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IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

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Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in fact. http://nautil.us/issue/65/in-plain-sight/your-iq-matters-les...

Sorry, I don't want to read that whole thing. Is there a linked journal article about IQs of nobel winners?

The article basically says when you look at a 1000 really smart 11 year olds you don't get any Nobel prize winners. Which is a pretty obvious straw man because the base rate of Nobel prize winners is 1 in a million, plus childhoold IQ doesn't perfectly correlate with adult IQ. For instance a group of children with an average IQ of 150 will have an average IQ of 130 as adults.

https://pumpkinperson.com/2015/07/26/anne-roes-study-of-extr...

Basically the average Nobel prize winners have IQ's in the 150's.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#102
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there are more important things than compassion, e.g. work/status, marriage and family. These are also easy to measure and to enforce by comparison. How do you force everyone to be nice? And is that worth it? Is the threat of being sued for "not being nice enough" an improvement for society? I doubt it. Children being treated nicely actually predicts worse, not better outcome.

https://econtent.hogrefe.com/doi/full/10.1027/2512-8442/a000...

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#103

There 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 wh…

> 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.

If this were true you would expect the average IQ of really accomplished individuals to be 110. But this isn't the case, if you look at Supreme Court Justices, scientists, CEO's they all have average IQs higher than what would be expected if IQ only correlated at the low end.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#104
post #9
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 is not science.

[deleted]

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#105

This 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".…

[deleted]

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't want to read that whole thing. Is there a linked journal article about IQs of nobel winners?

The article basically says when you look at a 1000 really smart 11 year olds you don't get any Nobel prize winners. Which is a pretty obvious straw man because the base rate of Nobel prize winners is 1 in a million, plus childhoold IQ doesn't perfectly correlate with adult IQ. For instance a group of children with an average IQ of 150 will have an average IQ of 130 as adults. https://pumpkinperson.com/2015/07/26/anne…

There were two future Nobel prize winners that were excluded from the group he studied because they didn't score high enough.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#107
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…

> Science is never unfair, never has an agenda, never backward

That’s the ideal of course. But History shows otherwise. Personal biases often influence research. This isn’t a knock against science, as you mentioned it’s ultimately a tool to understand the world. Human judgements, prior beliefs and reasoning is the issue here.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article basically says when you look at a 1000 really smart 11 year olds you don't get any Nobel prize winners. Which is a pretty obvious straw man because the base rate of Nobel prize winners is 1 in a million, plus childhoold IQ doesn't perfectly correlate with adult IQ. For instance a group of children with an average IQ of 150 will have an average IQ of 130 as adults. https://pumpkinperson.com/2015/07/26/anne…

There were two future Nobel prize winners that were excluded from the group he studied because they didn't score high enough.

Who both also had very high iqs, just not quite high enough at the age of 11 to be included.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#109

There 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 wh…

> 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. If this were true you would expect the average IQ of really accomplished individuals to be 110. But this isn't the case, if you look at Supreme Court Justices, scientists, CEO's they all have average IQs highe…

I don't know the average IQ of a CEO or a supreme court justice. Do you know what it is?

Why 110? 1 sd is 115, 2sd would be 130.

Anyway for supreme court justices we have a straightforward explanation: the schools they are selected from (Yale and Harvard, primarily) themselves use a proxy IQ test (the SATs, or LSATs or whatever) to select for.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (2019)

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If this were true you would expect the average IQ of really accomplished individuals to be 110. But this isn't the case, if you look at Supreme Court Justices, scientists, CEO's they all have average IQs highe…

I don't know the average IQ of a CEO or a supreme court justice. Do you know what it is? Why 110? 1 sd is 115, 2sd would be 130. Anyway for supreme court justices we have a straightforward explanation: the schools they are selected from (Yale and Harvard, primarily) themselves use a proxy IQ test (the SATs, or LSATs or whatever) to select for.

I saw numbers for supreme court justices a couple years ago but I can't find it.

https://pumpkinperson.com/2015/07/26/anne-roes-study-of-extr...

Says Nobel prize winners had an average IQ of 155, which is a 1 in 4000 score that couldn't be driven by just sub 100 effects.

Hard to find IQ scores on really high performers, I guess it's hard to convince a CEO or a supreme court justice to take an IQ test.

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