Psychometrics peddlers looking for suckers (military, large corporations) buying the “this is the best measure in psychology” argument when it is not even technically a measure — it explains at best between 2 and 13% of the performance in some tasks (those tasks that are similar to the test itself)[see interpretation of .5 correlation further down], minus the data massaging and statistical cherrypicking by psychologists; it doesn’t satisfy the monotonicity and transitivity required to have a measure (at best it is a concave measure). No measure that fails 80–95% of the time should be part of “science” (nor should psychology — owing to its sinister track record — be part of science (rather scientism), but that’s another discussion).
IQ testing incurs legal risk and yet companies use proxies like the wonderlic, because there is some correlation between IQ and competence, that is not possible to predict otherwise.
No it doesn't. I think this is a genuine example of an urban legend; many large employers, companies with deep pockets against whom employment lawyers would gladly take cases on contingency, very publicly administer IQ and general cognitive ability tests. There's nothing specifically risky about IQ; any employment fairness regime that proscribed Ravens Progressive Matrices would also proscribe the Wonderlic or CCAT test.
Griggs vs. Duke Power doesn't mention "IQ" even once --- but does specifically call out the Wonderlic.
It doesn’t pass the smell test. I think it’s clear from personal experience that some people I meet are just “smarter” than others. They do better at a wide range of intellectual activities. I don’t know if “IQ” is the best measurement of that but it’s clearly true that some concept of general intelligence is real.
A lot of the arguments here are silly. For example IQ has only a moderate correlation with income. Well yes, there are many other important skills for being successful and intelligence is just one of them. It doesn’t mean all else being equal I wouldn’t rather have a higher IQ.
Your article provides a compelling critique and highlights many important correlations. However, I find it somewhat incomplete when it comes to defining “success” This is a key point in Taleb’s arguments. Factors like inheritance and geographic location often play a much larger role in determining success in business or financial terms. Clearly not in scientific research.
The reference in the study on Danish people is intriguing, but it may skew the concept of normality since Denmark is a statistical outlier, being at the positive extreme in many metrics. This raises questions about the generalizability of the findings. I think testing on Danish people is great to debunk the wrong idea about that measurement of intelligence is pseudocientific but doesn't help with the "success" concept in other societies.
Both articles offer a good foundation for further discussion on IQ, but I believe they fall short by not addressing key concepts like crystallized and fluid intelligence, as well as memory. These are crucial components of intelligence that go beyond traditional IQ measurement techniques and deserve more attention. Those concepts clearly shows that the concept of IQ is no a pseudocientific thing.
Anybody who knows a little about testing and IQ eventually figures out this is not a perfect rating.
Sometimes there is an outlier that makes the whole thing seem suspect in some way or another.
If a truly intelligent person were to achieve only a mediocre score on a test like this, the article could very well be a "measured" response to that discrepancy alone. "Extensively" measured really, this is quite technical and not a short blog post.
To the degree that it can be measured of course . . .
What does a "truly intelligent" person even mean? Intelligence doesn't have an objective actual definition that is reliable and not contradictory.
It is so odd, that in science, you wouldn't make tests for something you haven't defined, but for some reason everyone believes to have an objective, reliable and consistent definition of intelligence.
People just rush to come up with tests for some reason. It is really odd
10 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 36.3 ms ] threadIQ testing incurs legal risk and yet companies use proxies like the wonderlic, because there is some correlation between IQ and competence, that is not possible to predict otherwise.
Griggs vs. Duke Power doesn't mention "IQ" even once --- but does specifically call out the Wonderlic.
A lot of the arguments here are silly. For example IQ has only a moderate correlation with income. Well yes, there are many other important skills for being successful and intelligence is just one of them. It doesn’t mean all else being equal I wouldn’t rather have a higher IQ.
"Nassim Taleb on IQ" January 8, 2019
https://archive.ph/PCvgk
The reference in the study on Danish people is intriguing, but it may skew the concept of normality since Denmark is a statistical outlier, being at the positive extreme in many metrics. This raises questions about the generalizability of the findings. I think testing on Danish people is great to debunk the wrong idea about that measurement of intelligence is pseudocientific but doesn't help with the "success" concept in other societies.
Both articles offer a good foundation for further discussion on IQ, but I believe they fall short by not addressing key concepts like crystallized and fluid intelligence, as well as memory. These are crucial components of intelligence that go beyond traditional IQ measurement techniques and deserve more attention. Those concepts clearly shows that the concept of IQ is no a pseudocientific thing.
Sometimes there is an outlier that makes the whole thing seem suspect in some way or another.
If a truly intelligent person were to achieve only a mediocre score on a test like this, the article could very well be a "measured" response to that discrepancy alone. "Extensively" measured really, this is quite technical and not a short blog post.
To the degree that it can be measured of course . . .
It is so odd, that in science, you wouldn't make tests for something you haven't defined, but for some reason everyone believes to have an objective, reliable and consistent definition of intelligence.
People just rush to come up with tests for some reason. It is really odd