> Whatever ability IQ tests and math tests measure, I believe that lacking that ability doesn’t have any effect on one’s ability to make a good social impression or even to “seem smart” in conversation.
Ever wonder why incompetent people get promoted? Or why consultants can sell projects using only buzzwords? Ever had that strange conversation where two colleagues are seemingly discussing something absurd, obvious, or impossible, but they think they're being clever?
I've recently spent an evening with a guy, who when asked any sort of question, would go into a long-form, several-paragraph-wide explanation of the phenomena.
Except if you actually paid attention to what he was saying, you'd realize that he was simply quoting the definitions of things he had learned over a sufficient time. He had a great vocabulary as well, and would put it in a good, well-versed academic paragraph.
The fact is that, unless you seriously paid attention to what he was saying - you'd think he's making a really deep point about something you don't understand. In actuality - he was simply going from one definition to another.
The amount of effort required to refute him is way above it takes him to blab about anything. He'd go around the issue without ever answering the question.
While I agree to some degree this also sounds overly dramatic.
First, there's a ton of evidence that people also get promoted/appreciated for the right reasons, not just because they're a fancy Markov chain of buzzwords (example: serial entrepreneurs, like Musk).
Second, there's underlying reality that eventually comes crushing people that fail to meet the expectations that they had built around themselves.
Sure, the correlations between X1:{IQ, conscientiousness} and Y:{income, educational attainment} are stronger than between, say X2:{agreeableness, height, race} and Y.
Y are examples of what people want (wealth). X1 are examples of "valid" reasons to be recognized as useful and therefore attain wealth, X2 are examples of "less valid" or "completely invalid" reasons.
Your opinions are not evidence no matter how much you dress them up in notation. I asked for evidence as I could use it.
Self-discipline is a better indicator for income and education than IQ.[0] So I know for a fact that your a priori fact is not valid. It's all good to share opinions, but please do not present them as reality when they are not.
And I didn't bother to point out particular studies validating my claims because much of this has been known to humans for close to a 100 years. In the same vein as linking to a proof of the undecidability of the halting problem would be excess references given the nature of HN community.
If you want an example study look at the "Health and longevity" section on the above linked Wikipedia page.
Or to directly support my thesis about X1 and X2 separation, first look at Wikipedia IQ page and the "Social correlations" section, it's generally around 0.5:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient
Well that is genuinely impossible to tell apart. I mean you can always claim that a system or a person is "overfiting", and given enough time and/or data they/it will be proven wrong.
I actually am competent when it comes to computer programming, but I've learned (through painful experience) that I have to develop a completely parallel set, totally unrelated to ability to actually program a computer, in order to convince anybody that I am. Real, professional computer programming that produces a tangible, usable result for a person tends to be a fair amount of: reading over documentation to gain a deeper understanding of the problem domain; settling on a mix between a quick, dirty, "brute force" solution and an elegant solution; aiming for a target, missing, and adjusting until the target is hit. We actually joke amongst ourselves about this ("I just cut and paste from stack overflow all day") but I have to be VERY careful how I present the actual truth about how I approach computer programming problems to people who've never tried it. I have to pretend that programming computers breaks down to discrete, easily-estimable "tasks" that can be performed linearly or even in parallel, but each of which takes up wall-clock time.
Ever wonder why incompetent people get promoted? Or why consultants can sell projects using only buzzwords? Ever had that strange conversation where two colleagues are seemingly discussing something absurd, obvious, or impossible, but they think they're being clever?