Why does IQ halve when people write about IQ

Robert Waldmann

So it turns out that extreme liberals have higher measured IQs than extreme conservatives and atheists have slightly higher IQs than biblical literalists.

What does this tell us ? Matthew Yglesias sent me to this and I learned that people will not accept the fact that not all stochastic variables are normally distributed.

I mean the extreme blind faith in the normal distribution is just not normal.

Razib Khan wrote

“Assume the “very conservative” and “very liberal” categories are normally distributed in intelligence. The mean is 95 and 106. What percentage of people within each category are going to have IQs of 130 and above?
Assume the “very conservative” and “very liberal” categories are normally distributed in intelligence. The mean is 95 and 106. What percentage of people within each category are going to have IQs of 130 and above?

0.92% of “very conservative” individuals
5.48% of “very liberal” individuals

That’s like writing “Assume my grandmother has balls. Is she my grandfather? 100% of my grandmother is male.”

Anyone who knows anything about IQ scores knows that they are not normally distributed. IQ scores have a fat upper tail. In other words the calculation is total nonsense and has nothing to do with any intelligent estimate of the fractions of very liberal and very conservative people with IQs over 130.

I mean if one is going to make assumptions which are demonstrably false, one might as well assume the conclusion (yes economics profession I am thinking of us too).

I am very liberal and atheist and *I* think this post (to which Yglesias linked) is clearly total nonsense.