IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle • Hacker News Board

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#101

Post by harry8 » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 4:55 AM UTC

harry8 wrote: post #82

naniwaduni wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is (in part) Nassim Nicholas Taleb's point: we use IQ to select for success, then say IQ is correlated with success. It is circular reasoning. This would only be correct if the SAT were expressly an IQ test, and we selected people based on SAT score for that reason . To put it another way, making this point is kind of like selecting for tall players for a basketball team, then saying weight is correlated with…

Yeah totally, or like selecting for confident people where you tell people who score well on the test that they're super confident. Tall is an absolute, objective measure of a real thing that exists. IQ is NOT a measure of a thing that exists. Similar effects can be found throwing dice and ascribing the total to an IQ score, then telling parents, teachers what the poor kid's IQ is as though it were their height. It's…

http://homepages.gac.edu/~jwotton2/PSY225/rosenthal66.pdf

https://sites.google.com/site/7arosenthal/

Per: Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1966 study, which deserves wider appreciation?

I want to emphasise 1966 was when this was published so it isn't overlooked as we all read pretty fast with these things.

edit:

Found a link to the original paper:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.488...

More recent criticism of the original:

https://thenewstatistics.com/itns/2018/04/03/weve-been-here-...

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#102

Post by pps43 » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC

chillacy wrote: post #95

pps43 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point Taleb is making is that IQ works well in the lower half of the distribution, but not in the upper half. Which makes sense, considering that questions for IQ tests are created by people with close to average intelligence. Imagine third-graders writing college-level math tests, or beginner chess players coming up with chess problems to separate masters from grandmasters.

But many of the tests aren’t binary in outcome, like ravens progressive matrices or N back.

The problem is not whether the answer is binary. The problem is that the author of the test needs to have at least the same level of intelligence (and probably even higher) than what the test is measuring. Otherwise how can you tell if the answer is correct?

So to get a good IQ score one needs to be able to figure out what a test designer (with average IQ) thought the correct answer should be.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#103

Post by torstenvl » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 5:08 AM UTC

harry8 wrote: post #92

JamesBarney wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The substance isn't much better than the style. He makes substantial claims like IQ is not predictive of performance above 100 which in and of itself could be a whole article. And then just assumes the reader will take his word for it, even though there is a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

>mountain of evidence to the contrary. [citation needed]

https://www.lsac.org/lsat

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#104

Post by torstenvl » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 5:11 AM UTC

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #94

jdietrich wrote: post #56

Frankly, I'm incredibly disappointed in Taleb's recent writing. This article is one of many where the actual point being made is buried beneath unnecessary and divisive ad-hominem attacks. Does the caption "Mensa members: typically high “IQ” losers in Birkenstocks." usefully contribute to a serious, scholarly conversation on IQ? Is it reasonable or fair-minded to immediately tar opponents to your argument as racists,…

It's his Twitter/Medium blog, he can write as he pleases. And his book sales do fine, with or without you. This is interestingly a point of his: what's 'rational' is what survives. Maybe arguments/discussion need emotional draw of some sort to be heard in the first place (in the 21st century). If a philosopher is arguing in a forest to no one, is he really arguing? Etc. We've seen the same effect of stylistic changes…

That's a non-sensical argument; it turns the question of intelligence into a question of popularity.

An idea that "survives" in the marketplace of ideas isn't per se rational or intelligent. Indeed, anti-science attitudes worldwide have enjoyed a great deal of popularity lately. Certainly anti-vax ideology is surviving just fine at the moment.

If Taleb's argument is that IQ tests are a "swindle" because they don't predict popularity, he's completely off his rocker.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#105

Post by shados » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 5:12 AM UTC

softwaredoug wrote: post #70

gus_massa wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being “smart” implies there’s a set of “un-smart” kids that don’t have the same fitness or goodness You don't like the implications of this, but is it true? I'd never play soccer as good as Messi, even if I'd practice every day in my life for many hours. Do you think that everyone has the same innate ability to play soccer? You can replace the example with any sport/music/whatever you like. Do you think that intell…

You’re right, as an adult I’m not suddenly going to become a piano virtuoso. Innateness here is a pretty complicated topic. Hard work at an early age probably has a huge part of molding skills we associate with so-called “intelligence”. Was Mozart a genius? Or was he working really hard at being a musician from an early age, and thus just very skilled? Would Mozart succeed if we suddenly had to train him to be a Java…

Less so because its many up if many complex factors. But if there are conditions that negatively affect memory, attention/focus, writing and reading skills, pattern recognition and more to various degree, it's quite likely the opposite is true and that people Excel at all of these to various degree. Now, in the same way not everyone who's super strong is going to apply it to competitive weight lifting, not everyone who's a genius will do anything meaningful with it but that's a separate topic.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#106

Post by golemiprague » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 5:13 AM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #4

IQ 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…

If anything it is the opposite, IQ measure whatever it measures, the problems is that some people don't want to accept the correlation to other things, for example to the rate of success in academic studies. So you can ignore those correlations as much as you want and put millions into educating people with low IQ but it doesn't and won't help.

You try to shame people for looking at the clear data and coming to conclusions while coming to the exact same conclusions and wrapping it with different semantics. Yes there are also other parameters in life, nobody denies it but IQ is pretty good indication for certain things.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#107

Post by asabjorn » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 5:15 AM UTC

mikemotherwell wrote: post #40

waterhouse wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

From the article: > Note that IQ tests correlate with SAT scores! That is (in part) Nassim Nicholas Taleb's point: we use IQ to select for success, then say IQ is correlated with success. It is circular reasoning. The more interesting measure is not jobs for which IQ is the main selection criteria to qualify for the training (your examples of MDs, JDs, and PhDs), but things where people create their own impact, lets…

If the SAT test wasn't selective in some meaningful way then people admitted through affirmative action should be expected to do approximately as well as the people that was admitted purely through merit. The outcome says otherwise [1], or if prefer a video [2].

Mismatching people to schools based upon an ideal hurts those people when they come unprepared relative to their peers. Many diverse people admitted through affirmative action with a dream to do the sciences abandon them for other less rigorous disciplines, and it doesn't have to be so if they were matched with a school without the social engineering attempts of ideologues.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-pai...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVvnTByzTmA

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#108

Post by ordu » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 5:15 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39

softwaredoug wrote: post #6

Best parenting advice I ever got was to praise children for hard work, and avoid calling them “smart.” Intelligence becomes a stand in for some measure of goodness or social fitness that after a while it’s hard to know what we’re talking about anymore. Further, it’s seen as innate whereas hard work is something anyone can do. Being “smart” implies there’s a set of “un-smart” kids that don’t have the same fitness or g…

> Being “smart” implies there’s a set of “un-smart” kids On the flip side, trusting in my intelligence let me persist on problems even when others said they were lost causes. If everyone is equally smart and all that matters is hard work, it doesn’t make much sense to work on different problems from others. (Or on problems others deem to be unworthy.) This leads to a monoculture. At the end of the day, if you have a…

If I understand you, you are arguing that parents should praise their kids for smartness because it helps kids to understand that they are smarter?

But there is not point doing that, if they are smarter they will figure it theirselves. At the same time if parents are praising them for smartness it would lead smartness to become a part of self-esteem and therefore their psychological well being will be tied with their success to be smart. It is bad, really bad. You cannot just make some more effort and become smarter, smartness is out of control of a person, and if self-esteem based on smartness then...

It is like praising girl for her beauty. Beauty is not completely under her control, and if she grow to not so beautiful woman, than she would have psychological problems through all her life.

From the other side, to work hard or not to work hard is completely under control of a person. And if self-esteem of a person based on working hard it is very good. When she feels bad she make more work to fix her self-esteem, and the fixing of self-esteem hopefelly leads to more success in the real life for her. Isn't it great?

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#109

Post by jesssse » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 5:20 AM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #4

IQ 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…

IQ and civilization seems commingled. IQ is a good tool for sociological observations.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#110

Post by catskul2 » Wed, Jan 02, 2019, 5:21 AM UTC

pps43 wrote: post #102

chillacy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But many of the tests aren’t binary in outcome, like ravens progressive matrices or N back.

The problem is not whether the answer is binary. The problem is that the author of the test needs to have at least the same level of intelligence (and probably even higher) than what the test is measuring. Otherwise how can you tell if the answer is correct? So to get a good IQ score one needs to be able to figure out what a test designer (with average IQ) thought the correct answer should be.

> The problem is that the author of the test needs to have at least the same level of intelligence (and probably even higher) than what the test is measuring.

What makes you believe that?