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IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

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Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#71

Post by roosterdawn »

zug_zug wrote: post #3

I 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…

I agree with your criticism in that the form and tone really do get in the way of a clear communication of his point. But I don't think it negates that he does have a point, which is that IQ is "scientistic" rather than scientific.

And furthermore, not only is what you're saying ("that people with an IQ of 60 are equally wealthy as those with an IQ of 110") a disingenuous reading of his point (he actually says that IQ is closer to a step function where correlation exists below the median but not above), but so too is the tone of what you're saying. To state that science is "a method to ascertain facts, entirely indifferent to our human affairs and feelings" is not something he is even arguing, it's the other half of what you say ("science is never unfair, never has an agenda") where you indict yourself.

He says this:

```

The “best measure” charlatans: IQ is reminiscent of risk charlatans insisting on selling “value at risk”, VaR, and RiskMetrics saying “it’s the best measure”. That “best” measure, being unreliable blew them up many many times. Note the class of suckers for whom a bad measure is better than no measure across domains.

```

When you say "science is never unfair, never has an agenda, never backward", shouldn't you be saying "science SHOULD never be unfair, science SHOULD never have an agenda, science SHOULD never be backward"? History is littered with examples of scientism masquerading as science that were only later on unmasked (such as Lysenkoism, phrenology, the humors, VaR as he mentions and so on) as frauds by the purportedly "scientific" concept's inability to _work_, and only then after causing a significant amount of ignorance and damage. For what reason are we to believe IQ is not one of these? Taleb's argument is that assumptions about IQ which misinterpret it as a linear function when it is a clipped linear function injected with noise lead to erroneous conclusions. If you have any criticism of Taleb here, then by your own reasoning, shouldn't it be because his hypothesis is wrong? And shouldn't you have a compelling argument for that? What are you doing but proving his point?

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#72

Post by danharaj »

iratewizard wrote: post #65
danharaj wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author is much better at probability than you. Maybe you're too stupid to notice? Oh? Is insulting you not a good argument? Pot meet kettle.

I'm much better at debating than you are. Maybe you're too stupid to notice? Using a simile to describe a poorly written blog post isn't the same as an ad hominem. Good try, though.

No, no, I'm not debating you. I'm genuinely asking you to examine the possibility that you aren't competent to evaluate Taleb's arguments. Do you even have a basic background in probability?

Statistics is garbage in garbage out. If you misuse it you will get utter nonsense. Your flaccid appeal to another statistical correlation when we're talking about the misapplication of statistics to complex phenomena just demonstrates that you're not engaging with the ideas.

It seems that IQ is one of your sacred cows. Why is that?

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#73

Post by afiori »

JamesBarney wrote: post #66
danharaj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So was astrology at one point.

Your argument applies equally strongly to every scientific finding. I think this means that either science is poor or the argument is.

I actually think it is a very insightful point, just not for proving either sides of this argument, for this purpose it is useless.

In the case of astrology, I find interesting how a few millennia of human culture, stories, and epics have been projected on celestial bodies and carried along our history through this shared medium.

I would say that (if you really want to find a strong point) astrology can be seen as trying to distill human knowledge from our cultural substrata.

Whether we should do it or not is another topic.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#74

Post by voodooranger »

> If you want to detect how someone fares at a task, say loan sharking, tennis playing, or random matrix theory, make him/her do that task; we don’t need theoretical exams for a real world function by probability-challenged psychologists.

^ horrible job interviews in a nutshell

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#75

Post by longtom »

api wrote: post #39
zug_zug wrote: post #3

I 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 seems to be more predictive at the low end than the high end. Someone with an IQ of 60 is handicapped. Someone with an IQ of 100 is normal. Above 100 the differences start to vanish into noise due to loads of other confounding factors and random chance. I have taken several tests in my life. They have all shown above average but the differences have varied wildly from 120 all the way up to 160 or something. That i…

> IQ seems to be more predictive at the low end than the high end.

More complex tasks actually become more g-loaded, i.e. among very sophisticated tasks, IQ and performance are more strongly correlated than at unsophisticated tasks. The reason is presumably because unsophisticated tasks have a quick satiation in what general thinking can help at all.

Though, true, a person who cannot solve simple cognitive tasks at all can very confidently be classified as someone who won't achieve much in the economy.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#76

Post by afiori »

foolrush wrote: post #57
JamesBarney wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an article about eugenics. No one is arguing for eugenics. Eugenics was awful, but just because something was used as a tool for evil does not make it untrue. If I light someone on fire with gasoline this makes it no less useful for fueling a car.

Read it. Learn history. Learn how sociology works. Nah don’t bother. It’s HN.

I would say that this was not the purpose of the link. A comment said "X is something studied scientifically" with X = IQ, and the reply was the same as proposing also X = eugenics. It did not look particularly constuctive.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#77

Post by rglullis »

rcoveson wrote: post #59
jcranmer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even as someone who agreed in large part with the conclusion before coming to this article, I find this virtually unreadable. It's just so full of vindictiveness and pettiness that it loses sight of its argument, and the images and graphs it uses aren't particularly coherent in their framing. > you're saying that people with an IQ of 60 are equally wealthy as those with an IQ of 110? Actually, if I understand his poi…

> ...but is pure noise for people of average or above-average intelligence. Maybe not pure noise. He pointed out in many paragraphs that further to the right of the distribution you would find "nerds", salarymen, and other sorts of boring people that would never write such revolutionary medium articles as this one. People ill-adapted for "real life"; academics and their lot. Oh, and "suckers" who don't have the insti…

My Google-fu is failing me, but I swear I've read before a quote from some business guy (I want to say Peter Drucker) that is similar to this: You don't want those with a 4.0 GPA because they will never think for themselves, and don't get those 2.0 GPA because they will just do enough to go by.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#78

Post by longtom »

badRNG wrote: post #68
longtom wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying it is largely determined by it and not claiming there are no injustices, but I'm saying it is not a negligible factor.

>The big question is whether the bottom end should starve. I think they should not starve and should have certain minimal living standards met, but they are going to be lower than the top end. You risk dividing the population trying to convince the smart to settle for less than they can get. They will simply band together and manipulate the system until they achieve it. This implies that poverty is largely a product…

Yeah the system is not very meritocratic. Not sure to which extent one can change that though and not sure how much better society would look after enforcing those changes.

If you wanted to make it more meritocratic the populations with lowest IQ would actually be worse off, unless you also increase the minimal living standards.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#79

Post by catalogia »

pavlov wrote: post #69
JamesBarney wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an article about eugenics. No one is arguing for eugenics. Eugenics was awful, but just because something was used as a tool for evil does not make it untrue. If I light someone on fire with gasoline this makes it no less useful for fueling a car.

IQ is more like lead additive in gasoline. Unnecessary to the main purpose, created with very dubious motivations, yet for decades people took it for granted that you can’t do without.

FYI most avgas is still leaded, to this day. This is because many airplane engines are designed to operate at very high compression ratios, requiring high octane fuel. The lead additive boosts the octane rating of the fuel.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#80

Post by catalogia »

longtom wrote: post #67
catalogia wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to this is to teach clever kids from a young age to be compassionate towards the less clever. Right now our society does a terrible job of this; hating and mocking people for being stupid is far too common. Much of it may feel justified under reasoning like "Stupid people [bullied me|voted wrong|didn't follow instructions|did something wrong and broke things] and for that reason my negative feelings towa…

Not saying the education system is perfect, but even though IQ is partly determined by education, science indicates there is not much one can achieve this way.

I don't propose that compassion towards the less clever will raise their IQ. When I say that compassion is constructive, I mean that compassion paves the road towards mutual understanding and social harmony.
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