SUMMARY OF IQ AS A MEASURE OF INTELLIGENCE AS PER TALEB
"IQ" THREAD
"IQ" measures an inferior form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects, meant to select paper shufflers, obedient IYIs.
1- When someone asks you a question in REAL LIFE, you focus first on "WHY is he asking me that?", which slows down. (Fat Tony vs Dr John)
2- It takes a certain type of person to waste intelligent concentration on classroom/academic problems. These are lifeless bureaucrats who can muster sterile motivation. Some people can only focus on problems that are REAL, not fictional textbook ones.
3- Look at the hordes with "high IQ" (from measurement) who are failures in real world rather than the ~50% correlation between IQ and success in 1) salaried employment, 2) jobs that select for edjukashion.
Yuuge survivorship bias: 37 out of 38 PhDs in finance blew up in 1998!
4 -If many millionaires have IQs around, 199 & 58 y.o. back office clerks at Goldman Sachs or elsewhere an IQ of 155 (true example), clearly the measurement is less informative than claimed.
5- If you renamed IQ , from "Intelligent Quotient" to FQ "Functionary Quotient" or SQ "Salary person Quotient", then some of the stuff will be true. It measures best the ability to be a good slave. IYIs want to build a top-down world where IYIs have the edge.
6- If you take a Popperian-Hayekian view on intelligence, then you would realize that to measure it you would need to know the SKILLS needed in the ecology, which is again a fallacy of intellectual hubris.
7- Perhaps the worst problem with IQ is that it seem to selects for people who don't like to say "there is no answer, don't waste time, find something else".
8- IQ is an academic-contrived notion. And the problem is that in academia there is no difference between academia and the real world; in the real world there is.
9- It is PRECISELY as a quant that I doubt "IQ". I've spent 34 years working w/"High IQ" quants. I've rarely seen them survive, not blow up on tail events.
10- #SkininTheGame shows that the only robust measure of "rationality" & "intelligence" is survival, avoidance of ruin/left tail/absorbing barrier, (ergodicity). Nothing that does not account for ability to survive counts as a measure of "intelligence"-- just philosophaster BS.
11- A robust use of "IQ" is for low scores for special needs pple. But then practically ANY measure would work to detect problem & improvement.
12- If someone came up w/a NUMERICAL "Well Being Quotient" WBQ or "Sleep Quotient", SQ, trying to mimic temperature or oth physical qty, you 'd find it absurd.
But put enough academics w/physics envy on it & it will become an official measure.
That's what happened to "IQ".
PHASES TO LEVERAGE IQ
IQ in isolation becomes more than dangerous measure to evaluate intellect.
1. Because human intelligence is beyond comprehension of humans at least till now. An age old measure and we’ve not found anything better
2. Academic performance cannot be a precursor to performance unless clubbed with inherent intent (scoring marks is one way but means and intent becomes critical - Albert Einstein was not an average student but was initially deemed average due to traditional education measuring him)
3. Also very high IQ has correlation with inability to collaborate which is one of important aspects of success, as their satisfaction is via self certification (or educational certification and not via having made an impact on others, which is generally a high focus of very successful leaders)
4. A lot of “very intelligent” people I’ve personally met have limited ability to appreciate difference they’ve made to other people’s life and end up being inward looking how much “intellectually challenging” an exercise was.
There may be phases of professional career:
Stage 1: Where you’re supposed to learn, execute and be accurate (these are roles where high IQ facilitates growth as rightly pointed in point #4 & 5)
Stage 2: Where impact made by a person in the job and how s/he tackles relationship to grow becomes important ( IQ has now started going downhill as a required skill because collaboration and smaller decisions start becoming success parameters - high IQ -> too analytical -> slow decision making; Lack of collaboration works as I pointed before)
Stage 3: Important decision making becomes key job scope (some high IQs May creep in here, most will be left in stage 2 and 1. Those who if don’t evolve end up wasting time and resources in “over-analysing” thus leaving opportunities behind especially people having survivor bias – “intellect only got me here”)
Stage 4: Being a senior leader will need all of these skills (may vary in quantum)
a. Collaboration
b. Quick decision making
c. Choosing right people
d. Result orientation
e. Learning from failures
Traditional measures of “intellect” measures none of above. In fact very high IQ becomes poison for each of the skills.
Collaboration and decision making have been pointed out.
High IQ leading to limited people orientation thus leading to choosing wrong people for job (see world through your lens - high IQ) or make existing people unhappy (again evaluation by your lens - high IQ)
Because of academic certification which has been part high IQ peoples’ lives; desire for “intellectual superiority” trumps result orientation leading to self declared sense of superiority and inability to make “real impact” thus “real success”.
Failure in field of academics, especially students is absolute/ binary – therefore there is generally limited ability to “look-back” and learn apart from “work-hard”. However, in real-life learning from mistakes becomes multi-dimensional and one needs to evolve in that direction.
Thus high IQ dwindles as a required skill as one grows and therefore should be taken with a pinch of salt whenever evaluating “reasons for success”
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