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IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

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Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#231

Post by michaelt »

samatman wrote: post #129
LordDragonfang wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Focussing on "affirmative action" feels uncomfortably close to the exact kind of dog whistling this article criticized up front. As I understand it, most colleges have been using some form of linear regression model on many factors to filter admissions in a way that maximize returns (i.e. alumni donations) for decades now. Surely there is other evidence which shows that if SAT scores were actually a poor heuristic of…

He didn't bring race into the conversation; you did. Affirmative action is precisely an adjustment of admissions criteria such that ceterus paribus a candidate is more likely to be admitted. Yes, it's based on race, but if it was based on lottery, it would have the same effect: students with lower SAT scores are admitted to schools which otherwise require a certain threshold. That they don't do as well, shows that th…

Has anyone done an equivalent study for legacy admissions?

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#232

Post by jdietrich »

vixen99 wrote: post #211
jdietrich wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've spent any amount of time in education (or you have any faith in the data), then it is patently obvious that there is indeed a set of "un-smart" kids. We can quibble about how big that group is, but they definitely exist. It's not their fault, they just got a bad set of numbers in the polygenetic lottery or were subjected to environmental stresses that caused lasting damage. Pretending that they're smart is…

I rather hope you don't teach kids or anyone else, armed as you would likely be with a set of non-evidential assumptions about their mental development including that of drawing a spurious, simplistic and dangerous parallel between physical disability and mental 'disabilities' as you apply it to the non-clinically-referable population.

What would you prefer? That I ignore the overwhelming burden of research on cognitive development? That I pretend that everyone has equal potential for cognitive development, regardless of genetics and environment? That I pretend that we know how to compensate fully for those early disadvantages?

No reasonable person would tell a stunted, sickly and uncoordinated teenager that they could make the NFL combine if only they tried hard enough. It would be an act of cruelty to persuade them of that rather than guiding them towards a more realistic ambition.

We have to accept the very simple reality that while everyone is born with equal rights and equal value as a human being, not everyone is born with equal potential and there is only so much that we as a society can do to ameliorate those differences. We must encourage everyone to achieve their full potential, but we must also recognise that not everyone has the same potential. We must build a society that is fair, decent and humane in spite of that fact.

A great number of non-clinically-referable people have to work extremely hard just to achieve elementary-level literacy and numeracy. Some simply don't have the concentration, memory and cognitive ability required to successfully complete a secondary or post-secondary education. The answer is not to bury our heads in the sand, but to create meaningful opportunities and social support for the millions of people who, through no fault of their own, are currently being shafted by the pointy end of meritocracy.

"You can achieve anything you set your mind to" is a hair's breadth away from "if you fail, it's because you didn't try hard enough". That's an unconscionably callous ideology to base an education system or a society upon.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#233

Post by tomhoward »

peteretep wrote: post #195
tomhoward wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny. Normally I place a high value on civility and decency in discourse. But I don't have any problem with this style of communication from Taleb. I think it's because I've read/heard enough of his material over many years, and I understand the game he's playing. He's not cruel, and he means no harm to people personally. Indeed he cares a lot about the general wellbeing of society and individuals, about avoida…

> His abrasive style is also a test: people who care about truth will not be offended, as they will welcome their ideas being challenged and scrutinised, because they'll win either way; either they'll be proven right, or they'll be shown to be wrong and they'll learn something. Really? My mental heuristic is that the more aggressive and flowery language someone uses, the less they believe in the strength of their arg…

As I said in my reply to a sibling comment, heuristics, by definition, have exceptions. I also adhere to the heuristic you describe, but Taleb's the lead exception.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#234

Post by barrkel »

mikemotherwell wrote: post #32
barrkel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ is definitely not a good measure of value, contribution, quality of thought. I think it's probably correlated, and for some contributions may be a gating factor, but I've seen plenty of smart people examining the wrong things, for sure. Meta-analysis of focus doesn't seem to come free with IQ. I think it's a skill.

IQ is an EXCELLENT measure of "value, contribution, quality of thought". The idea it isn't is weird to me. What IQ fails at is being an ABSOLUTE measure of those things, e.g. John Nash is a genius, but his schizophrenia likely made a lot of what he did and said questionable. Just taking IQ and ignoring other factors would lead you awry. Even then, John Nash came up with the Nash Equilibrium. I think the mistake is th…

> I think the mistake is thinking that one measure will be absolutely predictive

And I agree. I believe I said that I think IQ isn't an absolutely predictive measure. I didn't say I thought there was one.

Another commenter talks about "taste" being an essential ingredient. That's what I mean about meta-analysis of focus: applying intelligence to the topic of what you're applying intelligence to.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#235

Post by tomhoward »

wtracy wrote: post #200
tomhoward wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny. Normally I place a high value on civility and decency in discourse. But I don't have any problem with this style of communication from Taleb. I think it's because I've read/heard enough of his material over many years, and I understand the game he's playing. He's not cruel, and he means no harm to people personally. Indeed he cares a lot about the general wellbeing of society and individuals, about avoida…

> His whole approach designed to cut through bullshit and seek the truth. The ad hominem attacks (particularly the "losers in Birkenstocks" remark) in this essay are the exact opposite of that.

Comments like that are included for a kind of shock humour effect. It's mostly satirical and designed to get a rise out of people who will take it seriously and get defensive. But nobody would react if it didn't contain at least a grain of truth :)

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#236

Post by mr_toad »

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…

> 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 135.

To be fair, he doesn’t say that high IQ are not correlated with high performance, he conjectures that they ‘decorelate’, by which I presume he means the correlation weakens. (It’s pretty obvious at the end of the post that he’s arguing that).

If true, that is concerning for a measure. Heteroscedasticity is a serious problem for accurate prediction - in particular it tends to conceal the inaccuracies of predictions.

He also points out other issues, non-monotinicity and intransitivity which would be problematic. If your measure predicts candidate A is better than B and candidate B is better than C, you generally want it to predict candidate A is better than C. If it predicts candidate C is better than A, it creates confusion.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#237

Post by z3t4 »

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…

This is why I like kids to try sports that use precise measures of performance, where one can compete with oneself. I also think sports and games that encourage teamwork is very important. But by having the performance exactly measured, in most cases "hard work" will pay off. When the kids see the correlation between "hard work" and results, they can apply it to other areas such as studying. Then there are "gifted" children that are very early in their maturity and will excel at everything, and will have a very easy ride until their growth curve flatten out, but will have a very hard time when the others catch up.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#238

Post by mike00632 »

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…

The leftist position isn't that everyone is inherently equal but that everyone should be valued equally and afforded equal opportunity regardless of their race/gender/ability. The idea of an "IQ" measure is too close to the idea of measuring inherent value, which shouldn't be contingent on things like how much nutrition you had as a child. Furthermore, the idea of "IQ" could be considered dangerous because it often serves to mask the harmful biases that actually inform our impressions of people.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#239

Post by bjoli »

baccheion wrote: post #138
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.

Corporations and schools are biased toward IQs in the 115-125 range, so it is likely predictive of advancement. On the other hand, even higher IQs are associated with greater earnings. Corporations (and schools) are also biased toward Te users (ENTJ, ESTJ, INTJ, and ISTJ) and extrovert + judger types (ENTJ, ESTJ, ENFJ, and ESFJ).

The jung/MB tests are probably the most unscientific drivel that is in wide use. It is insulting to human intelligence that is given any significance at all.

Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

#240

Post by [deleted] »

michaelt wrote: post #231
samatman wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't bring race into the conversation; you did. Affirmative action is precisely an adjustment of admissions criteria such that ceterus paribus a candidate is more likely to be admitted. Yes, it's based on race, but if it was based on lottery, it would have the same effect: students with lower SAT scores are admitted to schools which otherwise require a certain threshold. That they don't do as well, shows that th…

Has anyone done an equivalent study for legacy admissions?

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