(Revised draft: 1) I initially wrote that IQ predicts between 10 and 50% at best, turns out it beats random selection in the best of applications by less than 17%, 2) Showed noise IQ/Weath, 3) Added information showing the story behind the effectiveness of Average National IQ is, statistically, a fraud. The psychologists who engaged me on this piece — with verbose writeups —made the mistake of showing me the best they got: papers with the strongest pro-IQ arguments. They do not seem to know what noise means.)
Background : “IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning difficulties), as well as, to a lesser extent, a form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects. It is via negativa not via positiva. Designed for learning disabilities, and given that it is not too needed there (see argument further down), it ends up selecting for exam-takers, paper shufflers, obedient IYIs (intellectuals yet idiots), ill adapted for “real life”. The concept is poorly thought out mathematically (a severe flaw in correlation under fat tails, fails to properly deal with dimensionality, treats the mind as an instrument not a complex system), and seemed to be promoted by
- racists/eugenists, people bent on showing that some populations have inferior…
