16 Comments

Thanks for posting this! I thought the charts on income vs. The Big 5 were particularly interesting. I'm very surprised that there's little relationship between neuroticism and income. As a man high in neuroticism, with a fairly high IQ, who has underachieved in life, I've tended to assume it was my neuroticism holding me back.

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I don't think the people making offhand claims realize how rare the high IQs are. When I think "threshold IQ" I'm thinking something in the 130-150 range, your quote compares 150 to 180. I'm not sure if its possible to evaluate 99.7 against 99.99.

This certainly isnt a 90th or 95th percentile phenomenon, but I think most people have a vision of someone so smart they are unwilling or unable to participate normally in society which gives the idea tenacity.

That being said, there are misfits at every IQ. Maybe the smart ones are just more memorable.

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I analyzed Cox' 1926 book "301 geniuses" and found a threshold effect. Probability of being a genius is an S-curve function of IQ, where the effect starts to rise around 120 and flattens around 180.

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>"Jensen of course did not claim that, see prior post for digging into this false attribution."

Gladwell's quote of Arthur Jensen is accurate (Bias in Mental Testing, pp. 113-114). Maybe you mean Jensen's opinion was not expressed at the extreme of Gladwell's opinion, and I agree, but it is not so much of a false attribution. Where is that prior post?

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OK - no threshold effect. So, explain this: why no people with IQs of 200? Or 500? or 200,000? There MUST be a threshold beyond which higher IQ becomes a liability, not an asset, or such people would exist.

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