One huge assumption no one has challenged is the notion that IQ is a valid measure of intelligence. One reason to doubt this is that above a low threshold (80 IIRC), IQ has no correlation with salary.
There are a lot of reasons you would expect divergence when just looking at salary. A Reporter is averaging 41k, a Postdoctoral Research Associate is averaging under $48k while a nurse makes $65k and a elevator repairman is making 79k. Higher status jobs don't necessarily pay more.
The paper doesn't say IQ doesn't correlate to socioeconomic success, it just notes that IQ tests may be biased by socioeconomic status. But even within this study you could look at the lowest economic group, and the kids that have better genetic markers go to college at ~5x the rate of kids in the same socioeconomic group with poor markers. It also doesn't say much about access to college today for lower socioeconomic groups because it is entirely looking backwards at people born between 1905(!!) and 1964. It is not surprising that the lowest quintile is much less likely to have attended college. In 1940, the census bureau estimate is less the 5% of Americans had a bachelor's degree or higher, so it would be expected that the educated 5% was very biased towards the upper class.
- Intelligence is negatively correlated with materialism
- Intelligent people get paid more for doing work that requires I but less for having an unpleasant job (given equal pay, would you rather be a programmer or a garbage collector?)
- Intelligence is negatively correlated with other abilities (brain areas specialized in reasoning can't be specialized in social skills, energy spent on the brain can't be spent on the immune system)
- Intelligence is negatively correlated with mental health (Less Intelligent people don't notice or understand problems more intelligent ones do – ignorance is bliss; the things that make one intelligent also make one less stable – the genes that make one less intelligent haven't died out because evolution hasn't progressed that far yet but because the brain designs intelligent people have are buggy.
Maybe the person you're replying to was thinking of the philosophical metaphysical concept of materialism, i.e. opposed to idealism. But your usage seems correct to me, it's that the word has multiple meanings.
Are you suggesting that genetics have nothing to do with Intelligence? AFAIK it isn't much but I find it hard to believe that it's nothing. Our genes make us smarter than other animals, why shouldn't they make a difference between humans?
Also I just listed all possibilities that came to my mind, whether I think they're likely or not.
I believe that was sarcasm, mocking that kind of very vocal people who like to argue that intelligence, gender and race are purely a social construct and have no physical foundation. Extreme offense is usually taken when someone attempts to correlate intelligence with race.
Very few people argue that intelligence is a "social construct", though the position taken by scientists and philosophers in the area is that race and gender are "social constructs"; that doesn't make them not real, though - but it does mean they're only about as real as money. A kind of objectivity obtained through many subjectivities.
But if you don't know that, intelligence being correlated with ethnicity is a plausible hypothesis. We shouldn't take offense when someone who doesn't know the data tries to correlate intelligence ethnicity purely because they are interested in biology. Which is of course probably not the motivation of most people who claim there's a correlation.
If genetics played a roll in intelligence don't you think we'd see some intellectual differences between groups of genetically similar people(i.e. races), like we do with physical characteristics? Some races of people are taller than others on average, and some races are more resistant to certain diseases. Obviously we don't see differences like this when it comes to cognitive ability though.
Different ethnicities have different physical characteristics because they are adapted to different environments. Being able to efficiently use sunlight is useful in high altitudes, being able to tolerate heat and intensive sunlight is useful near the equator. Intelligence is useful everywhere.
IQ is a valid measure of a certain kind of intelligence. And it most certainly correlates with salary and success at an individual and a national level.
The higher your IQ, the greater the odds of you making more money. The higher the collective IQ of a nation or group, the greater the odds of that nation or group being successful or wealthy.
If you look at the list of successful and wealthy countries and the list of national iqs, they tend to correlate fairly well. Barring war or some external impediment, the nations with the highest iqs tend to be wealthier and the lower iqs tend to be poorer.
Not sure what salary has to do with it. Salary is not intelligence.
I'm not saying that assumption is not wrong; I certainly have my doubts about the validity of IQ tests. But salary isn't a valid measure of intelligence either.
Honestly, I don't think we can even really agree on what intelligence is, and as long as that's the case, we can't really know what we're supposed to measure either.
IQ measures intelligence, not how much the market values intelligence.
Perhaps what you're getting at is 'how much does IQ matter' which is an interesting question.
In modern society the answer is probably a lot. And when you factor in the negative correlation between intelligence and aggression / self-control, probably a lot more.
IQ attempts to measure intelligence. Key difference. You should not put too much weight on an attempt to measure subjective qualities or reduce a human being to a number.
It is a little risky assuming correlation - hopefully salary is correlated with a sort of general economic contribution rather than intelligence. Intelligence isn't a prerequisite for contributing mightily.
If intelligence was correlated with salary that would be a symptom of bad outcomes in the economic system. I'd expect that, but wouldn't be happy to see it. Eg, whoever is running the local plumbing small business is in a position to make a lot of money. The plumber might be smart or might not be, really shouldn't matter.
I've seen situations where truck drivers make a higher salary than engineers. More intelligence almost correlated with a lower salary.
I agree with other replies that salary is a very flawed indicator of intelligence, but it was a simple data point to share. My only point is that it's not at all obvious that IQ is a valid measure of intelligence.
If you think about what is involved in an IQ test and all the ways someone's intelligence manifests itself, it seems clear to me that IQ is at best a very distorted and narrow measurement of intelligence.
