...I just think he spends too much time rhetorically splitting hairs.
..."Most child prodigies are highly successful—but most highly successful people weren't child prodigies."
Okay, maybe "rhetorically splitting hairs" wasn't a good term, as others have pointed out, but it was pointing out the annoyingly obvious.
Okay so the top 0.01% aren't going to have the majority of "innovative contributions to society" (whatever that is; define it how you like).
But suppose the top X% (in IQ, or some other measure) contribute f(X)% of "innovative contributions to society" (or some such thing). What does f look like? For which X% is f(X)%=50%?
Maybe the top 0.01% contribute 1% (100 times their "share"), while
the top 5% contribute 50% (10 times their "share").
So the higher IQ kids end up disproportionately making intellectual contributions to society. (Duh, Captain Obvious strikes again.) But if they are to do this, they need to be properly educated to their ability level. J0rdan Ellenberg seems to be trying to rebut this claim by choosing X% so small that f(X)% has to be small.
The argument I just made is so obvious that it would have occurred to him as quick as a flash of lightning. Failing to explicitly present this argument was downright sneaky.
