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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

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.

JamesBarney 8y ago
The substance isn't much better than the style. He makes substantial claims like IQ is not predictive of performance above 100 which in and of itself could be a whole article. And then just assumes the reader will take his word for it, even though there is a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
- harry8 8y ago
  >mountain of evidence to the contrary. [citation needed]
  - torstenvl 8y ago
    https://www.lsac.org/lsat https://www.lsac.org/lsat
  - JamesBarney 8y ago
    Here's 10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Social_correlations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Social_c...
- baccheion 8y ago
  Corporations and schools are biased toward IQs in the 115-125 range, so it is likely predictive of advancement. On the other hand, even higher IQs are associated with greater earnings. Corporations (and schools) are also biased toward Te users (ENTJ, ESTJ, INTJ, and ISTJ) and extrovert + judger types (ENTJ, ESTJ, ENFJ, and ESFJ).
  - jrs95 8y ago
    Those personality types are a lot more pseudo-scientific than IQ
    - jhbadger 8y ago
      Yes, the story of Myers-Briggs is really amazing -- how a system developed by two people with no training in psychology just invented a system with no more basis than astrology and convinced the corporate world to use it. There was a recent book "The Personality Brokers" by Merve Emre that tells the story.
  - bjoli 8y ago
    The jung/MB tests are probably the most unscientific drivel that is in wide use. It is insulting to human intelligence that is given any significance at all.
    - andrewingram 8y ago
      I've often wondered about this, because I can't see how simple categorisation across 4 axis can be either scientific or unscientific. It's just categorisation, it doesn't make predictions. I enjoy reading the different type descriptions, unlike horoscopes (which are basically barnum phrases) they do seem to describe me with a high degree of accuracy. Then again, I stopped at this point, and never dived deeper into all that Jungian shadow self stuff which I fully accept started to sound like pseudo-scientific drivel.
      - SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
        > I can't see how simple categorisation across 4 axis can be either scientific or unscientific. If you pick the axis on scientific criteria, then it can be scientific. If you just make them up, then it's not. Myers-Briggs is the latter.
      - jdietrich 8y ago
        >It's just categorisation, it doesn't make predictions. If it doesn't make predictions, it isn't science. The Big Five model of personality is reasonably scientific, because it has some predictive power. If you give someone a standardised test to measure their Big Five traits, you can make better-than-chance predictions about their behaviour in the real world. If they're high on openness to experience, they're more likely to vote Democrat. If they're low on agreeableness and conscientiousness, they're more likely to have a criminal record. The MBTI has a tiny little bit of predictive power, but it's grossly inferior to most psychometric instruments with similar aims. IMO the biggest problem with the MBTI is that it presupposes false dichotomies. Most psychological traits are approximately normally distributed, with most people being somewhere near the average. It makes no sense to categorise people as either "Thinking" or "Feeling" while excluding the middle. Knowing that someone is ESTJ or ISFP tells me almost nothing about them; they might be almost completely average on every domain, or they might be extreme on one of them. This false dichotomy also gives the MBTI very poor reliability - someone who is very slightly above average on extraversion might be slightly below average next week or next month.
- talebreturns 8y ago
  Yes, he is correct. IQ is ability to adapt yourself to an environment and not performance. In an environment where people with higher performance will be killed, higher IQ people will still surive.
zxcvvcxz 8y ago
It's his Twitter/Medium blog, he can write as he pleases. And his book sales do fine, with or without you. This is interestingly a point of his: what's 'rational' is what survives. Maybe arguments/discussion need emotional draw of some sort to be heard in the first place (in the 21st century). If a philosopher is arguing in a forest to no one, is he really arguing? Etc. We've seen the same effect of stylistic changes in classical music even. In my city, in order to keep up ticket sales and actually get to play proper classical music, the local symphony has to do renditions of pop songs to occasionally draw a larger audience and boost ticket sales. Maybe classical music is dying. Maybe dry academic discussions that nobody except academics read, are dying. [Aside - if you want to argue that maybe the 21st century modern discourse sucks, I'm right there with you. Ditto for changing music tastes.] It's OK, these things happen. Things change, as driven by the market of human interest and willingness to participate.
- torstenvl 8y ago
  That's a non-sensical argument; it turns the question of intelligence into a question of popularity. An idea that "survives" in the marketplace of ideas isn't per se rational or intelligent. Indeed, anti-science attitudes worldwide have enjoyed a great deal of popularity lately. Certainly anti-vax ideology is surviving just fine at the moment. If Taleb's argument is that IQ tests are a "swindle" because they don't predict popularity, he's completely off his rocker.
  - zxcvvcxz 8y ago
    Survival is the ultimate measure of rationality (as per Taleb). This is a higher order intelligence than stale test taking, or complete trust in the medical establishment, for instance. Low IQ is predictive of being mentally deficient. Average and above IQ is a predictor of... not much.
thaumaturgy 8y ago
For every one person who would rather have a scholarly debate about anything, there are at least a hundred who want some dessert reading, or want to be entertained, or want to get in a fight. A lot of well-respected authors distinguished themselves by not being boring. I usually use a dry tone on HN because it's a place that's particularly prone to petty pretendo-debate-club arguments, and being boring reduces the chances of getting caught in one of those, which I don't enjoy. But the more entertaining personalities here get a lot more attention. And fwiw his description of Mensans doesn't seem totally off the mark.
aleph_naught 8y ago
> This article is one of many where the actual point being made is buried beneath unnecessary and divisive ad-hominem attacks. This is consistent with his writing style though, at least since Antifragile. I had a hard time getting into Antifragile due to the constant, unending, and unnecessary ad-hominem attacks throughout the text.
tomhoward 8y ago
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.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  The guy is a fucking primadonna who has built a massive echo chamber around himself by simply ignoring everyone who disagrees with him. It’s pathetically juvenile.
- username90 8y ago
  > His whole approach designed to cut through bullshit and seek the truth. This is not the problem, the problem is that most of what he is saying in this article is bullshit veiled behind enough low level math to fool the masses.
- jdietrich 8y ago
peteretep 8y ago
Which of his earlier writing did you enjoy? I’ve completely avoided anything of his since about the first 30 pages of The Black Swan.
kneel 8y ago
Taleb is great. He's always been a crank.
talebreturns 8y ago
I am very confused. On one hand people give some credit to IQ yet fail to acknowledge it's not Europeans or American who have highest IQ but the East/Central Asians. But people from Askenazi Jewish tribe posses even higher IQ. No one really knows why high IQ originates in that region or specific tribe. But it's them who made their way to America before Europeans. Genetic research has proved that the native Americans are genetically Central Asians. It's safe to assume IQ = superior ability to adapt to your environmental not intelligence. It helped you survive genocide targeted at you orchestrated by one of most powerful regime of the time. It helps you survive in the most difficult and diverse terrain. It helps you walk through the frozen land into completely different climate and terrain, still manage to surive. IQ is everything which helps you survive in your environment but it doesn't mean that high IQ people are capable of empathising with the large set of population with average IQ. Should these people whoes primary instinct is to surive at any cost themselves be given chance to thinks for others? No we don't think so. So we shouldn't have high IQ people at top, we should actively select against them. In modern word as you go farther from the mean, the benefit of IQ decreases till ofc we are hit by an apoclyspe you'll not be able to see what high IQ is capable of.
stared 8y ago
Even worse, by "When someone asks you a question in the real world, you focus first on “why is he/she asking me that?”, [...] Only suckers don’t have that instinct." he pretty much offends everyone on the autism spectrum.

JamesBarney 8y ago

The substance isn't much better than the style. He makes substantial claims like IQ is not predictive of performance above 100 which in and of itself could be a whole article. And then just assumes the reader will take his word for it, even though there is a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

harry8 8y ago
>mountain of evidence to the contrary. [citation needed]
- torstenvl 8y ago
  https://www.lsac.org/lsat https://www.lsac.org/lsat
- JamesBarney 8y ago
  Here's 10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Social_correlations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Social_c...
baccheion 8y ago
Corporations and schools are biased toward IQs in the 115-125 range, so it is likely predictive of advancement. On the other hand, even higher IQs are associated with greater earnings. Corporations (and schools) are also biased toward Te users (ENTJ, ESTJ, INTJ, and ISTJ) and extrovert + judger types (ENTJ, ESTJ, ENFJ, and ESFJ).
- jrs95 8y ago
  Those personality types are a lot more pseudo-scientific than IQ
  - jhbadger 8y ago
    Yes, the story of Myers-Briggs is really amazing -- how a system developed by two people with no training in psychology just invented a system with no more basis than astrology and convinced the corporate world to use it. There was a recent book "The Personality Brokers" by Merve Emre that tells the story.
- bjoli 8y ago
  The jung/MB tests are probably the most unscientific drivel that is in wide use. It is insulting to human intelligence that is given any significance at all.
  - andrewingram 8y ago
    I've often wondered about this, because I can't see how simple categorisation across 4 axis can be either scientific or unscientific. It's just categorisation, it doesn't make predictions. I enjoy reading the different type descriptions, unlike horoscopes (which are basically barnum phrases) they do seem to describe me with a high degree of accuracy. Then again, I stopped at this point, and never dived deeper into all that Jungian shadow self stuff which I fully accept started to sound like pseudo-scientific drivel.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
      > I can't see how simple categorisation across 4 axis can be either scientific or unscientific. If you pick the axis on scientific criteria, then it can be scientific. If you just make them up, then it's not. Myers-Briggs is the latter.
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      >It's just categorisation, it doesn't make predictions. If it doesn't make predictions, it isn't science. The Big Five model of personality is reasonably scientific, because it has some predictive power. If you give someone a standardised test to measure their Big Five traits, you can make better-than-chance predictions about their behaviour in the real world. If they're high on openness to experience, they're more likely to vote Democrat. If they're low on agreeableness and conscientiousness, they're more likely to have a criminal record. The MBTI has a tiny little bit of predictive power, but it's grossly inferior to most psychometric instruments with similar aims. IMO the biggest problem with the MBTI is that it presupposes false dichotomies. Most psychological traits are approximately normally distributed, with most people being somewhere near the average. It makes no sense to categorise people as either "Thinking" or "Feeling" while excluding the middle. Knowing that someone is ESTJ or ISFP tells me almost nothing about them; they might be almost completely average on every domain, or they might be extreme on one of them. This false dichotomy also gives the MBTI very poor reliability - someone who is very slightly above average on extraversion might be slightly below average next week or next month.
talebreturns 8y ago
Yes, he is correct. IQ is ability to adapt yourself to an environment and not performance. In an environment where people with higher performance will be killed, higher IQ people will still surive.

zxcvvcxz 8y ago

It's his Twitter/Medium blog, he can write as he pleases. And his book sales do fine, with or without you. This is interestingly a point of his: what's 'rational' is what survives. Maybe arguments/discussion need emotional draw of some sort to be heard in the first place (in the 21st century). If a philosopher is arguing in a forest to no one, is he really arguing? Etc. We've seen the same effect of stylistic changes in classical music even. In my city, in order to keep up ticket sales and actually get to play proper classical music, the local symphony has to do renditions of pop songs to occasionally draw a larger audience and boost ticket sales. Maybe classical music is dying. Maybe dry academic discussions that nobody except academics read, are dying. [Aside - if you want to argue that maybe the 21st century modern discourse sucks, I'm right there with you. Ditto for changing music tastes.] It's OK, these things happen. Things change, as driven by the market of human interest and willingness to participate.

torstenvl 8y ago
That's a non-sensical argument; it turns the question of intelligence into a question of popularity. An idea that "survives" in the marketplace of ideas isn't per se rational or intelligent. Indeed, anti-science attitudes worldwide have enjoyed a great deal of popularity lately. Certainly anti-vax ideology is surviving just fine at the moment. If Taleb's argument is that IQ tests are a "swindle" because they don't predict popularity, he's completely off his rocker.
- zxcvvcxz 8y ago
  Survival is the ultimate measure of rationality (as per Taleb). This is a higher order intelligence than stale test taking, or complete trust in the medical establishment, for instance. Low IQ is predictive of being mentally deficient. Average and above IQ is a predictor of... not much.

thaumaturgy 8y ago

For every one person who would rather have a scholarly debate about anything, there are at least a hundred who want some dessert reading, or want to be entertained, or want to get in a fight. A lot of well-respected authors distinguished themselves by not being boring. I usually use a dry tone on HN because it's a place that's particularly prone to petty pretendo-debate-club arguments, and being boring reduces the chances of getting caught in one of those, which I don't enjoy. But the more entertaining personalities here get a lot more attention. And fwiw his description of Mensans doesn't seem totally off the mark.

aleph_naught 8y ago

> This article is one of many where the actual point being made is buried beneath unnecessary and divisive ad-hominem attacks. This is consistent with his writing style though, at least since Antifragile. I had a hard time getting into Antifragile due to the constant, unending, and unnecessary ad-hominem attacks throughout the text.

tomhoward 8y ago

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.

toasterlovin 8y ago
The guy is a fucking primadonna who has built a massive echo chamber around himself by simply ignoring everyone who disagrees with him. It’s pathetically juvenile.
username90 8y ago
> His whole approach designed to cut through bullshit and seek the truth. This is not the problem, the problem is that most of what he is saying in this article is bullshit veiled behind enough low level math to fool the masses.
jdietrich 8y ago

peteretep 8y ago

Which of his earlier writing did you enjoy? I’ve completely avoided anything of his since about the first 30 pages of The Black Swan.

kneel 8y ago

Taleb is great. He's always been a crank.

talebreturns 8y ago

I am very confused. On one hand people give some credit to IQ yet fail to acknowledge it's not Europeans or American who have highest IQ but the East/Central Asians. But people from Askenazi Jewish tribe posses even higher IQ. No one really knows why high IQ originates in that region or specific tribe. But it's them who made their way to America before Europeans. Genetic research has proved that the native Americans are genetically Central Asians. It's safe to assume IQ = superior ability to adapt to your environmental not intelligence. It helped you survive genocide targeted at you orchestrated by one of most powerful regime of the time. It helps you survive in the most difficult and diverse terrain. It helps you walk through the frozen land into completely different climate and terrain, still manage to surive. IQ is everything which helps you survive in your environment but it doesn't mean that high IQ people are capable of empathising with the large set of population with average IQ. Should these people whoes primary instinct is to surive at any cost themselves be given chance to thinks for others? No we don't think so. So we shouldn't have high IQ people at top, we should actively select against them. In modern word as you go farther from the mean, the benefit of IQ decreases till ofc we are hit by an apoclyspe you'll not be able to see what high IQ is capable of.

stared 8y ago

Even worse, by "When someone asks you a question in the real world, you focus first on “why is he/she asking me that?”, [...] Only suckers don’t have that instinct." he pretty much offends everyone on the autism spectrum.