Intelligence is overrated

What attributes do you want in a person as a friend, neighbor, or leader? The press, intellectuals in academia, and budding students place a higher value on intelligence than is warranted because IQ is important to them. The result is that society as a whole overvalues intelligence relative to other human characteristics. Character, principles, knowledge, and intellectual attributes other than intelligence are as important, and collectively they are more important. Society should change its thinking. Definition Intelligence is the ability to score well on IQ tests. That definition seems to avoid the fundamental question of what intelligence really is, but in fact it defines intelligence quite precisely. In science, “time” is defined by how clocks measure it. Special relativity, for example, relies upon concepts of clocks being synchronized and moved around at different relative speeds. The principle in science is operationalism. http://plato.stanford.edu... Intelligence is operationally defined by IQ tests. IQ tests were pioneered by Harvard in the '30s as a means of identifying students who were likely to do well in school. The Scholastic Aptitude Tests were originally IQ tests. The principle was to identify students who had the potential for academic success even if their high schools were poor at fulfilling that potential. In the early 90s, SAT departed from that principle. This explains why those in academia value IQ highly. it is fundamental to success in academia. Intelligence is not knowledge. The ability to learn does not guarantee that a person will learn or that a person will be taught correctly. Intelligence can be a limiting factor, and intelligence is important. Certainly one must have some intelligence, but so must a person have some character, principles, and knowledge. 1. Human characteristics beside intelligence are critical There are other human attributes that compete with intelligence as useful and admirable characteristics. Among them are: 1.1 Character includes honesty, kindness, persistence, optimism, courage, cheerfulness, motivation, flexibility, foresight, and the willingness to work hard. 1.2 Principles. Principles are a person's set of core beliefs, regardless of whether the origins of those beliefs are soundly derived or not. Principles include political ideology (e.g. conservatism, liberalism, etc.), beliefs about nature (validity of natural laws, the scientific method), and religion. One need not know how gravity works to have a belief that it is reliable. 1.3 Knowledge. Knowledge comprises facts learned from school, by independent study, or by personal experience. A super-genius who happens to be born in a remote valley of New Guinea can be proved by culture-independent tests to have a very high IQ, but her broad knowledge of how the world works is likely to be surpassed by an average college student. Knowledge includes skills, like how to repair cars or build things. Some important skills of how to manage and how to invest are not well-taught by schools. 1.4 Intellectual attributes other than intelligence. One of the key attributes for being a good President or a good manager is the ability to work successfully with large amounts of conflicting opinions and confusing data. There is also problem solving ability, emotional maturity, and artistic ability. 2. Intelligence is only 20% of success. “A Canadian television program recently tracked down some of the people with the highest IQ scores in North America. One man who has an extremely high genius IQ works as a motorcycle mechanic, hangs out with biker gangs, and is frequently in and out of jail. … Another man interviewed on the program has the highest IQ recorded in North America. He has worked as a bouncer in a bar for ten years, earns minimum wage, and lives in a tiny garage. Clearly, a high IQ is not enough to guarantee success in life.” http://iq-test.learninginfo.org... Probably the most intelligent politician of modern times was John Sununu, the New Hampshire governor and Bush Sr. chief of Staff. http://en.wikipedia.org... Sununu received an engineering PhD from M.I.T. and was tests showed an IQ of 180. http://www.eskimo.com... Sununu was a whole lot smarter than the Senators he dealt with as chief of Staff, and unfortunately had no problem telling them so. Our most intelligent president was probably Jimmy Carter, with an IQ score of 176. Carter was one of our worst presidents, noted for micromanaging and ideological stubbornness. I cite two high IQ politicians, one conservative and one liberal, with confidence no one will proclaim them both great leaders. There are various measures of success. In the scientific world, we can count published papers. In politics we can, with some trepidation, rely upon the judgment of history, in the perspective of sufficient time. Business people can be judged on their business success. Various measures of success correlate with IQ, but only up to IQ scores of about 130. Remarkable IQ scores start at 130. “In [his] book, Emotional Intelligence Daniel Goleman points out that IQ only accounts for about 20% of a persons success. The balance - by far the majority of a person's success is attributable to social and emotional intelligence.” http://hubpages.com... Goldman, like many others, wants to expand the definition of “intelligence” to include qualities other than IQ. That's probably a worthy goal, but in this debate intelligence has the traditional definition of IQ. The journal Intelligence published a study on the connection between IQ and wealth. The scatter graph is shown at http://paul.kedrosky.com... there is some correlation for IQ scores below 100, but even that is not extreme. It is not appreciable above 100. 3. Intelligence is subservient to ideology Professor Michael Shermer explains a problem with high high intelligence in his book “Why People Believe in Weird Things.” http://www.michaelshermer.com... He devotes a chapter to Why Smart People Believe Weird Things. Smart people have the ability to rationalize weird beliefs. Whether you tend to side with libertarian Milton Friedman or extreme anti-capitalist Noam Chomsky, you must agree that both are highly intelligent and one or the other is dramatically wrong. 4. Intelligence leads to the danger of hubris Smart people, like college professors, often know a whole lot about something. Ask a question in their field of endeavor, and they will either know the answer or say why it is an unsolved problem. 99.9% of the time they are right about their specialty. This leads to the error of assuming that since they have figured out something, they are therefore likely to have figured out everything. As a result we see professors with foolish political opinions, Nobel prize winners embarrassing themselves with pronouncements outside their expertise, and the general phenomenon of intellectuals pronouncing anyone who doesn't agree with them to be stupid. William Buckley said he would rather be governed by the first hundred names in the phone book than the faculty of Harvard. Ordinary people have a better sense of their limits, and they are more likely to accept counter-evidence as convincing, rather than rationalize it away. They will accept things that work rather than demand, on ideological grounds or errant personal conviction, something that does not. Summary The low correlation of IQ to success shows that IQ is not as important as most people think. Few of us want friends who are mean or dishonest. Employers do not want employees who are untrustworthy or unmotivated; a less intelligent person who is focused and diligent is far more valuable than a detached and unreliable genius. The resolution is affirmed.