Individual g will have some bearing on what is learned, but the social payoff will be more a matter of s.

The predictive power of IQ is based on g, not s. Such things as income, longevity, health, education, marital success, etc. are correlated with g and not with s. Keep in mind that g is the same, whether measured by one test or another. S is only the specificity associated with the test or with the group factor residuals.

... are you not misjudging social utility in a general way?

I don't think I am misjudging anything. I am simply recognizing that when a correlation matrix is residualized by factoring out g, the remaining factors have virtually no external validity. They are just about worthless.

the social utility of learned material might be very high even though the utility of that same material might be much higher for a high g person.

I think you are overextending the implications of s. We are discussing intelligence. As it turns out, lower IQ people have more of their variance explained by g than do more intelligent people.

Putting all that together, I guess Dickens and Flynn do not claim FE gains are entirely due to g, nor do they say FE gains have any g-loading, nor can they estimate to what extent FE gains are g-loaded.

I can't say what Dickens believes, but I have already reported that I asked this question directly to Flynn and he said "I don't know." He is not willing to make any g related projections on the FE.

In other words, most people who have some familiarity with FE gains think the gains are all about s ...hollow gains, but useful all the same.

Most of those who have actually looked have found no g increases. I don't recall that any of these people has argued that the gains are "useful all the same." In fact, some have expressed dismay over the simultaneous decline in scholastic related test items.

(I found very little on Condon and Schroeder...some stuff about idea fluency, but no inkling that g might be found or might have been found in FE gains.) I suppose you know how Condon and Schroeder relate their Memory for Design test scores to FE gains.

That paper goes back to 2004. I was present when they presented it and I was very interested in the topic. I still recall that Tom Bouchard (sitting beside me) looked at the test and said "That's hard." Indeed it was difficult. Their study of the Flynn Effect did not incorporate memory for design.

I might agree with you if I thought cognitive ability was mostly a function of g with very little s.

Let me suggest that if you think that s is a significant factor in the predictive validity of intelligence, you are simply wrong. The predictive validity of IQ is due to g and not to s. In fact, s can be one thing in one test and something else in a different test. That is not true of g because g is a reflection of the factors that constitute intelligence.

I'm not sure what social factors you're talking about.

Environmental factors fall into two broad categories: the shared environment and the nonshared environment, but those names can be distracting to someone who doesn't understand exactly what they mean. So, let's use Jensen's terms: the micro environment is that which is composed of chemical and biological factors that affect an individual, such as disease, toxins, nutrition, etc. The macro environment consists of the family, school, institutions, jobs, and political environments. The macro environment does not affect g in adults. Even if a small group can be studied in childhood and found to be influenced by the macro environment, the effects are temporary and cannot be found at a later date. Those factors do not differentiate the people who experienced them from those who did not.

(You say Miller's hypothesis isn't proved, but it's "well reasoned".) Surely you wouldn't say that the only useful hypotheses in social science are proven facts.

Miller did not call upon magic to explain neural noise. Dickens and Flynn have proposed a mechanism that requires a magical transposition that has not been seen in science.

Are you saying in effect that anything learned, no matter how dynamic and complex, is rote learning because it has no novelty? Or does some learning escape the curse of roteness as it still requires some apperception and judgement?

Rote learning is overlearning to the point that the task can be performed automatically. We learn basic language and multiplication tables by rote. We do not become novelists or mathematicians as a consequence.

Given the tendency of IQ to predict important life outcomes for individuals of a cohort, IQ still doesn't predict the cohort's future environments.

It is predictive (it is not deterministic) of their SES and, therefore, part of their future environments. It is also predictive of their ability to deal with novelty, so that as change happens and new environments present themselves, those with high g will most easily adapt to and exploit their new environmental conditions. Those with low g are most likely to be hammered by change.

If people are statistically fated to occupy various social slots in their environments, does an increasingly gainful environment raise all boats?

It might or might not. There are some conditions (a nation at peace) that will be desirable for all and there are some (rapidly increasing automation) that will benefit bright people and may harm dull people.

(Might increasingly detrimental environments lower all boats as well?)

Sure. I expect that happened in Germany from the time the Allies started carpet bombing until well after the end of the war.

This notion of high and low g boats should allow high g boats to rise higher or fall less than low g boats.

That is the most likely outcome.