Relationship between Chess rating and I.Q?

And, to quote the late and great Stephen Hawking, “anyone who brags about his IQ is a loser” Not saying anyone here is, but I felt this is the right place to say this. 

Of anyone to say that, Hawking is a reliable source (his IQ was between 150 and 189) 

IQ tests do not measure everything. A good indication of intelligence is to look at what you have accomplished in your life.

Invention? Wrote best seller? Patents? Movie maker? Music composer? Etc...

It has more to do with your study habits and the age at which you start.

It takes a certain amount of genius...

Best sellers are rarely quality literature. I would never assume such an achievement to reflect any more intelligence than possessed by successful marketing people. 

Mensa is crap.

I don't see it that way: I rather find intelligent an author who finds a clever way to inform or entertain as many persons as possible.

I don't think you'll find many people who agree with you--that being entertaining indicates intelligence.

Sure some entertaining people are very intelligent, but like Ziryab I'd never automatically attribute intelligence to someone with a best selling book (or movie, or etc).

I never said that being entertaining indicates intelligence. My point is that if your work is broadly appreciated because you carefully designed it to attain this goal, then this is a sign of intelligence. And not a rocket scientist one.

Thomas Pynchon is a genius. Read his novels and you’ll know that. Their quality is why they will never be best sellers.

Well, like Ziryab mentioned... marketing. There are LOADS of talented actors, singers, writers, artists, who will never be famous, because, frankly, those skills are fairly common. So there are, let's say, 1,000,000 people as talented as [insert celebrity here] but they will never be famous because they don't have a multi-million dollar marketing and production apparatus supporting them. That's just how it is.

Additionally, "broad appeal" is not very noteworthy. Around 90% of a person's mental bandwidth is taken up by relationships, money, health, these sorts of things. That leaves about 9% for hobbies, and about 1% for everything else... in other words to be entertaining, it has to be dumbed down enough so that 1% of a perons's bandwidth can process it. For example I recall an interview with a director or some-such of the very popular CSI series. He said a metric they used was whether or not you could enjoy an episode while not watching it (meaning, while just listening). I.e. it had to be extremely easy to follow.

The most watched YouTube video is... baby shark. Yes it's for kids, but just think about the overall theme. The most subscribed-to YouTuber was pewdiepie (who made inane videos for children). The talent it takes to do these things is ubiquitous. It just depends on things like marketing and luck... the Harry Potter books were not well written at first, but luckily for Rowling some Christian groups were outraged that satanism (read:  magic) was in the book, and protested enough that it got these books in the news. Suddenly everyone wanted to buy them to see what all the fuss was about... and since the books were bad enough to be processed by 1% of the average person's bandwidth, they became a brand, and eventually adapted into movies, etc.

I guess I should be careful... art and entertainment are integral parts of the human experience. Some artists are truly rare talents or geniuses whose work will stand the test of time and be enjoyed for generations... my point is not to confuse celebrity with intelligence.

I hadn't heard of g factor before. Interesting.

Though I would say that "skills aren't intelligence" is debatable, no?

To become skilled in something, your brain forms more synaptic connections, related to that particular activity.

It's perhaps oversimplifying to say it, but synaptic connections basically equate to intelligence ...

Cephalopods (I'm a fan of them!) are notably more intelligent than other species because their brains require more synaptic connections to accommodate the complexity of their shapeshifting, color-changing skin ... This increased amount of neural pathways has resulted in greater intelligence - hence why we see scientists putting cuttlefish and octopi in underwater puzzle-boxes, to see how they think their ways out of it.

We're obviously not cephalopods, but ... A talented singer is going to have a greater number of synaptic connections in the regions of their brain related to singing. A talented dancer is going to have more synaptic connections in a completely different region of their brain.

Will an IQ test properly measure the intelligence of both of these individuals?

Or would it simply measure their cognitive abilities, as related to the test-specific skills, only?

That's really my main qualm with IQ tests. I agree that they're great at what they do. But I don't think that what they do is adequately measure intelligence.

Case in point: I recall a psychologist referring to exceptional athletes as possessing a kind of "genius" in their particular field - though also suggesting that it was a kind of genius that could not be measured by a written test ...

I guess I'm in the middle, maybe because I don't know enough about it.

I don't buy into the idea that everyone's intelligent in their own way, Gardner's theory of mulitple intelligences and all that... but I agree that intelligence isn't well defined, and that IQ tests are not as reliable as some might think.

To me at least, intelligence is when a person is creative in a conceptual way... they combine abstract ideas in a clever way for a desired outcome, and they do in spite of having had limited exposure to these concepts i.e. they do it quickly... I can't imagine how it's possible to make a single test that will measure this for everyone.

Yes yes, using yellow text to talk about urine, very clever.

Maybe post it where kids are talking, that way you'll be more likely to get the reaction you want, like "eww, that's gross." 

I think that's a good working definition.

Another one I've heard (can't remember from where, but it's an idea that I liked) is that a "genius" is intuitively capable of taking something complex and turning it into something simple.

I know, from your posts, that you're not a big fan of Nakamura. Though I would argue that he has a real knack for taking complex chess positions and making them seem absurdly simple. When I watch him play from his stream, everything looks (relatively) easy and obvious. When I watch him play on the board, though, his play often leaves me bewildered ... I don't dare to call him a chess "genius" (lest I face your wrath ), though I would certainly say he matches the sentiment that I mentioned above.

To me it's like learning to read. At first you sound out each letter. As you get better you can read whole words without even seeing the letters. Nakamura recognizes certain combinations of elements... that's not genius to me anymore than reading is genius to me, it's just practice.

Now... the fact that, let's say millions of people, start from a young age and don't become a top 10 player, sure, that means Naka has a talent for chess.

... and he could be really smart. I don't think he's an idiot... I've just never heard him say anything I consider intelligent, and he doesn't seem very self aware, e.g. the silly Sauron tweet, and lots of other childish behavior in streams... maybe that doesn't come from a low IQ, maybe he has emotional issues from when he was a kid and couldn't help but behave that way, I have no idea. FWIW he seems to be doing better now... but anyway, this is how I think of him.