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Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney

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Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney

#41

Post by sonofgod »

heptathorp wrote: post #35
wmil wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with discussing IQ is that people like to focus on the performance of very high IQ individuals where it's predictive power is weakest. But it's very strong in other areas. For instance say you have two groups of woodworkers, one group has an average IQ of 90 and another group has an average IQ of 100. It's a smart bet that the 100 group has more (total) fingers. "What can we do to help people with 90 IQs…

> For instance say you have two groups of woodworkers, one group has an average IQ of 90 and another group has an average IQ of 100. > It's a smart bet that the 100 group has more (total) fingers. Not without knowing the size of each group. More fingers per capita, sure.

Even if intelligence doesn't correlate with not chopping your fingers off with a chisel, it's well established that IQ is a bell curve with an average of approximately 100, so there'll be more IQ 100 people than IQ 90.

Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney

#42

Post by sonnyblarney »

hackeraccount wrote: post #40

I've always thought the right analogy for intelligence is beauty. Could you come up with a test to measure beauty? Sure. Is beauty heritable? Sure. Is it a product of environment? Sure. But the real deal with beauty is that you can look at any measurement of it and poke holes in it. There's never going to be some objective measurement of beauty. If you find someone saying person A. is 112 on my beauty scale and perso…

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but some things are crudely objective.

Symmetry for one thing.

Visible signs of bad health are fairly universally negative.

A little stronger/fitter/taller than the norm (but not too much) as well.

Nice, bright, white, straight teeth.

And these things exist in tech as well, just not quite as much as in banking or consulting.

Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney

#43

Post by commandlinefan »

whoisnnamdi wrote: post #29

Think it should be kept in mind that what Taleb is arguing here is the limited usefulness of IQ in predicting success above a certain IQ level, let’s say the mean. He 100% acknowledges its usefulness for predicting success of lower IQ persons. He mainly just wants to point out that any other measure that was as bad at predicting higher levels of performance as IQ is would not be held in nearly as high regard. IQ ther…

Was IQ ever meant to be a measure of financial success? Or rather, did anybody, at any time, ever think that the “smarter” people were the more financially successful? I know I never thought that or observed that anybody else appeared to think that. Being “smart” meant that you were (under the just-world hypothesis) guaranteed a certain level of comfort: you’d end up with an office job where you say all day in an air conditioned office rather than breaking your back under the hot sun, but the super-successful types were either (depending on your biases) the ruthlessly selfish or the risk-takers.

Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney

#44

Post by iguy »

whoisnnamdi wrote: post #39
traderjane wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view the interesting part of IQ is not merely in its ability to predict human performance in areas where we expect intelligence to matter, but also in its underlying claim that there is even such a thing as a general intelligence ( g ), as opposed to bundles of domain-specific abilities.

As another poster mentioned, don’t think that g is necessarily in opposition to bundles of domain-specific abilities. I see g as an attempt at dimensionalality reduction - can the essence of what is admittedly a complex phenomenon be boiled down to a single metric which, while clearly not complete, is at least directionally correct / helpful. g in some sense could simply be a low dimensional projection of these more…

It is exactly that: think of it as the first principal component, of some group of tests.

Obviously this always exists. The argument is really about how big the 2nd component is -- if it were comparable, then talking about the 1st alone would be very misleading. And for a typical bundle of school-like topics (like math/english/biology exams) it's quite a long way down: IIRC a factor of 3 or 4?

If the bundle of subjects is different, then the size and meaning of the components will vary. In the tests the army does to slot recruits into all sorts of roles, I think manual dexterity is one of the things they care about which is almost uncorrelated with g. Eyesight is I think one of the only things negatively correlated with g (and it's thought to be nurture: bookish kids spend too little time outdoors).

Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney

#45

Post by iguy »

sonofgod wrote: post #41
heptathorp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For instance say you have two groups of woodworkers, one group has an average IQ of 90 and another group has an average IQ of 100. > It's a smart bet that the 100 group has more (total) fingers. Not without knowing the size of each group. More fingers per capita, sure.

Even if intelligence doesn't correlate with not chopping your fingers off with a chisel, it's well established that IQ is a bell curve with an average of approximately 100, so there'll be more IQ 100 people than IQ 90.

By definition it's a bell curve centered at 100, width 15.

But what was clearly meant was that IQ 90 woodworkers would be more accident-prone than IQ 100 ones (on the same tasks etc). And while I'm sure nobody has done the exact study of counting carpenters' fingers, it would be extremely surprising if this were not true. Armies, especially conscript armies, have mountains of excellent data on pretty similar things, and it's good data in that they assign people to tasks, and get detailed reports of every subsequent screw-up.

Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney

#46

Post by mike00632 »

briga wrote: post #18

>13- For a measure to be a measure it needs to be: + UNIQUE + MONOTONIC or, at least + TRANSITIVE I'm not sure I buy this one. Intelligence is something that is inherently constructive in nature. Your knowledge and problem solving abilities build on themselves as you grow, so I don't think it makes any sense that IQ would stay the same throughout a lifetime. Not to mention, I can think of many measures that don't fit…

I didn't understand this either. What would it mean for a human measurement to be transitive or monotonic? Maybe there is a good definition for these but it's not obvious to me.

Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney

#48

Post by stuntkite »

whoisnnamdi wrote: post #29

Think it should be kept in mind that what Taleb is arguing here is the limited usefulness of IQ in predicting success above a certain IQ level, let’s say the mean. He 100% acknowledges its usefulness for predicting success of lower IQ persons. He mainly just wants to point out that any other measure that was as bad at predicting higher levels of performance as IQ is would not be held in nearly as high regard. IQ ther…

Have you ever read any of his books? Bluster and Fluster is his thing. I wanted to put down "The Anti-fragile" until I figured out that his persona is kind of like his advice on prediction. A kind of caustic sorting hat. Now it's sort of his brand and it works fantastically for clickbait.

Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney

#49

Post by pl1234 »

postingtoofast wrote: post #28
jowdones wrote: post #2

I have a strong hunch that for reasonably smart people, IQ tests are gameable the same way academic tests are. I mean, if you test someone "out of the blue" you get some measure on how much they know. If they prepare, the more they do that the higher the score. First time I competed for admission at one of the best universities in my country, I failed. For the next year I kept preparing myself, 8 hours per day math a…

Another comment mentioned something called 'progressive matrices', these tests are not based on any crystalized (studyable) knowledge. You could practice solving the sort of visiospatial puzzles that they pose but then you'd ruin your results. People who use these tests are expected to have not had much/any experience with solving the types of puzzles it presents.

"You could practice solving the sort of visiospatial puzzles that they pose but then you'd ruin your results."

You are contradicting yourself. First you claim it is not based on studyable knowledge, then you claim studying for the tests ruins the results.

Some people solve similar puzzles during their life and get practice for the tests, others do not.

Re: Nassim Taleb on why IQ is baloney

#50

Post by pizza »

mike00632 wrote: post #46
briga wrote: post #18

>13- For a measure to be a measure it needs to be: + UNIQUE + MONOTONIC or, at least + TRANSITIVE I'm not sure I buy this one. Intelligence is something that is inherently constructive in nature. Your knowledge and problem solving abilities build on themselves as you grow, so I don't think it makes any sense that IQ would stay the same throughout a lifetime. Not to mention, I can think of many measures that don't fit…

I didn't understand this either. What would it mean for a human measurement to be transitive or monotonic? Maybe there is a good definition for these but it's not obvious to me.

I think he's using a measure-theoretic meaning of a measure. Suppose I asked you what the difference in intelligence is between person A and person B. The problems with that would start pretty rapidly.
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