Tisti, ki so brali 3. in 4. poglavje “Outliers” Malcolma Gladwella ali slišali za Termanovo “Genetsko študijo genijev”, odgovor že poznajo. Ne, visok IQ ne garantira uspeha ali izrednih dosežkov v življenju. Ljudje z nadpovprečno visokim IQ (med 140 in 200), ki jih je 50 let spremljal Lewis Terman, v življenju niso bili nič bolj uspešni od “negenialnih” vrstnikov.

Nicholas Taleb (avtor uspešnic “Black Swan” in “Fooled by Randomness”) je leta 2019 napisal članek “IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle” o tem, da gre pri merjenju IQ za napačno metodologijo, da IQ meri kvečjemu ekstremno neinteligenco, da so IQ testi podlaga za rasno diskriminacijo (psevdoznanstvena prevara), in da visok IQ ni pomemben za uspeh. Pokazal je, da ni statistične korelacije med IQ in dohodkom ljudi (v najboljšem primeru da spremenljivka IQ za 2 do 6 % boljše rezultate od testa na slučajnem vzorcu). In naprej, Taleb ponuja “razlago hokejske palice” glede pomena IQ. Višji IQ je pomemben pri nižjih ravneh IQ (pod 100), tam je korelacija med uspehom in IQ visoka, toda pri višjih ravneh IQ dodatno višji IQ ne naredi razlike.

Spodaj je dober (užiten) povzetek Talebovega članka.

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Nassim Taleb has written a devastatingly strong critique of IQ, but since he writes at such a technical level, his most powerful insights are being missed.

Let me explain just one of them. 🧵

Taleb raises an intriguing question: what if IQ isn’t measuring intelligence at all, but instead merely detecting the many ways in which things can go wrong with a brain?

Imagine a situation like this, where there’s no real difference between having an IQ of 100-160 in terms of real world outcomes, but an IQ of 40-100 suggests something has gone seriously wrong in a person’s life: anything from lead poisoning to severe poverty.

Now, consider that there’s a decent amount of noise in how we measure IQ — testing the same person twice yields scores that only correlate 80% — and also, that there’s a lot of luck and chance involved in how people’s lives turn out.

The overall fuzzy picture we get makes it look like IQ makes a difference all along the scale, but maybe it doesn’t.

If you naively compute the correlation between IQ and real life outcomes in a situation like this, it’s going to tell you they’re correlated.

We assume the correlation applies to the whole range of IQ, but it’s mostly coming from contributions on the lower end of the scale.

Taleb gives the example of this data on death rates for people of different IQs. Notice how the number of deaths spike for low IQs, but doesn’t seem to matter much above 100.

Ironically, early IQ tests were designed to identify children with learning disabilities, not to be general measures of intelligence.

So Taleb’s view is closer to the original understanding of IQ.

Source: Taleb’s IQ article on Medium

IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle Background : “IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning… https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39

I’ll leave you with this bit of anecdata. Richard Feynman only had an IQ of 124, and yet almost every physicist agrees that he was one of the most brilliant physicists that ever lived.

Vir: Kareem Carr via X