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IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

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Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#201

Post by geezerjay »

toasterlovin wrote: post #167
aleph_naught wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I would very much agree with this, with an added caveat: there are diminishing returns on mental horsepower after 2 stdevs (e.g. 130 iq). After a certain point obsessiveness separates the wheat from the chaff, by very wide margins. The long-game is underrated.

You need all three. Picking the wrong thing to work on wastes all of the time that gets spent because of obsession.

> You need all three.

Actually, you don't. It may help to be gifted on all three, but work ethics makes up for any deficit in intellectual potential. For example, MENSA membership does not correlate with intellectual elites in any research field, but you'd be hard pressed to find a leading researcher who doesn't have a strong work ethic.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#202

Post by jf- »

iron0013 wrote: post #139
mikemotherwell wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original tweetstorm and this post aim to show something very specific, namely that IQ misses the mark as a measure of intelligence the further away from IQ 70 one ventures. In other words, stupid is stupid, but smart seems to come in many flavors. The title of the article itself points to this fact, as the word "largely" is inserted. Nassim Nicholas Taleb himself can see the value at the lower levels. If the goal…

The frustrating thing from the perspective of an individual differences researcher is that Taleb is not at all correct about IQ becoming less predictive of performance at higher levels! Studies pretty consistently show that IQ is a valid predictor of performance all the way up the scale, so that, for example, someone with an IQ of 145 is likely to perform (at school, on the job, etc) better than someone with an IQ of…

IQ is one of those topics which is, unfortunately, inescapably political. If important psychometric traits, like intelligence and personality, are highly heritable, then one of the implicit assumptions of left-leaning points of view is undermined: that everyone is inherently equal, that anyone can achieve anything given the right education, environment and resources.

Add to this the fact that we know that other heritable traits may be ethnically distributed, and we have a particularly difficult thesis.

The solution to this for some, is that IQ cannot be allowed to be meaningful, as the idea is simply too dangerous. The article above and much of this discussion are the result.

Simply put, this is a battle of ideology masquerading as a debate over a matter of fact. This is not the kind of discourse you would get if people were discussing the precise atomic weight of hydrogen.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#203

Post by rataata_jr »

i_feel_great wrote: post #14

Q. What is an IQ test? A. A test that measures intelligence. Q. What is intelligence? A. The thing measured by an IQ test. Throw this at the next person who mentions IQ to see how intelligent their answer is.

Also, take a guess of what the IQ is, of people working in Google.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#204

Post by dang »

sgjohnson wrote: post #90
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?

Psychology is a pseudoscience per se.

Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#205

Post by feanaro »

geezerjay wrote: post #143
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. How…

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

Regardless of whether this is true, it still fairly reliably predicts the fact that they are gifted. Conversely, IQ tests aren't precise enough to predict who is less gifted among a set of peers on the lower end either (for small enough score differences).

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#206

Post by barry-cotter »

mikemotherwell wrote: post #17
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…

The original tweetstorm and this post aim to show something very specific, namely that IQ misses the mark as a measure of intelligence the further away from IQ 70 one ventures. In other words, stupid is stupid, but smart seems to come in many flavors. The title of the article itself points to this fact, as the word "largely" is inserted. Nassim Nicholas Taleb himself can see the value at the lower levels. If the goal…

> The original tweetstorm and this post aim to show something very specific, namely that IQ misses the mark as a measure of intelligence the further away from IQ 70 one ventures. In other words, stupid is stupid, but smart seems to come in many flavors.

Not true. As far as we can tell smarter is better at all levels.

> Beyond the Threshold Hypothesis: Even Among the Gifted and Top Math/Science Graduate Students, Cognitive Abilities, Vocational Interests, and Lifestyle Preferences Matter for Career Choice, Performance, and Persistence

> The assertion that ability differences no longer matter beyond a certain threshold is inaccurate. Among young adolescents in the top 1% of quantitative reasoning ability, individual differences in general cognitive ability level and in specific cognitive ability pattern (that is, the relationships among an individual’s math, verbal, and spatial abilities) lead to differences in educational, occupational, and creative outcomes decades later. Whereas ability level predicts the level of achievement, ability pattern predicts the realm of achievement. Adding information on vocational interests refines prediction of educational and career choices. Finally, lifestyle preferences relevant to career choice, performance, and persistence often change between ages 25 and 35. This change results in sex differences in preferences, which likely have relevance for understanding the underrepresentation of women in careers that demand more than full-time (40 hours per week) commitment.

https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Ferriman_20101....

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#207

Post by barry-cotter »

geezerjay wrote: post #201
toasterlovin wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need all three. Picking the wrong thing to work on wastes all of the time that gets spent because of obsession.

> You need all three. Actually, you don't. It may help to be gifted on all three, but work ethics makes up for any deficit in intellectual potential. For example, MENSA membership does not correlate with intellectual elites in any research field, but you'd be hard pressed to find a leading researcher who doesn't have a strong work ethic.

If you can’t hack calculus you will never be an Engineering professor, likewise close critical reading and an English professor. That puts a floor somewhere between 115 and 120 IQ on becoming a professor at a decent community college no matter how hard you’re willing to work.

I guarantee you MENSA members have higher incomes and educational attainment than non members. I’m equally sure that non-members who are eligible for membership but wouldn’t bother do better because they have better social skills which are helpful for anything.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#208

Post by SZJX »

jf- wrote: post #202
iron0013 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The frustrating thing from the perspective of an individual differences researcher is that Taleb is not at all correct about IQ becoming less predictive of performance at higher levels! Studies pretty consistently show that IQ is a valid predictor of performance all the way up the scale, so that, for example, someone with an IQ of 145 is likely to perform (at school, on the job, etc) better than someone with an IQ of…

IQ is one of those topics which is, unfortunately, inescapably political. If important psychometric traits, like intelligence and personality, are highly heritable, then one of the implicit assumptions of left-leaning points of view is undermined: that everyone is inherently equal, that anyone can achieve anything given the right education, environment and resources. Add to this the fact that we know that other herit…

I had a discussion on this topic a while ago, and IMO a reasonable stance to take could be that, yeah, there might be some congenital differences among people in terms of their abilities to perform certain tasks. However, this doesn't mean that people should be treated way too differently just based on that factor.

Isn't the ultimate left-wing dream "everybody doing whatever they enjoy/are good at, but treated absolutely equally"? Obviously we can't really be there yet due to a limitation on the total amount of available resources, and we do have to reward people more who hold important positions and make big impacts. However the point is if somebody is born without that much resources/luck/congenital abilities or whatnot, it's not their fault and they should still be totally respected and well treated. That could be a more sensible way to approach this instead of being absolutist.

Also I still believe that luck and resources far outstrip so-called "raw talent" in the vast majority of cases/jobs, unless you are to be Usain Bolt or something. So the importance of IQ or not doesn't really change their point that much.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#209

Post by geezerjay »

barry-cotter wrote: post #207
geezerjay wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need all three. Actually, you don't. It may help to be gifted on all three, but work ethics makes up for any deficit in intellectual potential. For example, MENSA membership does not correlate with intellectual elites in any research field, but you'd be hard pressed to find a leading researcher who doesn't have a strong work ethic.

If you can’t hack calculus you will never be an Engineering professor, likewise close critical reading and an English professor. That puts a floor somewhere between 115 and 120 IQ on becoming a professor at a decent community college no matter how hard you’re willing to work. I guarantee you MENSA members have higher incomes and educational attainment than non members. I’m equally sure that non-members who are eligib…

> If you can’t hack calculus you will never be an Engineering professor, likewise close critical reading and an English professor.

You don't need to score high marks in IQ tests to pass calculus, and there are plenty of fields of research in engineering where a good grasp of calculus is fundamental. Thus, quite obviously you can become an engineering professor eventhough you suck at calculus.

> I guarantee you MENSA members have higher incomes and educational attainment than non members.

Feel free to provide any reference to back your baseless assertion.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#210

Post by kneel »

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,…

Taleb is great. He's always been a crank.
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