The other sites, like City Search and Google reviews, don't attract this element, probably because they don't allow for elaborate "profiles" and don't cultivate a "community."
I noticed something similar, though not as a programmer.
I tested videogames one summer, where it was my job to locate and report bugs. It was soon apparent that there was huge variation in productivity: some people submitted more and better bugs, in better written reports, than others.
Most people were hired as independent contractors through an outside company. A select few would be hired by the actual game company, and kept on through the season. Was it the most productive who were kept on? No. It was the people who put in the most overtime hours, and made themselves available when the company asked.
Call me an ignorant youth, but it seemed like, if they wanted to, they could raise salaries, fire the bottom X%, and hire some more talented QA testers, and still come out ahead.
Cook's explanation doesn't really explain this scenario, but I have a feeling the answer is similar, for both the QA tester and the programmer.
My theory: management simply doesn't care, and doesn't need to. If you were to walk out, they could easily get someone else at the exact same pay-grade. It's only when your value to the company is crystal clear, and you are clearly better than the competition, and that there's a viable threat that you will leave somewhere else and actually get better pay, that a company will pay you accordingly.
After all, economics doesn't say you get paid what you're worth. It says you get paid the market clearing wage. You might be creating $200 of value per hour for your employer, but if there are tons of people ready to work for $10 an hour and are just as productive, then you will get paid $10 an hour.
This is more conjecture, but I think for things to change, for people to be paid according to their productivity, two critical pieces of information are essential:
1. Exactly how productive you are, relative to your peers.
2. Exactly how much people of varying abilities make.
The problem is, for #1, the metrics are bad if at all existent. For #2, there's a huge taboo against telling people what you make, which ultimately helps employers keep wages lower.
I think my QA testing situation would have been different if say, the men in charge took some pride in it, and only hired great testers. They didn't, they were just filling slots, so the QA on the QA testers themselves was pretty shoddy.
"Call me an ignorant youth, but it seemed like, if they wanted to, they could raise salaries, fire the bottom X%, and hire some more talented QA testers, and still come out ahead."
Not ignorant at all; this is a very insightful observation. I've seen the same thing from the programming side. Unfortunately, an unskilled programmer can create more and longer-lasting damage than an unskilled QA tester -- some code sticks around for decades and has layers and layers of new code built on top of it. Thus, bad programmers can drag down other programmers' productivity long after they've left the project. So the advantage of replacing a lot of bad programmers with a handful of good ones who are better paid could be even greater.
Not to mention that a smaller group has much less communication overhead than a larger group (as described in The Mythical Man Month).
@porfirio: Thanks a lot for trying it out. We're currently pulling in data from various sources like Foursquare, Google Places, etc. -- but we do add unique stops as well. Currently we've filled out unique stops for the PNW (since we're based here), but CA is definitely one we'd like to tackle soon.
Despite the UK being very similar to the US, on a global scale, the relationship between IQ and drug use is not the same across the herring pond. There are relationships between IQ and social indicators that are consistent across time and nations, and this isn't one of those. Whatever is causing this relationship in Britain is cultural - I doubt it's a feature of high intelligence, rather than just Brits who have high IQ.
It's more accurate to say socioeconomic class measures IQ, rather than the other way around. To oversimplify, high IQ people are more productive, IQ at adulthood is heritable to a great extent (~80% of variation in IQ is due to genetic variation), so 1 + 1 = rich families have higher IQ children. Imagine if people were paid based on how tall they are, and replace IQ with height, and it'd be the same -> Tall parents + high heritability for height -> rich families have taller offspring. People don't recognize this with regards to IQ because they ultimately don't believe IQ is highly heritable, which it is.
IQ is heritable, but the catch is that it may, in fact, only be heritable through the mother's half of the genes contributed to the child [1]. The jury is still out on this possibility, but it's being seriously considered in studies right now.
So all those uber-rich guys who select stereotypically dumb, hot trophy wives are doing their offspring no favors in this department. (On the flipside, they may be doing their offspring plenty of favors w/r/t looks, and countless studies have shown that looks are also highly correlated with professional success).
Finally, IQ is, for lack of a better word, malleable. It's not locked in at birth. It can be trained, and it can also wither on the vine if not properly used and challenged. And it's highly susceptible to environment: types of attention received as a child, education, socialization, and even environmental pollutants all play a big role. And they continue to play a big role throughout life, up until roughly the mid-20s, when the brain stops undergoing its rapid changes and loses a lot of its plasticity (though not all of it).
[1] This is something I think science should call the "Lisa Simpson Effect," inasmuch as it explains how a dolt like Homer and a smartie like Marge could produce a genius child.
"IQ is heritable, but the catch is that it may, in fact, only be heritable through the mother's half of the genes contributed to the child [1]."
Do you have a source for this that isn't, um, from the Simpsons? Geneticists have an equation for estimating the response to selection, the change in IQ from parent to offspring, and it uses an average of both parents' IQ. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability#Response_to_Select... for the equation.
IQ is somewhat more malleable initially, but it seems to converge on a point set by one's genetics, by adulthood. The APA estimated heritability in childhood at .45 and .75 by adulthood.
"Do you have a source for this that isn't, um, from the Simpsons?"
My Simpsons reference was meant to be a colorful analogy, and not a "source." Sheesh.
The source for my statement was journal article I read a few months back. I can't seem to track it down online, but here's a blog that summarizes the studies:
this so called 'new hypothesis' has been around for more than 50 years. It was just not written about because people couldn't accept the consequences have accepting that it was a possibility.
There are more genes related to intelligence on the X chromosome than on just the X and Y chromosomes. There are still 22 other pairs of chromosomes, which in offspring, are a mishmash of the father and mother's chromosomes. Genes on these chromosomes have been experimentally linked with intelligence (eg, http://genepi.qimr.edu.au/contents/p/staff/CV453.pdf)
Plus, there are sex differences in intelligence; there are more male dullards and geniuses. Men score higher on visuospatial ability, and women on verbal ability. Given that these are distinctly sex related, their genesis lies in differences between the X and Y chromosomes.
they ultimately don't believe IQ is highly
heritable, which it is
I don't think anybody sane questions that, but what people are saying and that studies so far have confirmed ...
1) small variations in IQ tests don't matter, like for example the difference between 120 and 140 being negligible and depends a lot on external factors, like rest, vitamins in your blood-stream and mood ... give a person several IQ tests over a period of time and he'll score differently every single time
2) you can increase your IQ score with a certain amount of points just by making your brain work harder. Physical exercises work too (professional athletes are above average)
Ultimately the most common complaint is that intelligence (while hereditary) is not something you can accurately measure and that IQ tests are inherently not reliable.
I took the same number of tests (4) over a period of 7 years and the minimum I got was 119, while the maximum was 140. Clearly this has some significance, as over 100 you're definitely at least average, over 130 you're definitely gifted, while below 80 you're definitely challenged.
However, my point was that small variations are not significant. Also, the correlation between IQ scores and intelligence in general is highly debatable - and that's what people are arguing about.
Interesting. My variation wasn't that marked. Some of the tests were different, so their scales may have been slightly different (IIRC). On at least one I remember I had when I was umm... 5(?) or 6? then again in mid 20s then again in late 30s - all were within 5 points of each other. I can't remember if it was stanford-binet or something else though. Hrm... no... I think earlier tests were stanford-binet, later were wisc and wj. To that end, the scoring models would have been different on the ones when I was a kid, and I know there's some issues between child scores vs adult scores - not necessarily directly comparable.
Also, just because one can game the test, or make its result less accurate, it doesn't mean the population level data is much less accurate. I'm reminded of the Body Mass Index - men, by strength training, can put on lots of muscle mass and become classified as "overweight" or even (rarely) "obese" without being fat. But the fact is that most "overweight" men are in fact fat, and not muscular. The fact that a test for an individual can have reduced or zero validity, does not necessarily threaten the validity for the overall population.
If everyone were to start gaming the tests, things might be different. Then again, being able to game the test might be a highly IQ dependent task, so the IQ test remains an IQ test.
it's spectacularly unstable for comparisons between cohorts though, most notably in the case of the Flynn effect. I find it highly unconvincing the average person in the 1930s had the same fundamental level of intelligence as those people scoring 80 on the same tests today.
I know a fair amount about IQ, having studied it a bit, and I'm surprised. IQ correlates pretty strongly, with law abiding behavior, at the very least, not going to jail. High IQ people are less socially dysfunctional than average and low IQ people, eg see the table here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
As for the sex difference between men and women of high IQ, fewer women in general do drugs, so it's easier for high IQ women to rack up a higher multiple of drug use over their average IQ female counterparts.
I looked at the Psychology Today/Kanazawa link, and it says that the relationship is insignificant in America. I.e., the relationship between childhood IQ and drug use is a British phenomenon. Maybe the intelligent are more decadent in Britain? If Kanazawa represents the data accurately, this whole IQ-drugs relationship is BS, in the American setting. Bye bye grand social theorizing.
"Not going to jail" != "law abiding behavior". Especially when you get class issues involved.
Getting picked up for smoking pot or petty vandalism in the suburbs often ends in a trip home to mom and dad after a very stern scare. In the city, it's another statistic for this month's arrests.
Yelp does a great service though. But half the reviewers are just intolerable attention whores. Found this hilarious explication: http://www.freddiew.com/2009/05/22/yelp-is-great-i-just-hate...
The other sites, like City Search and Google reviews, don't attract this element, probably because they don't allow for elaborate "profiles" and don't cultivate a "community."