I guess if you accept IQ as a proxy for general cognitive ability, this would suggest the article is right.
On the other hand, I still find it very counter intuitive. The ability to plan ahead and the spatial thinking are things I though would transfer well to other domains (arguably both are not things that an IQ test, or the academic tests from the article, would measure well though).
It isn't assumed that IQ is a proxy go general cognitive ability, it is known that it correlates to some degree with many positive outcomes and abilities.
So you can look up how well it correlates with what things, and what it doesn't, and get an idea of what it is predictive of.
It isn't anywhere near perfect of course, you can't capture the whole of a person's cognitive ability in one number, but then it is only a "proxy" as you said.
It correlates with education, income, etc. because it serves basically as a literacy test. (As in, very low IQ means you fail at most measurable things.) Once you condition on IQ>110, the correlation disappears.
Specifically, when looking at people with IQ above 110, it seems like the correlations are still there at least for PhD level science. Most fields have average IQs above 130: http://www.religjournal.com/pdf/ijrr10001.pdf
One thing I didn't know initially is that IQ tests are normalized so the mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 10. If we assume IQ is normally distributed (not exactly true, but roughly accurate), then IQ of 110 puts you in the top 33% of the population. IQ of 130 puts you in the top 0.3%.
> One thing I didn't know initially is that IQ tests are normalized so the mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 10.
No, the standard deviation is 15 IQ points, not 10. 130 puts you in the top 2%. I know this because my kid scored in the < 0.02%.
On the other hand, IQ tests are highly correlated to how much you prepare for them, which is why rich families score higher. There was a tutor on Reddit for private schools admissions who said she had never had a student who didn’t surpass the entrance qualifications for a standardized test. It’s very easily gameable.
Anyone considered “profoundly gifted”, ie IQ over 145, would shudder at the idea of being associated with Mensa. It’s basically an organization for moderately intelligent people with self-esteem issues who like to think they are rare geniuses.
Most profoundly gifted people don’t want to be “outed” as profoundly gifted because they have been bullied or ostracized for much of their lives because of it. There’s a reason why very high IQ scores don’t correlate to very high success. High IQ is nothing except a certificate you can hang on your wall to brag, hard work is what gets you success.
I don’t think that’s fair. My aunt was a member of Mensa. The only reason she chose to be was because of the books of puzzles she got out of it. I don’t think she went to any meetings or told anyone about it. She lent some of the books to me as a kid when I was bored.
Many more than 2% can achieve a 130 IQ score by preparing for the questions and taking sample tests. Many people do that, especially when IQ tests are requirements for entrance exams for private schools. I’ve seen this first hand from the cohort of children at my kids’ schools.
Sure, but that leaves your argument about the innateness of the characteristic it's measuring as handwaving and special-pleading. You see the same effect with SES in twin studies, for what it's worth.
I only know one person who is in Mensa but he fits that description perfectly lol. He probably grew out of it now but for a while his thing was he got into Mensa.
There is definitely the aspect of talent. I've seen (and arbitrated) players who began at an early age, had the most effective training and became completely average or even stagnated. And I've also interacted with those who heightened their chess skills in a really short time and are among the highest rated players.
Point well taken, but I'm still not convinced that the variability you describe couldn't be accounted for by things like differences in diet (which can greatly affect cognitive ability), or differing circumstances at home (ie. abusive homes, or parents who are neglective vs caring and nurturing) and/or outside the home (like various forms of stress when kids live in dangerous neighborhoods where their peers and adults get assaulted or murdered on a regular basis), parents who push their kids to achieve vs ones who don't care how or what their kids do, etc...
Picking out the effects of nature vs nurture in a random chess playing kid is not easy, and I wouldn't be so quick to attribute to innate talent that which could be explained by environment.
What is clear, however, and something which you did not seem to deny in your own response, is that playing a lot of chess when you're young is critical to overall chess performance. Without that even "intelligent" and very capable adults who started playing too late are just not going to catch up to capable kids who played a lot of chess early.
Yes, I may have assumed that all other variables are held constant, which is usually not the case. Although on your other point, I feel as though your argument sounds more like the 10,000 Hour rule popularised by Malcom Gladwell which I don't 100% agree with.
But I don't believe an adult who started playing chess late and plays 10,000 hours will be anywhere near as good as a child who started playing chess early and played 10,000 hours (all other variables held constant).
Also, I have no confidence in a 10,000 hour (or any other fixed number of hours) figure. The hours it takes to attain a certain skill in chess will vary from person to person, depending on all sorts of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, including their training regimen, the skill of their teachers, and many of the factors I listed in my earlier post.
IQ tests can have a lot of type 2 error (scoring lower than one’s theoretical maximum).
I wouldn’t put too much weight on a low score for someone who is demonstrably intelligent.
Edit: He was doing it while on stream (multitasking) while being watched (probably increased stress), while talking out his answers. For most folks who tried to do the same, the results would be much lower a score taken under typical conditions.
That test is terrible. He bombed the test because he didn't understand the format that the grid is a series of 3 geometric equations (one per row) like A XOR B = C
Skills from chess certainly would translate to other fields, but that is true for any activity. The question is whether chess is better than alternative than other things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx3h70GoaoM
I guess if you accept IQ as a proxy for general cognitive ability, this would suggest the article is right. On the other hand, I still find it very counter intuitive. The ability to plan ahead and the spatial thinking are things I though would transfer well to other domains (arguably both are not things that an IQ test, or the academic tests from the article, would measure well though).