Whatever ability IQ tests and math tests measure, I believe that lacking that ability doesn’t have any effect on one’s ability to make a good social impression or even to “seem smart” in conversation.
That section of Sarah’s post jumped out at me too, because it seemed to be the opposite of my experience. In my (limited, subject-to-confirmation-bias) experience, how smart someone seems to me in conversation seems to match pretty well with how they did on standardized tests (or other measures of academic achievement). Obviously not perfectly, but way way better than chance.
Thought something similar, and then I noticed that I met most the people recently through board-game nights, which makes it rather easy to observe these traits first hand. This now makes me wonder to which degree you can deliberately optimize for this by sneakily throwing verbal Puzzles (Did they get the joke?) at people, with or without taking social hit points. My guess would be that it would be hard to Tell apart Motivation (your joke wasn’t funny (to them) to begin with).
That section of Sarah’s post jumped out at me too, because it seemed to be the opposite of my experience. In my (limited, subject-to-confirmation-bias) experience, how smart someone seems to me in conversation seems to match pretty well with how they did on standardized tests (or other measures of academic achievement). Obviously not perfectly, but way way better than chance.
Thought something similar, and then I noticed that I met most the people recently through board-game nights, which makes it rather easy to observe these traits first hand. This now makes me wonder to which degree you can deliberately optimize for this by sneakily throwing verbal Puzzles (Did they get the joke?) at people, with or without taking social hit points. My guess would be that it would be hard to Tell apart Motivation (your joke wasn’t funny (to them) to begin with).