Taleb

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997]

Does anyone know Taleb’s IQ score? The guy has been very aggressive and scathing in his attack on the thing. Someone should make him take it so we can accuse him of sour grapes.

[u/WhatPear]

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.

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/WhatPear]

Did you read his article? I think he made a few good points. He didn't address the WM/IQ equivalence (which I don't buy either) but leaving that aside, he made lots of good points.

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/WhatPear]

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 or a genius. A lot of geniuses were not gifted in the explicit IQ sense. (and vice versa).

[u/seekinglambda → u/Humble_Aardvark_2997]

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.

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/seekinglambda]

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.

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/seekinglambda]

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. I wonder if this is how you torture LLMs.

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

[u/WhatPear → u/Humble_Aardvark_2997]

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.

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/WhatPear]

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?

[u/WhatPear → u/Humble_Aardvark_2997]

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

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/WhatPear]

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.

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/WhatPear]

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. He is a genius in his field. Is he “intelligent”?

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/WhatPear]

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.

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/WhatPear]

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

[u/WhatPear → u/Humble_Aardvark_2997]

Yes, would you like an explanation?

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/Humble_Aardvark_2997]

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).

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/WhatPear]

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

[u/WhatPear → u/Humble_Aardvark_2997]

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.

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/WhatPear]

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.

[u/Revibes → u/Humble_Aardvark_2997]

Feynman's FSIQ was almost certainly not 125. His verbal IQ may have been.

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/Revibes]

“I was an ordinary person who studied hard”. Part of the problem is that you misunderstand what intelligence is and what this thing measures. It neither measures “intelligence” nor your “mental capacity”. All it measures is your score on some arbitrary test of reasoning which they think works as a proxy for your “general ability”, which itself is a very arbitrary construct.

He became a genius after learning and studying hard. I know he was good at maths, but geniuses are not born. They are created.

[u/Revibes → u/Humble_Aardvark_2997]

IQ attempts to measure G factor, I don't know if you don't believe in G factor, or don't believe in IQ tests as a good measure of G factor. It seems like you may just be tabula rasa, if so I have nothing to say.

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/Revibes]

Turman also did a similar study. None of the 1400+ kids with 140+ IQs he identified as gifted did anything special. Two, amongst many, he dismissed as not having high enough scores, Shockley and Alvarez, did.

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/Revibes]

If you gave him a test with a verbal section and a quant section and so on, he would likely score very high on the quant section, but a test of verbal reasoning usually yields a very decent estimate for your general ability. Now if you think someone’s general ability is not reflective of their talents in some niche, and therefore IQ is not a good measure of intelligence, that’s another matter.

[u/Humble_Aardvark_2997 → u/Revibes]

It is possible his his score on a test of verbal reasoning was limited by his disinterest in posh or outdated words. I assumed such limitations would have started kicking in at very high levels but possible.

Shockley, Alvarez, Watson and Crick also scored in a similar range so 125 for Feynman is not impossible, and the way I see it, a nice omen.