Your IQ Matters Less Than You Think
Nautilus Magazine
Cutting-edge science, unraveled by the very brightest living thinkers.
Hello, friends of Nautilus.
We're back with our 2nd LinkedIn newsletter. As you get accustomed to the format here, let us remind you that with each edition we'll provide an unlocked story regardless of your Membership status (meaning no paywall).
Today's unlocked story is from Dean Simonton , who shows how IQ may be an exaggerated factor in the path to eminence.
Please do subscribe, follow along, and consider becoming a member of Nautilus if you like what you see. You'll unlock a bunch of fun benefits. Now let's roll.
FREE STORY
Your IQ Matters Less Than You Think
In studies of children and historical figures, IQ falls short as a measure of success.
People too often forget that IQ tests haven’t been around that long. Indeed, such psychological measures are only about a century old. Early versions appeared in France with the work of Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon in 1905. However, these tests didn’t become associated with genius until the measure moved from the Sorbonne in Paris to Stanford University in Northern California.
Benjamin Breen on his 3 greatest revelations while writing Tripping on Utopia, about the birth of psychedelic science.
"Above all, I was surprised by the public response to the Hollywood actor Cary Grant’s reveal that he was regularly using LSD in psychedelic therapy sessions. In a series of interviews starting in 1959—the same year he starred in North by Northwest—Grant went public as an unlikely advocate for psychedelic therapy."
领英推荐
Could quantum mechanics hold the key?
There’s an outside chance we’ve been getting black holes wrong.
Physicists had long presumed black holes to be simple: massive gravitational objects, inescapable prisons of overwhelming matter and spacetime collapse.
But the more we study them, the more black holes refuse to cooperate with this picture, born out of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity—the sweeping model that explains the workings of gravity at grand scales.
A SPECIAL OFFER
World Cancer Day was earlier this month, and we had a tremendous response to a series of stories surrounding cancer and cancer research. We’d like to help you support one of the scientists featured in that series—Siddhartha Mukherjee—and his work researching Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS). Join Nautilus today, and we'll donate 25% of the cost of your membership towards MDS-Leukemia stem cell research at Columbia University.
Myelodysplastic Syndromes have no cure and treatment options are limited—about a third of MDS patients go on to develop acute leukemia. Dr. Mukherjee, his research partner Azra Raza, MD, and their colleagues at Columbia are working to change this by investigating the extraordinary power of stem cells to replenish blood cells for the possible benefit of its patients.
Join Nautilus today, and support MDS research.
AND SPEAKING OF WHICH....
A reader responds to our World Cancer Day promotion:
Greetings from New Zealand. As a cancer survivor speaking seven years distance from surgery, I’d like to share a little of my journey. To maybe help others.
My prostate cancer diagnosis (invasive and aggressive) came as a shock. I’d done all the right things; regular checkups with PSA blood tests and digital examinations. But problems persisted, especially at night. So, the GP referred me to the urology clinic at the public hospital. Many tests did I endure resulting in, well, no result. All clear, and the official letter advised me that I had been “...taken off our books.”
Back to the GP, who wasn't satisfied. “What’s next?” was my naive reaction. A biopsy. A few pieces of my prostate for analysis. Which found the “invasive and aggressive” prostate cancer tumor.
Back to the hospital—I’m relating the brief version of my journey—to be told that surgery wasn’t an option because the tumor was too close to the bowel. However, quite by chance, a family member tipped us off to robotic surgery. At an expensive,? private hospital facility. Radical Robotic Prostatectomy.
So, here I am. We’re poorer but I’m still breathing. My message? Ask for a biopsy. It may be a lifesaver. Your life. The consultant tells me I’m likely to enjoy “a normal lifespan.” As I’m now 80 years old, I still have enough time left to complete my postgraduate qualifications, in philosophy. – Michael D.