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Chinese Company Seeks US Workers With 125 IQ
CWmike writes "A Chinese IT outsourcing company that has started hiring new US computer science graduates to work in Shanghai requires prospective job candidates to demonstrate an IQ of 125 or above on a test it administers to sort out job applicants. In doing so, Bleum Inc. is following a hiring practice it applies to college recruits in China. But a new Chinese college graduate must score an IQ of 140 on the company's test. The lower IQ threshold for new US graduates reflects the fact that the pool of US talent available to the company is smaller than the pool of Chinese talent, Bleum said."
the iq test tests very narrow ranges of iq, such as topological intelligence, the ability to manipulate 3D shapes in your head
but it has zero ability to measure something like social intelligence, the ability to manipulate people
i don't know that the ability to play 12 games of chess at the same time in your head is as valuable as the bedrock ability to communicate well, especially in the realm of business. the iq test certainly has its uses, but i think people ascribe way too much significance to it when determining someone's worth. someone with a very high traditional iq score can be quite useless in a business sense. the idea of something being useful is a relative term of course: you can be quite useful to an asocial pursuit that could very well be important to mankind in abstract ways with a traditional high iq
however, in your average business environment, the ability to simply and effectively communicate is a basic need, and pretty much trumps every other area of intelligence, since a business is nothing more than an efficient social organization. the more efficient a business is socially, the more efficient a business is economically, all else being equal. someone who gets well below 100 on a traditional iq test can be quite charismatic, persuasive, and capable of leading people. while someone who scores well above 100 on a traditional iq test can be unresponsive, aloof, distant, and confusing. so for the specific case of a business environment, a high traditional iq would seem not very useful at all
the ability to lead people is perhaps the most important iq of all possible areas of human intelligence, especially in business, but there is no test for it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The ghost of Alan Turing is here; he begs to differ. I'm with him.
I live in the US, where human rights are in fact Pretty Damn Good. But it wasn't that long ago that I was guilty of countless felonies for having sex with my boyfriend (before those laws were finally struck down by the Supremes), and I can still be fired in my state for simply having a boyfriend. Having an IQ of 140 hasn't changed that, and I can't imagine it makes much difference at all in countries where human rights are Pretty Damn Bad.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
This is the whole problem with the idea of "intelligence", or someone being "smart". Smart at what?
Different people are smart at different things. Some people are musical geniuses, but they wouldn't have the first clue about partial differential equations no matter how hard they tried. Some people are brilliant at understanding other people and relating to them, but have a hard time working with a computer. Some people are brilliant theoretical physicists, but are basically retards when it comes to social mores and dealing with other people.
I'm not sure if it's true, but I've read that Thomas Edison couldn't even do long division, and had to hire a mathematician to do math for him. He could invent brilliant mechanical contraptions, but couldn't understand higher math. This would explain why his rival Tesla was able to invent so many things involving AC power (transformers, generators, motors, etc.), since that relied on understanding Maxwell's equations well.