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It's not "what I think", it's what we know. One of the most well established facts in sociology is that IQ is the best predictor for life success: Firkowska-Mankiewicz, Anna, and Jerzyna Słomczyńska. Intelligence (IQ) as a Predictor of Life Success. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20628656

You reiterate my question in the second sentence: How do we weight these different privileges?



A quote from paper that cites the one you link,

>For instance, IQ was believed to be one generic measure of human intelligence, on which Young’s meritocracy was based. But a century of research on IQ and life success has largely dispelled the once widely spread myth about the importance of IQ (Arrow et al., 2000; Gardner, 1983; Goleman, 1995; Gould, 1996; Zhao, 2016). Based on longitudinal studies on IQ and life’s success that lasted multiple decades, researchers conclude that: “the value of the IQ scores should not be overestimated” (Firkowska-Mankiewicz, 2002, p. 41).

https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/josi.1...

Besides that, even if an analytical weighting cannot be given, it doesn't mean we can't examine the effects qualitatively.

>The results demonstrate that intelligence is a powerful predictor of success but, on the whole, not an overwhelmingly better predictor than parental SES or grades. Moderator analyses showed that the relationship between intelligence and success is dependent on the age of the sample but there is little evidence of any historical trend in the relationship.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028960...


is that IQ is the best predictor for life success

Perhaps, but the paper also concludes "that the importance of the role of IQ in predicting life success should not be overestimated". Furthermore while IQ did to some degree predict objective life success it does not seem to predict subjective life success, ie how happy you are with how your life turned out.


Also, they only compared those who scored very low to those that scored very high. The study says nothing about the predictive power of IQ for those who are within 'normal' ranges. All you can really conclude is that 13-year-olds with a WISC score above 130 tend to do better in life than kids with a WISC score below 85. It says nothing about if we can extrapolate that to conclude the kids scoring 115 do better than kids scoring 95.


You are misinterpreting that research.

It’s the best individual predictor when compared against other predictors, but not very predictive on its own.

I.e. Iq is more predictive than inherited wealth, but iq + inherited wealth is more predictive than either individual factor.


And again we're back at my original question... This is just a never ending loop. My whole point is this: How do we separate our inherited traits from the privilege brought on by our "class"?


IQ is the strongest individual predictor, but much smaller than the aggregate of class traits.

Class traits are of course inherited, but there is a distinction to be made between cultural inheritance and generic inheritance.

Which are you talking about?


IQ is an output of environmental factors.




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