371–380 of 400 posts
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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 :)
Again, "shock humor" and satire are antithetical to "cutting through the bullshit".
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I'll ask again, did you actually read the submission? I get how cliche it is to ask this but you genuinely seem ignorant of the entire basis is this conversation. If you had read the submission, you would know how flawed and useless IQ tests are, and how they reward test taking abilities over intellect.
I have read the submission, but have you? Did you somehow miss the complete absence of substance in it? Which part of it should have me convinced? That Taleb said so and did so emphatically ? That you are now repeating it emphatically? Please remain civil and refrain from calling me ignorant. I have read the submission and disagree with its (lack of) argument.
You're not following HN rules by refusing to address the best form of the argument, and when you break rules like that, it makes it hard to stay civil.
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The left uses any inequality of outcome, like the unequal representation of minorities and women in the software development industry, as evidence of discrimination without allowing for the possibility these differences are due to different abilities, choices, or desires. And if anyone challenges the belief that all outcomes should be equal, they retreat behind the very different argument you've just made, which near…
Hold on, I'm a lefty - and don't particularly like that brush you're tarring me with. Now before we go on, I do agree with some of your points. The results we observe are driven by many factors and individual choice is one of them. I object to 'positive discrimination' and the like as it's personally unfair. However, I do have that deep troubling feeling that there is bias all over the place. I'll just go with gender…
My observation is that the biggest chasm between left and right is the burden of proof for discrimination. The left believes discrimination is the basic human condition and one must prove that a decision or process is fair, or else it is biased by default. The right believes discrimination is an abberation, much like crime, and guilt must be proven, not presumed.
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> Just because something is a good predictor doesn't make it scientific. What does it mean for a thing to be scientific? > In those exceptions, it was generally found that wealth of parents played a much bigger role in future success than IQ. You are talking about very long term success. It is somewhat obvious that wealth you are born into should be an important factor for overall success. I'm talking about shorter t…
To be scientific would require proving a definite causal relationship between IQ and intelligence, while also convincingly proving that intelligence can be measured with a number
That's not how science works. A scientific theory includes a hypothesis with a causal explanation, but science doesn't deal in “definite causal relationships”, but in empirically useful models which only get viewed as approximating definite causal relations with age and lack of a better (simpler and/or with broader explanatory power) model being discovered.
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That's not really addressing the point, is it. IQ correlates well with measures of performance. Taleb's point, if we are to generously interpret his screed, is that some classes of valuable mental performance are very hard to generate metrics for or even define at all, and therefore, you would expect them to correlate with IQ less or not at all. For instance the chart that claims IQ correlates well with military perf…
> is that some classes of valuable mental performance are very hard to generate metrics for or even define at all, and therefore, you would expect them to correlate with IQ less or not at all. I think the crux of Taleb's point is that the kind of mental performance IQ is a useful metric for is not valuable (including the associated jobs and roles that go with it).
Yes, the most generous interpretation of Taleb’s screed is that its not really (despite it's express wording) a criticism of IQ as a measure of intelligence but of the value or intelligence beyond a certain level compared to other aspects of personality.
Which is probably a broadly more sensible claim on a general level (though his specific claims about IQ as a success predictor remain wrong.)
But that's a fairly generous interpretation of his claims that requires an equally ungenerous interpretation of either his writing ability or his character (because if it is intentionally written as misleadingly as that would require, it's got to be a deliberate effort to produce exaggerated controversy.)
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If you care about what college someone graduated from, you care about something highly correlated with IQ. Indeed, part of the reason why elite colleges are able to command such high prices is that, as you mention, we rarely use formal IQ tests when evaluating people and so graduating from an elite college is the best way that high IQ individuals can signal intelligence.
It may be that attending such colleges is highly correlated to IQ; I'm unaware of research on that topic. (as closely as my field is related to that topic, highly elite schools tend to be outliers and aren't in the scope of my own activities) What I can say somewhat definitively is that any such research would be fairly outdated. IQ tests simply are not used at any scale that would be required to study such a correla…
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Again, "shock humor" and satire are antithetical to "cutting through the bullshit".
It’s petty well established that the entire purpose of forms of humour like satire and charicature is to cut through bullshit.
We started with what could have been an interesting discussion about the validity of IQ tests, and suddenly it turned into a passive-aggressive discussion about fashion.
Now the discussion spans multiple disjoint topics, several of which are emotionally charged. Any good points that might have been there are buried in, well, bullshit.
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The smartest people I've known almost never come across as smart when interacting with them. Perhaps the most easily observed indicator of smarts is humility. The learned learn.
Could you expand with examples?
You might also be requesting examples of other issues, that I feel are interesting, of how I know they're smart if they don't act like it; or of how they do act.
I find it self-evident that people who are aware they don't know something will be more likely to learn something than somebody who believes they already know it. But you might be askimg for examples of that.
People who try to display their smarts are focussing on something other than learning. That can be helpful if their goal is to impress potential mates, competitors, opposition, colleagues, employers, investors, customers, clients, audience, readers, followers. It's social conduct, and it's just that it's not helpful for becoming smarter.
I'll give some examples anyway.
Someone who listens to you and watches you like a hawk (somewhat predatory). Someone who easily says "I don't know" because they have a crisp delineation between what they do and don't know, and similarly "you could be right".
In my personal experience, it's incredibly rare to directly experience someone being smart. An example is when I just barely managed to articulate a hazy problem clearly, only to have a smart person solve it without missing a beat.
The issue is (I think) there just aren't that many opportunities for actual smarts to be displayed. For one thing, you have to be confronting a new and difficult problem. And you have to be there. And of course, you have to be less smart than the person, to be able to appreciate it!
Smart people I've known tend to speak slowly.
BTW I'm clearly not speaking as someone supersmart, but as someone who has been the opposite type on occasion!
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I have read the submission, but have you? Did you somehow miss the complete absence of substance in it? Which part of it should have me convinced? That Taleb said so and did so emphatically ? That you are now repeating it emphatically? Please remain civil and refrain from calling me ignorant. I have read the submission and disagree with its (lack of) argument.
How can I do anything but call you ignorant when you say things like "did you somehow miss the complete absence of substance in it?" You're not following HN rules by refusing to address the best form of the argument, and when you break rules like that, it makes it hard to stay civil.