Comment by dinfinity
19 hours ago
You're confusing 'adaptation', 'knowledge', and 'intelligence'. The scientific comparison would be to put the mathematician and (lower IQ for the example) tribesman in the same situation from birth and see which performs better.
Now it's still not a given in that situation that the high IQ individual would be better adapted to the environment as physical traits may matter more, but it is probable that the high IQ individual has a better model of the predators, spiders, snakes and environment in general.
The speed with which an individual develops accuracy in their model of something (ceteris paribus) does seem to be captured by an IQ-like score, according to the research.
The thing people that actually causes problems is that people mentally equate 'higher intelligence' with 'better' or 'more valuable' which goes against our desire for humans to all be equal(ly valuable). That is what generally leads people to come up with other forms of 'intelligence' (emotional intelligence, street smarts, etc.), even though that just redefines intelligence to the point where the original meaning is lost and a new word needs to be introduced. Much better imho is to keep the original word intact and use terms like 'emotional competence', which also capture the experience part rather than just the genetic part.
Even so called "emotional intelligence" has been shown to been closely linked to general intelligence. Turns out being smarter makes you better at reading people's emotions from stimuli details. This kind of bullshit has been "invented" because there is a belief that intelligent people are "bad" socially when in fact they just don't care or are bored/annoyed when hanging around "regular" people. This study shows one of the reasons: it is difficult to communicate and reason with other people when their prediction/description of stuff is systematically very wrong.
Plenty of people are working very hard to redefine "intelligence" because reality hurts their egos. There is still nonsensical debate about being able to measure it and whatnot even though the research has constantly shown the truth for quite a while now.
I guess that at the start of formalized measures like the meter there were plenty of people to contest how "stupid" it was because it made them shorter than they liked to pretend.
> but it is probable that the high IQ individual has a better model of the predators, spiders, snakes and environment in general.
In a hostile environment a lack of prior experience or a lack of guidance with prior experience can mean death in a few days. The mathematician has no time to update priors. A nutritional deficit or a lack of adequate shelter will result in a rapid cognitive decline.
IQ as a predictor of health seems like the most relevant point in the research to this hypothetical situation.