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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28893 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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Not all humans have 135 IQ (supposedly the average here)

Lolwut?

https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/pJJdcZgB6mPNWoSWr/2013-survey-results

Can we finally resolve this IQ controversy that comes up every year?

The story so far—our first survey in 2009 found an average IQ of 146. Everyone said this was stupid, no community could possibly have that high an average IQ, it was just people lying and/or reporting results from horrible Internet IQ tests. Although IQ fell somewhat the next few years—to 140 in 2011 and 139 in 2012 - people continued to complain. So in 2012 we started asking for SAT and ACT scores, which are known to correlate well with IQ and are much harder to get wrong. These scores confirmed the 139 IQ result on the 2012 test. But people still objected that something must be up.

This year our IQ has fallen further to 138 (no Flynn Effect for us!) but for the first time we asked people to describe the IQ test they used to get the number. So I took a subset of the people with the most unimpeachable IQ tests—ones taken after the age of 15 (when IQ is more stable), and from a seemingly reputable source. I counted a source as reputable either if it name-dropped a specific scientifically validated IQ test (like WAIS or Raven’s Progressive Matrices), if it was performed by a reputable institution (a school, a hospital, or a psychologist), or if it was a Mensa exam proctored by a Mensa official.

This subgroup of 101 people with very reputable IQ tests had an average IQ of 139 - exactly the same as the average among survey respondents as a whole.

I don’t know for sure that Mensa is on the level, so I tried again deleting everyone who took a Mensa test—leaving just the people who could name-drop a well-known test or who knew it was administered by a psychologist in an official setting. This caused a precipitous drop all the way down to 138.

The IQ numbers have time and time again answered every challenge raised against them and should be presumed accurate.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/17/ssc-survey-2017-results/#comment-476694

We have this argument every year. Points in favor include:

  1. Survey IQs mostly match survey SATs from IQ/SAT conversion tables.
  2. One year we asked ACT and that matched too.
  3. One time we made everybody describe which IQ test they took and in what circumstance, and the subset who took provably legit IQ tests given by provably legit psychologists weren’t any different from the rest.

I don’t doubt that a lot of the overly high numbers are people who took a test as kids which wasn’t properly normed for kids their age or something.

Interesting. I dont recall any of these polls or participating in any.

There are no good counterarguments to the standard objections that:

  1. People with impressive IQs highly disproportionately respond to "what's your IQ" questions, for the same reason that rich people disproportionately respond to salary threads, and extremely fit people to gym threads, and promiscuous people to threads about sexual histories etc etc etc. The infamous internet picture thread rule holds true - people who post in 'show us your face' threads on anonymous forums are either (a) delusional or (b) hotter than the average user of said forum.

  2. People Just Lie On The Internet. For an even moderately intelligent midwit, coming up with plausible context for a very high IQ score (where it happened, which test it was, how it correlates with ACT/SAT/GMAT/LSAT scores) takes 5 minutes of research via Google. Of course people lie most to themselves, misremember things, think "oh yeah, I'd definitely have gotten y instead of x score if I'd had a better day or had prepared a little more so I'll just say I got y".

  3. The Motte is now like 10 years out of SSC / LW and has a related-but-substantially-distinct audience. Rats are disproportionately high IQ silicon valley weirdos, the CW thread - /r/Motte - website progression and long lifespan of the community, plus big overlap with /r/drama, redscarepod, various other culture war conversation communities picked up a large number of people of more modest intelligence. Sure, likely still well above average, but not 99th percentile.

Despite 1 and 2, I believe old LW being 130-140 and remaining close if lower as it's grown. More than a few posts there are just college-level math, and many of the remaining posts are analytic philosophy tier in attention to detail, precision, and length (not that either are necessarily true as a result), and often come from people who were math/physics majors. 3 is correct though.

I kind of assume this community is 135 IQ. Scott Sumner once said that Iq level doesn’t read the nyt they go somewhere on the blogosphere. My scores would test around there. I’m curious if not here then where would 135 IQ people go?

I haven’t found an above.

Scott Sumner once said that Iq level doesn’t read the nyt they go somewhere on the blogosphere.

Bill Gates probably has an IQ of at least 155, maybe 160 or higher (Harvard Math 55, publishing something interesting on sorting in undergrad etc), and apparently reads the New York Times cover to cover every day. It's a weird thing to say that smart people don't read the news. But in general it's a fallacy to assume there have to be publications that have an average audience of IQ 135. There may be, but they'll be things like some kinds of math journals in niche subfields, not things that cover general interest topics, like this place.

There may be some similar academic discussion boards for math/physics, but a mainstream political discussion board like this one is never going to be predominantly 99th percentile. There are subreddits like some of the ask-X where the politics may be odious but the raw quality of the writing is on the same level as here. You don't need to be 99th percentile to write most posts or comments here. I'd say the 25th percentile bound of The Motte regular users (more than 200 comments per year) is maybe 90th percentile IQ, sure.

apparently reads the New York Times cover to cover every day.

This makes me think less of his intelligence rather than more given the NYT articles I've actually read. That paper has been incredibly suspect and dubious the entire time I've been paying attention to the media.

This is ... generously ... a severe cognitive bias on your part. There are a lot of smart people who are enthusiastic liberals. In fact, most of the smartest people at every level who are politically engaged are liberals. So it can't be a knock on someone's intelligence. If anything, by Bayes, it's weak evidence for intelligence.

Like, let's construct a pseudo-syllogism here, based on easily observable facts.

Easily observable fact 1: Most science and math professors at universities are liberals. This is easily confirmed by anecdote, or by surveys.

Easily observable fact 2: Most smart liberals read, and like, the New York Times. Also easily confirmed by anecdote.

Okay, so smart science and math professors probably read the NYT..

Now this is real life, categories and proposition don't apply to nebulous contingent phenomena in the way they do to math. Maybe university professors, still, don't read the NYT. Let's spot check: Smart math professor? Terry Tao. Social media? Mastodon. His most recent post? New York Times. Also, your suspicion of the NYT is based on the claims they make and beliefs they have, and that applies to liberal media and beliefs generally - liberal professors, even if they didn't read the NYT, would still fail your standard for intelligence.

This isn't even a partisan thing. The Daily Wire or Fox isn't more reality-based than the NYT, both have significant flaws, and a decent number of high IQ CS and engineering people still eat that up. For many reasons - alienation, incentives, lack of personal knowledge, more not worth getting into here - otherwise smart people are retarded on politics. There's a reason yud called it the mind-killer. I agree that a lot of the NYT is quite bad.

There are a lot of smart people who are enthusiastic liberals.

??? That has nothing to do with my objections to the NYT. It isn't the direction of the political content that I object to, but the quality of the journalism involved. My contention is that the NYT produces terrible journalism, and is largely riding on the coattails of previous generations who built up substantial "reputational capital" for the paper. Smart specialists continuing to read a paper that used to be good but is now substantially less reliable is actually exactly what I would expect to happen, given that they presumably have more important topics on their mind. The fact that the long march through the institutions happened and academia became heavily politicised in one direction is also immaterial here.

His most recent post? New York Times.

He is reporting that an event he was an important part of received an article in the NYT. I don't see anything here that supports the claim that he religiously reads the paper...but again, that has nothing to do with my original contention.

Also, your suspicion of the NYT is based on the claims they make and beliefs they have, and that applies to liberal media and beliefs generally - liberal professors, even if they didn't read the NYT, would still fail your standard for intelligence.

Wow, this is news to me! I was under the impression that telling your interlocutors what they actually believe was considered poor form on here, but apparently not. That said, I have to disagree (you'll have to forgive me for not posting a proper citation) - it is actually the quality of the journalism I dislike as opposed to the directionality. My own political positions are heterodox and don't map neatly onto the left/right divide, and so "Liberal professors" actually don't fail my standard for intelligence in a vacuum. There are plenty of them that would fail my standard, but it isn't because they're liberal professors.

Hm. I probably failed at 'arguing against the person you're replying to, instead of an amorphous blob of all the people on the internet making similar arguments', sorry. I still think the inference 'reads NYT religiously and loves it -> low IQ' is very very wrong, though.

My contention is that the NYT produces terrible journalism, and is largely riding on the coattails of previous generations who built up substantial "reputational capital" for the paper

Can you name another paper that has, on the whole, better journalism? I can think of a bunch of equivalents, but nothing better that isn't also much more specialized.

And more generally, I know a decent number of high-IQ people who respect the NYT, and via social media have observed a whole lot more. The easy explanation here is they don't specialize in politics and thus will be hopelessly confused about it no matter what their positions are. But even among those who dedicate their careers to politics, plenty of very smart people continue to respect the NYT. Overall, I think it should be obvious that there's no correlation, as things stand today, between IQ as confirmed by things like scientific or mathematical achievement and 'recognizing the NYT is bad'.

That said, I think I agree with your object-level claim about the NYT's journalism today, although I am not sure it was any better in the past.

Can you name another paper that has, on the whole, better journalism? I can think of a bunch of equivalents, but nothing better that isn't also much more specialized.

I can't think of anything that isn't much more specialized either, but that does nothing to improve the NYT. If I have a choice between a map that is wrong and no map at all, then I'm going to go without the map and make my own judgements.

Overall, I think it should be obvious that there's no correlation, as things stand today, between IQ as confirmed by things like scientific or mathematical achievement and 'recognizing the NYT is bad'.

I think that if you tried to tie IQ to this you would actually find a really complicated morass. IQ would be a factor, but so would tribal affiliation, income, cultural context, social milieu, etc. The degree to which someone is willing to disregard pro-social illusions ("The NYT is a trustable and reliable source of information about the world") isn't necessarily correlated to IQ, but at the same time I will absolutely lower my estimation of someone who takes that paper seriously as a factual source of information about the world. A higher IQ isn't an unalloyed good, and doesn't necessarily mean that you always make the correct decision either. But if you do take the NYT seriously and view it as a useful source of true information about the world then you are displaying a lack of curiosity and discernment that makes me think less of you all the same - unless you're just so busy elsewhere with real work that you don't have the time to seriously interrogate your media diet, like Terence Tao.

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Ya he might. Nyt definitely aims for more of the top 10%. But what’s north of there?

It’s the blogosphere or Reddit.

What would you say is the average score for readers of, say, the New York Review of Books?

Very weak guess of 120? Which lines up with the (chart I saw on twitter of) IQ scores by major for english/history majors.

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