Alex Profile picture
Jan 19 6 tweets 2 min read Read on X
A recent study found a latent correlation between IQ and Financial Literacy of r=0.76

This is "real life as an IQ test"; unfortunately, many have poor finances due to their intelligence.

A few example questions and the IQ they test for🧵 Image
Starting off easy, risk: This question best tests for an IQ of 70, and about 90% of people got it correct.

A minority of people don't understand even the basics of risk. Image
Next, diversification: This question best tests for an IQ of 91, and 61% of people got it correct.

Risk can get complicated, and for many, diversification is unintuitive. Image
Credit cards are harder: here, you have to figure out that the interest grows at the same rate as your monthly payment.

Understanding interest and borrowing can be genuinely hard for many, 24% of people got this right, and the question best tests for an IQ of 120. Image
Overall, money and its complexity are overlooked as sources of stress, and that’s why personalities like Dave Ramsey sometimes give less-than-optimal financial advice for the sake of simplicity.
Technical note: when I say "best tests for" I am referring to the IQ for which the questions' information is maximized, since there is a lot of noise for any specific question, whether or not someone gets the answer correct is a very weak measure of their IQ alone.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Alex

Alex Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @notcomplex_

Jan 27
This is the most detailed study on personality and intelligence ever done:

First, the Big Five: Neuroticism is robustly associated with lower intelligence, particularly processing speed and quantitative ability. Image
Next Extraversion and Openness:

Extraversion itself has no correlation to intelligence (r= -0.02); however, activity and and enthusiauaim do—smarter people are more lively!

Openness has the strongest association of the five, its easy to see as 'ideas' correlates at r=0.4. Image
For Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, there are no broad associations; there are as many agreeable, intelligent people as there are disagreeable ones.

Though compassion and industriousness do have positive associations with intelligence! Image
Read 5 tweets
Dec 30, 2025
Pit bulls are bred to be violent; this has inevitable costs on society.

What you might not expect is that activists and owners are working hard to socialize these costs.

A thread on a microcosm of fairness, "justice", and discrimination. 🧵 Image
Pit bulls are not like other dogs: they are bred to fight.

In the pit, dogs are expected to clash round after round. The first round begins with the dogs both released at once, they must race and attack the other—the round ends when the dog who is overpowered "Turns" away. Image
You would be forgiven to think that this is like boxing, where, after a number of rounds, a winner is decided, emphasizing strength and skill. This is NOT how dog fights are decided: the winner is selected by attrition or death.
Read 26 tweets
Jun 12, 2025
Education doesn't raise intelligence

Here's how it works 🧵 Image
Above is the average genetic score of high school students, but I'll get to that later.

Below are the results of a meta-analysis on education. Here, education, using different methods, points to a 1-3 IQ point increase per additional year! Image
So there is certainly an effect! But let's put that into context: a 3 IQ point increase equals a Cohen's d of 0.2, or 1% of the variance.

1% isn't nothing, but look at what the rest shows us: the smartest students are considerably better, 3 IQ points is small in comparison. Image
Read 15 tweets
Mar 15, 2025
Race isn't a social construct.

A brief explanation 🧵 Image
Social constructions can be found in many forms.

Take virginity, whether or not someone is a virgin isn't a social construct but some of its importance can be a social construct.
A pure social construct might be a playground game of tag where the players make up the rules, the outcomes, and the meaning.

Children quickly learn that the game is not about who can run the fastest but what the group decides.
Read 20 tweets
Feb 17, 2025
McNamara’s Folly and The Denial of Individual Differences 🧵

The utmost importance of Intelligence in war, and the grim reality of what happened when the Military drafted over 300,000 low IQ men. Image
Robert McNamara, the eighth Secretary of Defense, was a genius.

At different points in his life was an Eagle Scout, the youngest and most highly paid assistant professor at Harvard Business School, and a president at Ford Motor Company. Image
He had mastered quantitative analysis by running the B-29 Bomber schedules and statistics in WWII and then later at Ford. In the 1960s, as Sec. of Defense he attempted to apply a similar process to the military.
Read 31 tweets
Jan 21, 2025
Taleb / Carr have an erroneous 'insight' over the nonlinearity of IQ along with a conceptual misunderstanding.

On linear and non-linear IQ relationships 🧵 Image
Here's the interaction, the premise is that :
a) There exists some (unspecified) degree of nonlinearity
b) This is somehow a 'devasting' critique of IQ Image
Note that the above is a simulation. This can motivate a point but you need to back it up with data, as we'll see this only happens in certain situations.

Critically, the point that IQ isn't efficacious at the high end fails here.
Read 13 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(