| Yeah I missed this HN; it's in my area of expertise. I don't mean to be hostile, but I don't know how else to say it: I don't know why or how posts like this, and most of what Taleb posts, get this much attention, because they're so ironically unscientific and poorly written. Taleb doesn't know what he's talking about, he selectively cites research, and makes assertions as if they are citations. The citation you provide is one example; there are scientists (e.g., Lubinski) who have successfully demonstrated over the course of years of research the validity of scores on the upper end of the intelligence distribution. Taleb comes across as an uninformed idiot. Taleb falls into these common fallacy traps regarding intelligence and individual differences research: 1. Some improper use of intelligence theory historically (e.g., racist, overapplication) doesn't mean the idea of intelligence is invalid or not useful.
2. A trait such as intelligence can be highly but not perfectly stable; environment can contribute to stability and genetic factors can contribute to changes.
3. Measures can be imperfect but still useful and valid, throughout the range.
4. The contribution of other factors to outcomes other than intelligence doesn't mean general intelligence isn't contributing as well.
5. The phenomenon of general intelligence doesn't preclude the existence of more specific ways of describing cognitive abilities (e.g., verbal memory, processing speed, visual mental simulation). Someone else posted something about how political IQ and individual differences research is. I feel about these topics how I imagine ecologists must feel about global warming research: lots of gish gallop by people who have a political or narcissistic axe to grind. Another problem is that people want to believe that problems in behavioral sciences can be reduced to really simple black or white positions, or apply analogies from other fields directly without any modification. Yes, you can measure behavioral attributes, but no it's not quite ordinal and not quite ratio, and that's fine. Yes things can be somewhat stable and somewhat not. The list goes on and on. Finally, there's this narcissistic status-asserting behavior that drives a lot of this. It's like the pecking order in science that goes something like physics > chemistry > biology > behavioral science is driven in part by people feeling the need to assert that they're smarter than people lower in the hierarchy. The problem is that this hierarchy is basically wrong, and driven in part by the system complexity of the fields, but it doesn't stop people like Taleb because he needs someone to bully to make himself look smarter. |