I think it would pretty significantly influence which career paths I would choose. If it came back with an IQ of 90 I would be very hesitant to go into mathematics, or really research professions in general, since those tend to be both pretty heavy-tailed and seem to rely on having a high general intelligence. I would be much more likely to choose a profession that is more standardized and has less variable outcomes (most service industry jobs seem to fit reasonably well here).
Also lots of other things, like how much I should trust my own judgement vs. relying on tradition and well-established norms. It’s not like this single piece of information would totally dominate my considerations, but it would add up to a general self-model that might include realizing that I am likely to be wrong when challenging tradition and established rules, and having a higher IQ should make me at least a bit bolder in challenging existing rules, since I would be more likely to actually get it right.
Also simple other things, like how much effort to put into getting high SAT scores, which would determine lots of college admissions (or whatever my local country’s equivalent of the SAT is). I would be more hesitant to switch professions, since I would expect to be less good at learning new skills than other people.
(Note: Thrasymachus’s response gets the basics right, in that I would expect most people to have a pretty good guess of their broad competence already. Knowing your IQ score is unlikely to be the most critical piece of evidence you will get on that, but if it’s really out of line with all the other evidence you have about yourself, then I would pay attention to that and try to figure out what’s up.)
I think it would pretty significantly influence which career paths I would choose. If it came back with an IQ of 90 I would be very hesitant to go into mathematics, or really research professions in general, since those tend to be both pretty heavy-tailed and seem to rely on having a high general intelligence. I would be much more likely to choose a profession that is more standardized and has less variable outcomes (most service industry jobs seem to fit reasonably well here).
Also lots of other things, like how much I should trust my own judgement vs. relying on tradition and well-established norms. It’s not like this single piece of information would totally dominate my considerations, but it would add up to a general self-model that might include realizing that I am likely to be wrong when challenging tradition and established rules, and having a higher IQ should make me at least a bit bolder in challenging existing rules, since I would be more likely to actually get it right.
Also simple other things, like how much effort to put into getting high SAT scores, which would determine lots of college admissions (or whatever my local country’s equivalent of the SAT is). I would be more hesitant to switch professions, since I would expect to be less good at learning new skills than other people.
(Note: Thrasymachus’s response gets the basics right, in that I would expect most people to have a pretty good guess of their broad competence already. Knowing your IQ score is unlikely to be the most critical piece of evidence you will get on that, but if it’s really out of line with all the other evidence you have about yourself, then I would pay attention to that and try to figure out what’s up.)