Again, you were correct the first time. Close to the mean, the IQ bell curve is very symmetrical, so we see roughly the same number of 70s as we do 130s. The further out you go to either extreme, the less symmetrical it is, and so you don't see IQs of 10 but you do see IQs of 190.

You guys sound so smart, but are horrible at answering questions in layman terms.

What you're basically saying is that it is a symmetrical bell curve within a limited margin of, lets say 50-150 and from then on it ceases to be the case.

This is understandable .. THANK YOU.

I just love learning useless ****e.

the overwhelming majority of poker players also are lifetime losers in the game though. There's a big difference between the intelligence of the poker playing community and the intelligence of the winning poker playing community imo

Maybe there is a higher % of women playing the WSOP ME only because their significant other is playing the event (and they are inexperienced players themselves) than vice versa (i.e. husband of female pro). The reasons why people play is a big variable... could account for some of the difference

Pro-tip: If you don't understand intelligence bell curves, you'll find yourself on the left hand side of the graph.

short answer:

yes, the small % of long-term winning poker players are most likely to be more intelligent than the average public. This does not correlate directly to IQ score. To study further, you can probably start looking at what an INTJ and similar is. Google it.

Maybe. Even if they are they negate it by overestimating their own intelligence to a much higher degree than the general public, though.

When your life revolves around making decisions with incomplete information and being right more than half the time is good, it sets you up to be a fool in many situations.

Agreed, but there are also people who absolutely refuse to make decisions unless they have "complete information" which is problematic because the quest for complete information can often lead one astray or to stagnate, especially in cases where it doesn't exist, and even more in cases where misinformation is purposefully being spread.

I think good poker players learn to strictly filter information into "useful" and "not useful" buckets without regard for completeness as they accept completeness can't be attained. This step means they may have less information to make their decisions, but the filtering effort makes the info higher quality for making decisions. It's not that the general public doesn't have this same quality, just that it's more pronounced in poker players because we know from the start we are dealing with incomplete information, and we know from the start people are trying to deceive us for their own benefit.

In the real world of capitalism the exact same thing is happening but the general public is far less in tune with the incentive structures governing actions. i.e. "The used car salesman seemed like a really genuine guy, I could tell he wanted to help me out and give me a good deal..." etc.

poker teaches the recognition of incentive structures which is an insanely important skill to have in capitalistic society IMO

Or you can stay away from Meyers-Briggs tests and other such pseudo sciences, but it's up to you

Could not agree more with this. The rub is that there are many situations where information is attainable and people instead decide to trust their internal process rather than obtain it. You see it all day long where people are arguing points of fact as if they are points of opinion. It is far from exclusive to poker players but it sure is common in this population.

could you expand more on which situations you would be a fool in if you're good at decision making with incomplete information with a benchmark of approximately 50% success

Every situation where you could be more than 50% successful/correct by obtaining more information when it is available. There are a lot of these situations off the felt in the wide world.

lol

um....you're forgetting about one of the operative forces in poker: randomness.

That is the reason success rates are close to 50% in poker. It has absolutely nothing to do with your ability to acquire and analyze information, like you are suggesting.

Being good at poker actually requires the opposite of what you are suggesting; that you are very good at acquiring as much as possible of the information available to you and using it as effectively as possible. Just because you're dealing with a small data set in poker if you compare it with all of the data in the world(lol comparison), says nothing of poker player's ability to acquire and analyze information from a larger data set.

Nothing do so with one's ability to do so, more to do with their inclination to.

No, lol. The statement you made about good poker players being inherently foolish in certain other situations based on the fact that they can only find approx. 51-55% success rates in poker is entirely incorrect, no matter how you word it.

I didn't say that. This post is a perfect example of what I did say though.

Actually, you said exactly that.

Are you actually going to try and say that you didn't say something when I can just go back and quote exactly what you said?

Like this...

So no, it's not a perfect example of what you did post being true. It's just you being entirely wrong, and too stubborn to admit it

Perfect example like I said. You had trouble understanding what I meant. You filled in the blanks you were left with using BS you created out of whole cloth and attributed it to me instead of getting clarification. When I declined to defend your bastardized version of my position you declared victory because you view every interaction as a contest, every discussion as a debate. Also a common practice of poker players.

Look, you're free to re-state your point and defend it at any point. At this point though, your original statement is wholly incorrect; I did not fill in any blanks, I merely interpreted your words.

It's not a contest, but we are on an open forum where ideas are compared and debated, and I think the idea of your's in question is absolute nonsense and entirely incorrect, so I stated what I thought.

Now, would you like to debate the point you made? Or are you going to just continue being upset and acting like a victim just because your idea is in contention?

What has led you to conclude I'm upset? Another case of you creating your own narrative and asserting it as truth. I don't feel like a victim at all. You have swooped in and proven my point nicely on every level. It's perfect, actually.

This is my interpretation of what you mean:

It sets you up to make it very difficult for you to concede your view on something in favour of another's view, which has the potential to make you a fool in many situations

A poker player may only need to be 60% (X) sure of something to be convinced of it and to try and convince others, whereas a member of general population might need to be 95% (Y) sure of something to feel the same conviction and take the same actions. If this continued on over time, eventually the poker players would be made to look like fools relative to the public because their convictions would be wrong more often.

The difference between X and Y would give some indication of the proportion of situations the poker player would seem a fool.

It's kind of like the reverse of how good players suck out less often than bad players because they get it in bad less often etc.

these words barely make sense to me but I feel I get you lol

feel free to re-state or defend your position at any time Johnny, not trying to have a petty argument about nothing with you. Sorry if I misinterpreted the first time.

Yes this is pretty close. It's a pretty general concept/observation and I would not have any clue how to attribute percentages though. I may be wrong.

My point is there are a lot of situations in life like poker, where it is valuable to assess limited information and move confidently forward with action. There are a lot of situations, however, where this is foolish because there is more info available, or others who have more experience/knowledge to draw from and learn from on a topic. When you are used to making autonomous decisions with limited information, and your very success depends on it, you may be more inclined to stop gathering info, less open to accepting other points of view,or trust your processes earlier than you need to once your story makes sense to you out of habit.

In poker you have to construct stories that make sense to you over and over, filling in blanks where needed with best guesses. You don't have to be right all the time, just a small majority. This process is not applicable to every situation in life (though it is very useful in many outside of poker) and in fact is the wrong way to go about drawing many conclusions. This is because relying on your best guess is not always necessary. To be clear it is a spectrum and not black and white.