9 ms·

I stand corrected. You are assuming that a person with a phd is inherently smarter than a person running a hot dog stand. He is not. He has more accumulated kno

by fmora 16y ago

I stand corrected. You are assuming that a person with a phd is inherently smarter than a person running a hot dog stand. He is not. He has more accumulated knowledge but I don't think he is necessarily smarter. I bet that if the hot dog person had been rightly motivated at a young age he could also get a phd. Also, a lot of people are able to game interviews. The difference between an average intelligent person and a super genius is really quite small when it comes to brain power. What you will notice is that the super genius got to where he is because he has worked harder at it than anybody else. From the outside it looks like he is just that much smarter than you or me. The truth is that he is probably just as smart as you or me. He just works harder than you or me at what he does. Same with talented pianist or painters. People like to think that they are borne that way. The truth is that they log thousands and thousands of hours working at it, usually at a very young age. Once they become very good at what they do people label it as talent and do not remember the hard work that it took them to get there. A really brief example, to people from 2000 years ago you will seem like a super-super genius because of all the things you know. Is that truth? No, people from 2000 years are just as smart as you and me. Difference between geniuses and average person is probably so minuscule that it really doesn't contribute that much to success. Persistence and working at it is what makes the difference. There are a lot of supposed geniuses (really high IQ averages) that are complete bums and never achieve anything in life.

gwern 16y ago
> You are assuming that a person with a phd is inherently smarter than a person running a hot dog stand. I'm assuming that if I pick random PhDs and hot dog vendors, I will get a higher average IQ from my random PhDs. Are my PhDs strictly greater in IQ than my hot dog sellers? Maybe, maybe not. But will, say, 99% of my PhDs have a higher IQ? I'd bet on that number or something like it. > No, people from 2000 years are just as smart as you and me. No, they were not. There were a few geniuses back then, the ones we still read and write books about. All few tens of thousands of them out of billions. But the average was vastly below the modern-day. The environmental causes alone are legion: lead plumbing, no formal schooling (worth something like 5-10 IQ points), rampant parasitic diseases of every conceivable sort, irregular or poor nutrition with nutritional deficits (protein deficiency damaging early neurological development - low myelination of nerves, iodine deficiency, etc.), medicine that would kill most patients... Your only valid points are that IQ is not perfectly correlated with success and that it varies within every group. This is not news to anyone who has done even a little reading on the topic.
- scotty79 16y ago
  > I'm assuming that if I pick random PhDs and hot dog vendors, I will get a higher average IQ from my random PhDs. Are my PhDs strictly greater in IQ than my hot dog sellers? Maybe, maybe not. But will, say, 99% of my PhDs have a higher IQ? I'd bet on that number or something like it. Are PhDs dominated by technical types? Can you have PhD in arts or post modern philosophy? Does that require high IQ? > No, they were not. There were a few geniuses back then, the ones we still read and write books about. All few tens of thousands of them out of billions. But the average was vastly below the modern-day. Not everyone could write a book back then. Not every book from back then survived. You can't tell how many ancient Ramanujans left no trace. Ingenious concepts of later ages often cropped up multiple times centuries earlier only to be dismissed and forgotten. That said you are spot on environmental factors. Here http://www.ted.com/talks/esther_duflo_social_experiments_to_fight_poverty.html http://www.ted.com/talks/esther_duflo_social_experiments_to_... it is said that thing as simple as deworming might increase very significantly children spend on learning and training their intellectual capacities.
  - gwern 16y ago
    > Can you have PhD in arts or post modern philosophy? Does that require high IQ? Yes, and yes for the latter. Philosophy is my own field, and while I would be much more comfortable making this assertion of analytic philosophers, post-modern (I'll assume you really mean 'continental') philosophers are still very smart people. Since you aren't doing any research, I will do just a little, and point out that philosophy PhDs tend to have been philosophy majors, and philosophy majors tend to have extremely high GRE scores, and the GRE is extremely correlated with IQ; philosophy majors are #1 and beat every other major when it comes to the Verbal and Analytic Writing sections - surely not the work of people of average intelligence - and rank 15th out of 50 in math scores (ahead of majors such as biology, accounting, architecture and others; being beaten by various engineering, physics/astronomy, and math majors): http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/philo/GRE%20Scores%20by%20Intended%20Graduate%20Major.htm http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/philo/GRE%20Scores%20by%20Intended... > Not every book from back then survived. Yes, but many catalogues (the Suda eg.) and quotes have survived. The survival rate and biases introduced by history can, and have been, estimated. (The latest one I heard about used statistics about the survival of works of the Venerable Bede, but I can't find the citation in a quick google.) The bias is not orders of magnitude, though it hits some authors badly (Sophocles's prize-winners, eg.) as one would expect from a random process.

by fmora 16y ago

gwern 16y ago

> You are assuming that a person with a phd is inherently smarter than a person running a hot dog stand. I'm assuming that if I pick random PhDs and hot dog vendors, I will get a higher average IQ from my random PhDs. Are my PhDs strictly greater in IQ than my hot dog sellers? Maybe, maybe not. But will, say, 99% of my PhDs have a higher IQ? I'd bet on that number or something like it. > No, people from 2000 years are just as smart as you and me. No, they were not. There were a few geniuses back then, the ones we still read and write books about. All few tens of thousands of them out of billions. But the average was vastly below the modern-day. The environmental causes alone are legion: lead plumbing, no formal schooling (worth something like 5-10 IQ points), rampant parasitic diseases of every conceivable sort, irregular or poor nutrition with nutritional deficits (protein deficiency damaging early neurological development - low myelination of nerves, iodine deficiency, etc.), medicine that would kill most patients... Your only valid points are that IQ is not perfectly correlated with success and that it varies within every group. This is not news to anyone who has done even a little reading on the topic.

scotty79 16y ago
> I'm assuming that if I pick random PhDs and hot dog vendors, I will get a higher average IQ from my random PhDs. Are my PhDs strictly greater in IQ than my hot dog sellers? Maybe, maybe not. But will, say, 99% of my PhDs have a higher IQ? I'd bet on that number or something like it. Are PhDs dominated by technical types? Can you have PhD in arts or post modern philosophy? Does that require high IQ? > No, they were not. There were a few geniuses back then, the ones we still read and write books about. All few tens of thousands of them out of billions. But the average was vastly below the modern-day. Not everyone could write a book back then. Not every book from back then survived. You can't tell how many ancient Ramanujans left no trace. Ingenious concepts of later ages often cropped up multiple times centuries earlier only to be dismissed and forgotten. That said you are spot on environmental factors. Here http://www.ted.com/talks/esther_duflo_social_experiments_to_fight_poverty.html http://www.ted.com/talks/esther_duflo_social_experiments_to_... it is said that thing as simple as deworming might increase very significantly children spend on learning and training their intellectual capacities.
- gwern 16y ago
  > Can you have PhD in arts or post modern philosophy? Does that require high IQ? Yes, and yes for the latter. Philosophy is my own field, and while I would be much more comfortable making this assertion of analytic philosophers, post-modern (I'll assume you really mean 'continental') philosophers are still very smart people. Since you aren't doing any research, I will do just a little, and point out that philosophy PhDs tend to have been philosophy majors, and philosophy majors tend to have extremely high GRE scores, and the GRE is extremely correlated with IQ; philosophy majors are #1 and beat every other major when it comes to the Verbal and Analytic Writing sections - surely not the work of people of average intelligence - and rank 15th out of 50 in math scores (ahead of majors such as biology, accounting, architecture and others; being beaten by various engineering, physics/astronomy, and math majors): http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/philo/GRE%20Scores%20by%20Intended%20Graduate%20Major.htm http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/philo/GRE%20Scores%20by%20Intended... > Not every book from back then survived. Yes, but many catalogues (the Suda eg.) and quotes have survived. The survival rate and biases introduced by history can, and have been, estimated. (The latest one I heard about used statistics about the survival of works of the Venerable Bede, but I can't find the citation in a quick google.) The bias is not orders of magnitude, though it hits some authors badly (Sophocles's prize-winners, eg.) as one would expect from a random process.