Twin study suggests rationality and intelligence share the same genetic roots - the study suggests that being irrational, or making illogical choices, might simply be another way of measuring lower intelligence.

[u/mvea]

https://www.psypost.org/twin-study-suggests-rationality-and-intelligence-share-the-same-genetic-roots/

[u/mtcwby → u/[deleted]]

Dad's family were all high achievers academically. My oldest aunt graduated HS early at 16 in the 1940s and went on to get a PhD, etc. All with tested IQs above 145 for what that's worth. Another's son is a current major university president with lots of patents based on his research. Dad was the dumb one with his IQ only in the 130s but he was the one they all called when they were panicking over one stupid thing or another. Academic intelligence doesn't always translate to real life well.

[u/Cursory_Analysis → u/mtcwby]

There are a lot of academic fields that don't heavily emphasize the use logic or rationality either. There are different types of intelligence.

To preface, I've never taken an IQ test but I have a Ph.D in philosophy and then changed careers to get an MD later on in life. Those are two very different types of intelligence that don't have a lot of overlap at first. The further you get, the more you realize that the skills that allow you to apply connections between disciplines and translate them to real world problems are what make someone the most successful.

I had a much stronger background in logic from philosophy than basically all of my med school classmates that were some of the best students in the country. Some of the most intelligent (IQ wise) people that I've ever met, get too bogged down in specificity and can't translate book smarts to applied scenarios. Some of those people can't do any critical reasoning but are literal photographic memory doctors that can quote the textbook at you.

However, when it comes to novel scenarios in the real world where someone has to make a new "applied knowledge" decision based on foundational theoretical "book knowledge", they can't come up with something new on the fly. The best people need to be able to use both and translate one to the other seamlessly.

[u/Square-Singer → u/Cursory_Analysis]

Some of the most intelligent (IQ wise) people that I've ever met, get too bogged down in specificity and can't translate book smarts to applied scenarios.

A lot of that comes down to training though.

If you are trained in book smarts (as is common with a lot of academic education) and especially by someone who thinks that book smarts are always superior (as is common with a lot of academic educators who haven't actually ever worked in the field they teach), you'll end up having a lot of book smarts while missing application.

I am a software dev, and it's really easy to spot who had an interest in programming and stuff before they started their education and who only got into IT via their education.