You have to be rather motivated by ego protection to argue that IQ scores have more variance in individuals than in population.
Anyone who did just a small amount of research into it, knows very well that test scores are rather stable over time, it’s not hard to test this on yourself…
And somehow he thinks associating Birkenstocks with Mensa members as losers is a valid argument. I mean I don’t like Birkenstocks much, nor do I care for Mensa but you have to be rather stupid to make such a remark.
The guy got famous for making a prediction where he just got lucky. He was just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks and it seems like he is just continuing this tradition. But science doesn’t work that way, so it’s not getting him anywhere…
It could also be that NN recognizes the worst insult possible is to insult someone's intelligence, and all his sophistries are, for various reasons, meant to make it very public that he totally doesn't think you're an idiot, unlike those turrible rayziztz (there's one big ol' modren reason right there).
Until you disagree with him, then you are an actual factual utter retard.
This is a good rebuttal. I'm not sure if Taleb is aware of something called the Streisand effect. But the more he writes to debunk IQ, the more attention he draws to the subject. And more people will become more aware of it.
Something that you didn't mention but I try to bring up on topics like IQ. MRI machines get better and cheaper over time. I firmly believe that in the next 30 years, we will have a MRI machine capable of scanning and counting neurons and their connections very accurately in the brain. When that happens, we will have a physical quantity to IQ.
Imagine scanning the brains of different population groups and finding out that yes, different groups do have different number of neurons. MRI machines can measure cranial volume accurately and that correlates with IQ. But most people dismiss this as phrenology. (And whale brains are huge compared to humans). But when we have machines that can count neurons accurately? That will be a game changer.
Decided to spend an evening on this and I shit you not the first bullet point from his original article already told me everything I would need to know:
"Racists/eugenists, people bent on showing that some populations have inferior mental abilities based on IQ test=intelligence; those have been upset with me for suddenly robbing them of a “scientific” tool, as evidenced by the bitter reactions to the initial post on twitter/smear campaigns by such mountebanks as Charles Murray. (Something observed by the great Karl Popper, psychologists have a tendency to pathologize people who bust them by tagging them with some type of disorder, or personality flaw such as “childish” , “narcissist”, “egomaniac”, or something similar). Note the online magazine Quillette seems to be a cover for a sinister eugenics program (with tendencies I’ve called “neo-Nazi” under the cover of “free thought”.) Note I am finding statistical flaws in Richard Plomin’s work — the pope of twin studies (see intransitivity of correlation in my technical addendum; he doesn’t get it)."
Why I engaged more is beyond me when he already made it clear he was going to call all honest genuine detractors Neo-Nazis regardless.
I'm so annoyed that they do this. They call everyone else Neo-Nazis and they get to act as if it's even remotely sensible or professional. Why should I not just call them pedophiles, psychopaths, or some other unrelated slur which they have not yet proven themselves to be, and be done with the discussion?
I promise Allah right here right now the next person who just calls me a racist, or a Fascist for questioning Jan 6th narrative (for example) I'll just call them a pedophile and be done with it. I have no patience in politics anymore and I blame Democracy and intellectual degenerates such as Taleb.
Overall, a very good article you present your arguments efficiently, yet very thoroughly.
for better measure of intelligence than IQ (Rasch measures used in Stanford-Binet and Woodcock-Johnson). These scores let you compare children and adults, which gives another line of argument against intelligence deniers. These measures also measure question difficulty on fhe same scale and allow computing the liklihood that a person with a given ability score will be able to solve questions of a given difficulty score.
Is it possible, somewhere along the way, Taleb got a rather mediocre result for an IQ test?
That’s what I suspect happened.
Exactly my thoughts.
You have to be rather motivated by ego protection to argue that IQ scores have more variance in individuals than in population.
Anyone who did just a small amount of research into it, knows very well that test scores are rather stable over time, it’s not hard to test this on yourself…
And somehow he thinks associating Birkenstocks with Mensa members as losers is a valid argument. I mean I don’t like Birkenstocks much, nor do I care for Mensa but you have to be rather stupid to make such a remark.
The guy got famous for making a prediction where he just got lucky. He was just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks and it seems like he is just continuing this tradition. But science doesn’t work that way, so it’s not getting him anywhere…
It could also be that NN recognizes the worst insult possible is to insult someone's intelligence, and all his sophistries are, for various reasons, meant to make it very public that he totally doesn't think you're an idiot, unlike those turrible rayziztz (there's one big ol' modren reason right there).
Until you disagree with him, then you are an actual factual utter retard.
This is a good rebuttal. I'm not sure if Taleb is aware of something called the Streisand effect. But the more he writes to debunk IQ, the more attention he draws to the subject. And more people will become more aware of it.
Something that you didn't mention but I try to bring up on topics like IQ. MRI machines get better and cheaper over time. I firmly believe that in the next 30 years, we will have a MRI machine capable of scanning and counting neurons and their connections very accurately in the brain. When that happens, we will have a physical quantity to IQ.
Imagine scanning the brains of different population groups and finding out that yes, different groups do have different number of neurons. MRI machines can measure cranial volume accurately and that correlates with IQ. But most people dismiss this as phrenology. (And whale brains are huge compared to humans). But when we have machines that can count neurons accurately? That will be a game changer.
Decided to spend an evening on this and I shit you not the first bullet point from his original article already told me everything I would need to know:
"Racists/eugenists, people bent on showing that some populations have inferior mental abilities based on IQ test=intelligence; those have been upset with me for suddenly robbing them of a “scientific” tool, as evidenced by the bitter reactions to the initial post on twitter/smear campaigns by such mountebanks as Charles Murray. (Something observed by the great Karl Popper, psychologists have a tendency to pathologize people who bust them by tagging them with some type of disorder, or personality flaw such as “childish” , “narcissist”, “egomaniac”, or something similar). Note the online magazine Quillette seems to be a cover for a sinister eugenics program (with tendencies I’ve called “neo-Nazi” under the cover of “free thought”.) Note I am finding statistical flaws in Richard Plomin’s work — the pope of twin studies (see intransitivity of correlation in my technical addendum; he doesn’t get it)."
Why I engaged more is beyond me when he already made it clear he was going to call all honest genuine detractors Neo-Nazis regardless.
I'm so annoyed that they do this. They call everyone else Neo-Nazis and they get to act as if it's even remotely sensible or professional. Why should I not just call them pedophiles, psychopaths, or some other unrelated slur which they have not yet proven themselves to be, and be done with the discussion?
I promise Allah right here right now the next person who just calls me a racist, or a Fascist for questioning Jan 6th narrative (for example) I'll just call them a pedophile and be done with it. I have no patience in politics anymore and I blame Democracy and intellectual degenerates such as Taleb.
Overall, a very good article you present your arguments efficiently, yet very thoroughly.
Good article. Long commenr eaten by substack's bad programming. See
https://substack.com/@enonh/p-149185059
for better measure of intelligence than IQ (Rasch measures used in Stanford-Binet and Woodcock-Johnson). These scores let you compare children and adults, which gives another line of argument against intelligence deniers. These measures also measure question difficulty on fhe same scale and allow computing the liklihood that a person with a given ability score will be able to solve questions of a given difficulty score.