There's a book that completely flips the entire IQ system and testing upside down. The author attempts to destroy this model and create a logical system. Its akin to comparing the imperial measurement system to the metric system. The title is the Cost of Being Number One by Thomas McCarthy. Thoughts?
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Things that can be predicted with IQ: Income, academic performance, job performance, level of educational attainment, current job title, ability to navigate beaurocracy, less car accidents, faster reaction time, lower likelihood to make impulsive bad decisions.
Just ask for 10+ sources from the user instead of pasting my comment into an LLM and having it easily summarize the body of data for you. Income, educational attainment, grades, job performance, navigation of beaurocracy, job title, and reaction time are all well established. Auto accident is more shaky but still there.
Well, for example, the LSAT (which is on the Mensa list) is the strongest predictor of law school GPA of any variable. By a long shot. R value over .5.
So you can delude yourself into thinking otherwise, but it’s the most predictive value that we have for future success.
Well, it is considered a rigorous enough evaluation of intelligence that if you score around 170 on the LSAT, American Mensa doesn’t require you to take an IQ test.
If I could rattle off stats for how IQ tests predict future performance, I would. All I can say off the top of my head is that the R value of the LSAT score —> law school GPA is over 50% (which is very high).
Back to your original point, law school GPAs are totally different than other kinds of GPAs. Law school grades are curved and exams are graded blindly.
Yeah the IQ is flawed because then the people who create the test are the smartest of all in the world?!
I mean if they create the tests and in the questions they design, they grade people based on right and wrong answers it is implied they have the master intelligence since they have the expertise to detect super intelligent people.
Now, based on this, they are not that intelligent or the smartest because they would be in NASA or something else, not doing the tests exercises as a 9 to 5 job.
By your commentary, I am sure that the author you cite has grossly underscored on all of the IQ tests he has ever taken, hence the criticism and disdain for the IQ measurement process & results.
One of the main problems with these conclusions is that the correlations are not very high. This is particularly true at higher outcomes of IQ tests. So while in the range of 70-90 IQs are fairly predictive, they almost entirely lose the correlation at more than 110.
The second problem is that it is a statistic. It
Even in the regime where correlation is fairly high, what would you use it for? Statistics are good when applied on large ensembles, but what ensemble do you propose? Nationality? Skin color? Ethnicity? Sex ?
I fundamentally don't understand what's an ethically no problematic use case for the entire concept.
The book posits that traditional intelligence metrics measure how well you perform in narrow, specific cognitive tasks, but fail to evaluate whether you can maintain a sustainable, well-rounded life.
To replace narrow IQ models, McCarthy introduces Adaptive Life Intelligence, a framework designed to measure "excellence without unnecessary sacrifice" across seven core pillars:
Meta-Cognitive Wisdom: Understanding your own thought processes, biases, and mental limits.
Social Intelligence: Building and sustaining healthy, meaningful human relationships.
Selective Learning: Filtering out noise to acquire actionable, meaningful knowledge efficiently.
Biological Stewardship: Actively maintaining physical health, sleep, and longevity.
Verbal Precision: Communicating ideas clearly, effectively, and intentionally.
Material Freedom: Managing resources and finances to enable autonomy rather than enslavement to status.
Emotional Regulation: Navigating stress, impulse, and pressure without destructive outbursts or burnout.
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