site banner
greyenlightenment  investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...  1yr ago (greyenlightenment.com)   Edited 1yr ago   3045 thread views

Nassim Taleb is likely wrong about IQ and talent

greyenlightenment.com
11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It's very obvious that Taleb is wrong about IQ. One can immediately see that those with very low IQ, with mental disabilities like Downs Syndrome and similar, are not capable of earning high income. I've met people who are very capable in verbal and mathematical domains, it's pretty obvious that their intelligence is general, that it extends out to everything. They're earning high incomes too.

One can immediately see that Taleb's own chosen chart comparing income to intelligence shows that they are positively correlated. And there's a gigantic confounder in that 'income' from Zalorsky 2007 includes welfare payments, artificially propping up the incomes of the poor/low-IQ. Even so, the paper still concludes that IQ is positively associated with higher income. Taleb just brushes off that conclusion saying that there was suspicious data selection and that he'll do his own study later.

https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39

Note that he's writing on medium, not an academically rigorous outlet. I read an article there claiming that Musk's twitter profile pic of a fork in the road meant that the Bitcoin he bought was actually BSV, a fork of bitcoin.

https://miro.medium.com/max/828/1*Txc8Deu_EEM7pH7ZL0k4cg.webp

Taleb's claim is that IQ is meaningful for lower than average but not higher than average values

Taleb is right in probably a strict sense — there is diminishing marginal returns to intelligence if the standard of success is wealth.

I've not seen a study that doesn't top out too low to confirm or refute that.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats