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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2102 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 11, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Does an IQ taboo (established for political reasons associated with another taboo around HBD, or any other reason) contribute to more of a reliance in many people on the heuristics of social class, physical features, clothes, sociolect and prosody, credentials/profession,

I'm having a hard time understanding what the alternative would be? Mean IQ during grades 1-4 tattooed to the forehead in childhood? And how does HBD play into that? Standard deviation on IQ is so large, you can never replace the other heuristics with it, on an individual level you absolutely shouldn't even include it into the list of heuristics in the first place.

In the end, you sometimes have to make an assessment about which strangers are worth listening to. Guessing IQ from hearing them speak (especially speak freely) works well in my experience. Even "correct"/"incorrect" vocabulary and sociolect cannot hide their true power level for long. And sure, the halo effect exists, but clothes, grooming and physical features were always the stereotypical weak point of hardcore nerds, so making assessments on those never worked all that well, especially in spaces like tech.

Mean IQ during grades 1-4 tattooed to the forehead in childhood?

Why would you need any of this? All you need is tracking (disliked by many for reasons @FtttG touches on) and the kids will put together the pecking order. We figured it out anyway in my school but it was tiny, 300 people total.

Post high school is a bit of a problem I guess. But if you had IQ tests and there was no awkwardness around you can figure it out. Thing is, I'm not sure we'd want to. It matters less in more selective schools and I don't know that people who run institutions want to be publicizing which programs actually capture the least mental horsepower.

And sure, the halo effect exists, but clothes, grooming and physical features were always the stereotypical weak point of hardcore nerds

Yes, the high-IQ sperg archetype is the clearest exception, which helps OP's point.

I believe that, in the US, employers are discouraged from using IQ tests to make hiring decisions, owing to the "disparate impact" doctrine (i.e. a tacit admission of HBD, even if no one will come out and say so). They must instead rely on proxies for IQ, some of which are reliable (the SAT is an IQ test in all but name) and some of which are not (such as being "well-spoken").

Ah, but the catch is that using the SAT directly still looks too suspicious for an employer to do, so you have to use the whole college degree instead. That could be an even better filter (assuming you keep track of which colleges still use the SAT) because it includes a measure of conscientiousness, but it's also a vastly more expensive filter, and the mix of "do they have a high enough IQ, and can they afford tuition plus four years' opportunity cost" might have a bigger disparate impact than IQ alone.

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