Thread title should read "Average intelligence and academic/professional achievement". Damn phone buttons.

BTM claiimed in another thread:
Is this true? It's always been my view that people below 100 IQ or so are incapable of grasping and succeeding in most advanced professional pursuits involving complex abstract ideas and a verifiably correct answer (engineering, the harder sciences, law, math, programming, etc).

You might be talking about something that BTM didn't intend to imply. A person w/ average intelligence may be able to understand something to a degree but not be able to develop a concept on their own. As an example, I think that I can understand theoretical physics as explained to me by the physicists that write books for the public but, since my mind freezes at advanced math, I'd never be able to ferret out what the physicists have.

IOW, you might - and I say might - not have taken his meaning.

I think the "develop the concept on their own" is a red herring. 99% of intelligent people couldn't develop 99% of the concepts they learn, on their own.

It's just a fact that most people, even intelligent ones, can't develop concepts on their own. Poker is a classic example - before David Sklansky laid out some (rather obvious, but nonetheless novel) ideas in Theory of Poker, very few people, even the intelligent and professional players, had come up with these ideas themselves.

My question is whether they can even grasp the concepts well enough to get the right answers to the same kind of questions that professionals in the field can. My contention is, they can't. That a person with <100 IQ, even with strong motivation, could not do adequately in the fields listed above.

Has it been shown that IQ scores alone correlate w/ careers?

yes....to a degree

on high ca 1%+ pays end it's mostly propensity for risk taking and luck

Yes. Not really debatable:

Fascinating talk about current and future problems in this area. I love the realism of this guy.

I started my 'Robot Apocalypse' thread bec of what that fellow's talking about. There aren't going to be jobs for ppl w/ an average intelligence. And I tell ppl that someday the government is going to be handing out drugs like candy. Ofc, I get laughed at by everyone but that's ok, it usually means that I'm right.

I'm halfway through this book:



GLGL, so far, ppl w/ average intelligence.

Government will be going to hand out money and stuff. The capitalists will not be allowed to pocket everything.

Human work will not be necessary. As a hobby? Why not.

You think that an average person cannot calculate a static load rating given a cheat sheet with the formulas on it and a calculator? How about if we supply them with a spreadsheet that is named ThisIsTheSpreadsheetForCalculatingLoadRatings.xls

Most of what engineers do (in real life) amounts to remembering "lefty loosey, righty tighty" or remembering which cheat sheet to search for. Learning the tasks involved is simply a long slog,* rather than the stuff of high intelligence.

*to be fair, getting through the long slog should be held as a pretty impressive accomplishment.

The economy has to shrink very significantly if there's no middle class purchasing power and the government, which might be able to hand out money for a couple of years, won't be able to keep it up. And you can't get the money out of the rich ppl either bec even if you took it all it wouldn't last long. Furthermore, the extremely wealthy have most of their money in stock in their companies whose value will likely fall. Who is going to buy the $1K iPhone on what the government gives them? There will hardly be anybody to even buy the stock.

And government hand-outs will create a massive class of single issue voters: 'Vote for me and I will give you more!' That hotbed of radical socialists, called the World Economic Forum says, in it's Global Risk Assessment 2017 that Captalism needs urgent reform. URGENT!

Meanwhile the people DO have a vote and I predict that it will come a time when it's taken away bec there simply is no way to make them happy.

End times, civilization, you heard it hear first.

Random sage advice: Never believe a psychologist whose ideals appeal to you.

You are thinking about this sideways. Forget "money" and think "stuff" instead as it makes it easier.

If the AI robots currently being developed by Apple get to the point where they can design upgrades at once per day and manufacture 4 billion units of IphoneSexRobot_2.3 per hour, and you make $0.001 per day by turning in beer cans at the local recycling center then the math indicates that you can buy 283 of the current model of IphoneSexRobot2.3 for a mere 28 seconds of work the day it is released.

Money is just potential waiting to become stuff.

Look at that, pure genius. That phrase just might take off and make me famous!

Btw, try getting a beer can w/ everybody else looking for them.

I've been stockpiling cans for such an eventuality. It has nothing to do with my lack of tidiness. That is my story and I'm sticking to it, copper.

As part of my free editing service, I'm editing your statement to "money is like potential energy, but for stuff."

Careers such as one that leads to Nobel prize in theoretical physics or Fields Medals then bring it IQ over 150 easily always.

Noway in hell a low intelligence person understands the world the same way a smart educated person does. Its a matter of curiosity and putting things together 24/7. How do you get there on top philosophical issues without intelligence that is very high. To understand properly QM, Relativity etc you definitely need some 120 and higher or substantial tutoring. But after the tutoring you still need your own natural curiosity to put things together and understand even more to have a clear connected picture of the world. High IQ is the best first defense against the demoralizing power of complicated new information in all great books. The easier you get frustrated and give up the worse it is.


In top business start up ideas or careful investing in them etc i bet it correlates very well with IQ.

Don't worry, my friend. The ZenoMatic****Matron3000 will beat out the Apple product.

There will be robots collecting beer cans. Maybe finding one thing to do each month the robots (yet) can't do will be enough for a hefty paycheck.

Thank you for making my point for me by the bolded. Training in the math will easily turn an undereducated 100 IQ person into your meager 120 IQ person.

I didn't understand the rest of what you were saying outside of the bit I bolded.

It means that most of knowledge is self gained eventually. So if you find it demoralizing acquiring tough to understand information you may get bored and call it a day and do something else that pleases the brain more by not screaming constantly "you do not get it easily". If it takes 5 hours to understand a paper and it takes another person 30 minutes then its a big difference in probability to actually finish it.

It is true that most papers are bs in theory for example but still it helps to know immediately why they are bs. It also helps to understand the great ones of the past when you read their work faster than a slow pace of one paper per week for example.

This is what higher intelligence gives to you. It gives you endless stream of little victories 24/7 that boost your ego and give you confidence to go for the f*cking impossible. And it gives you legs when you need them in hard efforts. From getting creative ideas that are original to imagining new hard roads because you are restless and fire in all cylinders until it happens and difficulty wont be a problem but an attraction. High intelligence is the difference between seeing a hard problem as challenge and seeing it as demoralizing insult. Intelligence gives you the brilliant quick solutions but also the long difficult ones that will not be stopped regardless of adversity experienced at any level of the trip. Confidence is the secret when you have no answers. People panic when they do not know what to do and the most intelligent ones experience the greatest joy in the anticipation of the creative process. They treasure the not knowing yet part.

The fact is with great heart, solid support and guidance one can do great things without a superb IQ. But these wont be always there to support you. When alone you will find out that its hard out there and it takes tremendous heart and determination to overcome the natural barriers of intelligence. High intelligence opens doors in your thinking and stimulates imagination.

So you better believe it i wish i had 30 points higher IQ that i do. I am also convinced that if i have 157 or whatever i do (that probably changes with age and time of day and situations) i owe 30 of it to my education, childhood and parents. So intelligence is a lot of things together and a better training and environment and opportunities will boost you up a lot but at the end of the day all it takes is to give you a geometry problem (the equalizer challenge among all humans across all educations and cultures) that takes hours to solve and see who is the boss really. And my money is on the person that has learned to not give up and has evidence this works from a lifetime of won battles that will not come as easy with lower intelligence. Because the brain likes to feel happy and superficially bs as it is you get pleasure at school when you beat everyone in 30km radius or get into super motivated mood when you score second in the country for example and you have won everything but that one thing yet. That kind of confidence and healthy humility mix that comes with exposure to hard problems doesn't come easily with lower intelligence. Adversity and eventual victory in math or science is the secret to getting the courage eventually to attempt the impossible.

The war out there in top fields is relentless (and i do not mean the competitive war, its the war with yourself really to reach your best when victories are rare). You cannot win it even with 160 IQ these days. It is then that your culture, your environment and your luck will make the difference if super high IQ is not there. But its unavoidable that all the great ones eg in Physics, Einstein Dirac, Feynman, Schwinger, Pauli, Fermi, Bohr, Heisenberg, Wheeler, Bell etc had it easily over 150 and were radiating captivating people.


I will never deny anyone with any size perceived by tests intelligence the opportunity and encouragement to go after their dream. The hardness of the world out there will do that for them and i am here to make it easier. It is the very bloody reason i am so damn long and perceived repetitive without so called brevity. Because i aim to be understood by more than all those i read who frequently dont give a damn who can follow. Intelligence that cannot be understood easily is hostile intelligence.

You can have success with even lower levels of intelligence but it will conveniently very often avoid the tough math and physics details and focus on more reasonably doable tasks that require commitment, discipline, luck, collaboration and endless effort. There is still good science to be done in all areas of experiments and observations or applied projects that wont require insane IQ but it wont magically in single steps lead to new paradigms, only incrementally with many others together that gradually paint the emerging picture. You will still need that one greater IQ person that will perform the synthesis typically.

The great news is that this age of individual miracles is coming to an end with AI. Synthesis is too important to leave to random brilliance. We need it like never before with the mess we are creating.

Why do you believe this to be true?
Do you disagree with his claim that it's very difficult and time consuming to train a <85 IQ (14% of the population) to do even simple job tasks reliably?

IQ isn't a stable trait except for when environment is stable. Changing it (in a person who is currently within 1 SD of the mean) by a bit over 1 SD is trivial.

It depends on the individual and how far below 85. If they have organic issues, then yes. If it is a task that requires a young brain and is completely outside their wheelhouse, then yes.

I'm just going to straight-up claim that no 100 IQ is ever going to be able to accomplish the robotics engineering or genome sequencing that that book I'm reading is talking about except for being able to plug/un-plug the machines.