Quote:Quote:
Is IQ an effective predictor of future success?
Wrong question.
Correct question is, "Is IQ an effective predictor of future success compared to other methods of predicting success?"
One way someone could predict success is through randomness. Randomly hire people from a full list of people, including criminals, losers, and lawyers. Is complete randomness more predictive of future success than hiring based on IQ?
No, or course not. So IQ is more predictive of success than randomness.
You could also hire people by reading resumes and conducting personal interviews. Is this more predictive of success than hiring by IQ?
No, it's not. So IQ is a better predictor of success than resumes and personal interviews.
You could hire people based on how hard they work. But scientists have defined hard work as "the ability to delay gratification in the present, in order to achieve better results in the future". And they created a brilliant experiment called "Don't eat the marshmallow!" to measure hard work - (go look up the Ted talk on YouTube, featuring the experiment's designer).
The marshmallow experiment is extremely predictive of future success, which is both frightening (because the experiment was conducted on preverbal toddlers), and comforting (because the conclusions confirm our suspicions that hard work is important). Even more comforting, delayed gratification can theoretically be taught to people, like any other skill.
Most importantly, however, hard work was less predictive of future success than IQ is.
If you disagree with me, then you have an objection to Science-in-General, not to IQ-in-Particular - no matter how hard you try to tell yourself it's the other way around.