
IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle - oska
https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39
======
barrkel
IQ is undoubtedly overemphasized by some factions, especially those with an
axe to grind and a dog whistle to blow, if it helps them feel less guilty
about their position in the world or otherwise rationalizes injustice.

OTOH there's definitely a difference between people, people who aren't
mentally defective, people that are quick on the uptake, sharp and alert, who
adapt to new mental models. IQ might be an unscientific metric for identifying
these people, it might leave some of them unidentified, but they definitely
exist. Anyone who's worked with other people, hired other people, had to
evaluate other people's capabilities, can be in no doubt about this.

It's hard to separate out Taleb's own axe-grinding from anything concrete he's
trying to say about what IQ means as an independent concept. He seems more
upset at short-sighted application of thought to first-order problems rather
than asking higher-order questions about why the problems are problems in the
first place, why the questions are being asked. When I've seen a difference
between people in this degree, it's more a matter of personality than
intelligence: the more detail-oriented, autistic-spectrum someone is, the more
they focus only on the details, and miss out on the bigger picture. It takes a
little effort to step back, but I think it can be learned. Whereas IQ (or g)
doesn't seem to be improved easily with learning.

~~~
mikemotherwell
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 was to find people that can, say, program, I think IQ works as a
perfectly fine metric. If one wants to find someone who can make revolutionary
break throughs, possibly less so, but even then, if IQ can exclude 50+% of
people, you are onto a good thing.

~~~
iron0013
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 135. Here's one good reference,
but you can easily find many others:
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/41038598?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/41038598?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

Taleb just seems to make the (incorrect) assumption that IQ is less predictive
of performance at the high end--without any evidence--and then builds an
extended diatribe on top of that falsehood. This thread is evidence of the
damage that someone with very little domain knowledge, very high self-
assuredness, and a far-reaching voice can do to the factual basis of public
discourse.

I just can't get over how misleading it all is. He just made up those figures
at the bottom of the article--they aren't based on any actual data at all!

~~~
jf-
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 heritable traits may be
ethnically distributed, and we have a particularly difficult thesis.

The solution to this for some, is that IQ cannot be allowed to be meaningful,
as the idea is simply too dangerous. The article above and much of this
discussion are the result.

Simply put, this is a battle of ideology masquerading as a debate over a
matter of fact. This is not the kind of discourse you would get if people were
discussing the precise atomic weight of hydrogen.

~~~
mike00632
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.

~~~
leereeves
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 nearly
everyone agrees with.

The motte and bailey tactic.

~~~
goldcd
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, as you mentioned it (and yes, this is all
anecdotal). I'm in the UK, working for an Israeli company. The UK office (and
US) is a veritable 'sausage-fest' \- however Israel and India have a far
higher proportion of women doing these technical roles. My point is that these
"personal desires" seem to vary by geography, rather than gender. Now, why
would this matter, if everybody gets to do what they want? Well, income. Many
western industries seem to have massive gender bias within them - and women
always seem to end up in the ones that pay less (which for want of a better
metric is our best indicator of 'value' we have). Now within a job role, once
you balance in hours worked/flexibility/anything-you-care to include the
gender pay gap isn't too bad. It's there, but not enough to annoy me. My
quibble is that if you/I had two children, one male, one female, equal in
every way - the male child is going to earn more.

~~~
notSupplied
Believing that all humans are equal and any differences in outcome is the
result of discrimination is a caracature of leftist views akin to labelling
conservatives "just people out to screw over the poor".

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.

~~~
jlawson
Interesting view I hadn't heard before.

Notably, under the left's view, believing a system is just would require
proving a negative.

Is basically 'guilty until proven innocent'; a recipe for eternal identitarian
strife; totally different from how we approach structurally similar questions
on other topics.

~~~
goldcd
I'd agree with the OP - I'd never thought about it like that before. My
addition to the theory would be that left & right look identify the issue from
different perspectives. e.g. You can look at the planet as whole today, and
see there are massive disparities - then try to drill down and work out how to
fix it holistically. Or, you can look at those immediately around you, sort
that out, and hope that all people do this and it will ultimately ripple up.

------
vivekd
reading the Wikipedia article, it says that scientific consensus among
surveyed psychologists and educational researchers is that IQ is a valid and
accurate mesaure of the important components of intelligence

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Reliabil...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Reliability_and_validity)

If you're going to challenge that scientific consensus you better have
something better to bring to the table than "it's being used by racists" and
anecdotal tidbits suggesting a causation correlation fallacy between academic
performance and IQ.

~~~
fsloth
Wikipedia is not a totally reliable reference when researching non-
quantitative information, especially in area with active stakeholders that
likely edit wikipedia. And I would not trust "scientific consensus" in this
instance given psychology's recent well documented reproducibility crisis.

~~~
jrs95
This article doesn't even seem contrary to scientific consensus as far as what
factual information is presented. It's just about how it's packaged in order
to form his argument. It's sort of a lawyer-y manipulation of terms with some
added hyperbole and even appeals to fashion sense that are misrepresenting
what IQ is and what the consensus actually is.

------
mgamache
This post reads like a polemic and not something to be digested as science
(note calling it a 'pseudoscientific swindle' and the ad hominem attack on
Murray at the start). There seems to be a bi-modal reaction to the IQ
measurement problem. It's either a real meaningful and effective measure of
intellectual capacity. Or, people try and discredit the whole idea and label
anyone that explores it a racist or otherwise posses a shallow understanding
of the science. The real problem is that it has _some_ validity so it can be
used to argue for and against all sorts of things that are really not
justified by the science. However, if we ignore IQ as a valid research subject
and line of inquiry we'll be doing ourselves a disservice. We need to follow
that thread even if we don't like where it leads.

~~~
Traster
I completely agree with you about the unproductive nature of this article, and
the fact that there are two lines of extremists both pro and anti and it has
absolutely become part of the identity politics of the right (and reactionary
left).

However, there's some real discussion on the effectiveness of IQ as a measure
and its shortcomings. Vox is a great example of this, they published some
highly critical articles after Sam Harris had Murray on his podcast. They
point to good specific points which are problematic with IQ - particular when
IQ is used as an argument for particular policies rather than information.
Unfortunately even when there are specific points raised and proper meat to
the discussion it still devolves into vitriolic shit flinging. Really the
lesson to learn from this is how political tribalism can work to totally
destroy the ability of society to have an honest discussion on a topic.

------
softwaredoug
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 goodness, and since it’s innate,
they’ll always be that way in an ungifted underclass. Cue the icky connections
to racism and eugenics...

Usually as a parent, seeing your kid as “smart” corresponds to noticing
affinity for a kind of interest or task. You’ll help their confidence more to
encourage that affinity and notice the hard won accomplishments than just
saying they have some magical innate thing called “intelligence”.

~~~
jdietrich
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 a brutal act of cruelty that only
serves to perpetuate inequality.

Some people aren't smart. Some people aren't tall. Some people aren't
athletic. Some people aren't beautiful. It is incumbent on us to build a
society that affords everyone security, respect and opportunity, regardless of
whether they're smart or tall or athletic or beautiful.

Still not convinced? Imagine a society where we just pretended that there was
no such thing as physical disability. Paraplegics are just as capable of
walking as anyone else if only they get the right training. We shouldn't give
paraplegics wheelchairs, we should lend them $150,000 to spend three years at
walking school. The blind don't need canes and dogs, they just need extra
seeing practice. How barbaric, how inhumane, how very familiar.

~~~
vixen99
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.

~~~
jdietrich
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.

------
ineedasername
It seems like the author is setting up a straw man representing the IQ test as
some omnipresent (or at least somewhat prevalent) test administered widely. He
then lambastes it for all its faults (some of his accusations are correct).

But the reality is that IQ tests are only very, very rarely used. In fact a
career on the periphery of academia, academic testing, and their efficacy in
predicting academic success at the University level, I have never, not once,
not from any colleague or at any conference encountered mention of an IQ test
as something to be considered for practical use. I have a lesser degree of
familiarity with grade school/high school testing methods, but (in the US) I
am similarly unaware of any common practice here.

~~~
maroonblazer
Aren't most standardized tests - SAT, ACT, GRE, etc - essentially IQ tests? We
don't call them that, but they're testing cognitive ability nonetheless.

~~~
ineedasername
No, these are some of the tests I work with. Pop culture turned them into a
proxy for IQ or Inteligence etc. They're not. The SAT for example is highly
targeted towards one specific goal: predicting level of success academically
in the first year of college, and only the first year.

They make no other primary research claims about the utility of how the test
results should be used, and in dealing with them they are very up front about
the importance of a good all around picture of a student including HS GPA,
rigor of courses taken, etc., along with SAT as one of multiple metrics.

I repeat, it is pop culture that has distorted these tests beyond all
reasonable correspondence to their actual intent.

~~~
chillacy
The old SAT correlated more with standard iq tests and can be used for
admission into MENSA from what I remember.

~~~
ineedasername
The old SAT has a statistically significant correlation, but if memory serves
(it might not, it's been a while) the correlation wasn't great, it has
something like an r-squared value of 0.4 to 0.5, so a majority of the variance
in outcomes was not explained by differing performance on the tests.

------
mbell
The title doesn't seem to match up with the article.

The point seems to be that IQ is good at predicting intellectual deficits at
the low end but bad at predicting 'success' above that; further it indicates
that IQ is mis-used in this range. This doesn't seem to indicate that IQ is
'pseudoscience', just that it's a misused statistic. Not a real shocker there,
almost every statistic is misused by some group.

~~~
Analemma_
Taleb is saying that if IQs above 100 have no predictive power, then what’s
the point in measuring them? It would be like taking a BuzzFeed quiz that
tells me my Hogwarts house: a real measurement yielding a reproducible result,
sure, but a pointless one and any use of it beyond “Huh, that’s interesting”
would be pseudoscience.

~~~
geezerjay
> Taleb is saying that if IQs above 100 have no predictive power, then what’s
> the point in measuring them?

The whole point of IQ tests is not to identify or rank people who score above
100. The whole point is to identify those who fall well below 100,because
that's actually a disability.

Look at it this way: some amusement parks feature amusement rides that are
only safe to ride if riders can be kept safe by the safety equipment. One way
to ensure safety requirements are met is to admit only people taller than a
predefined height. That means that a specific metric (height) is used to pick
who is able from those who are not. However, that does not mean taller people
are better at riding that specific ride, let alone any attraction.

The IQ concept serves the same purpose. Those with a low IQ simply struggle to
perform some tasks, but above a fuzzy threshold IQ is a meaningless metric to
evaluate or predict success.

~~~
mike00632
>The whole point of IQ tests...

I think you're ignoring that the point of IQ for most people and throughout
its history is to make statements about racial and/or gender superiority. Most
of the posts here seem to focus on the hiring process but the vast majority of
the time I hear about IQ it's within the context of a bigoted rant.

------
jdietrich
Frankly, I'm incredibly disappointed in Taleb's recent writing. This article
is one of many where the actual point being made is buried beneath unnecessary
and divisive ad-hominem attacks.

Does the caption _" Mensa members: typically high “IQ” losers in
Birkenstocks."_ usefully contribute to a serious, scholarly conversation on
IQ? Is it reasonable or fair-minded to immediately tar opponents to your
argument as racists, eugenicists and "psychometry peddlers looking for
suckers"?

I am uninterested in engaging with the substance of Taleb's arguments here,
because the style is so needlessly vicious. I won't be buying Taleb's next
book, because I don't want to endorse this kind of debasement of the public
dialogue.

~~~
tomhoward
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 avoidance of
violence, poverty, oppression etc.

His whole approach designed to cut through bullshit and seek the truth.

That means being ruthless in breaking down the mechanisms people use to hide
bullshit or smuggle it into important discussions - e.g., status/authority
signals like titles, honorifics, academic/professional qualifications,
academic processes, group memberships like Mensa, corporate/academic jargon,
and politeness/courtesy when it's used to subdue people's efforts to seek
truth.

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.

People who have something to hide will respond by getting offended at his
tone, rather than simply defending/explaining their ideas on their merits.

Related to that, he's fine with people being rude to him; indeed he prefers
it, and he hates it when people try to flatter him or build rapport with him,
because he knows that's the first step to being bullshitted.

There have been times when he's been savage about issues I hold dear, and
that's been uncomfortable. But it's been a signal that I've needed to keep
working to understand those issues more deeply so they'd hold up to any
scrutiny.

~~~
jdietrich
_> His whole approach designed to cut through bullshit and seek the truth._

If that's the case, then why did he expend so many words on matters that were
irrelevant to his core thesis? Why not just concisely set out the evidence
demonstrating the inadequacy of IQ?

 _> People who have something to hide will respond by getting offended at his
tone, rather than simply defending/explaining their ideas on their merits._

There is an overwhelming amount of information and opinion on the internet.
Most of it is very bad. Winnowing it down requires some heuristics. The
heuristic "do these words look like those of a careful and thoughtful person
making a good-faith argument?" has served me well. I do often encounter bad
ideas dressed up in faux erudition, but I very rarely encounter good ideas
delivered with a string of irrelevant insults and ad-hominem attacks.

More broadly, being polite in your writing is a simple matter of
neighbourliness. Causing upset or inflaming anger is occasionally necessary to
pierce the veil of indifference, but we should do so only with great caution.
There is already more than enough discord in the world without us adding to
it. I see abundant evidence for the fact that civilisation is a fragile and
precious thing, held together with the glue of civility. We should think twice
before discarding the norms of social behaviour that most of us learned in
kindergarten.

~~~
tomhoward
Yep, it's a heuristic I observe too.

But heuristics, by definition, are imprecise and subject to exceptions, and in
my experience he's one of the exceptions.

> Causing upset or inflaming anger is occasionally necessary to pierce the
> veil of indifference, but we should do so only with great caution.

I think he does. He only attacks people who are powerful enough to be able to
handle it.

And the stuff he talks about is important.

The way IQ testing is revered and misused arguably does great harm to many.

And the stuff he's been banging on about for years - the way governments, big
corporate execs, academics and media insiders work together to benefit
themselves at the expense of the powerless majority is important, and could
well lead to another economic crisis in the next few years - is critically
important.

That said, you don't have to listen to him, of course.

But it's worth examining if there's some deeper reason why you find his ideas
unpalatable, beyond just tone and style.

My own motivation has been to pay attention to what he says, as he turns out
to be right when it matters most, and by applying his ideas about things like
stoicism and "anti-fragility", my life has vastly improved.

~~~
jamesdmiller
"He only attacks people who are powerful enough to be able to handle it." He
was attacking people who politely participated in that Twitter exchange
including me, an obscure college professor. Yes, knowing Taleb I wouldn't have
challenged him unless I was ready to be insulted, but still I very much doubt
that he looked me up to see how powerful or emotionally stable I was.

------
xupybd
I 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?

~~~
Itsdijital
There's a lot of good evidence that correlates race and IQ. Even when
controlling for as many factors as possible. To the best of our current
scientific knowledge, this is a thing.

Obviously this is an excellent source of ammo for racists and likewise those
fighting racism see it as a threat. By extension, anyone who speaks of this
science must also be racist and the science itself must be wrong because it is
racist. And even if it's not wrong, it must be locked in a box, hidden deep in
the archives, and never spoken of again. If you're a social scientist and your
results come back supporting this, should you publish them, twist them, or
burn them?

So it's three powerful forces (racism, equality, and truth) all converging on
one extremely hot button topic. It's seems Taleb here is trying to pull out
the rug from underneath this perfect quaternity of shit show.

~~~
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
IQ is well supported, but raceXiq is very poorly supported.

Most of the HBD and 'race realism' stuff fails simply at trying to define
race. Often it's 'colored people', and not any kind of grouping that even
resembles human genetic diversity. This all relies on very straight-forward
and well-established genetics, but they generally can't even come close to the
mark here. They'll shout and scream about how "you're not allowed to study
this!" despite plenty of scholarly work on human genetic diversity. It's not
literally titled 'black people are human garbage', so I can see why they might
have trouble finding it.

There's also a lot of cherry-picking, agonizing over particular sub-
populations that happen to fit their narrative and acting as though that's
case closed.

The reality is that most of the population diversity is in Africa and a bunch
of isolated islands. Yet even in these extreme outliers we don't see much in
by way of large effects (intra > inter, generally). But the race realist
narrative, somehow and miraculously, comes to the conclusion that white people
are super duper great, the somewhat less white people are somewhat less great,
and black people are genetically .. unfortunate. Who knew?! They just got so
damn lucky and happened to hate just the right people!

Plenty of detailed refutation for anyone interested:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/39t4...](https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/39t4vx/gathering_some_old_refutations_of_the_typical/)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/39bx...](https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/39bx7w/welcome_to_ahs/cs2bzsr/)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/debatepoliticalphil/comments/7m3lex...](https://old.reddit.com/r/debatepoliticalphil/comments/7m3lex/argument_the_case_against_race_realism/)

------
throwaway324232
It seems a lot are coming to the defense of IQ tests so I thought I'd throw in
my perspective having taken these tests 6 times over the years (WAIS and
Raven's) for my diagnosis of ADHD (these tests cost thousands of dollars and
are usually reviewed by psychologists).

An IQ score itself is an average of subtest scores that measure various
abilities related to intelligence. So you could have some really high scores
for certain abilities (e.g. executive functioning - ability to plan ahead) and
some really low scores (e.g. spatial reasoning - understanding three
dimensional space) and come out as average. Or you could have a really low
score in a certain ability while having average scores in others and come out
as below average.

Additionally, some test scores can change based on whether they're timed or
not. So you could have certain abilities that are above average, but when
timed, come out as average or below.

Notably, IQ tests DO NOT test for creativity nor emotional intelligence.

The problem with judging others by their IQ score is that you throw away their
strengths by looking at a single score. Some of my abilities are above average
and that could be useful to society. I certainly think creativity, emotional
intelligence and other abilities IQ tests neglect are relevant to society as
well.

For me, my IQ has ranged anywhere from 87 to 117 and this may be due to ADHD.
The instability of the score doesn't give me much faith in its usefulness, nor
has my intelligence seemed to affect my career as a software engineer (I've
had plenty of success in my decade long career). It has however reliably
demonstrated I have ADHD for schools and health insurance purposes, and that's
really its primary usefulness.

------
username90
> it explains at best between 13% and 50% of the performance in some tasks,
> minus the data massaging and statistical cherrypicking by psychologists; it
> doesn’t satisfy the monotonicity and transitivity required to have a
> measure. No measure that fails 60–95% of the time should be part of
> “science”.

Where did he get "fails 60-95% of the time" from? To me it looks like he
either doesn't understand statistics or he is pulling numbers out of the air.

------
Madmallard
I have given dozens of ravens-progressive-matrices variant tests to friends of
mine of various intellects and the results are basically never surprising.

I guess it's bullshit though.

Third world country girl who struggled trying to learn computer science and
gave up and became an accountant? 95

Kind of slow guy that can't do any algebra in his head, bronze 1 at league of
legends? 98

Genius guy that is master tier in league of legends and constantly outwits
everyone in banter? 143

Asperger sharp awkward guy that is astonishingly good at math - diamond 3
league of legends? 133

Me: I think I'm an idiot sometimes and smart other times. Platinum 1 at league
of legends? 122

My older brother (1): Obviously smarter than me but not by that much
seemingly, and definitely a lot physically healthier than I am: 130

My oldest brother (2): National bridge champion and obviously very
intelligent, masters in math, been an alcoholic for 5 years and got noticeably
less sharp overtime: 135

Another guy who was challenger tier at league of legends and also obviously
very intelligent in conversation? 138

Smart younger guy that is kind of whacky and out there, diamond 3 at league of
legends: 120 (deviates from the norm here but still lends evidence to the
correlation)

Extremely competent native american guy that is 2000 ELO in Chess and was
diamond 2/3 in league of legends? 120 (while high though, and same caveat as
the above example as the other example just above)

hMmmMmmmMmMMMMMM I guess it is just confirmation bias.

I found it interesting how well it correlated with rank in league of legends.
There are about 5-6 other samples I just don't recall the specifics anymore.

------
harekaze
(1) The details of popular IQ tests are considered commercial secrets by
testing companies. The reliability data and validity data are kept secret to
people other than selected experts connected to those companies. This
opaqueness does nothing to enhance the credibility of IQ tests.

(2) The claims that IQ tests are supported by consensus of psychologists
ignore that, scientific knowledge does not rely on consensus to justify its
credibility, but the explanatory power and predictive power stemmed from such
knowledge. Plus, most psychologists don't do research on IQ tests, the so-
called consensus can be regarded to an extent as textbook claims in disguise.

(3) There have always been disagreements. Multiple intelligence theory is one
that made its way to textbooks. But there are others. For example, the
mutualism model by van der Maas, Kan, and Borsboom (2014) claims that IQ tests
do not constitute as a reliable measure that can reflect the underlying mental
capacity (if there is one, not none or multiple), the value of IQ tests can
only be (weakly, in my opinion) justified by pragmatic considerations [0]. The
mutualism model is somewhat tangential to the claims made by Taleb, but my
point is that IQ tests are not something that should be glorified.

(4) Psychometrics in general, has deep issues. Operationalism plagues the
discipline. The practice of many (I shall reserve properly that it's not all)
psychometricians does not meet the idea of validity as instigated by current
recommended guidelines, and what should be constitutive of validity is still
somewhat an open question that remains to be explored. These are not direct
evidence for or against the credibility of IQ tests, but nonetheless should
make us cautious how we reach our judgments.

[0]
[https://www.mdpi.com/2079-3200/2/1/12](https://www.mdpi.com/2079-3200/2/1/12)

EDIT: grammar

------
opportune
Also the people with 180+ IQs that make random lists of “smartest people ever”
if you look into it, basically have IQ test taking as a hobby and practice for
it to improve their IQ (or rather, ability to take IQ tests). Or they took
some test like Stanford-Binet that allows child IQs to reach ridiculous levels
if the child happens to develop faster than normal (because of the formula of
adjusting a child’s IQ to an adult level)

~~~
mike00632
In other words: "when a measure become a target it ceases to be a measure"

------
waynecochran
I have been afraid to take an IQ test for the fear of finding out that I am
not very smart. In any case, the current hubbub of folks speaking against IQ
tests seems to be more of a idealogical reaction to what IQ tests are telling
us. OTOH, this guy seems to be legit. Truth is so hard to find these days.

~~~
sifoobar
Maybe you're looking in the wrong place?

The question on my mind is the following: How is blindly trusting science
better than blindly trusting the pope or your local shaman? Wasn't the real
issue blind trust, rather than who or what?

There's nothing to be afraid of, and no reason to take a stupid test. I had to
as part of drafting and I can't see these tests leading anywhere worth going.
Maybe ask why being seen as smart is important?

~~~
waynecochran
Most of what any of us believe is trust in some other source. Few things that
we believe admit to the scientific method, and even those things that do very
few of us reproduce on our own. When is comes to social science, the "science"
is pretty weak anyway. Most folks just believe what is popular or what they
want to believe. I tend to look for consistency and track record -- most
useful tests for truth in practice.

------
nabla9
>If you want to detect how someone fares at a task, say loan sharking, tennis
playing, or random matrix theory, make him/her do that task; we don’t need
theoretical exams for a real world function by probability-challenged
psychologists.

If you want to measure skill and experience, that's good advice.

When you want to measure the ability to solve problems where the individual or
nobody has skill or experience yet, you have to measure something like
intelligence.

~~~
kokokokoko
And anecdotely, IQ style testing has been by far the most determinant data
point for successful software developer hires in my experience. I'm almost at
the point where I might start to believe it is more important than domain
knowledge of programming.

This is likely because the type of work I typically hire for has a large
amount of problem solving and troubleshooting as opposed higher level system
design. Which is essentially what IQ tests test for.

The world "intelligence" is just a very loaded word and means different things
to different people. IQ tests show how well a person can solve puzzles and
make connections between systems. Which many consider to be a sign of
intelligence. But not everyone.

------
BuckRogers
No one on HN has mentioned my takeaway on the IQ subject that I've held for
many years now. Upon learning more information over the years since, it has
only solidified my view.

On his analysis, he has a nice argument but he's outright wrong about some of
it. They're discovering more everyday about how advanced 'tribal Europe'
really was. From the Vikings having more advanced societies than initially
thought, back to the Celts when the Romans actually started to fear the Gauls
and decided to stop their advances before they became so organized they also
had centralized government. The planning ahead required for survival in
northern Europe alone greatly increases the chance of evolving a higher
minimum IQ vs more congenial conditions where little to no planning is
required.

Sometimes truth is inconvenient. I would defend IQ. It's real, and it does
matter. What I would say is that in my years, I've learned that it is
definitely not the most important attribute. It may not even be the second
most important attribute.

A cooperative nature is more important than IQ. What use is a highly
intelligent person who won't cooperate with others or interact? Einstein
without the willingness to collaborate with society overall is useless. Maybe
even a nightmare if he's beyond uncooperative and a malevolent genius. A very
uncooperative stupid person could potentially be a big problem too.

If I'm ever picking people to be on my team for a zombie apocalypse, or even
just managing a modern society today, I'll take someone with a cooperative
nature and little regard for their IQ.

In sum, I would agree with Taleb that IQ can potentially be a swindle, but
wouldn't agree with the basis of his argument. IQ is an objective measurement
of intelligence, but you don't really need to reach so hard as he did to
disqualify the importance of IQ. It's obvious as to why it's secondary to
other factors.

------
gok
The title is actually much less extreme than the article. The author basically
claims all of psychology is a pseudoscience.

~~~
vertline3
Well he addressed the replication crisis in earlier writings, which others
have noted is a problem as well.

------
foolrush
Missing a bit of sociological historicizing here.

IQ and SATs were essentially designed to keep undesirables, notably Jewish,
people out of academic circles. Eugenics and these tests marched hand in hand.

> Armed with this so-called objective methodology, 3 American eugenicists
> advanced a straw-man rationale for large-scale testing.14 They reasoned that
> society needed to identify, segregate, and sterilize the "feeble-minded,"' 5
> initially defined as those with mental disabili- ties' 6 but later extended
> to include any "unfit" person of low intelli- gence, character, or
> ethnicity.17 In both Germany and the United States, persecution of the
> "feebleminded"'18 hastened a broader eu- genic campaign against immigration,
> miscegenation, and other pro- fessed threats to Nordic ascendancy.1 9

[https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=h...](https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.ca/&httpsredir=1&article=1270&context=law-
review)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-
of-d...](https://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-
discriminating-against-jews-2014-12)

[https://twitter.com/ft_variations/status/1075782671320657920...](https://twitter.com/ft_variations/status/1075782671320657920?s=21)

------
blablabla123
> Mensa members: typically high “IQ” losers in Birkenstocks.

Nice article.

IQ is actually the best measure yet found to see how well people can succeed
in life. There used to be some craze about EQ, but _that_ is actually pseudo-
scientific stuff invented and monetized by book authors.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14940184](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14940184)

~~~
aptwebapps
Yeah, I'm hope I'm not missing out, but the beginning of the article was too
aggressive for me to bother with the rest.

~~~
blablabla123
Same, I just skimmed. Quite sad that people still do this kind of thinking and
talking and that it gets rated so high here. I thought that's what people
cared about last year, that people deserve equal treatment, no matter what the
background is.

------
Animats
Taleb's output is getting weird.

See "G factor"[1]. There's a strong correlation between various metrics of
"types of intelligence".

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_\(psychometrics\))

------
kc1116
Wow lots of people really wrapped up in this whole IQ thing lol. It’s
literally a joke, only reason it’s so prevalent these days are because of the
racist white supremacist and pseudosciencentist “philosophers” raking in the
Youtube money. Can someone point to actual real research where someone
literally went around the world and gave IQ test to groups of people ? Also
were these test in the people’s native language, how were they chosen etc. I
have a hunch (not a biologist or anything like that) that common sense would
say if you take any group of people that come from similar environments and
administer IQ test the scores would be similar no matter the race, height,
sex, etc. (I.e: take middle class college students from different groups and
compare. Then take groups of people from poverty stricken backgrounds and
compare) Does anyone disagree ? And why?

------
judge2020
Related: Adam ruins everything had a segment about IQ in 2017,
[https://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-ruins-
everything/blog/adams...](https://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-ruins-
everything/blog/adams-sources/emily-ruins-adam.html)

------
pcurve
Wow. So much hatred in this. Iq is just one of many ways to measure certain
aspects of aptitude. No institutions are shortsighted enough to place strong
emphasis solely on IQ test. This is why college admissions take other data
points into equation because sat and act scores are highly correlated to Iq.

~~~
soufron
Well, most of his argument is that it measures nothing, at least not more than
let's say... astrology. IQ is pseudoscience. And people using it are wrong -
whether they place a strong emphasis on it, or only a little one.

------
dang
Two threads about this from last week:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18756946](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18756946)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18755193](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18755193)

------
kazinator
The thing is, that people who have high IQ can answer the test questions with
ease. They don't have to "muster sterile motivation." That's the perspective
of someone daunted by the testing, and thus of lower IQ.

"Anything too hard for me requires lifeless academics capable of sterile
motivation, and anything easier is for idiots. I'm sitting precisely at the
perfect intelligence level myself; neither idiot, nor starchy, impractical
academic!"

> _" When someone asks you a question in the real world, you focus first on
> “why is he/she asking me that?"_

In this case, why is this blog writer asking me to believe that the IQ has low
value? The "no brainer" hypothesis is that he tried and didn't score very
well.

------
austincheney
IQ is largely poorly understood. When measured as a number it is a convergent
assignment, which is everybody is measured against a central assessing scheme
that doesn't realistically reflect capabilities, competency, or potential.

More valid are divergent tests that measure creativity, response quantity,
originality, and problem solving. In other words how unique can the answers
get and still be applicable.

------
tim333
The 'original tweetstorm' that led to the article:
[https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1076845397795065856](https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1076845397795065856)

------
bryanrasmussen
anecdote time: Once I was taking IQ tests with a group of other people, one
guy in that group I knew was just really an idiot.

This guy really did seem to be stupider than me in every conceivable measure.
There was just no possible human endeavor that I did not feel confident in
beating him and this is a pretty rare thing to notice in people for me, I can
think of 4-5 people in my life I've thought this of (discounting people
suffering from obvious disabilities)

Anyway we took the IQ tests, he came back when he got his result, extremely
happy and announced 'I got a 100! I had no idea it was that high!'

------
vertline3
Those birkenstocks look pretty comfortable. Plus maybe they last longer. I
suppose they aren't "sexy" , but I suspect the guys have conceded that. I
won't knock it until I try it, which is never.

------
whymauri
Maybe I'm dumb, but why is "performance fat-tailed"? It was kinda left as an
exercise to the reader, but maybe someone has insight. The article got a bit
edited, but I'm still not getting it.

~~~
amasad
In other words it's pareto distribution. Most of the scientific citations goes
to the 1% of scientists. Most of the success in business goes to the 1% of
companies/entrepreneurs.

In Taleb's words: we live in extremistan.

~~~
whymauri
Got it, this was helpful as was the answerer below. Thank you guys!

------
projektir
Well, I was rather interested in this article at first, as I think IQ is
highly questionable and we give it waaaaay too much credit, but this mostly
seems to be an article wanting to bash people with focused thinking patterns
(perhaps autistic people), or "nerds", or other groups of people that fail to
conform. While calling them wage slaves. It's curious how they managed to
conflate both Mensa members and the military in attitudes.

Would be nice if we could call these various things into question without
stooping to something as low as modern Western (who am I kidding, American)
conceptions of "succeeding" in life.

------
arisAlexis
If intelligence exists then there can be some measure of it. Maybe current
tests are not very good but that doesn't justify all the arguments in the
article.

------
kamalkishor1991
Is IQ data available in a nice CSV file for us to analyze? I would like to see
a nice Jupiter notebook with plots and should be able to play around with the
data.

------
lota-putty
Yes, IQ is as much overrated as formal education.

Tests, only measure the state of mind during(tests); not the capability in the
past or future.

------
pps43
What a mess. Tweetstorm was easier to follow.

------
mbfg
Given the general snarkyness of the author towards 'intellectuals' in his
words, i tend to write off his opinions whether there is validity or not. I'm
quite sure there are problems with IQ tests. I'm also sure that they have
value much beyond what is promoted here.

------
i_feel_great
Q. 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.

~~~
Itsdijital
I present to you three small companies. All three provide the same type of
service. One has an average worker IQ of 80, the next 100, and the last 120.

Which one would you feel most confident in using?

~~~
i_feel_great
The one who does best in a 3 month trial.

------
tidwall
True story

------
black-tea
People want IQ to be wrong. People like the idea of someone who did bad at
school but is still a successful and productive person. Such people surely
exist, but successful people overwhelmingly do well at school and have natural
aptitude. You can deny it all you like, though.

------
zozbot123
So, 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!

~~~
mikemotherwell
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....](https://cdn-
images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*76fPv686eOXo1b7F.jpg) shows how he claims IQ
scores correlate with outcomes, i.e. as you move away upwards from < 70 IQ,
its predictive power plummets.

Said simply: stupid is stupid, but we're not totally sure what smart is.

~~~
akhilcacharya
I'm not sure if you got the reference but in case you didn't:

[https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/33230821132142592...](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/332308211321425920)

------
danieltillett
... but g is the only thing of importance.

~~~
pps43
The problem with g is that it's a number. Who has higher g, Magnus Carlsen or
Terence Tao?

------
api
Interesting... 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).

------
silvat1
I'm not sure I believe in varying levels of innate intelligence at all. And if
it does exist, it is probably so removed from our standard measures of
intelligence so as to make it inconsequential.

What I do believe is that what we perceive to be different levels of
intelligence among people is actually learned ways of thinking and approaching
problems. Some people are lucky enough to be exposed to habits and ways of
thinking early on in their life that provide a compounding return for the rest
of it.

