> GM Hikaru Nakamura famously took the Mensa online IQ test and scored a very average 102
His elo peak rating is 2816. Just one example for an extraordinary strong player with average IQ (there are many other examples). I don't think that a high IQ is required to become a decent chess player (like 2000). It may help though.
While I think people underestimate how much hard work can overcome low cognitive talent, such that probably a lot of people with average iq can hit a chess rating of 2,000 if that was their primary goal in life, I also think Hikaru's IQ probably isn't actually only 102. Online tests aren't so rigorous. Just from hearing him talk he seems to have the usual nuanced understanding of the universe on a variety of domains that would not be typical of an average iq. he also took the chest while streaming and talking to chat
I think that the value of IQ is overestimated. IQ tests don't capture "nuanced understanding of the universe on a variety of domains". They measure something much more narrow, i.e., how good you are at the particular type of IQ tests.
> GM Hikaru Nakamura famously took the Mensa online IQ test and scored a very average 102
Nice clickbait. It you watched him take it on stream, you'd know that he was goofing around with his chat and ran out of time b/c he didn't know it was timed.
> The most comprehensive and recent publication I've found related to this question is The relationship between cognitive ability and chess skill: A comprehensive meta-analysis.
> The bottom line is that according to a meta-analysis of numerous studies, there is clearly a correlation between chess skill and cognitive ability, but cognitive ability explains only about 6% of the variance in chess skill (12% if you only consider numerical ability only). There must be other factors as well (e.g., training), some of which could be more important than cognitive ability.
From my personal observations I very much agree with 6%.
IQ tests are universally accepted in psychology as the most robust psychometric ever developed. The idea that IQ tests are "bullshit" is nonsense pop psychology. Some people might try to over-interpret IQ tests as meaning more than what they do, but they are very good at measuring what they measure, and they predict a lot of things.
That said, I agree if you brag about your IQ you're a moron.
a test in isolation cannot be bullshit. when people talk about iq test many people imagine the person believes an iq test is a rigorous measure of all intellectual talent. or course it is not that. but it is also wrong to suggest it has no meaning at all. it does have some predictive power.
imperfect measures are not always useless, which is goof since all measures have some error.
A test trying to measure something we can't even properly define is kinda flawed in it's whole premise.
As such the best an IQ test can do is measure how well somebody prepared for a test like that, but it will struggle to properly catch any knowledge or skill domains not covered by the test, of which there are a lot.
IQ tests correlate with things. Thus it captures more than just how good someone is at the IQ test.
You can say "There is this test, and people's scores on this test correlate with various things like, income, marital fidelity, religiosity, incarceration rates, job performance". We call this test the IQ test.
If anything, top level chess players are likely to have missed some non-chess education when they were young due to being a chess prodigy, which would contribute to a lower IQ in adulthood.
1) They are a measure of a very specific kind of intelligence: the kind of intelligence required to score high on IQ tests. I score pretty high on IQ tests but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that my intelligence in other areas is, at least as it appears to me, below average.
2) intelligence does have some elasticity. When you think of intelligence has a culmination of pathways/heuristics/low-level-techniques, it’s easy to see how many pathways are self-reinforcing and not easily taught or measured. You can be predisposed to a particular kind of intelligence, and not everything is attainable by everyone, but what we call intelligence is close to what we call talent: seems like an innate quality, but actually reflects long-term hard practice with countless hours dedicated.
Intelligence is a complex interplay of nature and nurture. There is no way to test only the "nature" component, it's akin to unmixing a pot of purple paint to extract the red and blue.
A lot of IQ test questions get easier the more mathematics you have studied.
that is the goal but at the extremes i imagine it fails. imagine you are a chess prodigy that was homeschooled and never had a sit down exam before. don’t know if hikaru fits the description.
> GM Hikaru Nakamura famously took the Mensa online IQ test and scored a very average 102
His elo peak rating is 2816. Just one example for an extraordinary strong player with average IQ (there are many other examples). I don't think that a high IQ is required to become a decent chess player (like 2000). It may help though.