions practices like the modern US. More research below, and I’ll edit in some extra stuff tomorrow when my brain isn’t fried.
Some actual data here (IQs estimated from SAT scores, ETS data as of 2013)
Surprisingly, at least looking at science / engineering / math majors, it looks like people are smarter than I would have guessed; Physics majors had the highest average at 133 with Psychology majors pulling up the rear with 114, and most of them are clustered around 120 − 130. For someone who deals with undergrads, that is frankly shockingly high.
Outside of the sciences, even the “dumbest” major, social work, managed a 103 and a lot of the popular majors are in the 105-115 range. Another big surprise here too; Philosophy majors are really damn bright with a 129 average, right up under Math majors. Never would have guessed that one.
Still, it’s obvious that the 115-120 figure I gave was overly optimistic. Once I look at some more data I will amend my initial post so that it better reflects reality.
Naive hypothesis: Given the Flynn effect, and that college students are younger than the general population, could that explain the difference? That Coscott’s conditional “If US citizens between 18 and 24 are representative of the entire population in terms of IQ” is false?
IQ tests are at least supposed to be normed for the age group in question, in order to eliminate such effects, but I don’t know how it’s done for the estimates in question.
I think that is likely.
I don’t have specific ranges in mind, but I think I’d call grad-student level sufficiently high-IQ.
Not necessarily overturning a principle, but rather opening up new directions to expand into. How about Woz, Jobs, Gates, all that crowd? They were outsiders—all the insiders were at IBM or, at best, at places like Xerox PARC.
Of course, but you don’t trust a process you don’t understand. You trust either people or the system built around that process. If your doctor gives you a pill to take, you trust your doctor, not the biochemistry which you don’t understand. If you take a plane across the Atlantic, you trust the system that’s been running commercial aviation for decades with the very low accident rate.
They were outsiders of business companies, not of science. It’s not like Gates never learned math at school, and then miraculously proved Fermat theorem in his dreams. It’s more like he took mostly some else’s work, made a few smart business decisions, and became extra rich.