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Comment by UltraSane

1 day ago

Intelligence varies incredibly wildly in humans. So much so I think IQ might be a logarithmic scale.

The CV of e.g. IQ is only 15%. That's in line with other 'natural' attributes of humans, but not compared to something like family wealth or background. From a quick Google, wealth is 700% in the US? Income also same OOM.

  • I worked in a retail PC sales and repair store and the gulf between the stupidest and smartest customers was enormous.

    • I think you've just got perceptual tuning for the human to human context. It's like how human faces that are 5% different can be very obvious to us, but it's much harder to tell (for example) two cats apart at the same difference level. All of your adaptive pressures are pulling in that direction.

      But at a system-scale view of intelligence, humans are squashed together and it plays a pretty small role on outcomes. You should much prefer being rich than smart if your goal is 'success' by most metrics.

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