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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

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.

barrkel 8y ago
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.
- mikemotherwell 8y ago
  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 < 70 IQ levels, but as you progress upwards it's predictive power wanes. 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.
  - FakeComments 8y ago
    I think it’s often understated what you say in your last paragraph: If success has multiple parts with a non-linear relationship (“more than the sum of its parts”), then we’d expect to see decreasing utility for IQ relative to having a strong secondary or tertiary talent — eg, strong leadership skills and EQ, so you can build momentum around your idea. In many senses, this is what we mean by a “well rounded person”. I’m not sure how that translates into the rant that IQ is useless, pseudoscience, etc. that Mr Taleb makes, though. Let’s look at height and NBA success. I think most of us agree distance is a measure, but it doesn’t explain NBA success. Just like IQ, it only really explains NBA non-success with much strength: there are very few successful short NBA players, and no midget ones; however, there are many non-NBA playing tall people. Naively, Mr Taleb seems to be arguing that height isn’t a real measurement because it doesn’t account for basketball skill.
    - mr_toad 8y ago
      Or, more subtly, once you focus on star basketball players, height ceases to be a useful differentiator. Beyond a certain point, increased height will not lead to increased success at basketball.
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    > IQ is an EXCELLENT measure of "value, contribution, quality of thought". Actually, it is not. At best, IQ is correlated with intellectual potential. However, having potential is not the same as being able to perform. Even a V8 without gas fails to perform on par with a filled 2-stroke motor.
    - scotty79 8y ago
      > However, having potential is not the same as being able to perform. But having no potential is virtually the same as not being able to perform. You can find high IQ people in the highest places in human society and in the lowest places. But you don't find low IQ people in the highest places.
- waterhouse 8y ago
  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).)
  - aleph_naught 8y ago
    Anecdotally, I would very much agree with this, with an added caveat: there are diminishing returns on mental horsepower after 2 stdevs (e.g. 130 iq). After a certain point obsessiveness separates the wheat from the chaff, by very wide margins. The long-game is underrated.
    - toasterlovin 8y ago
      You need all three. Picking the wrong thing to work on wastes all of the time that gets spent because of obsession.
      - geezerjay 8y ago
        > You need all three. Actually, you don't. It may help to be gifted on all three, but work ethics makes up for any deficit in intellectual potential. For example, MENSA membership does not correlate with intellectual elites in any research field, but you'd be hard pressed to find a leading researcher who doesn't have a strong work ethic.
        barry-cotter 8y ago
        If you can’t hack calculus you will never be an Engineering professor, likewise close critical reading and an English professor. That puts a floor somewhere between 115 and 120 IQ on becoming a professor at a decent community college no matter how hard you’re willing to work. I guarantee you MENSA members have higher incomes and educational attainment than non members. I’m equally sure that non-members who are eligible for membership but wouldn’t bother do better because they have better social skills which are helpful for anything.
waterhouse 8y ago
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_accomplishments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Other_ac...
- mikemotherwell 8y ago
  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.
  - naniwaduni 8y ago
    > 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. This would only be correct if the SAT were expressly an IQ test, and we selected people based on SAT score for that reason. To put it another way, making this point is kind of like selecting for tall players for a basketball team, then saying weight is correlated with fitness to be on a basketball team. That height and weight are correlated doesn't make this circular reasoning.
    - harry8 8y ago
      Yeah totally, or like selecting for confident people where you tell people who score well on the test that they're super confident. Tall is an absolute, objective measure of a real thing that exists. IQ is NOT a measure of a thing that exists. Similar effects can be found throwing dice and ascribing the total to an IQ score, then telling parents, teachers what the poor kid's IQ is as though it were their height. It's insane.
iron0013 8y ago
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_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/41038598?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co... 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!
- feanaro 8y ago
  I'm as surprised as you and I'm glad someone took the time to write that up (I was about to when I saw your comment). I don't understand why someone would call IQ "unscientific" without addressing research showing it to be a good predictor of future performance. Note that this still doesn't invalidate the point that people can be smart in many different ways (yet have the same IQ), which seems like a reasonable position.
  - otalp 8y ago
    Just because something is a good predictor doesn't make it scientific. There could be a third variable like wealth which needs to be controlled for, but is rarely done in those studies with few exceptions. In those exceptions, it was generally found that wealth of parents played a much bigger role in future success than IQ.
    - feanaro 8y ago
      > 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 term success, like job performance.
barry-cotter 8y ago
> 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. Not true. As far as we can tell smarter is better at all levels. > Beyond the Threshold Hypothesis: Even Among the Gifted and Top Math/Science Graduate Students, Cognitive Abilities, Vocational Interests, and Lifestyle Preferences Matter for Career Choice, Performance, and Persistence > The assertion that ability differences no longer matter beyond a certain threshold is inaccurate. Among young adolescents in the top 1% of quantitative reasoning ability, individual differences in general cognitive ability level and in specific cognitive ability pattern (that is, the relationships among an individual’s math, verbal, and spatial abilities) lead to differences in educational, occupational, and creative outcomes decades later. Whereas ability level predicts the level of achievement, ability pattern predicts the realm of achievement. Adding information on vocational interests refines prediction of educational and career choices. Finally, lifestyle preferences relevant to career choice, performance, and persistence often change between ages 25 and 35. This change results in sex differences in preferences, which likely have relevance for understanding the underrepresentation of women in careers that demand more than full-time (40 hours per week) commitment. https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Ferriman_20101.pdf https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Ferriman_20101....
james_s_tayler 8y ago
His own argument is bust in that in that success and failure are themselves asymetric, so it's a moot point. "Failing" or "not succeeding" is the default and anyone can do it. In fact, the majority of people will never "make it" and most people even who do semi-well will live comfortable but not amazing lives. "Success" which he seems to judge as perhaps being a somebody or doing something notable follows a power law distribution. It's rare. Ok, so most people work the 9-5. And what does Taleb have to say about that? He says "ok, well, yes, if you're a slave then IQ seem to predict you'll do better in that particular game". Right. So it is a good predictor of how well you can expect someone to do when they play the game that the vast majority of people play. So... In other words it's roughly speaking useful. Don't even get me started on on his term IYI (intellectuals-yet-idiots). Implying that there are people who are intellectuals that suffer no bounds to their rationality nor any partisan or ideological bias. Right. Only an IYI could even come up with such a concept. I see this all the time. Disagree with someone in academia? Oh, well they are a pseudo- intellectual! Or perhaps you might consider the alternative that you just used pseudo-reasoning to reach your psuedo-conclusion. He draws an analogy between "best measure" proponents and "Value at Risk" proponents. Ok. Well let's lay out the tools that will help us analyse that analogy. In the book Shortcut John Pollack describes the 5 things that characterize an effective analogy. 1) uses the familiar to explain the unfamiliar 2) highlights similarities while obscuring differences 3) identifies a useful abstraction 4) tells a coherent story 5) resonates emotionally It certainly resonates emotionally if you accept the premise that it tells a coherent story. It certainly tells a coherent story that relying on a bust metric will catastrophicly blow up in your face if you accept the premise that it identifies a useful abstraction. It identifies a useful abstraction that a metric might not actually be measuring anything real if you accept the similarities and don't look at the differences. I'm not part of the finance world and don't have a good enough grasp to deconstruct the analogy enough to figure what the differences are and whether it is a good or a bad analogy, but I wanted to lay out the tools to help people do so. My gut says thats not a good analogy. If only because people say that well it seems to be the best measure we have and he says that's what the VaR guys said. But then he also says, well yeah if you're talking about the domain in which the majority of people spend the the majority of their lives (the workplace) then yes, it does actually seem to have some predictive power there. He himself is fooled by randomness.

barrkel 8y ago

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.

mikemotherwell 8y ago
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 < 70 IQ levels, but as you progress upwards it's predictive power wanes. 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.
- FakeComments 8y ago
  I think it’s often understated what you say in your last paragraph: If success has multiple parts with a non-linear relationship (“more than the sum of its parts”), then we’d expect to see decreasing utility for IQ relative to having a strong secondary or tertiary talent — eg, strong leadership skills and EQ, so you can build momentum around your idea. In many senses, this is what we mean by a “well rounded person”. I’m not sure how that translates into the rant that IQ is useless, pseudoscience, etc. that Mr Taleb makes, though. Let’s look at height and NBA success. I think most of us agree distance is a measure, but it doesn’t explain NBA success. Just like IQ, it only really explains NBA non-success with much strength: there are very few successful short NBA players, and no midget ones; however, there are many non-NBA playing tall people. Naively, Mr Taleb seems to be arguing that height isn’t a real measurement because it doesn’t account for basketball skill.
  - mr_toad 8y ago
    Or, more subtly, once you focus on star basketball players, height ceases to be a useful differentiator. Beyond a certain point, increased height will not lead to increased success at basketball.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  > IQ is an EXCELLENT measure of "value, contribution, quality of thought". Actually, it is not. At best, IQ is correlated with intellectual potential. However, having potential is not the same as being able to perform. Even a V8 without gas fails to perform on par with a filled 2-stroke motor.
  - scotty79 8y ago
    > However, having potential is not the same as being able to perform. But having no potential is virtually the same as not being able to perform. You can find high IQ people in the highest places in human society and in the lowest places. But you don't find low IQ people in the highest places.
waterhouse 8y ago
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).)
- aleph_naught 8y ago
  Anecdotally, I would very much agree with this, with an added caveat: there are diminishing returns on mental horsepower after 2 stdevs (e.g. 130 iq). After a certain point obsessiveness separates the wheat from the chaff, by very wide margins. The long-game is underrated.
  - toasterlovin 8y ago
    You need all three. Picking the wrong thing to work on wastes all of the time that gets spent because of obsession.
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      > You need all three. Actually, you don't. It may help to be gifted on all three, but work ethics makes up for any deficit in intellectual potential. For example, MENSA membership does not correlate with intellectual elites in any research field, but you'd be hard pressed to find a leading researcher who doesn't have a strong work ethic.
      - barry-cotter 8y ago
        If you can’t hack calculus you will never be an Engineering professor, likewise close critical reading and an English professor. That puts a floor somewhere between 115 and 120 IQ on becoming a professor at a decent community college no matter how hard you’re willing to work. I guarantee you MENSA members have higher incomes and educational attainment than non members. I’m equally sure that non-members who are eligible for membership but wouldn’t bother do better because they have better social skills which are helpful for anything.

waterhouse 8y ago

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_accomplishments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Other_ac...

mikemotherwell 8y ago
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.
- naniwaduni 8y ago
  > 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. This would only be correct if the SAT were expressly an IQ test, and we selected people based on SAT score for that reason. To put it another way, making this point is kind of like selecting for tall players for a basketball team, then saying weight is correlated with fitness to be on a basketball team. That height and weight are correlated doesn't make this circular reasoning.
  - harry8 8y ago
    Yeah totally, or like selecting for confident people where you tell people who score well on the test that they're super confident. Tall is an absolute, objective measure of a real thing that exists. IQ is NOT a measure of a thing that exists. Similar effects can be found throwing dice and ascribing the total to an IQ score, then telling parents, teachers what the poor kid's IQ is as though it were their height. It's insane.

iron0013 8y ago

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_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/41038598?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co... 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!

feanaro 8y ago
I'm as surprised as you and I'm glad someone took the time to write that up (I was about to when I saw your comment). I don't understand why someone would call IQ "unscientific" without addressing research showing it to be a good predictor of future performance. Note that this still doesn't invalidate the point that people can be smart in many different ways (yet have the same IQ), which seems like a reasonable position.
- otalp 8y ago
  Just because something is a good predictor doesn't make it scientific. There could be a third variable like wealth which needs to be controlled for, but is rarely done in those studies with few exceptions. In those exceptions, it was generally found that wealth of parents played a much bigger role in future success than IQ.
  - feanaro 8y ago
    > 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 term success, like job performance.

barry-cotter 8y ago

> 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. Not true. As far as we can tell smarter is better at all levels. > Beyond the Threshold Hypothesis: Even Among the Gifted and Top Math/Science Graduate Students, Cognitive Abilities, Vocational Interests, and Lifestyle Preferences Matter for Career Choice, Performance, and Persistence > The assertion that ability differences no longer matter beyond a certain threshold is inaccurate. Among young adolescents in the top 1% of quantitative reasoning ability, individual differences in general cognitive ability level and in specific cognitive ability pattern (that is, the relationships among an individual’s math, verbal, and spatial abilities) lead to differences in educational, occupational, and creative outcomes decades later. Whereas ability level predicts the level of achievement, ability pattern predicts the realm of achievement. Adding information on vocational interests refines prediction of educational and career choices. Finally, lifestyle preferences relevant to career choice, performance, and persistence often change between ages 25 and 35. This change results in sex differences in preferences, which likely have relevance for understanding the underrepresentation of women in careers that demand more than full-time (40 hours per week) commitment. https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Ferriman_20101.pdf https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Ferriman_20101....

james_s_tayler 8y ago

His own argument is bust in that in that success and failure are themselves asymetric, so it's a moot point. "Failing" or "not succeeding" is the default and anyone can do it. In fact, the majority of people will never "make it" and most people even who do semi-well will live comfortable but not amazing lives. "Success" which he seems to judge as perhaps being a somebody or doing something notable follows a power law distribution. It's rare. Ok, so most people work the 9-5. And what does Taleb have to say about that? He says "ok, well, yes, if you're a slave then IQ seem to predict you'll do better in that particular game". Right. So it is a good predictor of how well you can expect someone to do when they play the game that the vast majority of people play. So... In other words it's roughly speaking useful. Don't even get me started on on his term IYI (intellectuals-yet-idiots). Implying that there are people who are intellectuals that suffer no bounds to their rationality nor any partisan or ideological bias. Right. Only an IYI could even come up with such a concept. I see this all the time. Disagree with someone in academia? Oh, well they are a pseudo- intellectual! Or perhaps you might consider the alternative that you just used pseudo-reasoning to reach your psuedo-conclusion. He draws an analogy between "best measure" proponents and "Value at Risk" proponents. Ok. Well let's lay out the tools that will help us analyse that analogy. In the book Shortcut John Pollack describes the 5 things that characterize an effective analogy. 1) uses the familiar to explain the unfamiliar 2) highlights similarities while obscuring differences 3) identifies a useful abstraction 4) tells a coherent story 5) resonates emotionally It certainly resonates emotionally if you accept the premise that it tells a coherent story. It certainly tells a coherent story that relying on a bust metric will catastrophicly blow up in your face if you accept the premise that it identifies a useful abstraction. It identifies a useful abstraction that a metric might not actually be measuring anything real if you accept the similarities and don't look at the differences. I'm not part of the finance world and don't have a good enough grasp to deconstruct the analogy enough to figure what the differences are and whether it is a good or a bad analogy, but I wanted to lay out the tools to help people do so. My gut says thats not a good analogy. If only because people say that well it seems to be the best measure we have and he says that's what the VaR guys said. But then he also says, well yeah if you're talking about the domain in which the majority of people spend the the majority of their lives (the workplace) then yes, it does actually seem to have some predictive power there. He himself is fooled by randomness.