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Notes -
Good.
I recognize the point as it applies to top-tier quantum physicists, but in almost every other area of life I don't think we should judge people based on 'capacity' as indicated by raw IQ.
First of all, most careers do not have uncapped potential for improvement. Let's say someone wants to become a physical therapist - they need to learn a variety of details about human physiology, be competent at working with people, and have the capacity to keep up with developments in the field. This is achievable by a 100 IQ person just as much as a 130, the primary difference will just be how much time and effort is required to acquire the knowledge. I put it to you that most fields have this characteristic. The difference between a god-tier PT and a typical one may matter a little on the edge cases but for the most part these people are indistinguishable in what they can accomplish. Meanwhile, other traits like personability and compassion may be more relevant distinguishers for how well this person does the job.
Second, IQ already plays into every sorting algorithm we have. Do you really think that being more intelligent doesn't help you acquire certifications? Or that it won't be recognized by gatekeepers in fields where it's relevant? IQ is general problem solving, it's learning, in other words it already applies to all these systems. But, again, it's not the only thing that applies - you are judged on a variety of personal characteristics, such as willingness to put in work, reliability, trustworthiness, not being weird, etc. These things all actually matter.
Like I said at the top, there are some fields where raw IQ really does determine your effectiveness. Maybe you're in or adjacent to one of these, and are really griping about how the selection methods there are failing to identify intellectual capacity? If so I'm sympathetic. But in all other realms, if you don't produce anything with your big brain then you're no more useful than an idiot. I'd rather have someone conscientious and loyal on my team any day of the week.
A higher-IQ physical therapist is still better. Taking the example of a physical therapist, all else equal:
Comparing a physical therapist with 100 IQ to another with 130 IQ, the diminishing returns to IQ would have had to already hit 0 by 100 IQ, which I don't find plausible in the slightest for them to be interchangeable.
This matters not only for edge cases, but also for common cases. A smarter physical therapist has better recall and better ability to synthesize information ranging from exercise form to injury diagnoses.
Suppose a patient is doing PT to recover from a bicep tear. At some point a basic, traditional, bicep curl will likely be involved as a PT exercise, where the dumbbell is to be rotated with palm facing upward.
If the patient doesn't get good rotation on the curl (and thus not getting full bicep engagement), a dumber physical therapist might not even Notice. A smarter one would Notice and take a look at where the patient is gripping along the dumbbell and slide the grip if necessary. After sliding the grip, the smarter one would with greater probability remember to monitor and encourage the patient to concentrate on "pinky first" if necessary, and then troubleshoot from there.
And this is just from one exercise from one particular type of injury. Differences between a 130 IQ and 100 IQ physical therapist can add up from relatively routine situations, much less those with tail risk, when one is considering things from an ex-ante expected value standpoint.
Physical therapy is gated by a doctoral degree in the US, although it historically wasn't and almost certainly shouldn't be. In the UK physiotherapy (which Wikipedia says is the same thing) is a bachelor's degree, mostly offered by "new" universities (in American terminology, community colleges that were upgraded in the 1990s) or specialist healthcare colleges whose main programme is nursing. Less than 50% of British 18 year olds will complete a first degree, so getting a bachelor's at all strongly suggests IQ>100, and healthcare-related degrees tend to be the more rigorous degrees at low-end universities. A 100IQ physiotherapy student would be at the bottom of their class and would struggle to graduate.
In other words, if you think the average Westerner could do the job of a physiotherapist, I suspect you are living in a bubble and don't understand just how dumb most of the lower-middle classes are.
A lot of us found the Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong/Slatestarcodex comment sections because (metaphorically, I hope) we couldn't deal with our local Mensa chapters being full of involuntary retards, and then moved from those places to here to get away from voluntary retardation due to wokeness. Those retards in Mensa - they're still the 98th percentile of the bell curve.
Although it’s likely a highly non-central example of a doctoral degree (most people would likely think of an MD or PhD), this is technically true.
Yeah, it’s a point I made back a few weeks ago when we were talking about Trans TA vs. Thot Undergrad. Despite how dumb OU Samantha might sound in her essay, it’s very possible she’s closer to the average Mottizen in IQ than she is to the average person, so one can imagine how dumb an average person might be like.
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You're not describing IQ. You are describing a combination of 1) specialized knowledge, and 2) attention to detail/conscientiousness. Only the first of these correlates to IQ, and then only because a higher IQ person can learn things faster, as I mentioned. Once the 100 IQ person works to acquire the knowledge/experience the difference between them becomes negligible in 99% of cases.
I’ll leave aside your unjustified confidence to characterize what I’m describing.
“Only because a higher IQ person can learn things faster” is doing a ton of lifting.
You’re looping right back into what was already pre-empted by OP. One could just as well sputter:
Anyway, let’s proceed.
It’s not just stock, but both stock and flow. Even allowing for the hypothetical that a 100 IQ person has the same stock of knowledge/experience as a 130 IQ person by turn of some magic genie, the 100 IQ person will forget things faster and learn new things slower, and be less able to pattern match among the things he does have in stock.
The 99% is just a made-up number backed up by your wishcasting.
And even then if we accept differences are “negligible”—“negligible” differences, as I explained, can add up quickly. If you’re a potential patient, all else equal you’d always go for the Physical Therapist with the more favourable “negligible” differences.
If you don’t like getting own-goaled by the physical therapist example that you yourself proferred, there’s always other real life examples such as various HFT marketmaking firms who make a negligible amount of money with each go (and often lose money on each go), but each go ends up accumulating to a lot.
My basic claim that IQ is not and should not be a primary characteristic that we're selecting for. It's secondary, in that it can affect the acquisition of primary characteristics, particularly specialized knowledge. But it seems to me you are reducing my hypothetical PT to this one number, and that you are wrong to do so.
In fact, I chose this example because I know a PT who is not a high IQ individual. He struggled a lot during school and barely squeaked by with a degree. I wouldn't estimate his IQ higher than 105. However, he's consistently rated as an excellent PT, with great reviews from his patients. How can this be? The answer is obvious - he put in a lot of work to acquire the necessary knowledge, and continues to work hard to research the unique problems his patients have, so he has the same functional knowledge as a higher-IQ PT. But he excels in other traits that correspond with high performance in this job, things like personability, conscientiousness, work ethic, and caring about his patients as people. I do not think a higher-IQ PT would be better at the job, even in negligible ways (you're right that 99% is a made-up number, well done spotting that). PTs aren't like Doctor House, coming up with genius insights that nobody else can see. They follow standard therapeutic guidelines. This is the case for most jobs.
As I said in both my comments, obviously IQ has an impact on many things, and 'all else equal' a higher IQ PT has an advantage - but all else isn't equal, and that advantage is not as significant as you seem to think. Overall, I believe that selecting for IQ is a mistake, for a lot of reasons - in this comment chain the reason I'm hitting on is that other traits are more important to many or even most jobs, and that we should assess people based on their performance. Hopefully that clarifies things for you.
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Fair point, but occupations such as physiotherapy aren't the point of contention (beyond the usual debate about whether or not they should be gated behind credentials, and if so, how heavily).
Let's talk about medicine: I would pay a sizable premium to have a shrink like Scott see me, instead of the modal kind, even if the latter delivers adequate care, and the returns diminish steeply. Outside of a single niche, better doctors/smarter-and-more-conscientious students go into the most competitive specialities. Within the same category, the truly great tend to become specialists and experts in their given domain.
Of course, the rate of return per IQ point can vary greatly. A 130 IQ janitor is just sensible about reading the signs that say "do not ever switch off the lab equipment". A hypothetical 170 IQ janitor probably won't stay a janitor for long.
On the other hand, a 130 IQ physicist might well be locked out entirely from the sorts of intellectual work a 170 IQ counterpart might produce.
Since we agree that this is heavily context dependent, and there are few/no professions where there's a negative return from IQ, we're baking the same cake, just arguing about the ratio of ingredients.
Medicine is very regimented. A doctor twice as smart as me completes their curriculum at the same pace, I'm not aware of accelerated med school programs of any quality. I think I've done decently enough, and am probably above average as a doctor in certain ways (as per exam results), but I don't delude myself into thinking I'd be a shoe-in at Harvard Med.
This is less personal angst, and more general commentary. I don't think my kids will need a SAT coach, or the need to dig wells.
(The previous situation was Mostly Fine. I think the current state of affairs are Mostly Fine. They could still be better.)
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