IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)
1–10 of 133 posts
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)
#2This comes off like an angry rant by a person who scored 100 but thinks of himself as highly gifted. IQ as a concept is a useful metric and predictor. Our current "stale" IQ tests still predict criminal behavior more accurately than any sociological theories of crime. It just doesn't predict whether someone will end up in a "menial job" or as a C-level executive.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)
#3I can't even bring myself to read this. After perusing and seeing it gets so emotional (bringing up eugenics, morality, etc), I have a hard time believing it's going to be objective.
"There is no significant statistical association between IQ and hard measures such as wealth."
So... you're saying that people with an IQ of 60 are equally wealthy as those with an IQ of 110?
I understand getting frustrated about misapplication of tests. But it's absolute that science must measure what is, not what we wish to be. Science is never unfair, never has an agenda, never backward -- it's simply a method to ascertain facts, entirely indifferent to our human affairs and feelings.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)
#4Ever since Taleb blocked me on twitter for such a minor pushback I gave in the replies of one of his tweets, I've lost interest reading anything he writes. His unbridled emotion is uncouth.
And it's not that I think IQ is "the most perfect psychometric ever created(TM)".
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)
#5IQ is just a metric from taking a standardized test. I don't know why people have a hard time understanding that. It's like being mad about people's SAT scores. It's not like IQ is even used for anything important, people don't put it on their resumes or anything.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)
#6This article is written so polemically it's hard to take it seriously. Also Taleb seems to be constructing so many straw men I wouldn't even know where to start.
IQ isn't a swindle, it's a very real thing. However, it is only one factor among many in determining most practical real-world outcomes, and it is well-known to be affected by environmental variables at population levels.
But IQ isn't a "fraud" or "immoral". These are bizarre claims Taleb makes, with zero evidence or even definition of what he means.
What a strange article.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)
#7There is a part I really like about this and a part I don’t.
The part I like: the linearity in IQ vs ability is driven by the low end. People who have cognitive challenges cannot complete the test and cannot perform the task. At the high end the correlation disappears.
This is — you can argue with it — an interesting observation.
The part I don’t like is the attack on “nerds.” Come on! I don’t even have to explain why it’s okay to wear socks with sandals. (Am I defending my own sloppy sense of style? You’ll probably never know.)
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)
#8"It does correlate to very negative performance (as it was initially designed to detect learning special needs)"
It did a crap job detecting learning special needs with my son. Because he has a weird intelligence profile of being above 98% on some tasks and below 10% on other tasks, the IQ test simply wouldn't score him, and put him in the "he's not taking the test correctly" category. Yeah, not at all useful, thanks. There were plenty of other more useful tests however that teased out his learning difficulties and actually gave us useful information to help his education.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)
#9I can't even bring myself to read this. After perusing and seeing it gets so emotional (bringing up eugenics, morality, etc), I have a hard time believing it's going to be objective. "There is no significant statistical association between IQ and hard measures such as wealth." So... you're saying that people with an IQ of 60 are equally wealthy as those with an IQ of 110? I understand getting frustrated about misappl…
IQ is not science.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)
#10I can't even bring myself to read this. After perusing and seeing it gets so emotional (bringing up eugenics, morality, etc), I have a hard time believing it's going to be objective. "There is no significant statistical association between IQ and hard measures such as wealth." So... you're saying that people with an IQ of 60 are equally wealthy as those with an IQ of 110? I understand getting frustrated about misappl…
Science is never unfair, but statistics and psychology as fields often misrepresent science for personal gain. The article is arguing that it's a useless (or harmful) metric for what most people use it for, which isn't science-denial.