[fdsaaf]

This belief is accurate. Men and women have similar IQ means, but men have greater variance. This difference implies that there are more low-IQ men than there are low-IQ women, and also that there are more high-IQ men than high-IQ women.

Denying reality, even with the best of intentions, ultimately does everyone a disservice. We should of course encourage intelligent and driven women to succeed. We can do that while acknowledging that, yes, brilliance is more common in men.

[kafkaesq]

Except that "brilliance" != high IQ.

[cjlars]

And what would be a better measure? We can't assess the validity of the belief without one.

[kafkaesq]

And what would be a better measure?

I don't know, right off. May well be there isn't any such "measure", for the higher end. Especially none as highly contention as that provided by so-called IQ tests (which in any case were initially intended to sift out mental retardation or developmental disabilities -- not for stack-ranking cognitive performance in upper-tier adults, for which their applicability is even more suspect).

The bigger point is that it doesn't do much good to just pretend that it's a valid, object measure of "brilliance" when most likely it isn't.

[scotty79]

So children's opinion is possibly accurate. However if current state is not the desired state we may choose to educate children in a way that does not reflect current state of affairs but rather such that will lead to the desired one.

[fdsaaf]

IQ is not boosted much by intensive education, especially in adults. Intensive education can raise IQs during childhood, but by the time these children mature into adults, their IQs are roughly where you'd expect by extrapolating from demographic factors.

Education is a prerequisite for making best use of one's intellect. Do you propose witholding education from boys so that adult outcomes are more equal?

[scotty79]

Is equality a desired outcome? Or rather having as many brilliant people as possible regardless of their gender?

[mac01021]

I would be very interested to see a citation for this.

[fdsaaf]

https://www.quora.com/Psychology-Do-men-have-a-wider-varianc...

[na85]

IQ tests only measure one's ability to perform IQ tests, are widely criticized as flawed indicators of performance and are at best tangentially related to what most of us would describe as genius or brilliance.

Your assertion that brilliance is more common in men than in women is unsupported.

[Sir_Substance]

>IQ tests only measure one's ability to perform IQ tests, are widely criticized as flawed indicators of performance and are at best tangentially related to what most of us would describe as genius or brilliance.

May I ask what measurable yardstick of brilliance you would use, if we are to eschew the most widely accepted yardstick?

Or are you just moving the goalposts because you don't like the current answer?

[na85]

I don't think there exists a reliable yardstick of brilliance. For example IQ tests do not and are not capable of assessing creativity, a trait I would strongly argue is a necessary component of brilliance.

You are free to assume whatever you like about my motives, and you can claim it's moving the goalposts if you like: There's also a racial bias in IQ test performance. Would you therefore argue that e.g. black people are less brilliant than whites? Or Asians?

[michaelbuddy]

It will serve you better to deal with the fear/reality that people are not equal and racial differences do exist, not just on the surface but they manifest in group averages of intelligence, performance. Group averages are not an individual.

If you can accept that there are people smarter and not as smart as you, more athletic or not as athletic, then you understand that people are different. The illusion that races aren't different is just part of a passing PC culture fad. Better to accept reality, better for everyone involved.

[Sir_Substance]

>I don't think there exists a reliable yardstick of brilliance.

I'm afraid that's not an acceptable answer. I'm rejecting your viewpoint in favor of currently accepted mainstream psychology until you can back it up with measurable fact.

[na85]

I'm on mobile and can't link it but I encourage you to read a recent study published in Neuron by Highland, Owen et al about this matter.

[fdsaaf]

IQ correlates very well with all sorts of things, including career choice (e.g. physicists have very high IQs) and lifetime earning. By any objective measure, IQ is at the very least a prerequisite for brilliance.

[na85]

That correlation simply implies that brilliant people perform well at IQ tests. It certainly cannot be used to establish IQ as a prerequisite, that's just not how statistics work.