Vaniver comments on Is IQ what we actually need to know? - Less Wrong

1 Post author: NancyLebovitz 25 February 2014 06:21PM

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Comment author: Vaniver 25 February 2014 07:51:39PM 10 points [-]

It seems to me that you can find out a lot about people's intelligence by talking with them a little, though I've underestimated people who were bright enough but didn't present as intellectual.

If this is true, then unstructured interviews should be a good way to determine how effective a candidate will be in a position. The literature is clear that unstructured interviews are worthless, and IQ testing is the best measure we have, typically explaining about half of the variance.

Lots of people have tried to dethrone IQ as a measure for a very long time, trying lots of things. They've never succeeded; IQ really is that good a measure of cognitive ability, and cognitive ability really is that important for almost everything.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 25 February 2014 08:29:01PM 4 points [-]

That unstructured interviews are useless only contradicts the conjunction that people can learn IQ from conversation and that the interviewers do learn it and that they choose to evaluate on it. It is a standard parlor trick to guess people's IQ based on five minutes of conversation.

Comment author: Vaniver 25 February 2014 08:44:53PM 2 points [-]

That unstructured interviews are useless only contradicts the conjunction that people can learn IQ from conversation and that the interviewers do learn it and that they choose to evaluate on it.

Agreed.

Comment author: A4FB53AC 25 February 2014 08:37:25PM 6 points [-]

I think this misses the point of the OP, which wasn't that IQ or intelligence can accurately be guessed in a casual conversation, but rather that intelligence can be guessed more accurately than other important parameters such as "conscientiousness, benevolence, and loyalty", for which we don't have tools nearly as good as those we have for measuring IQ. The consequence of which being, since we can't assess these as methodically, people can fake them more easily, and this has negative social consequences.

Comment author: Vaniver 25 February 2014 09:00:27PM 3 points [-]

I think this misses the point of the OP

On a second read, I agree with you- I don't think I paid much attention to the third sentence, because the first two both rubbed me the wrong way. I have known people who turned out to be all hat and no cattle, intelligence-wise, and see that as a general phenomenon, and think verbal ability can be very distinct from mathematical/technical ability. There's significant anecdotal and statistical evidence for that.

for which we don't have tools nearly as good as those we have for measuring IQ

We have good measures of conscientiousness, but are either benevolence or loyalty single factors? Benevolence or loyalty to a single entity we have moderately good tests for, and it's not clear to me it's possible to do better without mindreading.

Comment author: jsalvatier 25 February 2014 08:31:27PM 2 points [-]

I think NancyLebovitz is not saying IQ isn't important, but that its a lot easier to read than other traits.

Comment author: satt 26 February 2014 03:11:17AM 1 point [-]

The literature is clear that unstructured interviews are worthless, and IQ testing is the best measure we have, typically explaining about half of the variance.

Side note: my understanding is that the correlation is about one half, so about a quarter of the variance is explained.

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