Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
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Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
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Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#2I 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 and physics. Next year I got admitted first.
Am I smart or am I stupid? Depends how and what you measure.
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#3[deleted]
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#4Human brain is a technological marvel. We know too little about it to measure its properties accurately. IQ tests do measure "something", but it does not give us a useful picture.
Analogy: We can use an electron as a wave or as a particle, but have very little understanding of what they truly are.
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#5Disclaimer: Former Mensa member
From personal experience it appears that high IQ is a horrible measure of success. On the other hand when you combine high IQ with discipline you can come very far.
With all that being said I wish Nassim would provide some actual data instead of anecdotes.
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#6IQ + EQ = Constant
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#7...wasn't that known for years outside the tiny bubble of psychometricians? They like to go on about how it's the "best predictor" for whatever, forgetting that the absolute prediction itself is pretty lousy even when at its "best" and most of it comes from obvious tail-end cases (people with IQ below 80). There's also evidence from neuroscience [1] that's what's being measured is an higher order artifact from multiple other measurements. That's the thing: as soon as you go from the abstract, cognition-as-a-black-box mental model to an actual physical one with a model of actual brain regions, IQ falls short.
Which shouldn't be surprising given how futile it should sound to try and encompass the entirety of human abstract thinking (without even being able to give a satisfying, consensus making definition of intelligence) into a single number. Imagine if people came up with a Health Quotient built on very basic medical exams and went on about how that number is the best "predictor" of your lifespan... doesn't mean the number isn't damn useless.
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#8Lots of hating on IQ. I have nagging thoughts: if IQ doesn't mean anything, they why is it so very, very hard for a perso to score higher on an IQ test in subsequent tests? Its at least measuring 'test achievement'?
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#9I 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 is no way I'll ever take an intelligence test again. It made me kind of an asshole for a while, too, I found it hilarious to respond to stuff like "it's cold outside, don't you want to take a jacket" with "I have an IQ of 142, don't you think I'd know when I need to take a jacket?". But even then I knew I was feeling really good that day, and answered quickly, and what I didn't know I maybe sometimes guessed correctly. I didn't take it serious serious.
But it also wasn't just a joke to me, either. When I as a little kid, I was reading a comic with the neighbour's kid who was 2 years older, and I remember coming to the end of a page and waiting for him to turn to the next one any moment, and being surprised at how long it took for him to do that. I was excited for a second becuse I thought "I read faster than this guy and I only just learned it!", then I scolded myself and thought "no, he's probably just taking time to actually look at the images in detail". Knowing that there's at least some fuzzy objective-ish substantation for actually being above average in some areas offered some closure to that kind of stuff, and from then on out allowed me to not have to prove myself when someone who I felt wasn't that bright insulted my intelligence. But it's good I didn't take a test with such a result at age 12, that would have been a social disaster I'm sure.
Ultimately, I didn't make myself, nobody made themselves, so at best intelligence still only gift, and even more importantly a responsibility. Honesty and kindness are much more valuable in a person than any amount of intelligence, IMO. Intelligence often just allows us to deceive ourselves and others better, and I think many of the major problems in the world we ascribe to stupidity are in large part so big due to intelligent people either not pulling their weight, or actively exploiting and molding people more simple than them.
> Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
-- Albert Einstein, who had a very high IQ, so.
Screw intelligence, let's strive to be wise and kind. Intelligence is just a bonus, a nice to have, like being a bit more agile, or like a computer having more RAM, less latency etc. -- but it doesn't make a bad application something entirely different.
Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney
#10Lots of hating on IQ. I have nagging thoughts: if IQ doesn't mean anything, they why is it so very, very hard for a perso to score higher on an IQ test in subsequent tests? Its at least measuring 'test achievement'?
Is it true though? There's plenty of evidence that IQ test performance can be learned (i.e. you score higher) with prior training. That's why it's often insisted that tests be taken "out of the blue" without any preparation whatsoever.