The mechanism is likely to be that a smarter researcher sees solutions intuitively, whereas a dumber one has to try lots of things that don’t work before getting to the correct solution; this would produce super linear speedup I think, because as you get smarter you avoid more and more wasted effort. There’s also the issue of status producing more motivation, which produces more achievement, which produces more status. This adds a significant nonlinearity.
Miscommunication. My point was only that I expect the function that describes the relationship to be a smooth curve. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the relationship between IQ and research productivity is stronger at the high end than in the middle.
The mechanism is likely to be that a smarter researcher sees solutions intuitively, whereas a dumber one has to try lots of things that don’t work before getting to the correct solution; this would produce super linear speedup I think, because as you get smarter you avoid more and more wasted effort. There’s also the issue of status producing more motivation, which produces more achievement, which produces more status. This adds a significant nonlinearity.
Miscommunication. My point was only that I expect the function that describes the relationship to be a smooth curve. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the relationship between IQ and research productivity is stronger at the high end than in the middle.