Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 400 posts

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#141

Post by barry-cotter »

pgeorgi wrote: post #119
mikemotherwell wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> > Note that IQ tests correlate with SAT scores! IQ tests (of which there are a ton) are regularly calibrated, internationally comparable (there are some reasonably culturally neutral test protocols) and stable while SAT is a US-only metric. Maybe SAT is calibrated to correlate with IQ tests?

The SAT is not calibrated to correlate with IQ tests. Being correlated with IQ tests is an unavoidable consequence of what it is. It’s a high stakes test with limited subject matter meant to measure scholastic aptitude. That will unavoidably be highly g loaded. It’s not culture fair, like Raven’s Matrices, because it assumes you speak English at a native level and have been exposed to a middle school curriculum.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#142

Post by JamesBarney »

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]

Here's 10.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Social_c...

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#143

Post by geezerjay »

vivekd wrote: post #97

reading the Wikipedia article, it says that scientific consensus among surveyed psychologists and educational researchers is that IQ is a valid and accurate mesaure of the important components of intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Reliabil... If you're going to challenge that scientific consensus you better have something better to bring to the table than "it's being used by racists" and…

> reading the Wikipedia article, it says that scientific consensus among surveyed psychologists and educational researchers is that IQ is a valid and accurate mesaure of the important components of intelligence

That statement doesn't contradict or refute the original assertion. In fact, the original assertion was that the IQ concept is effective at identifying those who fall in the lower spectrum of intelligence.

However, IQ fails as an indicator of higher intelligence because it fails to correctly identify who is more gifted among their peers.

The basketball example used often in this discussion is very good at illustrating the difference. Just because some individuals feature higher in a specific ranking (i.e., height) that doesn't mean they are or will be better basketball players.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#144

Post by zorga »

kibwen wrote: post #30
Jedi72 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify, are you making the claim that everyone has the same mental capacity for thinking/deduction/memory/etc, it's just our perception of that based on various external cues which makes us think these levels exist? Because I would disagree with that statement. Even if I had 50 years of study I would not think on the level of say Terrance Tao.

Rather I'd say that "intelligence" in practice is an enormous grab-bag of different skills and qualities, some broad, some specific, some learnable, some inherent. A brilliant mathematician like Terence Tao may still very well consider themselves a dullard when faced with, say, the musical intuition of a piano virtuoso, or the effortless foresight of a chess grandmaster, or the rapt attention commanded by master stor…

> A brilliant mathematician like Terence Tao may still very well consider themselves a dullard when faced with, say, the musical intuition of a piano virtuoso, or the effortless foresight of a chess grandmaster, or the rapt attention commanded by master storyteller, or the social intelligence of a smooth-talking Jobsian entrepreneur.

I'd bet all of those people would score high in IQ.

> For these kinds of intelligence, the IQ test is ill-suited

That's not what the science tells us.

> which is fine as long as we don't conflate IQ with the be-all end-all of intelligence

There is only one G. There's little to no evidence in support of the theory of multiple intelligence's; it's not really science, IQ is actual science with lots of evidence to support it.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#145

Post by geezerjay »

Jedi72 wrote: post #16
diminoten wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I would accept it if someone told me that 100% of what I perceive as "smarts" when interacting with someone is explained by confidence and other learned social behaviors.

Just to clarify, are you making the claim that everyone has the same mental capacity for thinking/deduction/memory/etc, it's just our perception of that based on various external cues which makes us think these levels exist? Because I would disagree with that statement. Even if I had 50 years of study I would not think on the level of say Terrance Tao.

> Even if I had 50 years of study I would not think on the level of say Terrance Tao.

The whole point of that argument is that someone who thinks on the level of Terrance Tao would not be perceived as being as intelligent as Terrance Tao if he had zero years of study, while at the same time someone with 50 years of study who was less gifted would place ahead.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#146

Post by zorga »

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 that don’t have the same fitness or goodness, and since it’s innate, they’ll always be that way in an ungifted underclass.

Which is true. You're against teaching your children the truth?

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#147

Post by aleph_naught »

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,…

> This article is one of many where the actual point being made is buried beneath unnecessary and divisive ad-hominem attacks.

This is consistent with his writing style though, at least since Antifragile. I had a hard time getting into Antifragile due to the constant, unending, and unnecessary ad-hominem attacks throughout the text.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#148

Post by fsloth »

vivekd wrote: post #97

reading the Wikipedia article, it says that scientific consensus among surveyed psychologists and educational researchers is that IQ is a valid and accurate mesaure of the important components of intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Reliabil... If you're going to challenge that scientific consensus you better have something better to bring to the table than "it's being used by racists" and…

Wikipedia is not a totally reliable reference when researching non-quantitative information, especially in area with active stakeholders that likely edit wikipedia. And I would not trust "scientific consensus" in this instance given psychology's recent well documented reproducibility crisis.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#149

Post by trextrex »

Itsdijital wrote: post #69
xupybd wrote: post #36

I have no way to navigate this, I've heard psychologists claim that IQ is the most well proven concept in the social sciences. Now this guy comes along saying the complete opposite. Anyone have any advice on how to weight this up and figure out what the truth is?

There's a lot of good evidence that correlates race and IQ. Even when controlling for as many factors as possible. To the best of our current scientific knowledge, this is a thing. Obviously this is an excellent source of ammo for racists and likewise those fighting racism see it as a threat. By extension, anyone who speaks of this science must also be racist and the science itself must be wrong because it is racist.…

> There's a lot of good evidence that correlates race and IQ. Even when controlling for as many factors as possible. To the best of our current scientific knowledge, this is a thing.

Care to point to actual data supporting that statement?

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#150

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

Itsdijital wrote: post #69
xupybd wrote: post #36

I have no way to navigate this, I've heard psychologists claim that IQ is the most well proven concept in the social sciences. Now this guy comes along saying the complete opposite. Anyone have any advice on how to weight this up and figure out what the truth is?

There's a lot of good evidence that correlates race and IQ. Even when controlling for as many factors as possible. To the best of our current scientific knowledge, this is a thing. Obviously this is an excellent source of ammo for racists and likewise those fighting racism see it as a threat. By extension, anyone who speaks of this science must also be racist and the science itself must be wrong because it is racist.…

IQ is well supported, but raceXiq is very poorly supported.

Most of the HBD and 'race realism' stuff fails simply at trying to define race. Often it's 'colored people', and not any kind of grouping that even resembles human genetic diversity. This all relies on very straight-forward and well-established genetics, but they generally can't even come close to the mark here. They'll shout and scream about how "you're not allowed to study this!" despite plenty of scholarly work on human genetic diversity. It's not literally titled 'black people are human garbage', so I can see why they might have trouble finding it.

There's also a lot of cherry-picking, agonizing over particular sub-populations that happen to fit their narrative and acting as though that's case closed.

The reality is that most of the population diversity is in Africa and a bunch of isolated islands. Yet even in these extreme outliers we don't see much in by way of large effects (intra > inter, generally). But the race realist narrative, somehow and miraculously, comes to the conclusion that white people are super duper great, the somewhat less white people are somewhat less great, and black people are genetically .. unfortunate. Who knew?! They just got so damn lucky and happened to hate just the right people!

Plenty of detailed refutation for anyone interested:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/39t4...

https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/39bx...

https://old.reddit.com/r/debatepoliticalphil/comments/7m3lex...

Post reply on HN