[mowenz]

The most amazing thing about IQ tests are that some social (really pseudo--they cant really experimentally test theory) scientists convinced the world these things matter.

If you go and read the literature the idea is that thete is a concept called g, general intelligence, and that IQ tests dont test that, but produce a result which correlates with g. In this framework it is acceptable that Feynman's g is different from his IQ score--they were only ever meant to be correlated.

[pas]

Things progressed a bit since then, and [IQ, but let's say SAT] test scores correlate very well with a lot of things. Even after controlling for as much socioeconomic and other confounding factors as you can. (Sure, that's still not a conclusive experiment.)

[mowenz]

We agree they do correlate, but there is actually some debate about just how well intelligence tests do correlate with success, but the general idea of them remains the same as described above afaik, unless you'd like to point what has changed?

Many things correlate with successful life outcomes. Height for instance correlates with income.