

At what point is freedom maximized on the IQ curve? - amichail

While it is obvious that low IQ will not give you many options in life, I think it is also the case that very high IQ will take away your freedom as well.<p>There are after all expectations on what one should do with a very high IQ as not to "waste" it.<p>For example, if you are the sort of person who can win a gold medal in the International Math Olympiad, then maybe becoming an entrepreneur will not make optimal use of your brain power.<p>Moreover, entrepreneurship is risky. Why should a very smart person take such risk?  Isn't academia safer?<p>And so the question becomes, what sort of IQ is best to maximize freedom?<p>P.S.  Very high IQ people who have exercised significant freedom in their projects/career have often been ridiculed.  Consider for example Wolfram and Marilyn vos Savant.
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astrodust
I think this is the same as saying "You're very tall, you should be a
basketball player!" or perhaps "You're very well endowed. It'd be a waste not
to go into porn!"

We all have different motivators. The true freedom is being able to choose
your career path because you have more options than someone with more limited
capabilities. A career is a significant life decision and to a degree it's
imperative to disregard what other people want or expect from you in order to
have long-term satisfaction.

Perhaps some people are "too smart" for business because the inherent illogic
and stupidity of it all can be a constant source of irritation, but that's
something you can learn to accept.

Since when are people like Wolfram ridiculed? Maybe you're confusing the
perverse American-style backlash against intellectuals with some specific
grudge against polymaths.

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narag
Maybe the freedom comes from other factors. Is your family rich enough? Do
they pressure you a lot? I remember that intelligent people from working class
at university used to be very puritan compared with middle class. It's
terrible to be the only hope of your family to put someone "there".

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quoderat
From what I've observed, those with an IQ more than two or so standard
deviations above normal have social problems because they relate to others
poorly.

Especially if they are introverts. Extroverts do better, but often have hidden
difficulties masked by their outgoing personalities.

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midnightmonster
My IQ is more than three standard deviations above normal. In Meyers-Briggs
I'm right down the middle between E and I.

Certainly I was never very popular in school, and for a long time there was a
feedback loop between peers finding me arrogant and annoying and me becoming
even more arrogant and annoying in defense.

But then my family adopted 4 special-needs kids, and I learned that being
smart wasn't enough for dealing with everything in life, and also that I
wasn't half bad at some of the other stuff: I made a perhaps-surprisingly good
big brother. And then I went into the IB program for high school and for the
first time personally knew people who were definitely smarter than me (if only
in some fields, I told myself). Both experiences were very helpful in teaching
me to have an identity outside intelligence.

But as far as relating to people in general, it's not as bad as you might
expect. For one thing, almost everyone I know is smart. My parents, my near-
age biological brother, my wife, my kids (so I tell myself, but they're too
young to know yet really), and most of my friends are all of well above
average intelligence.

And overall I find that humility and real (or adequately feigned) interest
make interacting with almost anyone pretty workable. For humility, I try to
remember that I'm smart through no merit of my own: it's a gift of God (or
chance, or the inexorable unfolding of the big bang as you like) through
genetics and environment. Of course I participated usefully in my own
intellectual growth, but there are any number of sad failures of application
and tenacity to count against me in that column, too. For interest, like so
many things, it's about faking it till it becomes real.

~~~
abyssknight
IB programs really teach you a lot about life. Our program was actually inside
an inner city school where the population not in the program had a very low
rate of success as far as graduating and careers went. There is a lot of
pressure involved with having abilities of any kind. People begin to expect
results, regardless of your other passions or wishes.

I agree, humility and genuine respect is absolutely critical to relating up
and down the chain of both IQ and command. That said, sometimes you have to
think if life wouldn't be easier if everyone had the IQ of a 3 year old. At
least then innovation would come naturally, and everyone would learn to share.

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yummyfajitas
I'm not sure I buy the premise. Wolfram and vos Savant are bad certainly
examples.

Savant is not so much ridiculed as ignored. She may be fantastically smart,
but she is nothing more than "Dear Abby" ([http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/linkset/2005/03...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/linkset/2005/03/25/LI2005032502583.html)) with a gimmick. She did
waste her brain power, but it hasn't really harmed her.

Wolfram, on the other hand, is not really a target of ridicule. He is mocked a
bit because his claims about cellular automata are overblown (and probably
false), but everyone takes him seriously. A few idiot academics may feel he
wasted his talents, but that's all.

Plenty of other very smart people who have exercised significant freedom are
treated quite respectably. I think the premise is wrong.

But what do I know, I'm a guy with an IQ 1 standard deviation below the mean.

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grandalf
Assuming the individual is emotionally healthy, I think higher IQ means more
freedom.

Some dangers are that some very bright people get sucked into academe or other
prestige occupations... rather than things that truly allow them to engage
their intellect.

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Raplh
The premise of this question confuses freedom with entropy.

A smart person who does all sorts of stupid things to screw herself up,
drinking, who knows what else, can easily live the life of a stupid person.

But what can a stupid person do to live the life of a smart person?

Clearly smart people have more choices.

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PonyGumbo
"Isn't academia safer?"

In the long term, assuming you can get tenure, yes. This is a terrible time to
be looking for a job as a professor, though - practically every institution
has a hiring freeze.

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badger7
If my car can only reach 50mph, I can't drive at 100mph. If my car can reach
150mph, I can cruise at 100mph if I wish to do so.

What is it that a high IQ prevents me from doing that a lower IQ would allow?

~~~
amichail
It's not so logical. As explained, there's the feeling that you are "wasting"
your IQ if you pursue certain career paths.

Even if the individual does not fall into this trap, there is social pressure
to worry about.

~~~
anigbrowl
Or the old question, if you're so smart, how come you ain't rich? Smarts often
don't correlate with savvy (or IQ != EQ or however you want to express it).
I'd happily trade some of the former for more of the latter. For reason and
other, I've never been able to exploit my IQ to the extent that I'd like.

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banned_man
This sort of "freedom" has more to do with upbringing than IQ. A 115 IQ is
more than enough brainpower to become a doctor or attorney and a person born
in that range in a family with high expectations will be expected to perform
at that level. Conversely, there are people with 140+ IQs whose families
expect little or nothing of them, although that sort of "freedom" isn't
desirable either.

For maximizing life success, I'd say that an IQ in the low 130s is optimal,
but anything above 140 is dangerous and rather useless unless you want to
"swing for the fences" and achieve something that will be remembered after you
die (something that, in my mind, is overrated). People selected as leaders are
usually 75-90th percentile (intellectually) within their reference frame, and
almost never 95+. The upshot is that the frame of reference gets smarter as
one gets older; people with 130 IQs are virtually never popular in high
school, but can do well in adulthood. In general, the smarter you are, the
later in life you hit your stride, socially speaking.

The risk is that not everyone recovers, although most do, from the negative
experiences earlier on. A 30-year-old with a 145 IQ has probably recovered
from any innate social problems and become socially normal, neurologically
speaking, but in the corporate world he's going to be competing against people
in the 120-130 range who have the advantage of positive past experiences.

