IQ is positively correlated with health, educational achievement, job performance, income and occupational status and negatively correlated with out of wedlock childbirth and being convicted of a crime.
Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns, American Psychological Association
people dont like being shown things that dispute their world view, especially on things which wield as much weight as intelligence, which is why i assume youve been downvoted. IQ may not be an exact metric of intelligence, but the correlations of IQ to success in the modern western world are too obvious to ignore, and indeed could be detrimental to ignore. Note, correlation does not equate causation, but suggests deeper research is required
Such claim would have been relevant if each kid of an age class (or at least several thousands, in various countries) is asked to pass an IQ test. Assuming that IQ stays constant throughout the life. And there is still the definition of "success" to discuss.
I'm pretty sure there is some bias in the selection. I've never knew someone who has effectively passed a real IQ test around me, and I guess it the same thing for most people in the western world.
On top of that, we must do not forget that we're talking here about outliers, people whose intelligence (whatever your definition of it it is) is - to quote your own words - too obvious to ignore. People at the far edge on the "Bell curve of intelligence". Nobody will argue that Hawking was brilliant, he was not in good health though.
Of course, saying that being smart helps you achieve something in life is obvious. As well as being well connected. As well as being healthy.
> Such claim would have been relevant if each kid of an age class (or at least several thousands, in various countries) is asked to pass an IQ test. Assuming that IQ stays constant throughout the life.
The earliest comprehensive national survey I’m aware of is the Scottish 1932 one[1]. Most countries with conscription/the draft administer an IQ test like the ASVAB in the US. So in the Nordic countries you have going on a century of data covering basically the entire male population at 18.
IQ becomes more stable across life. The younger a child is the more likely it is that any given test is a bad estimate of their adult IQ, which will basically be stable taking into account age related cognitive decline[2].
[1] Population sex differences in IQ at age 11: The Scottish mental survey 1932
There is uncertainty whether the sexes differ with respect to their mean levels and variabilities in mental ability test scores. Here we describe the cognitive ability distribution in 80,000+ children—almost everyone born in Scotland in 1921—tested at age 11 in 1932. There were no significant mean differences in cognitive test scores between boys and girls, but there was a highly significant difference in their standard deviations (P<.001). Boys were over-represented at the low and high extremes of cognitive ability.
[2] Intellectual Development from Early Childhood to Early Adulthood: The Impact of Early IQ Differences on Stability and Change over Time
Intellectual ability of about 200 individuals was first assessed between the ages of four to twelve years, and subsequently at the ages of 17 and 23. Stability of general intelligence was found to be moderately high for the entire study period. Stability was higher for shorter intervals between measurement points and increased with age. Subgroup analyses for initially high-, average-, and low-IQ children revealed that IQ stability over time was higher for the low-IQ than for the high-IQ children. Overall, participants with initially higher IQ scores maintained their advantage throughout the study until the period of early adulthood, and were more likely to attend higher educational tracks.
Taleb is not an expert in the field. I'm not qualified to examine the data from first principles, but my understanding is that among experts in the relevant academic fields the standard orthodoxy is that 1) IQ tests measure something meaningful and 2) whatever it is they measure is highly predictive of a wide variety of benefits in life.
"Correlation" being the key here. All of those things are also correlated with having a good upbringing and environment, as well as nutrition in childhood, as is IQ, so IQ is basically an irrelevant reflector of environment/inheritance factors.
