The title of the article is called “The Inappropriately Excluded.” When you read the comments at the end of this post, you’ll see why it’s a misnomer:
“Members of high IQ societies, especially those that require D15IQs above 145, often comment that around this IQ, qualitatively different thinking emerges. By this they mean that the 145+ D15IQ person doesn't just do the same things, intellectually, as a lower IQ person, just faster and more accurately, but actually engages in fundamentally different intellectual processes. David Wechsler, D. K. Simonton, et alia, have observed the same thing.
Since intimate social relationships are predicated upon mutual understanding, this draws a kind of 'line in the sand' at 140-150 D15IQ that appears to separate humans into two distinct groups. This may truncate the 30 point limit for those between 150 and 160 D15IQ people. Even when 150+ D15IQ people learn to function in the mainstream society, they will always be considered, and will feel, in some way 'different'.
if these extremely high IQ (>140) individuals were allowed to work on the hardest problems, the result would be eminence. To provide perspective for readers, one in 261 people have IQs over 140 and one in 2,331 have IQs over 150. While the high IQ exclusion does not directly affect a large percentage of the population, the people it does affect, it affects profoundly. Because of the large population of western civiliztion, the absolute number in this group is not small. There are approximately 6.5 million people with an IQ over 140 and 729,000 people with an IQ over 150.
From a theoretical standpoint, democratic meritocracies should evolve five IQ defined 'castes', The Leaders, The Advisors, The Followers, The Clueless and The Excluded. These castes are natural in that they are the result of how people of different intellectual abilities relate to one another.
When IQ differences are greater than 30 points, leader/follower relationships will break down or will not form. It establishes an absolute limit to the intellectual gulf between leader and followers.
We have no reason to conclude that this upper limit on IQ differences changes in adulthood and, consequently, an elite with a mean R16IQ of 128 will have no leaders with R16IQs over 158 (149 D15IQ).
Persuasiveness is at its maximum when the IQ differential between speaker and audience is about 20 points.
We already know that elites have an average IQ of about 125 (R16 128) which implies that the audience that is to be convinced by the elites has a mean R16IQ of 108 (D15IQ is about the same under 120 IQ). People with R16IQs below 98, after Hollingworth, are not effective followers and in a modern meritocracy are essentially disenfranchised and in the public discourse, essentially 'The Clueless'. It means that the 'The Followers' in the public discourse have a R16IQ mode of 108 R16IQ and 'The Leaders' have a R16IQ mode of 128 (125 D15IQ).
In free markets people choose to whom they listen. In other words, in audiences dominated by high school graduates, who average around 105 IQ, the successful leaders will have an average IQ of 105+20=125. Speakers with R16IQs over 105+30=135 (D15IQ130) will be cancelled from radio, fired from TV and print or not elected because they confuse rather than enlighten their audience. A college educated audience (115 IQ) will be most convinced by a R16IQ of 115+20=135 and confused by a 115+30=145 R16IQ (140 D15IQ).
Effective leaders recognize that they need the counsel of those smarter than themselves. They will be most convinced by advisors with R16IQs of 128+20=148 (D15IQ 139).
A Leader needs to be persuasive within the community of Leaders which limits the R16IQ to 128+20=148 which is the same as the mode for Advisors. However, the 148 R16IQ Leader becomes incomprehensible to most Followers, which limits their effectiveness and encourages them to become an Advisor. Because Leaders become ineffective above an R16IQ of 148, Advisors won't find clients if their R16IQ is over 148+20=168=155 D15IQ.
So we see that these parameters of maximum persuasiveness of 20 R16 points and maximum leader/follower differential of 30 R16 points, create a natural trifurcation of enfranchised people into 'The Advisors' (128-168 R16IQ; 125-155 D15IQ), Leaders (115-141 R16IQ; 112-138 D15IQ) and Followers (98-128 R16IQ; 98-125 D15IQ) 'The Clueless' with D15 IQs below 98 are effectively lost to the process. They cannot really understand the public discourse and will often not follow discussions in productive environments.
The exclusion really begins in primary school with the failure of the educational process to provide an appropriate learning environment. The grading process, which should be a reliable assessment of knowledge learned and skills acquired, becomes nothing more than a measure of the child's willingness to bend to the will of the teachers' demand that he or she acquiesce to a profoundly inappropriate curriculum and learning process.
Leta Hollingworth noted that, if mainstreamed, children with R16IQs over 150 (D15IQ 141) check out and do not excel. Miraca Gross has done a long-term longitudinal study of 60, 160+ D15IQ Australian children. 17 of the children were radically accelerated, 10 were accelerated one or two years and the remaining 33 were mainstreamed. The results were astonishing with every radically accelerated student reported as educationally and professionally successful and emotionally and socially satisfied. The group that was not accelerated she characterizes as follows: 'With few exceptions, they have very jaded views of their education. Two dropped out of high school and a number have dropped out of university. Several more have had ongoing difficulties at university, not because of a lack of ability but because they have found it difficult to commit to undergraduate study that is less than stimulating'. These children have IQs similar to Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, etc., so the loss from unrealized potential is enormous.
The problem stems from the misconception among educators that the intellectual gulf between moderately and highly gifted children is not that great. In fact, depending upon the conceptual content, Professor Gross suggests that the exceptionally gifted children and above may learn 4-5 times faster than the midrange students.
So, a 150 D15IQ child would be expected to progress through a K-12 public school curriculum geared to the 100 IQ student in 12/1.6=7.5 years. They would graduate from high school at 13. Some children may be physically and emotionally prepared for full time school a year early and would finish high school at 12. When we hear about a child who finishes high school at 12 or 13, we think of a 'one in a million' prodigy and we suspect that the child was pushed to his or her detriment. Yet, with an enabling educational environment, it is actually a reasonable expectation for about one in 200 children. The true 'one in a million' child is doing college level learning at 7 or 8.
These children can be expected to complete their six years of college, which is geared to a 120 IQ, in about 6/(160/120)=4.5 years. So, we would expect the 150 D15IQ person to receive their first advanced degree at age 17 or 18 if the educational system didn't actively retard them. This will provide them with another five or six years of education, during which they can acquire another four advanced degrees or equivalent.
It is often stated that gifted children become bored in mainstream classes. However, that is too passive a description. Often they are frustrated and even angered by the slow pace. Garth Zietsman states that people with IQs over 124 'don't require assistance to learn. They can find the information and master the methods themselves'. It is probably the case that for most 140+ D15IQ people, autodidactic or self paced learning is preferred. It is also likely that they prefer the polymathic 'question first' approach to learning, as well.”
Comments:
“I suspect that a lot of super-intelligent men simply aren't interested in a lot of "elite" professions. In these cases, the super-intelligent aren't "inappropriately excluded"; they are appropriately excluding themselves. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of doctors, lawyers, and academics don't do anything that requires an IQ over 140, and it is no surprise that men with such IQs don't want these jobs.
Often the basic principle can be explained to those more than 30 IQ points below. However, the understanding is illusory. As a very practical example, I challenge you to explain the Monty Hall problem to a 90 IQ person. You will reach a point of complete frustration and you will not succeed. As D.K. Simonton says, you may be able to use words they understand but the concept is inaccessible to them. The reason that the Strong Anthropic Principle demands a Creator is an example of a concept that simply cannot be explained to a person with an IQ below about 130. Again, if you want to frustrate yourself, go ahead and try. The notion that any concept can be effectively explained to any person of any given intelligence is absurd on its face and only seems reasonable because of the egalitarian myth. I got into this once with the Principal of my son's elementary school (I took him out after 2nd grade). He wanted to pull the 'You will agree that all children can learn?' I replied, 'I will do you one better. I will grant you that all vertebrates can learn. Now make your point.' That actually made him angry because the argument that comes after that is clearly absurd when applied to all vertebrates, but because we have been conditioned to egalitarianism, it sounds good for children.
A fundamental assymetry isn't reflected in the studies: it's possible to pretend to be stupider, but not smarter. It's not surprising studies in children would miss this, as it either hasn't occurred to them to dissemble yet, or they yet lack the social wherewithal to succeed. That said, obviously it's of no use to society - the superior decision and strategies can't be advised if you're pretending not to have them. (Caveats apply.) Nevertheless, this is why I don't find it all surprising that high IQ is not a guarantee of socioeconomic failure. At least, I have no issues being liked by average and below-average brains. Indeed the problem is being trusted too much and accidentally manipulating them.
By the time I was 30 I had returned to finish high school; graduated summa cum laude from a first-tier institution in a non-hobby discipline; got straight 'firsts' for Masters coursework; had a 'full ride' scholarship for PhD; was the 'golden boy' PhD student in a world-leader 'think tank'. And I have never, ever run at more than half-speed - ask any of my former colleagues if they ever got the impression that I was 'having a crack'. I've also never been part of any 'high IQ' society: they strike me as having about the same relevance to my life, as groups of wine-wankers, olive-oil wankers, cigar wankers... you get the drift. Smart people are square pegs, Morty. They 'under-achieve' as measured by dummy-metrics, because dummies have the wrong definition of 'achieve'... the objective is happiness, not status, income or membership of some wanky society.
Talking about high-IQ individuals being 'excluded' perhaps misses about half the issue - namely, that high-IQ individuals are less interested in signalling, status and other nonsense. You were sneaking up on that idea when you got to
"By this they mean that the 145+ D15IQ person doesn't just do the same things, intellectually, as a lower IQ person, just faster and more accurately, but actually engages in fundamentally different intellectual processes."
If, from there, you had developed the argument along the lines that high-IQ folks have different preferences, including different propensities to be annoyed by nonsense and hamster-wheels, you would have been on to something. In my experience, genuinely smart people have no time for stupid games of the type that dominate most workplaces (including academia). If intelligence indicates problem-solving capability, then how can someone have a high IQ and not be persuasive? I mean, "How to be persuasive" is a problem that can be solved just like any other, right?
Instead, I would say the exclusion is probably often self-exclusion. I'm getting a PhD in physics and I can already tell that academia is not a place for creative people. Here, like everywhere else, connections and style are more important than substance. I have too much curiosity and ambition to stay in an environment that claims to be intellectual yet at its core is driven mostly by politics. Heck, I would rather work in a low-skill job where I can do the work AND think about my own ideas simultaneously, whereas academia would demand that I focus all my attention on problems that I don't find interesting. So my point is that you seem to assume that high IQ people are being excluded from the academic and leadership positions, but its possible that they are just smart enough to voluntarily remove themselves from the game out of disgust. Maybe they see the sacrifices of human dignity that are necessary to get into those positions of power that you value so highly and don't think it's worth it. This isn't a "personal flaw", just a value call that smart people tend to make (apparently).
Then again, I haven't met other people as smart as me. Maybe they all tend to be assholes, but then to my original point: Solving "How to be successful" means solving "How to get people to like you", and if intelligence means what it's supposed to, then high-IQ people should be able to solve those problems... But again this is assuming that very smart people would value mainstream definitions of success. I don't think they would."