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IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
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Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#32Earlier 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…
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 thinking that one measure will be absolutely predictive. Nassim Nicholas Taleb's point is that IQ is a great measure of stupid people, almost absolute at Which is GOOD. Success is defined by many parts. Genetics, culture, training, hard work, timing aka luck. That there is no one metric that predicts everything is a good thing. However, while we should be clear on the limits of each of our measures, and not over state their individual value, that is not to say that these metrics are useless.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#33So, does this mean that when I read some "genius"'s endless tweeting about how he "has one of the best I.Q.'s" while soandso is a "very low I.Q. individual", that doesn't actually mean anything of substance? Color me surprised!
Thankfully, it's unlikely that someone who spends their day tweeting like that could ever be a position of responsibility.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#34Interesting... for some reason I thought Taleb was a darling of the alt-right and the biological determinists (but not necessarily that the feeling was mutual).
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#35Earlier 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…
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.
A guy I know—who basically spends his time around high-IQ kids, seems to be on speaking terms with several Fields Medalists, and has closely studied the lives of lots of great scientists and mathematicians—says that great achievement comes from three ingredients: (a) mental horsepower (roughly measured by IQ); (b) taste, an aesthetic sense that helps one decide to work on the right things or investigate the right hypotheses; and (c) obsessiveness, such that when you encounter a project that truly is worth working on, you're likely to spend enormous amounts of time working on it. (The big-5 trait Conscientiousness may be one way of implementing (c).)
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#36I 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?
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#37Q. 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.
Intelligence: the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
I don't think you need to define Intelligence with reference to the IQ metric.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#38So, does this mean that when I read some "genius"'s endless tweeting about how he "has one of the best I.Q.'s" while soandso is a "very low I.Q. individual", that doesn't actually mean anything of substance? Color me surprised!
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is saying that the second part is likely accurate - e.g. low IQ people are accurately assessed - but the former part is off. This graph: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*76fPv686eOXo1b7F.... shows how he claims IQ scores correlate with outcomes, i.e. as you move away upwards from Said simply: stupid is stupid, but we're not totally sure what smart is.
I'm not sure if you got the reference but in case you didn't:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/33230821132142592...
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#39Best 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 smart kid, praise them when they’re clever. If you have an empathetic child, encourage them to explore that. Humans are different.
Re: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle
#40Earlier 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…
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 say entrepreneurs, or world changing ideas (think Naler's Nudge).
I don't necessarily agree with this, BTW. Just linking the ideas back together.