Nationality at birth, parental income, skin color, height, highest degree completed, etc. are also highly correlated.
But yes, I recognize the "like a scratch-off lottery ticket which might reveal that you should be a Big Winner In Life" psychological appeal of IQ tests. Especially for people who are not actually experiencing any of that Big Winner in Life stuff, or have other issues. Such as needing humanity to be a Well-Ordered Set ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-order ) with a convenient and easily-rationalized "who gets to look down upon whom" metric.
Yes. There are few measurements that also correlate with various outcomes. But I don't think anything is as broad as IQ which is just the speed at which you can do logic puzzles. Isn't it interesting? That something so silly correlates so strongly with so many things? The metrics you mention are kind of obvious in comparison and about as interesting as the hypothesis that "it's better to be healthy and rich than sick and poor".
As for comparing humans with each other I agree it's totally stupid. Personally I blame religions and their simplistic concept of good and evil for this eagerness of comparing humans and putting them on a spectrum of quality.
> As for comparing humans with each other I agree it's totally stupid. Personally I blame religions and their...
Read up a bit on the hierarchy systems found in various non-human primate societies. Religious status is just another convenient and easily-rationalized ordering metric.
Does china strike you as particularly religious? You dont even need IQ tests. Students naturally fall on a distribution if tested. And those students generally test in the same range their whole life.
But yes, I recognize the "like a scratch-off lottery ticket which might reveal that you should be a Big Winner In Life" psychological appeal of IQ tests. Especially for people who are not actually experiencing any of that Big Winner in Life stuff, or have other issues. Such as needing humanity to be a Well-Ordered Set ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-order ) with a convenient and easily-rationalized "who gets to look down upon whom" metric.