To those who are a little confused, the main point is that you can't use measures which are roughly normally distributed (like IQ) to predict other things that are not at all normally distributed "wealth". Most of the relationship that social scientists see is "noise" or unexplainable, random variation in the results.
Couldn't a translation model that maps a Gaussian to a non-normally distributed space be crafted? Theres of course the chance that because its translating from a Gaussian that it inherently will not work, but hey its worth a shot. Not sure if that's already been done.
@@mimmotronics People have tried things like PCAs with varying results. Nassim isn't a big fan of these transformations, but it's out of my expertise to try and explain why they don't always work
Taleb is right to be skeptical, indeed, disdainful about the limitations of normally distributed number sets and attempts of social scientists to fit the square peg of random uncorrelated noisy information into Gaussian round holes. But there's a bit of a straw man here because IQ, properly considered, is a useful metric of a certain cognitive skill--namely the ability to manipulate symbols. A high level capacity to manipulate symbols is especially useful for, say, a physics professor who will never be particularly wealthy, or an ex-options-trader-mathematician best selling author who has very high levels of fuck you money. No low IQ person is likely to EVER to be in either of these positions with vastly different net worths, so "'wealth" as a dependent variable, as are many others, is pretty useless. But let's do a thought experiment. If you had a choice of societies to live in, which would you choose? A society where the average IQ is 80 and the standard deviation of 5, or a society where the average IQ is 130 with a standard of deviation of 5? If you're a high IQ person, you might choose the former, thinking, "hey I can be king there!!" But maybe, in that low IQ society, you are more likely to run across individuals with low executive functioning and low impulse control, with a greater potential to do harm to YOU on a whim. In the high IQ society your may not stand out from the crowd and you may run across some very shrewd dark triad individuals or autistically challenged savants. Then again, you would be able to have conversations about statistics. Nevertheless, in the spirit of "skin in the game," I challenge Taleb to put himself inside one of those low IQ societies and maneuver inside it on permanent basis- hey, all the potential dependent variables are statistically noisy anyway, so no problem!!! You can find similar societies not too far from NYU by the way. My non-statistical guess is that he'd take a pass.
Im having statistics as a course for my engineering study. I absolutely have hated every bit of it, until now. Somehow randomly stumbling upon your videos has made me very interested in it, thanks.
@@bujdosogyula3429 In Medium Magazine? I did actually. But typical of Taleb fans to point vaguely to his amazing argument without feeling the need to spell it out at all.
Nassim, I am writing my 'Master's Thesis' based upon your Dynamic Hedging text(partly). I thought you should know the impact your thinking has had on me. This includes the treatment of volatility, statistics, stochastic applications, and how that should play out in areas beyond finance. Take this as an indication of my respect.
CptnBrryCrnch Just finishing the taut components of my Data Analytics MSc. I would also be interested in reading your thesis. Best of luck with your masters :)
@@babakmadadi356 I am still writing and working on it. Thanks for the words of encouragement! Your subject sounds really engaging, actually. What would be the best way for a novice(myself) to learn more about your field?
@@TradeStream By spot on you mean ignores bits of information about iq while also giving talks on it? Go watch Vaush and Destiny and Dillahunty dismantle Jordan for the idiot that he is. Seriously. Spot on doesnt come close
@@TradeStream The issue is Peterson is not a statistician at his core. Remember, IQ science is borrowing knowledge from this field, and to put it simply, if psychologists misinterpret the statistics then IQ science should be reexamined
@@Septiviumexe Destiny, Vaush and Dillahunty know less about statistics and math than Peterson tho, not sure why you think what they have to say matters. You can easily find much more credible sources debunking Peterson.
Taleb is absolutely one of the last REAL humanists standing on this planet! We would need more intellectuals like him in Europe! P.S. In Europe we have another kind of stupid useless tests, called "OECD PISA". They pretend to "measure" the high or low grades of education of different countries. The director of that institution, Andreas Schleicher, is in my opinion the "unsophisticated nerd" par excellence. These kind of people are causing damages in many countries with their garbage.
+Testament DNR Taleb's faulty stats debunked here: (can't post a URL as YT will remove it): "Nassim Taleb on IQ debunked - Pt 1" [Corelian Channel] watch?v=ju_rEErqUrI
Taleb's strength is that basically no one other than someone with similar qualification can rebut his mathematical assertions. you don't need IQ to derive or infer inconvenient truths about stupidity and the degree to which it is present in a given country. Taleb said on twitter he finds it morally wrong etc...sure I agree
That's the point. He finds it morally wrong, therefore his cognitive bias will lead him to describe this data is a way that is aligned with his morals. So, you can walk away from his analysis, not the data though. For example, expecting a correlation between wealth and IQ is just plain stupid. My children are guaranteed to be wealthy based on my success in life. They are not however guaranteed a high IQ. The moment the video showed a correlation between wealth and IQ, I stopped listening. It's a stupid stupid stupid, extra stupid analysis to perform and expect any correlated result from if you know anything about the origins of the data. . . Unless, you are trying to prove a point, which he is because his cognitive bias can't let him walk away from it. Additionally, this is the core problem of intellectuals that do not engage extensively with other fields. Tunnel vision.
@@SKushon It's not stupid, it is reasonable as it is easy to measure, you have a number. Also, who tells you that the IQ is not the result of a moral bias e.g. some people and groups will always be smarter no matter what you do.
@@m3po22 no i didn't. Please go to the article he wrote that he is displaying and discussing here on medium. In the comments there are good "compelling counter arguments"for that, I don't feel like doing that here. Peace👍
@@yushpi He fails to note that IQ is never expressed as normally distributed, but transformed to a normal distribution for tractability. Very amateur mistake.
I am not a stats guys in any way, shape, or form. But my gut has always told me that IQ was more predictive of being a good test taker. One last point, the smartest people I know worked with their hands. From the mechanic to the carpenter, many are smart as hell in the real world.
There is just something natural with working with your body. I mean evolution primed us to ,so like fasting, diet, etc. they are needed to establish a balance. From anecdotal evidence, the people I know that are the most organized/physical tend to be more successful. My grades in Math improved when I organized my life. Well, my grades improved because my ability to learn improved.
There is a complete lack of mid-level jobs, especially stem majors, which limits potential 'successes'. And anyways, who's to say 'being an engineer' requires more 'intelligence', than a prospering engineer scoring straight As across high level college courses. Engineers have done most of their best theoretical thinking in their years as academics, when the mind peaks - the fact they find mundane ways to apply their skills in the real world to uphold their status, shouldn't be taken to as a sign of extraordinary intelligence. Being able to maintain a profession more-so reflects some elementary level intelligence.
What is IQ a good measure or indicator of, besides the ability to perform well on the test itself? I don’t find any surprise watching your video because my understand is that IQ represent potential. Certainly there are innumerable other factors that contribute to what actually happens.
Of course it represents something. It’s not by accident that if you go to a maths class at an Ivy League university and do an IQ test with them, then do an IQ test with a bunch of high school dropouts, you would see a clear disparity. Nobody is saying it’s definitive but I’d bet my house on it that Taleb scores much higher on an IQ test than me. Coincidence?
To understand would be a fair bit. It would be a serious hobby to teach yourself. I'm currently studying statistics at uni. As far as math goes its lots of calculus, linear algebra, probability theory, etc. To just interpret the gist of what he's saying here however would probably just require a few listens to of the video.
If you encounter a word or concept you are unfamiliar with, look it up. If the definition of that concept contains a concept you are unfamiliar with, look that up. Using this recursive method, you’ll uncover the principal components required to understand the idea. This may take a while, but it’s the only way to truly understand high level concepts.
If you did these exact same plots for Height and Basketball Ability, it would look very similar, wouldn't it? Height is a very real biological property, and it has a correlation with Basketball Success but only a very noisy correlation
@@artie649 why? because all the NBA pros are tall? All the self made billionaires have super high IQs as well. And then there are tons of tall people who can't play basketball and tons of high IQ people who can't make money. It's the same thing
@@artie649 yes exactly, there's a correlation. but it's a weak, noisy correlation because the skill and athletisism of the player counts just as much as the height, if not more.
@@artie649 you missed the point huh? that's the reason why i chose this example, because there is a connection between height and basketball success, just like there's a correlation between IQ and financial or academic success
Hi! I guess you have already proven your statement: "If you're measuring a fat tailed performance with a Gaussian predictor, then the correlation will not converge". Although this makes total sense to me, where could I read technical proof about this?
I had great trouble understanding the article as a non-expert. I love maths and have always been good at it, yet I understand none of what you are saying. This is no way to write an argument, it's nearly incomprehensible jargon mixed with ad hominem attacks on people like Dr Charles Murray.
This is actually easy. The problem is that correlation is DEFINED using variation. So if the variation doesnt exist then you can not define correlation, it doesnt exists. And this is the Point. The fat tailed distributions dont have variation so theoretical correlation between fat tailed and something different doesnt exists.
>Wealth Is it evaluated whether wealth was passed down from family or whether person pulled himself out of poverty? What if you look at A) IQ, B) conscientiousness and D) direction and magnitude of change in wealth distribution percentile as a three dimensional scatter plot. Data about this might be hard to acquire but I highly doubt there won't be a correlation if one were to look at such data.
@@Nork490 He just showed it is not a predictor, based on the data. I am not sure if you ever had a job, how you can claim that IQ test result predicts how you are doing your job, but ok.
If you took a randomized group of 10,000 people in the US with IQ scores between 90-105, and 10,000 people who score between 100-115, is it not reasonable to suggest that the higher IQ group will produce more engineers, doctors, and other professions which require competence? Which group would have the higher crime rate? Are you suggesting that there are no reasonable expectations generated by the average IQ score of a population?
I realize the point about the correlations being sometimes circular, but does that undermine the practical application of IQ? Yes, IQ will inherently correlate with academic success because both are measured in terms of test-taking. But isn't academic success still a desired outcome, as opposed to dropping out of school or flunking out of college? These correlations are still measures of real-world outcomes, despite being similar measures. Net worth and yearly income are also somewhat "circular" in this way, but both describe and entail facts about people's needs, interests, and way of life.
The argument is whether IQ is a measure of intelligence. It is not, because intelligence is NOT reducible to test taking. This is Nassim's argument, which you can also easily find in his books. He knew successful traders who were terrible at academic stuff but great at their job. Hence they could not have been stupid. As for the predictability of academic outcomes based on IQ scores, you don't need an IQ test to find out who is a gifted test taker. You just administer normal tests to them. Mathematically gifted children will outperform their peers in mathematics, as will the linguistically gifted in essay writing. You don't need to contrive a test to measure what is already being measured.
@@noname_whatsoever But if you set the bar high enough - say at the 95th percentile - then that group of mathematically gifted kids will also reliably outperform their peers in essay writing, and the 95th-percentile linguistically gifted kids will also outperform their peers in math.
@@skoto8219 I don't know what you base this conjecture on. But even if this were true, if you had data about relative performance of people gifted in different domains, it still would not matter, because what is at stake here is whether IQ is a useful measure for predicting academic performance or a scale that captures variability of human intelligence. Neither is true. IQ simplifies the complexity of human cognitive ability and is just another nerdy test that correlates with similar tests. Cognition, however, is not only about tests.
Nassim, for the IQ-SAT plot, why are there literally zero people above IQ 130? It seems the relationship would show to be more linear with less drop off at the right end if people above IQ 130 were included, especially since those are the people we would expect to score the highest. Even without the high-end IQ data points, the people at 130 are still all doing well on the SAT compared to the average. So IQ is a good predictor for standardized test performance (not surprising at all). Nassim, two questions: why don’t you address the heritability and biological basis for general cognitive ability in depth? A lot of studies have tracked the g factor with brain morphology. It’s striking that g correlates with head size and structural & connectivity elements of the cortex. Pair this with the extremely high heritability estimate, and it strongly indicates that general cognitive ability has a biological basis. This is exactly what you would expect for a complex trait like intelligence in a population. You would expect intelligence to vary and have a biological origin in the brain. Second question: why do psyshometricians assume that general cognitive ability would fit a Gaussian curve? There doesn’t seem to be a good reason to justify this. I’ve read that people who design IQ tests remove a lot of harder questions. The WAIS-makers state that the test starts to lose validity after 130. It’s known that they transform the data to fit a Gaussian. It seems to me that human intelligence is very fat tailed; it exists in extremistan. Nassim, do you think IQ would become more robust if they trashed the Gaussian assumption? It would be interesting to see. John Von Neumann is wayyyyyy smarter than most people who would score similarly on an IQ test. So it really is a limited tool. They don’t even try to describe what different IQ point differences represent. Differences in IQ points do not inform us about the actual differences in the underlying parameter, general cognitive ability.
Why would you expect human intelligence to exist in extremistan? That would mean that some people are magnitudes smarter than others, which is not what we observe. John von Neumann, as you mention, was probably one of the smartest persons to have lived, that we know of (huge limitation), yet for all the amazing stuff he came up with, we view him as human, not some extraterrestrial intelligence.
+Amplicon >"Nassim, for the IQ-SAT plot, why are there literally zero people above IQ 130?" Because Nassim is a poor analyst of statistical graphs. He can't see clipping effect of score conversion, which creates an artificial "ceiling", nor the source of non-linear nature of the IQ/SAT relationship. All his "red dot" graphs (and thus the conclusions he draws) are incorrect. Taleb's faulty stats debunked (can't post a URL as YT will remove it): "Nassim Taleb on IQ debunked - Pt 1" [Corelian Channel] watch?v=ju_rEErqUrI >"why do psyshometricians assume that general cognitive ability would fit a Gaussian curve?" >"There doesn’t seem to be a good reason to justify this" IQ tests are designed and normalized on a representative group of about 2,000 people to produce normal distribution. Yes, there good reasons to assume that IQs fit a Gaussian curve for most of the population. I may elaborate on this in Part 2 of the video above.
@@corelianchannel4905 Hopefully you don't delete this comment out of embarrassment, but if you do I'll just get this out ahead of time. You need to brush up on different types of statistical analysis: *Descriptive Type of Statistical Analysis Inferential Type of Statistical Analysis Prescriptive Analysis Predictive Analysis Casual Analysis Exploratory Data Analysis Mechanistic Analysis* You also need to make sure you're fully reading & understanding the study's you cite. You cited: www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3 "A joint (multi-phenotype) analysis of educational attainment and three related cognitive phenotypes generates polygenic scores that explain 11-13% of the variance in educational attainment and 7-10% of the variance in cognitive performance." Better study(meta analysis not just 1 study) : journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797618774253 "How Much Does Education Improve Intelligence?: Intelligence test scores and educational duration are positively correlated. This correlation could be interpreted in two ways: Students with greater propensity for intelligence go on to complete more education, or a longer education increases intelligence. We meta-analyzed three categories of quasiexperimental studies of educational effects on intelligence: those estimating education-intelligence associations after controlling for earlier intelligence, those using compulsory schooling policy changes as instrumental variables, and those using regression-discontinuity designs on school-entry age cutoffs. Across 142 effect sizes from 42 data sets involving over 600,000 participants, we found consistent evidence for beneficial effects of education on cognitive abilities of approximately 1 to 5 IQ points for an additional year of education. Moderator analyses indicated that the effects persisted across the life span and were present on all broad categories of cognitive ability studied. Education appears to be the most consistent, robust, and durable method yet to be identified for raising intelligence."
Psychometiricans assume that intelligence is normally distributed because it's strongly biologically bounded, and almost all strongly biologically bounded variables are normally distributed.
As long as IQ is measured in terms of a sequential environment, we will not advance. And we are now deeply trapped in the sequential bubble, that is currently imploding.
@@rggharwiom2102 Hope you are well. I have the impression we know each other, but I can be wrong. Regarding your question, I would like to give a basic example. When you walk, you may think that you are doing steps. Probably, you think that this is the way it has to be. One thing after the other, one step after the other. This perception could also be available to you when you analyse your thought process/es. One thought after the other, and so on. So, when someone measures sth, they are creating a sequential environment (perception of it, to be exact) to fit their sequential tools. This works nicely, as changing perception is relatively easy and has been done for ages. The problem arises, when the results of the measurements are not sufficient to guarantee advance in the field to be explored, or in society itself, or individually. And by now, most of the sequential bubble is imploding, as there is no "step further" or beyond. Sequential bubbles impede paradigm shifts completely (but are willingly opened to fake them by changing the measuring tool until it may fit). Just go out on the street on a nice day, with a lot of people walking. Bend over and look through your legs behind you. Observe how they all really walk. This will show you how far the manipulation of your measuring tools (your perception) has gone. Trust me, this is an easy experiment and you will immediately notice the difference between what you were told to see and what walking really looks like. Have a nice day and I wish the very best for you and your beloved, M.
I dont know why you would think making money is related to high IQ. The ability to make money is more related with a lack of moral values and empathy, and having psychopathic traits. IQ is very strongly correlated to the ability to learn new things quickly and logical reasoning. Your bad premise of "IQ is correlated with wealth" doesn't make IQ a swindle.
This will probably be lost in the echo chamber that is this comment section, but noone has ever claimed that IQ is a predictor for wealth. Yet 95% of this video is focused on IQ vs. wealth graph. If Taleb wasn't blocking people on Twitter, he would've been so misapprehended.
Great video, thanks Mr. Taleb. I missed the second problem when you discussed it in the Medium article, or didn't understand it: the problem of a gaussian function predicting a fat-tailed distribution. It's easy to see how that would be a big problem now, as you'd see everyone with an IQ of 150 being multi-millionaires and that's clearly not the case.
+Razer217 >"you'd see everyone with an IQ of 150 being multi-millionaires" What makes you think people with IQ > 150 want to accumulate money, as oppose to pursuing activities that are more fulfilling to them (art, writing, research, travel)?
@@corelianchannel4905 Hopefully you don't delete this comment out of embarrassment, but if you do I'll just get this out ahead of time. You need to brush up on different types of statistical analysis: *Descriptive Type of Statistical Analysis Inferential Type of Statistical Analysis Prescriptive Analysis Predictive Analysis Casual Analysis Exploratory Data Analysis Mechanistic Analysis* You also need to make sure you're fully reading & understanding the study's you cite. You cited: www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3 "A joint (multi-phenotype) analysis of educational attainment and three related cognitive phenotypes generates polygenic scores that explain 11-13% of the variance in educational attainment and 7-10% of the variance in cognitive performance." Better study(meta analysis not just 1 study) : journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797618774253 "How Much Does Education Improve Intelligence?: Intelligence test scores and educational duration are positively correlated. This correlation could be interpreted in two ways: Students with greater propensity for intelligence go on to complete more education, or a longer education increases intelligence. We meta-analyzed three categories of quasiexperimental studies of educational effects on intelligence: those estimating education-intelligence associations after controlling for earlier intelligence, those using compulsory schooling policy changes as instrumental variables, and those using regression-discontinuity designs on school-entry age cutoffs. Across 142 effect sizes from 42 data sets involving over 600,000 participants, we found consistent evidence for beneficial effects of education on cognitive abilities of approximately 1 to 5 IQ points for an additional year of education. Moderator analyses indicated that the effects persisted across the life span and were present on all broad categories of cognitive ability studied. Education appears to be the most consistent, robust, and durable method yet to be identified for raising intelligence."
people still do IQ in 2021? Easy way to disprove the usefulness of IQ tests: have people study for them. or is the point of IQ tests to see how people do if they don't study for them? hmmm....
I hear that there is a causal link btwn wealth and iq; on avg, corrected for other variables, moving from the bottom 5% of the socioeconomic class to the top 5% increases your iq, on avg, by 1sd
Christopher Grant Disagree, there are many studies coming to very similar conclusions, and the fact that you don’t think there is a causal link demonstrates your unwillingness to google
Christopher Grant The fact that this phenomenon still exists when poverty levels are at an all time low, and globalization of information is at an all time high, gives an over-significant reason to believe that there is a causal link.
@@thunderbirdizations You dont understand what causality means, what you are trying to describe is correlation and what iq tries to do is claim that correlation is a decent measure of reality, and in this case intelligence, which it isnt.
His argument is fallacious in many different ways. He substitutes (financial) success for intelligence - so straightaway that's the fallacy of equivocation and it renders everything else he says moot. He introduces copious ad hoc "outs" such as IYI, loser, paper-shuffler etc to bluff away the direct falsification of his main point. Thus, these outrageous no true scotsman fallacies render his argument circular and empty. He makes various appeals to morality (eg, "racists") and engages in numerous ad hominems with his silly made up terms. And the list goes on... In short, the only thing to comprehend here is an absolute shambles composed of a jumbled collection of different argument run together as one and with the lot hidden behind irrelevant mathematics.
@@und3rgroundman865 everything you have on him is the same cherry picked trash that pseudo right intellectuals use to pigeon hole their opponents. 'He says racism and calls people names'. Butthurt triggered cant face reality' - essentiallly reducing him to like an outrage sjw from a college campus. Pathetic
@@und3rgroundman865the extent to which you have proven my point is just illustrative of how idiotic the opposition are. The point is that it doesnt even matter what the 'outcome' is that its meant to predict. 'Financial success' is incidental in this argument hes making, its not even relevant. The point is that it cant predict anything AT ALL with high performance (literally anything past origin). Its a good test for proving people are retarded, but that could be just as easily done by giving them a fucking sudoku from a news paper.
@@sunnymarchflymcgee When the core of an argument is shown to be wildly fallacious - that's not cherry picking, that's the destruction of the argument. You, on the other hand, cherry picked my name calling concerns when that was trivial compared to to my main criticism: the ridiculous series of redefinitions that render all else moot.
@@und3rgroundman865, stranger, if you write cliché phrases such as "wildly fallacious" you add emotion to your argument, not strength. Words like inaccurate and fallacious have clear definitions which allow you to make your point accurately without edgy qualifiers. Now, structure aside, Taleb's point about financial success was not the "core" of his argument. Rather, his paper proves that IQ tests do not measure what is intended to be measured. This remains true even when you remove his point on financial success which you find distracting.
My IQ is >150. I have never made over $40,000 in a year. Why?? Because I have a wide range of interests, love learning and have no desire to be in a political environment like a corporation. The world rewards mastery and service. If you spend all your time on a subject, and can deliver to a large group of people, you get paid. Fat Tony may get paid handsomely mastering the fine art of car salesmanship, but he's not cracking the atom.
I find iq tests completely useless. If i compare my own "first try" against myself after doing that test every day for one entire year i would get completely different results. I would come out as a genius in the second test compared to before but i am in reality the exact same person.
Of course you will. IQ tests are to be taken within a certain time limit. Let's say the IQ test you take was meant to be taken in 25 minutes. Take it again the next day, and you'll technically have spent 50 minutes on it.
Unfortunately, the charts at the beginning have a reversed axis from the IQ chart shown below. It shows the opposite of what is claimed. Then later when yo scroll down, if you look at the raw data, it shows that IQ does continue to predict net worth throughout the distribution. The chart looking noisy doesn't change that.
@@manuelolaya3194 Or it shows that you don't know how statistics works. It isn't just noise, as demonstrated by the model. Pulling out a scatterplot that just looks noisy to the human eye doesn't change what the data actually says.
@@Bridge2110Have you read the article? His entire point is that in the absence of symmetry correlation decreases and thus becomes meaningless. The graphs shown, show very little symmetry in most things. Also, changing the axis in the SAT to IQ stuff does not remove for the fact that there isn't any symmetry.
+Peter Straka You don't need to log transform, you can just take the medians, standard way of dealing with skewed distributions (income, house prices). Of course, Taleb won't do it, since then IQ vs wealth/income becomes very apparent. Your claims and faulty stats debunked here: (can't post a URL as YT will remove it): "Nassim Taleb on IQ debunked - Pt 1" [Corelian Channel] watch?v=ju_rEErqUrI
>"Why don't you log transform someone falling" Because falling is a physical action, not data, and thus not suitable to mathematical operations to reveal patterns. If you take medians from the (heavily skewed) wealth/income data, the correlation with IQ becomes instantly apparent. What does it tell you? Medians were printed in the Zagorsky paper. Why did you choose to not address them? Your claims and faulty stats debunked here: (can't post a URL as YT will remove it): "Nassim Taleb on IQ debunked - Pt 1" [Corelian Channel] watch?v=ju_rEErqUrI
@@nntalebproba Complete non-answer, log-transforming a power law distribution solves the problems you talk about about precisely because it removes fat tails. This is taught to freshmen.
@@vainbow4632 THen go watch videos for freshmen. Transformation does not change the distributional properties, even if the fit works. And there is NO transformation from power law to Gaussian, sorry . I block idiots.
Monsieur Taleb, je suis passionné par votre oeuvre et tous vos écrits, or je ne suis pas anglophone, pouvez-vous s'il vous plait mettre des vidéos en fançais ? S'il vous plait, Karim
IQ is an aptitude test and is tuned using statistics. For example, the questions are selected based on what (estimated) proportion of test takers can answer them correctly. Then the testee's performance is used to place them in the that quantile. In other words, it divides the population using questions of varying difficulty. Taleb's point is weak. The test isn't designed to predict wealth outcomes. Of course there are silly quackademics that don't even understand statistics that will try to use any kind of data for anything within their academy. It's too easy to mock non mathematicians for misapplying statistical methods. The irony is that mathematics aptitude is highly, highly correlated with IQ and that Taleb knows it. In other words, he is himself using his higher IQ and consequent mathematical abilities to mock academics without sufficient IQ to understand higher mathematics. (distribution theory, technical mathematical theorems, and the nuanced details of probability and statistics).
I know IQ is scientific swindle but I am not too knowlegable on math can anyone give me a summary of what he is saying I am 14 this is super hard to understand
Not very good with math. So the extra explanation is appreciated. Much better than just tossing around ad hominens on twitter. A couple of questions … Couldn't increased variance in outcomes as IQ increases perhaps indicate other factors interfering with someone maximizing their intellectual potential? Many factors that go into wealth accumulation other than IQ. Shouldn't data sets specifically pertaining to intelligence be used to assess the viability of IQ? For example: Excellence and advancement in Math. How far along did someone get before they flunked a course? Regardless, thanks for challenging my views. Even if I think you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Much less costly to give people a test, than to have someone sit down with a psychologist for 15 minutes or however long it takes to assess their mental health.
The problem is that beyond a certain level (say high school algebra), other factors contribute to success and accomplishment. Among them, things harder to quantify such as motivation, discipline, and peer pressure.
+Aaron Peters >"Not very good with math" Neither is Taleb. Taleb's faulty stats debunked here: (can't post a URL as YT will remove it): "Nassim Taleb on IQ debunked - Pt 1" [Corelian Channel] watch?v=ju_rEErqUrI
@@corelianchannel4905 Hopefully you don't delete this comment out of embarrassment, but if you do I'll just get this out ahead of time. You need to brush up on different types of statistical analysis: *Descriptive Type of Statistical Analysis Inferential Type of Statistical Analysis Prescriptive Analysis Predictive Analysis Casual Analysis Exploratory Data Analysis Mechanistic Analysis* You also need to make sure you're fully reading & understanding the study's you cite. You cited: www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3 "A joint (multi-phenotype) analysis of educational attainment and three related cognitive phenotypes generates polygenic scores that explain 11-13% of the variance in educational attainment and 7-10% of the variance in cognitive performance." Better study(meta analysis not just 1 study) : journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797618774253 "How Much Does Education Improve Intelligence?: Intelligence test scores and educational duration are positively correlated. This correlation could be interpreted in two ways: Students with greater propensity for intelligence go on to complete more education, or a longer education increases intelligence. We meta-analyzed three categories of quasiexperimental studies of educational effects on intelligence: those estimating education-intelligence associations after controlling for earlier intelligence, those using compulsory schooling policy changes as instrumental variables, and those using regression-discontinuity designs on school-entry age cutoffs. Across 142 effect sizes from 42 data sets involving over 600,000 participants, we found consistent evidence for beneficial effects of education on cognitive abilities of approximately 1 to 5 IQ points for an additional year of education. Moderator analyses indicated that the effects persisted across the life span and were present on all broad categories of cognitive ability studied. Education appears to be the most consistent, robust, and durable method yet to be identified for raising intelligence."
A humble request: lets say someone scored a 'high iq' in youth and got good grades but grew up to be a loser. and he is afraid to take risk. What should he do to grow up? asking for a friend 🙄
Don't be afraid to look stupid and fail. Risk is all around you, it's good your scared of it. Look around you to see what you naturally do better than others and keep improving those skills. Don't follow that dudes advice on Jordan Peterson or others like him. All they do is exploit the gullible. "Wait, wait Mr. (Dr.?) Peterson let me write this down (licks pen) I have to woOrkK HaRder. Why haven't I hear this new theory before. Let me give you money. " It takes a while before you find out what your really good at. But if you don't try and fail you never will.
iq isn't complete bs - though it can me misapplied just like literally anything. It is designed to try and conceptualise intelligence which I am sure if you sit and think about for a while actually is in itself a tall order. However many many psychologists not just JP would claim it is the best defined branch of psychology. It is a good marker for success in society but it is just that - a single marker. Many other factors come into play which is why iq normally can get a 25% to 35% correlation with long term performance in life. To throw the entire branch of iq out the window like Taleb just did is unfortunately uninformed and goes against many of the greatest psychological thinkers of the last 100 years. And I don't think he has quite pondered it's efficacy to quite the same degree.
The problem is that before IQ psychologists were regarded in the same tier as sociologists or political scientists. The creation of g meant that they had produced something "worthwile" that could be applied to everyday life and that is why they are so keen to keep using this statistical construct. If it wasn't for it they would literaly have nothing. This is what taleb called the best map fallacy and it shows that psychology really isn't able to do much because of the complexity of the human brain.
Peterson doesn't argue for a 1 to 1 correlation, or even something scientifically admissible. He's talking about the strongest correlation psychologists have to work with. I'm sure he'd prefer a better predictive model for intelligence, we all would.
@@ascryblkmn From the videos I have seen he is much more enthusiastic about IQ than your comment suggests. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Cycon01RT18.html
@@pikaso6586 Because it's the only measure approaching scientific validity in his field. What would you propose basing psychology on? What's the predictive measure.
@@ascryblkmn I am on the side of those who think that psychology is not a science. Using pseudo mathematical tools to describe behaviours is a vain exercise that only leads to non-sense.
@@pikaso6586 Fine that's fine. I agree. I'm saying that if psychologists admit that, then they're shooting themselves in the foot. That's why Peterson dances around the issue and clings to the one thing that seemingly legitimatizes the discipline.
Wow I thought Jordan Peterson knew the statistics. He says iq is the best predictor of success in the future. Maybe he wasn't talking about income, or maybe he implied it. Could you send him a message?
Peterson is talking about IQ as the strongest correlation as a predictor of success psychologists have to work with. He's admitting psychology is a soft science, by Taleb's definition not even a science. Peterson and psychologists would obviously love to have a better replicable model to predict outcomes.
@@ascryblkmn Even if iq is completely NOT correlated with iq, Psychology is still a science though. Peterson is very dignified for other things within psychology, like the studies of criminal behaviour. But it is biased that he didn't mention that there is no strong data between iQ and success. Unless of course he disagrees with with the video. For example, if you adjust the diagram for how hard it is to be succesful, then maybe the data will be more skewed towards high iq people.
@@ascryblkmn Economics is a social science allegedly. I suggest this simple thing. Adjusting for difficulty. You could do that by adjusting for working hours. Given that success takes longer hours than average, you should see how many people are at the right end of the spectrum, given how many people work the hours necessary for success. Social sciences are hard, that is why you need some narrative and intuition. I've learned a lot from Milton Friedman and helped understand what is going on in my country with high clarity. Maybe economics is not a science but they have still helped me understand a lot about the world.
“ When someone asks you a question in the real world, you focus first on “why is he/she asking me that?”, which shifts you to the environment and detracts you from the problem at hand” Really? Taleb can’t think of an instance through academia where we have to be diverted from the immediate, and towards something distant? I appreciate his rant against IQ, but his anti-education make his seem like an advocate for corporate america. Corporate fat cats love to select their candidates based on elementary adaptability, and they don't care about the guy loaded up to solve a few complex problems. I disagree with him regarding that distinction: There is nothing that sets academia apart from the real world except that it requires one’s fundamental experiences to be gathered within a very short period of time, and that one has to process and associate information through complex fields. This is in contrast to the real world, where most lay-folk are not dealing with complex systems directly. All other functions of the mind can be applied equally in either environment. That being said, we should consider that academic expertise and intuition are more closely related to intelligence proper than most high-IQers would like to imagine.
To date i have not come across any Caucasian who can define intelligence. Not one. So, Ztech, without visiting a source outside yourself please define intelligence for me. No cheating, no sneakily peering into any journals, books, magazines, Wikipedia or You tube. Come on, i'm just relishing the thought of publicly humiliating you. Remember, if you fail to define intelligence then the IQ test as a measure for intelligence was an evil grotesque lie all along. lol.
" There is nothing that sets academia apart from the real world " Not so sure about this. Academia has rarely any significance to the real world in 99% of all activities. Those 1% are extremely talented individuals who change the world. 99% are just doing some useless "research" that rarely results in any tangible result.
I’m a black guy (sorry if it makes other uncomfortable” from Africa & understand Nassim’s work & he’s trying to tell everyone that intelligence is immeasurable, it has dynamics too and yes you get to be labeled an idiot if you still don’t understand.
+jim peters >"mathematically proven them wrong" He hasn't, his graphs are wrong, and his ramblings about IQ are very much "disputable". Taleb's faulty stats debunked here: (can't post a URL as YT will remove it): "Nassim Taleb on IQ debunked - Pt 1" [Corelian Channel] watch?v=ju_rEErqUrI
@@corelianchannel4905 Hopefully you don't delete this comment out of embarrassment, but if you do I'll just get this out ahead of time. You need to brush up on different types of statistical analysis: *Descriptive Type of Statistical Analysis Inferential Type of Statistical Analysis Prescriptive Analysis Predictive Analysis Casual Analysis Exploratory Data Analysis Mechanistic Analysis* You also need to make sure you're fully reading & understanding the study's you cite. You cited: www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3 "A joint (multi-phenotype) analysis of educational attainment and three related cognitive phenotypes generates polygenic scores that explain 11-13% of the variance in educational attainment and 7-10% of the variance in cognitive performance." Better study(meta analysis not just 1 study) : journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797618774253 "How Much Does Education Improve Intelligence?: Intelligence test scores and educational duration are positively correlated. This correlation could be interpreted in two ways: Students with greater propensity for intelligence go on to complete more education, or a longer education increases intelligence. We meta-analyzed three categories of quasiexperimental studies of educational effects on intelligence: those estimating education-intelligence associations after controlling for earlier intelligence, those using compulsory schooling policy changes as instrumental variables, and those using regression-discontinuity designs on school-entry age cutoffs. Across 142 effect sizes from 42 data sets involving over 600,000 participants, we found consistent evidence for beneficial effects of education on cognitive abilities of approximately 1 to 5 IQ points for an additional year of education. Moderator analyses indicated that the effects persisted across the life span and were present on all broad categories of cognitive ability studied. Education appears to be the most consistent, robust, and durable method yet to be identified for raising intelligence."
1) Your "red dot" graphs, on which your ramblings rely, are incorrect. They do not reflect the SAT/IQ relationship. 2) You fail to grasp the non-linearity of the SAT/IQ graph in the F&D paper 3) You failed to notice the clipping effect of IQ conversion from ASAVB, which creates an artificial "ceiling" 4) Wealth / income has very severe right-skewness which needs to be taken into account. Medians for wealth and income correlate very highly with IQ Your claims and faulty stats debunked here (part 1) (can't post a URL as YT will remove it): "Nassim Taleb on IQ debunked - Pt 1" [Corelian Channel] watch?v=ju_rEErqUrI
To date i have not come across any Caucasian who can define intelligence. Not one. So, Corelian Channel, without visiting a source outside yourself please define intelligence for me. No cheating, no sneakily peering into any journals, books, magazines, Wikipedia or You tube. Come on, i'm just relishing the thought of publicly humiliating you. Remember, if you fail to define intelligence then the IQ test as a measure for intelligence was an evil grotesque lie all along. lol.
Hopefully you don't delete this comment out of embarrassment, but if you do I'll just get this out ahead of time. You need to brush up on different types of statistical analysis: *Descriptive Type of Statistical Analysis Inferential Type of Statistical Analysis Prescriptive Analysis Predictive Analysis Casual Analysis Exploratory Data Analysis Mechanistic Analysis* You also need to make sure you're fully reading & understanding the study's you cite. You cited: www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3 "A joint (multi-phenotype) analysis of educational attainment and three related cognitive phenotypes generates polygenic scores that explain 11-13% of the variance in educational attainment and 7-10% of the variance in cognitive performance." Better study(meta analysis not just 1 study) : journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797618774253 "How Much Does Education Improve Intelligence?: Intelligence test scores and educational duration are positively correlated. This correlation could be interpreted in two ways: Students with greater propensity for intelligence go on to complete more education, or a longer education increases intelligence. We meta-analyzed three categories of quasiexperimental studies of educational effects on intelligence: those estimating education-intelligence associations after controlling for earlier intelligence, those using compulsory schooling policy changes as instrumental variables, and those using regression-discontinuity designs on school-entry age cutoffs. Across 142 effect sizes from 42 data sets involving over 600,000 participants, we found consistent evidence for beneficial effects of education on cognitive abilities of approximately 1 to 5 IQ points for an additional year of education. Moderator analyses indicated that the effects persisted across the life span and were present on all broad categories of cognitive ability studied. Education appears to be the most consistent, robust, and durable method yet to be identified for raising intelligence."
IQ is not gaussian, it's transformed into a gaussian for tractability purposes... Even though I'm a statistician we agree with a lot, but this is not one of them. Yes IQ is far from a perfect measure, but it's good, the same goes for personality metrics.
Hi Nassim, I’m a huge fan, have read all of your books and learnt so much as a young person. Unfortunately I was blocked by you on Twitter cause i made a bad joke that was quite stupid. I would greatly appreciate if you would unblock me. Pls pls pls! If you unblock me I will be very happy as you were my favourite tweeter. @lityoungboss
there is nothing to debate. did you watch molyneuxs rebuttal video of this article? he skipped over addressing the numbers and graphs saying 'im assuming they are all correct'....
@@Kastralis Molyneyx is out matched on this one. Taleb takes five minutes to explain his technical point while it took Stefen 50 minutes to muddle his point. Also really hoping Jordan Peterson takes Taleb on, JBP has been making a lot of hay out of IQ.
To win a 'debate', by which I'm assuming you mean arguing for opposite points on camera, you need smooth talking, which is not the same as being right. Debates do not prove anything of substance; they are just entertainment disguised as inquiry.
