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A note on IQ

It has been more than six years ago now that Nassim Taleb rightfully called IQ a pseudoscientific swindle. Yet this zombie idea keeps coming back, most recently as a meandering essay by one Crémieux who, through a series of scatter plots and other data visualizations, attempts to persuade that “National IQs” are a valid concept and that yes, they are much lower in South Asia and Subsaharan Africa than the rest of the world.

This hogwash prompted another series of exchanges on IQ ending, for now, with this X post that recapped some points from Taleb’s original essay for a lay audience. That alone is worth reposting, but what I thought was even more interesting was one of the replies:

But I still prefer my doctor or pilot or professor to have an iq of over 120 (at least). I am sure it matters. Not as the only characteristic, but still.

While missing the point so completely that it wasn’t worth replying to, the post is a good example of another IQ-neutral human trait, to hypothesize on properties in isolation without considering nth-order effects. Let’s say your surgeon’s IQ is 160. What are the implications for their specialty of choice, fees, where they work, and bedside manner? Are they more or less of a risk-taker because of this? Does their intellectual savvy transfer more to their own bottom line, picking high-reimbursement procedures over a more conservative approach? Even if you said “all else being equal I’d prefer someone with a higher IQ”, well, why would you if everything else was equal? In that case would it not even make more sense to pick someone who did not have the benefit of acing multiple choice questions based on pure reasoning rather than knowledge? And yes, Taleb wrote about that as well.

Another set of replies was on the theme of “well I don’t think we could even have a test that measures IQ”, showing that they don’t know what IQ is — it is the thing measured by an IQ test. There is some serious confusion in terms here and X is the worst place to have a discussion about it, everyone shouting over each other.

Finally, since I agree with Taleb that IQ as used now is a bullshit concept, people may surmise as they did for him that I took the test and that I am now, disappointed in the result, trying to discredit it. I do think it’s BS for personal reasons, but of a different kind: some 25 years ago as a high school freshman in Serbia I took the test and was accepted to mensa. Having attended a single, tedious meeting in Belgrade shortly afterward I saw that the whole thing was indeed laughable and haven’t thought about it again until reading that 2019 essay.

Having a high IQ means you are good at taking tests, and correlates with success in life as much as your life is geared towards test-taking. There is nothing else “there” there and good test-takers unhappy with their lives should focus on other of life’s many questions, like how to execute a proper deadlift and whether home-made fresh pasta is better than the dried variant.

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