How To Easily Out Perform High IQ Individuals?

Why would you or anyone wish to out perform high IQ individuals? Well, for starters, all of us would like to be cleverer than we are. It is perhaps to inflate our egos, or it is perhaps to boost the functional utility of our lives. Either way, this inherent desire in us is more common than we’d like to admit.

But to become more intelligent, one need not compare oneself with “high-IQ individuals”. So, why is it that I specifically target outperforming such individuals in this essay? You see, I use it as a proxy to get into a far more valuable meta-discussion on different types of intelligent agents.

What we will be really discussing in this essay is the notion of hidden intelligence that is accessible to everyone with or without a high intelligence quotient (IQ). And that is the secret to becoming truly clever.

The unfortunate (or fortunate) fact is that the concepts that I will be discussing in this essay are hidden in plain sight. Anyone would be able to see them if the really wanted to. In other words, these are seriously undervalued concepts. Without any further ado, let us get started with the discussion.

This essay is supported by Generatebg

The Big Secret of Science

Talking about secrets, it is no secret that humanity has made huge leaps in scientific progress in the last couple of centuries. As a consequence, we have begun understanding the value of investing time and effort in the practice and advancement of science.

A direct consequence of this understanding is the development of our present educational system in the form of schools and universities. Students are typically taught the basic sciences in school. Following school, students move to colleges and universities. The elites go on to complete their master’s degrees and doctoral theses.

All these systems are presently working well in the context of the aforementioned practice and advancement of science. However, there is one big secret hidden in plain sight here. Almost all of these systems such as schools and universities focus on top-down knowledge.

For any of us who was born in the past century, it might appear as if this is how science works and has always worked. But history tells us otherwise (history is also ironically a subject taught in schools). To illustrate my point practically, let me just ask you one question:

“How did science progress before modern schools and universities existed?”

The answer to this question lies at the core of this essay’s discussion. That answer is tinkering!

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Intelligence Quotient Versus Trial and Error

Schools and universities optimise for top-down knowledge; they are environments where people with high-IQ (typically) flourish compared to others. In fact, the modern notion of IQ is pretty much a measure of how well someone performs mentally in comparison to others.

The IQ tests are said to be objective and neutral without any subject bias. I seriously doubt this claim. However, I am not going to go into that discussion in this essay. For there is no need for that discussion to outperform high-IQ individuals.

The key point to note is that the notion of IQ specifically measures one type of intelligence — a unitary individual’s mental pattern recognition ability in comparison to a cohort’s “average”. In other words, we are dealing with the deceptive and notorious normal distribution here; I am not a fan (and IQ is no longer even a quotient).

When you pit this notion of intelligence against rigorous trial and error, the results from trial and error are so far out ahead, that it does not even look like a fair comparison (more on that in a bit). Our current education system gives us the illusion that it pays well to sharpen the axe by spending time on learning theory before executing.

But real-life data and historical data suggest otherwise. It is not that high-IQ individuals have no access to trial and error. But it is the case that they are so incentivised by their good performance in top-down systems that they are more resistant to employing trial and error than the typical person.

So, where is the evidence for this outrageous real-life performance based on trial and error?

Where Does Trial and Error Flourish?

Most of the iconic and influential discoveries in science are made through trial and error. It is “after the fact” that scientists and theoreticians go back to “connect the dots” and make a story out of it. This gives modern theoreticians the illusion that science is top-down.

Historically, science has been driven by bottom-up knowledge. And “Trial and error” lies at the heart of bottom-up knowledge. You might think that this discussion would have been valid before the technological internet age, but not after.

All the big tech companies of our age hire people with very high-IQ after all. So, what gives? Well, look around you. Have you ever heard of the phrase “A/B testing” form big tech jargon before? Each and every feature of each and every successful app that you use was tested rigorously through trial and error.

If enough of us don’t pay attention to it, the feature goes away or is moved to where our attention is. This is why big tech companies value our data so much. It helps them run a monumental battery of trial and error tests which would never be possible via top-down theoretical approaches.

The modern venture of machine learning and artificial “intelligence” is proof that bottom-up knowledge is seriously undervalued and underrated. Some of these systems are now creating art that is beginning to rival human creations. And all of this is done without an inkling of theoretical understanding (on the part of the models). This brings us to the next part of our discussion.

How to Out Perform High IQ Individuals — The Unintelligent Vs. the Unintelligible

We often confuse the notion of the “unintelligent” with the “unintelligible”. Unintelligent means the lack of intelligence, whereas unintelligible means something that we cannot (or may never) understand.

We treat unintelligible modes of acquiring knowledge such as trial and error as unintelligent.

This is why today’s artificial intelligence systems are challenging many of our conventional beliefs and skills. If such unintelligible systems can dethrone today’s intelligent workers, we really have to ask ourselves the question:

“What IS intelligence, really?”

Why Does Trial and Error Outperform Top-down Systems?

The biggest advantage trial and error offers resides in the fact that the “errors” after each trial are optimised to be as small as possible. So, in this realm, there is almost no failure; only minor errors. And each time we encounter an error, we “learn” and “course correct” — the ideal goal of bottom-up knowledge.

This leads to a system where there are frequent (but small) errors and very infrequent (but massive) successes.

“It isn’t 10,000 hours that creates outliers, it’s 10,000 iterations.”

– Naval Ravikant.

In scientific terms, theory-based top-down knowledge works like a linear function, whereas trial and error-based bottom-up knowledge works like an exponential convex function. The differences are huge; the tech savvy reader might like to model these as randomised models and see the results for themselves.

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Examples of Bottom-up Systems and Top-down Systems

We have already covered one example each of bottom-up systems (experimental/practical knowledge) and top-down systems (theoretical/academic knowledge). Here are some other examples of each of these systems:

1. Cooking (bottom-up) Vs. Baking (top-down) — If something doesn’t work out in cooking, it is very seldom that the entire dish is ruined. But the small error helps the next dish taste better. This is not the case with baking.

2. Entrepreneurs (bottom-up) Vs. MBA-Types (top-down) — The former makes numerous small mistakes and learns from each trial and error. On the other hand, the latter makes decisions on theoretical knowledge and doesn’t necessarily learn from error (due to the lack of incentives to do so).

3. Tinkerer Vs. Perfectionist — The former is interested in tinkering and seeing frequent results. On the other hand, the latter is focussed on executing perfectly in the first attempt, but takes a lot of time in planning for it.

I could go on and on with the examples, but you get the picture at this point. Now that I have clearly made the case for trial and error as a valuable source of (bottom-up) knowledge, it is time to answer the next big question.

Should We Demonise Top-down Knowledge?

After having rained down arrows on top-down theoretical knowledge, let me pose the next set of logical questions: Do I suggest demonising top-down academic knowledge? Should we completely get rid of it?

The answer is: no. I am not against top-down academic knowledge. What I am against is the propaganda of dressing up bottom-up knowledge as top-down knowledge.

“A lot of things that we believe come from theoretical knowledge, effectively come from tinkering.”

– Nassim Taleb.

Basic theoretical knowledge is indispensable for all of us, but at the same time, we need not be high-IQ geniuses to take advantage of it.

Use Trial and Error To Out Perform High IQ Individuals

The concepts that I have presented in this essay might upset modern theoreticians. But theoreticians, whilst very useful to society and science, should know their place. It is unfair and dishonourable to steal credit for knowledge/progress that was achieved through trial and error.

To the practitioner, this essay might come across as a welcome flag of approval. Although it is the case, I would like to caution that the key to a successful bottom-up knowledge model lies in designing it for “small” errors after each trial.

The moment that errors get out of hand is the moment that the system stops being useful. If a system has a huge weak spot, it is bound to fail at that spot. So, design your systems carefully and acquire optimal theoretical knowledge where needed.

So, all in all, the tools of trial and error are available to everyone to benefit from. So, anyone can use them to outperform high-IQ individuals. The last time I checked, even high-IQ individuals wished that they outperformed other high-IQ individuals.

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Reference and credit: Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

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Further reading that might interest you:

• Common Sense Is Not Really Common At All.
• How Easy Is It Really To Predict The Future?
• Correlation: One Of The Most Misunderstood Concepts In Science.

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