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IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
21–30 of 400 posts
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#22It seems like the author is setting up a straw man representing the IQ test as some omnipresent (or at least somewhat prevalent) test administered widely. He then lambastes it for all its faults (some of his accusations are correct).
But the reality is that IQ tests are only very, very rarely used. In fact a career on the periphery of academia, academic testing, and their efficacy in predicting academic success at the University level, I have never, not once, not from any colleague or at any conference encountered mention of an IQ test as something to be considered for practical use. I have a lesser degree of familiarity with grade school/high school testing methods, but (in the US) I am similarly unaware of any common practice here.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#23IQ is undoubtedly overemphasized by some factions, especially those with an axe to grind and a dog whistle to blow, if it helps them feel less guilty about their position in the world or otherwise rationalizes injustice. OTOH there's definitely a difference between people, people who aren't mentally defective, people that are quick on the uptake, sharp and alert, who adapt to new mental models. IQ might be an unscien…
At this point I would accept it if someone told me that 100% of what I perceive as "smarts" when interacting with someone is explained by confidence and other learned social behaviors.
Except (hopefully) when you are interacting with someone on your field of expertise.
I'm sure everyone here has run into someone talking about a topic with great confidence, a topic you yourself are actually intimately knowledgeable of, and you realize that they really have no fucking idea what they are talking about.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#24So, does this mean that when I read some "genius"'s endless tweeting about how he "has one of the best I.Q.'s" while soandso is a "very low I.Q. individual", that doesn't actually mean anything of substance? Color me surprised!
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is saying that the second part is likely accurate - e.g. low IQ people are accurately assessed - but the former part is off. This graph: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*76fPv686eOXo1b7F.... shows how he claims IQ scores correlate with outcomes, i.e. as you move away upwards from Said simply: stupid is stupid, but we're not totally sure what smart is.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#25The title doesn't seem to match up with the article. The point seems to be that IQ is good at predicting intellectual deficits at the low end but bad at predicting 'success' above that; further it indicates that IQ is mis-used in this range. This doesn't seem to indicate that IQ is 'pseudoscience', just that it's a misused statistic. Not a real shocker there, almost every statistic is misused by some group.
Not to mention, the assumption is that if IQ is not useful for predicting success regardless of circumstance (i.e. whether somebody is employed as an astrophysicist or as a sweatshop seamstress), it must be not useful in all cases.
The fact that IQ is a useful metric at the low end of the scale is exactly the hint as to why it's not useful when misused at the high end. That is, the difference between being able to return 100% of balls in tennis at, say, one return every 800ms, is not any greater help when your opponent can only return every 1400ms anyhow.
In order for a difference of general cognitive ability to be useful, a cognitive task of sufficient complexity over a sufficiently short period of time must be presented.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#26[deleted]
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
At this point I would accept it if someone told me that 100% of what I perceive as "smarts" when interacting with someone is explained by confidence and other learned social behaviors.
Just to clarify, are you making the claim that everyone has the same mental capacity for thinking/deduction/memory/etc, it's just our perception of that based on various external cues which makes us think these levels exist? Because I would disagree with that statement. Even if I had 50 years of study I would not think on the level of say Terrance Tao.
Think about what? Think about poems with Terrence or music or movies or stochastic calculus?
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#28IQ is undoubtedly overemphasized by some factions, especially those with an axe to grind and a dog whistle to blow, if it helps them feel less guilty about their position in the world or otherwise rationalizes injustice. OTOH there's definitely a difference between people, people who aren't mentally defective, people that are quick on the uptake, sharp and alert, who adapt to new mental models. IQ might be an unscien…
The original tweetstorm and this post aim to show something very specific, namely that IQ misses the mark as a measure of intelligence the further away from IQ 70 one ventures. In other words, stupid is stupid, but smart seems to come in many flavors. The title of the article itself points to this fact, as the word "largely" is inserted. Nassim Nicholas Taleb himself can see the value at the lower levels. If the goal…
Wiki says that the average IQ of MDs, JDs, and PhDs is 125.[1] That is pretty far away from 70.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Other_ac...
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#29Ugh ok, another 'IQ is worthless but I have no alternative' article. What's the point?
Do you need an alternative to criticise a measure? The alternative is to place less emphasis on IQ tests and focus on other qualities.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
At this point I would accept it if someone told me that 100% of what I perceive as "smarts" when interacting with someone is explained by confidence and other learned social behaviors.
Just to clarify, are you making the claim that everyone has the same mental capacity for thinking/deduction/memory/etc, it's just our perception of that based on various external cues which makes us think these levels exist? Because I would disagree with that statement. Even if I had 50 years of study I would not think on the level of say Terrance Tao.
Rather I'd say that "intelligence" in practice is an enormous grab-bag of different skills and qualities, some broad, some specific, some learnable, some inherent. A brilliant mathematician like Terence Tao may still very well consider themselves a dullard when faced with, say, the musical intuition of a piano virtuoso, or the effortless foresight of a chess grandmaster, or the rapt attention commanded by master storyteller, or the social intelligence of a smooth-talking Jobsian entrepreneur. For these kinds of intelligence, the IQ test is ill-suited, which is fine as long as we don't conflate IQ with the be-all end-all of intelligence (which has arguably happened in the popular imagination).