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Nassim Nicholas Taleb: IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (medium.com/incerto)
15 points by Anon84 6 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment





Well, it’s certainly invective against psychologists, people with learning difficulties, and IQ.

I think he grossly undervalues naive pattern recognition. Natural complex systems are emergent from very simple interactions with mind boggling numbers. I think the {1,2,3,4,x} example is demonstrative because he doesn’t suggest what the answer should be.

I agree with him that IQ is meaningless. I think his arguments are, ironically, somewhat reductive. A man from Lebanon’s privileged elite who has surely amassed fortune along with his fame during his lifetime places financial success as the most important metric. For others it could be how much “unproductive” time they have or propensity to be vegan or the number of offspring they produce or sporting success et cetera et cetera.

So sure, IQ is useless but I think the essay just tells us a lot more about him.




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