He’s right, I’m afraid. The kinds of things that iq tests measure are whether you have the patience and training and whether or not you care about the kinds of problems that show up on iq tests. I’ve worked with computer programmers, and forklift operators, and I have to tell you that the forklift operators are just as smart as the computer programmers. Taleb is also correct that there are a few people who have suffered some sort of brain injury for whom iq might be a useful test; but you can tell who those people are with a casual conversation. All the rest is just training and personality.
Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
21–30 of 52 posts
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taleb doesn't mean IQ doesn't test something real. He says this "something real" is irrelevant.
I was in the US military, and they used something called an ASVAB test to check your suitability for various jobs. It's one of the few skills tests I've encountered that seemed both reasonably accurate and useful. I'd much rather see the results of that for a potential job hire than I would want to see their SAT scores, IQ, etc.
The ASVAB effectively is an IQ test. There's more of a breakdown than other tests, but you can calculate IQ from it.
The SAT isn't considered a proper IQ test.
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#23He’s right, I’m afraid. The kinds of things that iq tests measure are whether you have the patience and training and whether or not you care about the kinds of problems that show up on iq tests. I’ve worked with computer programmers, and forklift operators, and I have to tell you that the forklift operators are just as smart as the computer programmers. Taleb is also correct that there are a few people who have suffe…
> I have to tell you that the forklift operators are just as smart as the computer programmers
Based on what? Conversational ability? How much you like them?
It's painful to ever admit that one person is better at a fundamental thing than another. Our primate brains get icked out at the thought of something like that because we evolved in small groups where slights and insults like that could get your head bashed in with a rock. That said, it's important that we approach such questions objectively and with data over anecdotes.
IQ measures _something_. In the case of the progressive matrices tests it seems to measure an ability to recognize abstract visual patterns, which probably maps onto _some_ skills in a way that is important.
Wouldn't you expect people with higher aptitude for, say, identifying abstract patterns, to have higher aptitude for certain professions?
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#24I have a strong hunch that for reasonably smart people, IQ tests are gameable the same way academic tests are. I mean, if you test someone "out of the blue" you get some measure on how much they know. If they prepare, the more they do that the higher the score. First time I competed for admission at one of the best universities in my country, I failed. For the next year I kept preparing myself, 8 hours per day math a…
I took an IQ test once, when I was 17. It was a sunny day in February, I was well rested, had nice breakfast and even managed to get a sneaky toke while my mother was in the shower. I prepared by singing to the radio in the car. It took a few hours and I got the results on another day, so it was a "real IQ test", though I'd have to look up the exact type. But it doesn't matter anyway. I scored 142 that day, and there…
most sources suggest that Schumacher said this quote, not Einstein.
http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2007/03/quote-verification.htm...
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#25Man there are some nasty replies in this thread. Not that I don’t agree with the high level premise, but I hate when people dismiss a hundred years of peer reviewed research generally without doing the peer reviewed legwork to back themselves up.
Examples of fields with hundreds of years of 'peer-reviewed research': -Alchemy -Phrenology -Humor theory -Spontaneous generation theory -Astronomical geocentrism -Ether theory -Graphology -Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis -Astrology all of them were once respected fields, complete with papers, journals, professorships, exams, etc. By the way, speaking as someone in academia, you'd be surprised at how little 'peer-re…
Don't forget '-Gender Studies'.
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> most of it comes from obvious tail-end cases (people with IQ below 80) That is not a tail-end case, it is a huge number of people, about 28 million in the U.S. alone. Wishful thinking is not a substitute for science, and IQ is (as far as we can tell) a good predictor of general cognitive ability, which is in turn a good predictor of a great number of things. If you think you have something better, we're all ears.
I'm not sure how what you're saying contradicts my point (apart from vague accusations of 'wishful thinking'). What Taleb is arguing, what I'm arguing, what the original designer of IQ was arguing and what seems to be common knowledge among everyone I know in neuroscience or medicine is that IQ is a very good predictor of life outcomes if you are mentally impaired to begin with. When you venture into the realm of >10…
> When you venture into the realm of >100 IQ, it loses a lot of its predictive power, which is why (where I live at least) it is mostly administered to people, mostly children, suspected of needing 'special requirements'. In that sense, it is a very good 'unintelligence quotient' but not much beyond that.
According to whom exactly? There is a very large body of work predicting chess outcomes, productivity in maths, etc. in the upper range of the scale. Maybe it is not as proportionally meaningful (i.e. in most cases people are not running up against a limitation in general cognitive ability), but that doesn't mean it's meaningless, it means you're trying to predict the wrong thing with it.
I think a lot of this rhetoric stems from insecurity. I don't know my IQ, I don't personally care, but if somebody produces a study with me included then IQ (or similar measures) could yield good results.
It is not useful for all questions, nor is it useless for all questions; it is a simple measure of a specific stable characteristic of the mind, which is correlated to other characteristics which are harder to measure or predict any other way. IQ is not intended to judge your overall worth as a human being, it is just there to estimate your general cognitive ability. The fact that general cognitive ability is not sufficient on its own for you to succeed is immaterial to its utility as a measure.
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#27Here’s a little corollary too: assume the population is divided into two groups, one who is healthy, and the other which has suffered at least minor brain trauma or lead poisoning or something. If the average iq of the two groups is 100, then that means the healthy group has an iq above 100 (in my anecdotal experience about 115).
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#28I have a strong hunch that for reasonably smart people, IQ tests are gameable the same way academic tests are. I mean, if you test someone "out of the blue" you get some measure on how much they know. If they prepare, the more they do that the higher the score. First time I competed for admission at one of the best universities in my country, I failed. For the next year I kept preparing myself, 8 hours per day math a…
Another comment mentioned something called 'progressive matrices', these tests are not based on any crystalized (studyable) knowledge.
You could practice solving the sort of visiospatial puzzles that they pose but then you'd ruin your results. People who use these tests are expected to have not had much/any experience with solving the types of puzzles it presents.
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#29Think it should be kept in mind that what Taleb is arguing here is the limited usefulness of IQ in predicting success above a certain IQ level, let’s say the mean. He 100% acknowledges its usefulness for predicting success of lower IQ persons.
He mainly just wants to point out that any other measure that was as bad at predicting higher levels of performance as IQ is would not be held in nearly as high regard. IQ therefore is in a vulnerable position as a hallowed metric, which he detects and proceeds to attack, hence the Twitter thread.
Think he could have done it with less bluster and fluster, but that’s all he’s saying at the end of the day. Not nearly as controversial as some are making it out to be
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was in the US military, and they used something called an ASVAB test to check your suitability for various jobs. It's one of the few skills tests I've encountered that seemed both reasonably accurate and useful. I'd much rather see the results of that for a potential job hire than I would want to see their SAT scores, IQ, etc.
The ASVAB effectively is an IQ test. There's more of a breakdown than other tests, but you can calculate IQ from it. The SAT isn't considered a proper IQ test.
Surely I am dating myself, but pre 1994 SAT tests were said to be better.
Total SAT (math and verbal scores), divided by 10,were supposed to be close to the measured iq.
FWIW my SAT divided by 10 was within two points of my mother's IQ testing from decades before.