all 13 comments

[–]AFutureConcern 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Taleb's whole shtick is claiming that most things are a "pseudoscientific swindle". His background is in trading, and he tends to distrust all predictive models (hence his "Black Swan"). I think it's true that IQ does not tell the whole story when it comes to intelligence and life success. It's very hard to predict things based on IQ alone. But then, it's very hard to predict things about a person based on anything alone.

Taleb's required standard of rigor would immediately discredit the entirety of psychology and the vast majority of social science in general. While I think most of it probably should be discredited, my standard of evidence is not nearly as high as Taleb; furthermore, my "null hypothesis" is NOT assuming that all groups are the same, so the fact that the evidence is less certain doesn't make me any more likely to accept the equalitarian hypothesis.

[–]DisgustResponse 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Taleb's required standard of rigor would immediately discredit the entirety of psychology and the vast majority of social science in general.

He admits as much. Socials sciences are trash.

[–]GConly 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

think it's true that IQ does not tell the whole story when it comes to intelligence and life success. It's very hard to predict things based on IQ alone.

Self control, work ethic, health. Were you an abused child? A whole bunch of things can affect life outcomes other than IQ.

IIRC conscientiousness has an even more significant effect than IQ.

[–]GoobahEnjoyer62 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

IQ is the strongest predictor of:

Job performance https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4557354/

Occupation, Education and Income level https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/Intelligence-and-socioeconomic-success-A-meta-analytic-review-of-longitudinal-research.pdf

From AltHype:

We know that IQ tests measure intelligence because IQ tests correlate with peer and self rated intelligence. For instance, in Denissen et al. 2011 489 college students were divided into 20 groups which studied together for a period of one year. At the end of this year, subjects were asked to rate how intelligent their group mates were on a 7 point scale ranging from “not intelligence” to “very intelligent”. It was found that the better a subject did on an IQ test the smarter their group mates thought they were.

Palhusand Morgan 1997 found similar results and also showed that the correlation between peer rated intelligence and IQ increased the longer the peer knew the person being tested. They had 5 group discussion sections, and in the first section, found that in the first session, intelligence ratings were almost entirely a function of how much people talked. By the Fifth session, it was almost entirely a function of the person’s IQ – so talking a lot only increases perceived “intelligence” above IQ in the short term.

Similarly,Bailey and Hatch 1979 showed that intelligence rated by people’s close friends correlated with their IQ and Bailey and Mattetal 1977 found the same was true of spouses.

A significant body of research has also shown that IQ tests predict how intelligent people rate themselves as being (Paulhus, Lysy, and Yik 1998, ,Angelo and James 1977, and Reilly and Mulhern 1995). Clearly then, the smarter a person thinks they are, and the smarter their friends think they are, the better they tend to do on IQ tests.

So in summary, IQ tests predict life outcomes better than several factors commonly recognized to predict life outcomes, such as what your parents are like and how good your grades are. And IQ predicts one’s subjective perception of a person’s intelligence the longer you interact with them.

[–]AltBaseGuy 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

If anything, this "critique" demonstrated how low Taleb's IQ is.

Sean Last has a good video debunking this

[–]literalotherkinNorm MacDonald Nationalism 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

Accepting the reality of IQ is an IQ test. :)

[–]AltBaseGuy 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes

[–]AidsVictim69 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Taleb has some pretty obvious biases here

It takes a certain type of person to waste intelligent concentration on classroom/academic problems. These are lifeless bureaucrats who can muster sterile motivation.

alright, but Taleb himself is an academic whos entire fame and profit (including parasitic stock trading) is entirely due to his capability with statistics. I don't even disagree with him but his entire career could fit pretty readily in that domain except he chose to apply it for profit.

Some of the argument in the paper (and follows from the above) is that IQ is only good at measuring certain types of capabilities. True perhaps but those capabilities still heavily correlate with materially useful (as in capable expanding our ability to manipulate nature in a useful way to improve our lives) knowledge or simply knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Society would be greatly harmed by a reduction in that capability while the intelligence for social climbing or catching a ball really doesn't matter that much beyond the individuals advancement. Some types of intelligence are simply more important and worthwhile investing in for society.

As for IQ losing predictive power as IQ gets higher or not being rigorously determinant past a certain thresh hold, he's probably largely correct. However Taleb (and many others in a similar school of thought) very badly wants to throw it out entirely without ever providing any better alternative other than "look at the actual results and if there's any correlation that could be interpreted in a racial way (i.e. anything negative about black or positive about whites) throw it out and try again". At some point the criticisms start to lose their punch when there is only criticism and no solution, because they only know that they don't like the ways IQ can be interpreted, not how to answer the question of measuring intelligence better. It's the line of thinking that leads to people giving moronic criticisms like "if we measured intelligence by who played basketball the best, African Americans would be the most intelligent people around. Who's to say what intelligence really is?"

For the right it really doesn't matter that much. Even if IQ difference between races were entirely negligible it's still the case that races will always have competing interests and modern society is directly antagonistic to the wellbeing of the average white person. The goal is to transform and destroy white societies and replace them with multicultural ones where whites are slowly dying out from low fertility, immigration, and miscegenation. Arguing about how society is hostile to your interests and the interests of your family is more convincing to normies that arguing about IQ, which the average person has been desensitized to, in any case. The IQ argument is not needed, it just helps explain some of the outcomes we see in society if one chooses to apply it that way.

[–]literalotherkinNorm MacDonald Nationalism 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Some of the argument in the paper (and follows from the above) is that IQ is only good at measuring certain types of capabilities.

The real problem with this type of argument -- and I've heard it a million times -- is that the proper scientific response isn't just to throw your hands up and give up because the methods you currently use aren't measuring all cognitive faculties it's to discover what IQ tests aren't measuring and incorporate them. In what other field is the appropriate response to a deficit of understanding a cause to just give up, declare the whole thing 'pseudoscience' and dismiss it?

What would have happened had we done that in physics? It's such an insane response to the problem.

[–]Nombre27 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What would have happened had we done that in physics? It's such an insane response to the problem.

Not being allowed to ask certain scientific questions and test them is no different from any other form of censorship, and right now the left is going all out on censor wrongthink in all areas.

[–]literalotherkinNorm MacDonald Nationalism 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Basically one of the only actually valid, replicable and well-researched areas in psychology and it's the one the left is in complete denial about.

Meanwhile this creep probably thinks 'stereotype threat' or some other horseshit is real.

[–]GConly 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

And yet you can accurately predict an infant's future mathematical ability with a brain scan.

And an adult IQ with a brain scan.

[–]EthnocratArcheofuturist 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Alt-Hype already debunked this nonsense.