[throwawaymath]

The colorful graphs in Taleb's blog post here obscure the fact that his claims are completely unsubstantiated. He's also extremely condescending (bordering on dismissive) to a variety of disciplines.

There are cogent arguments that critique the use of IQ as an intelligence measure. This is not one of them.

[coldtea]

>The colorful graphs in Taleb's blog post here obscure the fact that his claims are completely unsubstantiated.

More than this comment that doesn't offer any?

Taleb makes some quite specific arguments, and the graphs are quite illuminating as well.

Check the "IQ and wealth" graph for example -- it looks like a total scattershot outside of the bottom left corner that everyone could predict (intellectually challenged people -> low income). That alone would be enough to justify the entire post.

>He's also extremely condescending (bordering on dismissive) to a variety of disciplines.

That's good in my book. We need more colorful characters and less hive mind and institutionalism. Then again I prefer Feyerabend to Kuhn, and Tom Waits to Michael Bolton.

[FabHK]

Yes. Stephen J Gould's "Mismeasure of Man" comes to mind. But then again, that's decades old.

[drilldrive]

My reading of Gould found that he is quite propagandistic with his claims, and that the ground that he covers would be more suitably done by a more careful analysis, which I believe to not exist currently.

[FabHK]

I was very impressed by the book when I read it, but from what I gather now, I'd probably be much more skeptical on a second reading (also given his other controversial viewpoints, eg spandrels, non-overlapping magisteria).

[drilldrive]

I cannot see how spandrels would be particularly controversial, though you need to have the right perspective of such. I believe a spandrel in theory to be the potential minus the solution at hand; in certain problem spaces a spandrel may be present in the optimal solution. This is not to say a spandrel is useless, in that removing a spandrel with reference to some solution from the potential alters the problem space, thus in the probabilistic theory of evolution you would encounter a different spectrum of outcomes.

I would see non-overlapping magisteria to be more controversial, however.