
Ask HN: What are the differences between people with high and very high I.Q - smithmayowa
What in your opinion are the differences in the level of thoughts and imagination(to computer science and programming in particular) between people with intelligence quotients in range (125 - 134) and people with intelligence quotients in range (135-144), i understand that above those quotients lies the genius range(145-200), and i can at least imagine what it means but i have never been able to imagine the differences in level of thinking between those ranges stated above.
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CyberFonic
IQ tests only measure a very portion of what constitutes intelligence in our
society. In other words you could score high on an IQ test and yet be an
"idiot savant" or score low on IQ and be the go to person for solving tricky
mechanical problems.

Since you ask about thoughts and imagination in a CS context, I can only guess
that you are asking about abstractions. In that case, there is a massive
difference between being able to understand an abstraction that has been
codified or to create a new one. For example, it takes most of us quite a bit
of effort to get our heads around the abstraction used by, say Haskell. But to
create a new abstraction that renders computations in a new area feasible,
e.g. neuromorphic inference, requires a totally different way of thinking and
I doubt that IQ tests can differentiate between the two.

In my experience, many genius programmers have very good recall of masses of
detailed information. Which is similar to the skills of top litigation
lawyers. Yet, when faced with a practical problem, like diagnosing and fixing
a corrupted notebook computer, they both call in somebody with better analysis
and deduction skills and most likely unable to recite masses of memorized
material.

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danieltillett
It is near impossible to understand how anyone thinks more than two standard
deviations above or below you, and most of the time even a one standard
deviation difference is difficult.

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ggm
I don't believe in IQ as a measure of anything so anything I say has to be
read in that context.

I am probably in the lower set. I struggle with abstraction, I struggle with
retention of key mathematical concepts like the application of Compositions of
functions, or lazy evaluation or partial function application or lambda
calculus.

All of these I judge people probably in the higher-est set, to show signs of
fluency and understanding in a deep sense.

Tl;Dr you can't actually take it til you make it, in maths,and if you believe
compsci is maths..

