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Comment by the8472 | Hacker News Reader

> Eg even with seven billion people we’ve never seen someone with a 500 iq.

For two reasons. First of all IQ is defined as a normal distribution with a mean of 100 and a sd15. So by definition only 0.1% of the population can have an IQ of above 145 and this fraction is rapidly diminishing with additional standard deviations.

Secondl: the definition matches reality reasonably well because intelligence is a polygenetic trait and many small factors add up to a normal distribution.[0] It is statistically unlikely that natural processes will yield an IQ500 human. You would have to engineer one. Which leads us back to the AGI concern.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem

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A series of connected games [society] is constructed by various groups in mankind. They all have common traits. A human being having no understanding of intelligence creates a measure of potential success in these games [society]. It is called an IQ test. It has nothing to do w/ actual intelligence as there is no fundamental understanding of it. Instead, it correlates to a potential for success in the games certain individuals have constructed. Change the game and the potential for success does as well. Far too much weight is put on the intelligence Quotient especially given a lack of understanding as to what intelligence is and the clearly skewed games mankind creates [society].

Also, I'm still confused as to what you mean by : AGI concern. What's the concern? What's the big fear?

But that sd15 is an empirical fit, is it not, reflecting the variance seen in the actual population?

No, the number is an arbitrary choice and the test results of IQ tests are scaled so that they fit into the distribution, based on random sampling of the population when the test is designed.

IQ is not a linear scale, all it tells you which quantile of the population one falls into. It does not describe the relative strengths between the quantiles in particular tasks.

To figure that out there are additional surveys that map IQ ranges to occupations and the tasks an individual is required to perform.

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