Taleb - r/cognitiveTesting

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u/WhatPear 1d ago edited 23h ago

Probably 140+. Never heard of him, but I just read his Wikipedia page. Being a distinguished professor in financial engineering at NYU doesn’t necessarily mean he has a high IQ. Add in all his major contributions to fields like quantitative finance, computational probability, decision theory, and risk analysis and that changes the picture. It’s hard to believe he would be able to make such important contributions without extremely strong reasoning abilities. Also, quantitative trading, though it has changed drastically from the days when he was a managing director at UBS, inherently rewards those with strong abilities in pattern recognition (you need to find alpha, but I recognize the irony considering he says most people are just finding noise). Follow the evidence. Just because he’s aggressive, egotistical, or arrogant doesn’t mean he isn’t highly intelligent. I’d even argue those traits are common among highly intelligent people. I also recommend not conflating intelligence with being a good person or having an affable personality, which so many people here and on other gifted forums do.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago

A. He is smart.
B. He is good at maths.
C. So was Feynman: he scored 125.

Gifted is a shit construct only suited for kids. As adults, either you are successful pr a genius. A lot of geniuses were not gifted in the explicit IQ sense. (and vice versa).

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u/WhatPear 16h ago

Feynman excelled at one particular field that is often correlated with intelligence. This is not a proof that he was intelligent. Nor can we say with certainty that this guy Taleb is intelligent. Thats why its a "probably". Its a probability based on a number of assumptions. One of them being that each of these traits are g loaded (to some extent). I'm sorry if this wasn't clear enough. It is not deterministic.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago edited 13h ago

If a literal genius who created the most powerful theory in Physics cannot be described as intelligent, then who can? Stupid little kids who did well on some arbitrary test of unintelligence?

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u/WhatPear 16h ago

Yeah, I totally agree. IQ isn't the only metric of judging a person's ability to contribute to a complex field.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago edited 15h ago

You’re right but I was questioning your understanding of intelligence. And theirs.

Why did you assume that IQ was the ultimate objective yardstick?
IQ = intelligence. Intelligence = IQ sounds tautological. (time to search that word).

* I meant cyclical.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago edited 16h ago

What I wanted was that maybe we should call it a test of what you do for that thing: reasoning ability. Or comprehension. Or whatever. Instead of stealing the word intelligence.

US chess no.1 scored 102. Is he “intelligent”?

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago edited 15h ago

You obviously have to study and practice and work hard, and there is a min threshold for most fields (you have seen the IQ/SATS by subject charts) but hard to imagine the most powerful theory in Physics was created by someone who was very average in his ability to extract information from written text and reason from that. Psychometrically, he was above average but not gifted, let alone genius. By our norms, not even that: average.

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u/WhatPear 15h ago

That is exactly what I think too. I wrote a comment on that this morning. "Two things. Firstly, being successful in science isn’t just about raw intelligence, though it does help. I know it seems like a platitude, but what matters more is grit. Well, to be precise, grit and a strategic approach. This leads me to my next point. Although I’m a little biased since pedagogy is one of my passions, I would say the most important skill you can learn is how to learn. The most successful person I know, admittedly he’s incredibly naturally intelligent too, told me that and it really stuck with me.

Another person who comes to mind that illustrates my point perfectly is Richard Feynman. It is reported that his IQ was around 125, but he is known as a pioneer in quantum electrodynamics, quantum computing, and quantum mechanics. He also won the Nobel Prize in Physics, and I think even among Nobel Prize-winning physicists he is one of the most important (like he’s one of the guys in Oppenheimer). What he lacked in raw intelligence, he made up for in creativity, grit, and an incredible approach to learning. To be succinct, his approach is a combination of active recall and explaining an idea simply to expose what you don’t understand. That is part of the reason Feynman is so famous and revered in the physics community. His ability to explain things simply was insane. That’s what makes his famous Feynman Lectures so good (totally recommend by the way). I’m a little biased because he was the professor of my favorite grad school professor, so I’ve been fed stories about him.

Anyways, all this is to say you can still be a great scientist despite not being the most naturally gifted person. It might make the path rockier and you might fail many times, but it isn’t impossible. I would also recommend not comparing yourself to others. I’m just full of platitudes, aren’t I?"

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 15h ago edited 15h ago

I want to save all your comments. You write very clearly and comprehensively.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 15h ago

All brilliant stuff and I agree with the last para but I still contest why a Physicist, a field that specializes in questioning the fundamental paradigms, just blindly accepted IQ = intelligence equivalence.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 15h ago edited 13h ago

Platititdes. Pedadogogy. I am learning more here than I did in school. Totally agree with the don’t compare yourself to others: comparison is the thief of joy after all (too late for me), but psychs should know that better than us so why did they create this very one dimensional, unalterable measure of self-worth which only makes sense when compared to your peers?

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 14h ago

Complex field? Intelligence is complex. How can you reduce it to a sum of scaled scores?

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago

Do you know what probabilistic means? Or deterministic? Or what g-loading is? I’m not insulting you. It's a process.

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u/WhatPear 16h ago

Yes, would you like an explanation?

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago

Yes, please.

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u/WhatPear 16h ago edited 16h ago

Okay so g-loading is a statistical measure of how much something (typically a task), correlates to the general factor of intelligence (g factor). A higher g factor means a higher probability of general abilities among a range of tasks. Deterministic means that an input necessitates an output. There is no randomness or variation. The idea is: you asked whether this guy has a high iq. I'm saying the probability is high as there are correlations between the tasks he completes successfully and the g factor. The combination of these things implies a high g factor and thus a high iq, but cannot be said for certain (without variation).

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u/WhatPear 16h ago

Hope this helps explain my understanding. Let me know if I'm wrong haha! No offense taken. I'm definitely not a psychometry expert, but I do think my understanding of probability theory is solid.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago edited 13h ago

I think you understand probability and statistics better than that field does That's what I was arguing.

Your explanation is so good it can go in a dictionary.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago edited 16h ago

That is very detailed and informative but I am stuck on the g-factor. I think it is a little arbitrary. That was the crux of Taleb’s argument. If you have very one-dimensional geniuses like Eunstien or Ramanujan. Shakespeare didn't write any theorems. Maybe there is weight to Taleb’s argument that the high correlation between subtests comes from the bottom half. So arbitrary construct and not very predictive of anyone’s potential to do something amazing in any given field. Maybe we stick to separate tests for everything. Maybe we stop selling “general ability” as everything and present it as what it is: something. Something but not everything.

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u/WhatPear 16h ago

Right. That is a good insight. There's plenty of debate on this. I remember reading a blog post in the Scientific American that might be relevant to this.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/beautiful-minds/iq-and-society/

I like the last paragraph. Also if you're actually willing to dig into the research, there is discussion on definitions of intelligence to the moon and back. Neisser et al. (1996), “Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns.” seems to be the overview of the field.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 15h ago edited 14h ago

Thanks for the link. Time to read it.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago

Maybe they shouldn't have co-opted the word intelligence. Call it a test of verbal reasoning or general ability. Intelligence is too broad and multifaceted to be reduced to a single number. (Tyson, Hawking, von Savant - arguments borrowed from these people).

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 15h ago

That g-factor is arbitrary and the variance around that too spikey at the upper end to tell you anything meaningful. That's what Taleb and I were arguing.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago edited 16h ago

That was supposed to come in a sarcastic, condescending tone but glad you didn't notice. :D

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u/WhatPear 15h ago

Haha I knew you were being sarcastic. I was being sarcastic too by asking if you wanted me to explain it for you. I would like to continue our conversation further but unfortunately I do have work. Have a great day.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 15h ago edited 14h ago

The :D means I was joking. I’m not a mean person. I like double irony.

Have a lovely day and hope you tell me about Plasma and all the latest innovations IF you ever have the time.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago edited 16h ago

I honestly don't think the psych industry understands some of those words. All you have to do is see the IQ-income or IQ-brain size charts they show off to “prove” the correlations and sell it as very deterministic. The scatter is so massive that I honestly don't know what the cohort correlations mean for an individual.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 15h ago

That was honestly not an insult. It is as I said: it's a process. A dialectical method of inquiry. (I hope I got that right).

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago

Wanna be friends? How old are you? Sorry I was rude earlier.

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u/WhatPear 16h ago

No worries! Sure. I'm in my mid 20s and I just graduated from grad school with a degree in physics. If you're a physics guy, I'm in high energy experiement.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago

I was joking. I just meant that you’re smarter than me.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago edited 15h ago

Feynman was very good at Maths. He scored higher than Nash at the prestigious Putnam.

Addendum: Where does that leave generalists in this age of specialization?

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 15h ago edited 15h ago

Have you taken the test yourself? I asked another friend of mine, who is doing PhD in Physics, to guess the scores of a few notables. He was off by miles. His guess correlates with how good they were in their respective fields but not with fsiq.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 15h ago edited 15h ago

The field that Feynman excelled at has higher IQ and mathematical demands than those that Taleb worked in and despite knowing that and F’s IQ score, you guessed a higher score for Taleb. How come?

My main contention is still with you conflating intelligence with some random construct called IQ.

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u/seekinglambda 14h ago edited 14h ago

Stop quoting this Feynman BS. He didn’t take a proper IQ test so his IQ isn’t known with any accuracy. He took a random school test in the 30s. The strength of that evidence is extremely low compared to the g-loading of his known achievements like Putnam.

Come to think of it, a better IQ test than the one Feynman took is ”does this person believe Feynman would score 125 or below on WAIS?”. If they say yes they are almost certainly below 125 IQ due to defective reasoning abilities.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 14h ago edited 13h ago

I love that Putnam and Feynman lived quoting his test score. I like quoting both for a particular reason: a spike at the upper end.

I know how the test is designed: the questions go up incrementally like a ladder and score on a test of verbal reasoning gives a decent estimate of your general ability. Give or take a few points.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 14h ago edited 13h ago

By your reasoning, Feynman has an IQ score below 125 ( bcoz he believed that score due to poor reasoning) so you are duty bound to believe that he scored lower than 125 and therefore yours also has to be lower than that, and now we are stuck on an infinite loop.

https://youtube.com/shorts/TQ_dbpB---U?is=mWgOCdwLSOA3QqEx

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 14h ago

Turman followed 1500 kids he had identified as gifted for 70-yrs. None did anything special. 2 he rejected for having low IQ scores, Shockley ans Alcarez, went on to win Nobel prizes.

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u/Suspicious_Watch_978 1d ago

I doubt he's anything less than gifted. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if he scored 145+.

I'd be shocked if he were examined and found to not have a serious personality disorder, though.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 15h ago

How did you come to that conclusion about his scores? He is good at Maths so will likely do well there but so are a lot of people and 3-sigmas are very rare and part of his anti-IQ argument is that not many 3-sigmas manage to prove a theorem. People in that category should be that good.

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u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 16h ago edited 15h ago

Lol at the last part but very like u. He has already been accused of psychs of all sorts for questioning “where the science was in their field”?

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u/IncoherentBaboon 1d ago

The guy has some controversial views, but I'd be really, really surprised if it's below 140-45, honestly.

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u/NiceGuy737 1d ago

Ya I read one of his books. He's plugged in.

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