I have a similar view. The only thing that holds me back from chucking it out in total is the research showing a bunch of better life outcomes correlated with IQ.
I'm open to being set straight on this point but my understanding is that research is largely apart and of a better quality than the more race bating stuff of 'The Bell Curve' crowd.
Edit: Full disclosure, I am really shooting from the hip here so please go easy. This is an issue I've bumped into a couple times and have never gone super in-depth on.
There's something I've read about IQ where the correlation you speak of only applies to the, say, lower half of the range. I.e. someone with an IQ of 90 will do better in life than one with an IQ of 75, but you won't find a significant difference when comparing 110 and 125.
So basically IQ "works" in the lower range, and this shows through as a weaker correlation across the entire range, even though it is meaningless in the upper range.
This would then make sense too -- in the low end, IQ is affected by things like malnutrition, lead poisoning, and the like, which happen to people who live in areas where everyone are having worse life outcomes, but not because of their IQ.
I wish I had a reference for this hypothesis but I lost it. if someone does please hit me up.
> but you won't find a significant difference when comparing 110 and 125.
IQ is the measurement of how capable you are at abstract learning. So a lower IQ will lock you out of certain jobs, at least on merit alone. Like you won't be a university math professor with a 110 IQ, but you'd probably be a fine nurse. A 75 IQ locks you out of basically any job. I believe the military found that ~83 is the lowest IQ that is trainable for the most rudimentary job.
But having a high IQ is in-and-of-itself, not a guarantee of success, because socio-economic factors can also lock you out of certain jobs. 100 years ago, being a woman was enough to prevent you from being a university professor, regardless of your IQ. And even today, you still have to be born in the right country to the right parents to have the chance to be a doctor or something.
However, there is a pretty big difference between a 110IQ and a 125. That's a 1.5 standard deviation improvement. That's like comparing an American man who is 6'1 to one who is 6'6.
I'm aware there's a big difference in IQ test performance between 110 and 125. What I'm asking is if this IQ test performance truly translates to real life, the way the difference between 75 and 90 does.
~125 eases entry into well-paid middle class jobs. Over 140 people start to seem weird by median standards. Over 160 they can seem very weird indeed, and are likely to become isolated without a compatible environment. So they're just as likely to fail spectacularly as to become innovative successes.
If you test a population, regardless of the test, certain people will always do better on average. So IQ is real. Out of all the studies done in the social sciences, IQ is by far the most conclusive.
But the other half of the story is the myth of the genius. The idea that intelligence provides all the answers. It does not. Terence Tao, a child prodigy with an IQ of 230 (apparently), would know. [1]
Talking faster is like running faster. If you're a stand-up comedian or chasing a purse snatcher, you'll have an advantage. But neither would make life any easier unless you deliberately reinforce your talents with hard work and pursue paths where you maintain an advantage.
The world seems to be built around normal folk. Being average isn't that bad. Of course, now we must define average. No one is truly average. We're all over the place.
The current name implies it is a measure of a fairly poorly defined thing, general intelligence. So yes, I think changing the name would be a good idea.
Of course there is a reason when neurologists do tests for cognitive decline or deficiency they use a range of tests, IQ being only one of several employed.
I'm open to being set straight on this point but my understanding is that research is largely apart and of a better quality than the more race bating stuff of 'The Bell Curve' crowd.
Edit: Full disclosure, I am really shooting from the hip here so please go easy. This is an issue I've bumped into a couple times and have never gone super in-depth on.