Update

iq.md

@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ TODO: more details, history, where to measure (web vs Mensa vs SAT etc.)
 
 **Is IQ a useful measure and if so, how important is the score?** Firstly if you are insecure about your own IQ then just stop that shit -- you know yourself, you know if you're good at math or writing or whatever else you try to do, do you need a piece of paper patting you on the back or something? That's completely pointless, the only thing worth of discussion is IQ as some standardized tool of estimating intellectual abilities of other people on a bigger scale, e.g. as some kind of filter in education (with small groups you can really just interview the people and see if they're dumb or not, that's also more reliable than IQ tests). In this of course the question of the validity of IQ is a controversial one, discussed over and over. Modern "inclusive" society dismisses IQ as basically useless because it points out differences between [races](race.md) etc., some rightist are on the other hand obsessed with IQ too much as it creates a natural hierarchy assigning each man his rank among others. True significance of IQ as a measure seems to be somewhere in between the two extremes here. As it's always noted about IQ, we have to remember the term "intelligence" itself is fuzzy, there doesn't and cannot exist any universal definition of it, so we have trouble even grasping what we're measuring and however we define intelligence, it usually ends up hardly even correlating with "success" or "achievements" or anything similar, so firstly let's see IQ just as what it literally is: a score in some kind of game. Furthermore intelligence is extremely complex and multidimensional (there is spatial and visual intelligence, long and short term memory, language skills, social and emotional intelligence etc.), capturing all this with a single number is inevitably a simplification, the score is just a projected shadow of the intelligence with light cast from certain angle. IQ score definitely does say a lot about some specific kind of "mathematical" intelligence, though even if designed to be so, even in this narrow sense it isn't anywhere near a perfect measure -- though a minority, some mathematicians do score low on IQ tests (Richard Feynman, physics Nobel Prize laureate had famously a relatively low score of 125). It's perhaps good to keep the "IQ tests as a game" mindset -- intelligent people will be probably good at it but some won't, performance can be increased by training, there will be narrowly focused autists who excel at the game but are extremely dumb at everything else etc. Having IQ score predict what we normally understand to be "intelligence" is like having height, weight and age predict how good of a soldier someone will be -- there will be some good correlations, but not nearly perfect ones. Some general IQ range will be necessary for certain tasks such as [programming](programming.md), but rather than +5 on an IQ score things such as education and personality traits will play much more important roles in actually achieving something or creating something good; for example curiosity and determination, the habit of thinking about everything in depth, nonconformity, a skeptical mind, all these are much more important than being a human calculator -- remember, the cheapest calculator will beat the smartest man in multiplying numbers, would you say it is more intelligent?
 
-{ Also consider this: even if you're average, or even a bit below average, you're still [homo](gay.md) sapiens, so as long as you're not a [feminist](feminism.md) or [capitalist](capitalism.md) you'll always be the absolute top organism in intelligence, a member of by far the absolutely most intelligent species that ever appeared on [Earth](earth.md), your intelligence greatly surpasses great majority of living organisms. If you are able to read this, you already possess the great genius, you mastered language and are among the top 0.1%, there's no need to compare yourself to others and aim to be in 0.01% instead of 0.02%. Rather think about what good to do with the gift of reason you've been given. ~drummyfish }
+{ Also consider this: even if you're average, or even a bit below average, you're still [homo](gay.md) sapiens and even if you only finished elementary school you received education that common people in middle ages could only dream of, so as long as you're not a [feminist](feminism.md) or [capitalist](capitalism.md) you'll always be the absolute top organism in intelligence, a member of by far the absolutely most intelligent species that ever appeared on [Earth](earth.md), your intelligence greatly surpasses great majority of living organisms. If you are able to read this, you already possess the great genius, you mastered language and are among the top 0.1%, there's no need to compare yourself to others and aim to be in 0.01% instead of 0.02%. Rather think about what good to do with the gift of reason you've been given. ~drummyfish }
 
 { It's still more and more complicated the more you think of it, even for example success in mathematics may sometimes depend less on pure math skills and more on non-mathematical kind of intelligence, e.g. that of observation skills and communication -- that's what academia is about. Yes, you need some creativity, but the ability to quickly understand ideas of others may sometimes be superior, an idea you "steal" from someone else is as useful as idea you came up with yourself, you need to catch many ideas of others and connect them together; on the other hand struggling with communication is sometimes simply like not speaking a common language at all. Thinking back I for one have always been quite retarded at understanding what others wanted to say, even simple things, so in classes I frequently wouldn't understand what was being taught while others understood, but it wasn't because I wouldn't understand the concept itself, I rather didn't understand the way the teacher explained it because (I think) I think differently about things. When we were given tasks to solve on our own, I usually beat my classmates because that was only about creative intelligence, not communication, and in this I think I was better than most of my peers. I didn't go for PhD later on while some of my classmates did -- TBH I don't think it's because they were necessarily more intelligent in general (many of them for sure were), but because they felt better in this world of communication, sharing papers, talking to others, understanding their ideas and collaborating, they had the "better mix" of intelligence for today's academic world -- this I always had problems with, so it contributed to my decision to not go there. This is just to show that this world is quite complex. ~drummyfish }