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February 02, 2007

(How much) does IQ matter?

Charles Murray has recently been stressing the importance of intelligence for social outcomes. Here's an alternative view.
Take chess. It's generally thought that IQ matters enormously for chess ability. And we've got a way of measuring this ability - the Elo rating.
What's more, there's a production function linking IQ to chess skill. It's the Levitt equation. It predicts that after years of play and study, a player's Elo rating will be approximately 1000 + (IQ x 10).
This has two interesting implications.
First, someone of average intelligence - IQ = 100 - can, with effort, get an Elo rating of 2000, which'll make him one of the best players in his area.
Secondly, let's do a sum. There are 2572 players with Elo ratings over 2400. On average, these ratings are only attainable by people with IQs above 140. Now, on the Stanford-Binet scale, 0.6% of the world's population have an IQ this high or better. Amongst over-20s, this works out at 24.7 million people.
This means only around 1 in 9600 of those with the potential to have an Elo rating of 2400 have actually attained it.
I draw two conclusions from this.
First, practice and experience can create good players out of average natural ability. If this is true of chess, where intelligence is considered hugely important, how much more true is it likely to be in other fields?
Second, what matters is not merely intelligence, but application. Of course, the main reason why high-IQ people don't have high Elo ratings is simply that they don't like chess enough to play it hard. But there's another reason - it's that most intelligent people don't make the best of their natural ability.
Now, this is not to take a view on Murray's point that it might be futile to educate people at the low-IQ end of the bell-curve.
What it does mean is that intelligence is over-rated, even in a field where it matters more than most. Rather than worry about how much potential we have, therefore, shouldn't we make more of this potential?

February 02, 2007 in Psychology |

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Comments

dearieme

How's your guitar coming along?

Posted by: dearieme | February 02, 2007 at 10:26 AM

james C


Levitt is having a laugh.

Posted by: james C | February 02, 2007 at 11:08 AM

James Hamilton

IQ? Aren't looks and a proper public school education important too?

Posted by: James Hamilton | February 02, 2007 at 01:14 PM

Alex

Which is essentially the opposite conclusion to your attack on equality of opportunity.

Posted by: Alex | February 02, 2007 at 01:29 PM

Jeffrey Mushens

What a sensible piece. Pointing out that, yes, natural ability is important, but that just (nearly, whatever) as important is what you do with the talent you have.

Posted by: Jeffrey Mushens | February 02, 2007 at 02:56 PM

Glenn Athey

I am crap at chess. Just can't be bothered with it. Maybe I am thick, but am making the most of my natural ability...

Posted by: Glenn Athey | February 02, 2007 at 06:03 PM

Dipper

Intelligence cannot be measured like height, and chess is a good illustration of why. Yes there are some top players who are all round polymaths, but there are also some who show no signs of anything but average intelligence apart from outstanding ability at chess (eg Bobby Fisher). Different players have different ways of analysing positions and different degrees of intuition.

So if IQ is of limited use in identifying top chess players, what use is it in any other sphere? None. It correlates most strongly with income, so its just a way of keeping the proles down by justifying the existing class structure (“you’re poor because you’re thick”), and labels people failures when we should be developing talents.

The concept of IQ has no place in libertarian debate. When you see it Attack! Attack! Attack!!

Posted by: Dipper | February 02, 2007 at 09:11 PM

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