Based Camp - Nassim Taleb's Anti-IQ Article Deconstructed (Yes, IQ Matters)

00:00:00.000 When you look at our prison system, the vast majority of people in it are at very low accused.

00:00:04.660 And when you deny that they had a systemic disadvantage when compared to you, when you

00:00:09.640 tell people to throw that out, that what you are taking the most vulnerable people in our society

00:00:16.060 who are in a situation to do something they had no control over and completely acting like they

00:00:23.380 had the same advantages you did in life. It is sick. It is sick. It is not moral. And you need

00:00:29.460 to get your fucking shit together and actually look at the data instead of trying to blow 1.00

00:00:34.000 smoke in people's faces so you can play your little virtue game. Okay. Because people are 1.00

00:00:38.480 suffering for your bullshit. And so you can feel like a hero without having to challenge 1.00

00:00:44.880 actual real world problems and fix them and take responsibility for the advantages that you were

00:00:51.460 born with, which other people worked. He ends up making an argument that needs to say that he has

00:00:56.100 achieved everything that he has achieved in life without systemic advantages. He has just

00:01:01.520 willed himself to this place that he is.

00:01:05.400 Simultaneously while flaunting that systemic advantage.

00:01:08.600 Right.

00:01:09.500 In every single, like to a fault, like to a point of illegibility.

00:01:14.640 Would you like to know more?

00:01:15.740 So Malcolm, what if I told you that obviously wealth doesn't predict success because there are

00:01:23.280 tons of millionaires and billionaires who just do nothing with their lives and piss away all their

00:01:27.740 money. And obviously being like super, super poor, like under the poverty line is a problem,

00:01:33.260 but like above a certain level, it really doesn't matter at all how much money you have.

00:01:37.640 Oh, I think that would make a lot of sense. I think that's exactly the type of thing a wealthy

00:01:42.700 person would argue. Right. So I got to talk about how we got on this topic. We had a fan of the show

00:01:49.020 stay over at our house because they happen to be passing through the area. And one of the things that

00:01:53.080 they mentioned, because they were like, well, this is an area where I questioned something that you

00:01:56.580 guys talk about a lot. Specifically, he believed that IQ didn't matter at all. And the reason he

00:02:02.720 believes this is because another smart person who he looked up to had argued this very passionately,

00:02:09.360 specifically Nassim Taleb. He wrote this medium post about this called IQ is largely a pseudoscientific

00:02:18.100 swindle. And I read this medium post and I saw it as a really interesting opportunity because

00:02:25.620 self-contained within the post itself was the proof that he was manipulating data and essentially lying

00:02:35.420 to the reader. But what we want to try to do on this episode is to not just show that yes, IQ likely

00:02:45.460 does matter, but give you the tools necessary to, even if you don't understand the scientific language

00:02:54.480 which was which a person is arguing, i.e. in this case, like advanced statistics, even if you don't

00:02:59.640 understand that, understand the telltale signs that a person is lying to you and be able to tell

00:03:07.640 that they are lying to you, even if you don't understand what they are saying. And better than

00:03:12.260 all of that, get to deeper truths than you even could from reading an article from the perspective of

00:03:20.480 somebody who agreed with what is true or what you already believe. And by that, what I mean

00:03:26.540 is if somebody who really believes in career is invested in IQ mattering, writes an article that

00:03:33.020 IQ matters, well, they can't really trust it because they might be lying with statistics as well. 0.98

00:03:38.080 Right.

00:03:38.140 If somebody who deeply believes IQ doesn't matter, or at least tries to argue that,

00:03:42.640 has sprinkled throughout his article little admissions to where IQ does matter,

00:03:47.280 you can know that at least in those areas, it definitely matters because he has everything

00:03:51.980 at stake in showing that it doesn't. So that's why learning to read articles in this way is really

00:03:57.620 important. Now, before we go further with this, I want to elaborate on the analogy that Simone

00:04:02.780 started this show is, because I think this is where we're going as a society. And a lot of these

00:04:07.380 people today who were born with advantages over people, born with usually really high IQs,

00:04:15.220 and then they pretend like they've achieved everything that they've achieved on their own.

00:04:20.060 It is not the look that they think it is. It's very much the new, I don't see race. 0.85

00:04:26.340 Pretending you don't see a systemic advantage that you have had over other people your entire life,

00:04:32.000 and taking credit being like, well, I was starting from the same position they were,

00:04:35.740 is not humble, okay? It is dehumanizing, and it is cruel and evil, and it prevents us as a society

00:04:45.820 from potentially solving systemic issues for people who weren't born with your immense privilege.

00:04:52.940 I say this to Naseed because he is somebody who was born with this immense privilege.

00:04:57.720 He's clearly someone who is very smart and who benefits from a high IQ. And if he were to,

00:05:03.340 in good faith, take an IQ test, he would probably end up with a very high IQ score.

00:05:08.800 Like, it's pretty apparent. I want to start off, too, with some caveats that, like,

00:05:13.000 you know, a lot of what he says is, we agree with, you know, IQ, like, if you have a really high IQ,

00:05:18.080 it doesn't mean you're going to be super successful. Obviously not. You know, this is why

00:05:21.700 with our school, we select for I will, as we say, and not IQ, because, you know, being really smart

00:05:25.860 does not predict success. But he claims that's what, like, IQ enthusiasts also claim,

00:05:31.060 which is not, it's just not true. So he makes a lot of false claims on that. I just want to say

00:05:34.800 that we agree. He also says a really key thing with IQ is, like, it, where it is most predictive

00:05:39.440 and where it is the biggest deal is where there's really low IQ. But he seems to, like, I don't know,

00:05:44.680 just discount that. That's not important. When actually, like, it's been a really big deal.

00:05:48.220 This is why lead remediation, you know, like, reducing lead exposure for populations has been

00:05:52.240 such a big deal.

00:05:53.040 Which was caught and measured through IQ. This is a place where IQ in public policy has

00:06:00.640 had a positive impact on the lives of pretty much everyone living on Earth today.

00:06:05.360 Yeah, because people were willing to admit that, you know, low IQ is a problem. And then also,

00:06:09.580 he talks about, you know, people misusing IQ often in very unsavory, disgusting ways. You know,

00:06:14.980 he points to racism a lot. That's totally true. But all sorts of messed up people use,

00:06:20.260 like, misuse all sorts of science and pseudoscience and other nonsense to forward their agendas. 0.99

00:06:26.220 Just because you see one idiot use something in a poor way doesn't mean it's not, you know, 0.96

00:06:31.260 it's not a, it's not a relevant field in other ways. So before we go further with this, I think 0.95

00:06:36.540 we can break this down into a few core points when you're analyzing an article like this.

00:06:42.220 Okay. Okay. Yeah. Let's do it.

00:06:44.320 So one is you're looking for what the motivation is.

00:06:47.220 Then you want to look at the data sets that they present. You want to look at what they think the

00:06:55.720 alternatives are that they're presenting. If IQ doesn't matter, what are the alternatives?

00:07:00.380 You need to look at where they can see that the other side has points. And you need to look at

00:07:07.180 what I call repeated hand flails. A repeated hand flail is a really bad argument that is used

00:07:15.500 repeatedly. And that is obviously a bad argument, but that at first glance can seem like it's a

00:07:22.740 really powerful argument. So I'll start with a repeated hand flail that he uses throughout the

00:07:28.120 piece because it's really obvious and it really got on my nerves, which was IQ doesn't matter

00:07:34.080 because the same individual, if you test them again with an IQ test, on average, that test is going

00:07:39.560 to differ from their first score by about a third, a standard deviation. And that's a big difference.

00:07:44.940 And therefore that proves that IQ tests don't matter. Now I ask a person to just, and this is

00:07:50.980 how, when you're hearing something like this and you're like, okay, he's using a lot of words

00:07:54.900 like the standard deviation and comparing this to different parts of the IQ stuff, ignore all of

00:08:01.300 that. Just use your common sense. Okay. So replace IQ tests with a different test, like a biology test,

00:08:07.160 right? Like I'm taking a, a 10th grade biology test and I am comparing my knowledge of biology to the

00:08:13.800 other students in the room's knowledge of biology. Now, if I retake that test, if you retake any test

00:08:19.580 about, you are going to differentiate from your previous results by about a third of a standard

00:08:25.300 deviation. If it's like a really big test, that's just normal. Anyone should know you're not going to get

00:08:30.280 the same results. Like every time you retake a test, that's a normal function of tests. However,

00:08:35.840 that being the case, that doesn't mean that biology test isn't measuring anything in terms of a

00:08:42.460 student's knowledge of biology. And so this is the first thing when they are criticizing something,

00:08:48.660 like if they're continually using argument, think, okay, but is there something else that we all

00:08:53.660 generally agree on that the bar is a good way to measure how good a lawyer is doing or the driver's

00:08:59.640 exams are a good way to measure, you know, do these have different results when a single

00:09:04.560 individual retakes the test? And if the answer is yes, well then why does he keep bringing this up?

00:09:10.080 Why is this so important? It is because, well, it's just a weird rhetorical tactic he keeps going back

00:09:15.440 to. Yeah. I think connected to this kind of is at the very beginning, and this was like a big trigger

00:09:21.040 for me. He, he says technical backbone, like he links to a technical backbone as here's just like

00:09:27.580 at the top of his article, here's my link to basically what he implies is, oh, if you really

00:09:32.320 want to understand why I'm correct and you want to see it on a technical standpoint, an academic peer

00:09:36.400 reviewed standpoint, this will explain everything. And you click over to it and it's just, it's just a

00:09:42.340 research journal article pointing to examples of people mistaking correlation with causation.

00:09:48.160 It isn't actually related to the arguments he makes in his blog post. And it's one of those

00:09:53.820 things that really bothers me because often people will link to something and be like, oh,

00:09:57.740 here's what backs up my argument. And it, I mean, usually it's at least broadly related to their

00:10:03.440 argument. This even wasn't really related to his argument. He's sometimes argued that, oh, people

00:10:06.940 don't understand correlation and causation, but yeah, that, that really bothered me when people are

00:10:10.800 like, read this other thing. You mentioned that I would note as well should be a big red flag with

00:10:15.340 people. Smart people can write in a way that dumb people can understand when we write people like 0.96

00:10:23.700 who watch our channel and stuff like that. They sometimes accuse us of talking. Like we have a 0.98

00:10:29.160 theotaurus in front of us. Okay. Whatever. I don't think that we do that to me. I talk really plain.

00:10:34.200 And that reminds me of that scene in idiocracy where they're like, I think it might be because 0.75

00:10:38.820 of these drugs the army put me on. But if you could, uh, just get me well enough to get back

00:10:43.920 to base. Right. Kick ass. Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothing, but, uh, it says on your

00:10:51.940 chart that you're fucked up. Uh, you talk like a fag and your shit's all retarded. What I do is just 1.00

00:10:58.620 like, you know, you know what I mean? Like, no, I'm serious here. I need help. There's that fag 1.00

00:11:09.600 talk we talked about. But yeah. And there's that scene where he's just trying to talk normal and 0.99

00:11:14.760 the other person just from a different cultural group hears it. It's him intentionally training

00:11:19.080 to sound erudite. Well, but I, you know, he doesn't really gatekeep throughout this essay. For example,

00:11:24.000 like in, in one sentence, he's, well, however, if you take up a Perry and have Venkian view of

00:11:27.780 intelligence in another sentence, he's IQ doesn't detect convexity of mistakes. Like.

00:11:33.660 So with the point being here is what I was saying is that for us, when we use words, it sounds,

00:11:40.580 I don't know, to somebody different from us that we're using a CS source or something,

00:11:43.840 they are still intelligible in context. They are not intentionally meant to get a viewer to

00:11:51.020 disengage or sort of shut down and just listen to the other one. Yeah. And be like, oh, I guess

00:11:55.940 I'll have to take your word for it because I don't understand this. And therefore you must be smarter

00:11:59.360 than me. So I'm just going to assume that you're right. Yeah. And I would say that if you notice that

00:12:04.140 happening in a piece and never, ever take away from that, this person knows what they're talking

00:12:08.840 about. Yeah. But can you bring it in? He's like literally in an article that he's using to disprove IQ

00:12:14.680 as like a thing. He's using IQ correlated vocabulary. He's using SAT words. Yeah. I'm

00:12:23.180 like the fuck, you know, he talks always, he's, well, you know, this isn't Gaussian. And you know 1.00

00:12:28.000 what? Honestly, like I've been out of academia long enough to have forgotten that Gaussian was

00:12:32.080 in reference to a normal distribution. He could have just said normal distribution. This man who

00:12:36.040 apparently throughout his writing makes it very clear that he really hates academia uses a lot of

00:12:40.780 academic speech, which is also really interesting. The techniques. And I love the first point you

00:12:45.380 mentioned, which is a huge red flag. If somebody says, here's a source and the source has nothing

00:12:49.720 to do with what they're talking about really, or is really just meant to shit on academics. That's 0.95

00:12:54.000 all it was trying to do. And he doesn't say that's what this is. You, you, you need to be aware that at

00:12:59.960 the very outset of this piece, he is saying, I am willing to mislead you to try to make my point.

00:13:05.780 That is what is being signaled here. But first we got to go back to this framework I set up. Okay. So

00:13:09.840 what is his motivation with this piece? Because he cites his motivation throughout the piece

00:13:14.860 very plainly. He cites very clearly that he believes that if IQ is a real thing,

00:13:22.860 then the racists are correct. And racists will be able to implement racist policy,

00:13:28.760 which will hurt people if IQ is a real. This is like second paragraph. People bent on showing that

00:13:34.200 some populations have inferior mental abilities based on IQ equals intelligence. Those have been

00:13:39.760 upset with me for robbing them of this quote unquote scientific tool. His goal right here,

00:13:44.780 he lays it out. Second paragraph. I am trying to rob racists of a tool.

00:13:49.840 Now see, the way I read that section is he gives a bulleted list and he's like, basically IQ was

00:13:55.540 something championed by first, he says racist and eugenicists. And second, he says psychometrics,

00:14:00.900 peddlers looking for suckers. And I thought what he was trying to do there was basically associate

00:14:05.040 this domain with unsavory people and exploitative people.

00:14:10.000 I think he also uses the association to discredit anyone who talks about IQ by just saying they're

00:14:15.140 racists. Okay. So he's using it for two reasons, but it was very clear from the piece that he believes

00:14:21.460 that if IQ is a real thing, then the racists are right.

00:14:25.140 I get in the outro, the argument that quote unquote, some races are better at running,

00:14:30.040 hence inference about the brain is stale. Mental capacity is much more. He goes over this over

00:14:34.620 and over. It is very clear. Wait, so he's implying that not all race, listen,

00:14:37.620 he's implying that all races are equally good at running.

00:14:40.980 No, he's implying that doesn't mean that there would be, okay, listen to this point. This is

00:14:46.000 actually a really good point of somebody messing with you. Okay. The argument that quote,

00:14:50.700 quote, some races are better at running, end quote, hence some inference about the brain is stale.

00:14:56.700 Mental capacity is much more dimensional and not defined in the same way running a hundred meter

00:15:01.360 dashes. What? So what he's saying is that because this is a more complicated thing to measure,

00:15:09.260 that it axiomatically doesn't vary between different ethnic groups.

00:15:13.780 Oh, okay. Right, right, right. Because intelligence is harder to measure and like nail down.

00:15:17.860 And it's this glomming weird thing. It's just a hand wave. Now there are reasons why,

00:15:22.640 and we have done videos on this, why if you can measure anything in a group, measure anything in

00:15:28.880 a group, and it's clear that he believes this. And this is why he is so sold on this point.

00:15:33.420 You can measure anything in a group like tennis ability. You are going to find systemic differences

00:15:39.280 between groups. That's just natural. The reason why IQ based race realism is irrelevant. And we've done

00:15:47.960 this before is because it changes so quickly. If you look like we were looking, okay, we had 50

00:15:55.320 embryos, like just our family. And we choose five embryos out of those 50 based on IQ pure generation 0.92

00:16:00.620 with existing technology. And our kids only marry other families who did that within just five

00:16:06.080 generations, the average member of our family would be three standard deviations higher in IQ

00:16:11.840 than the average American citizen today. And keep in mind that within the next 75 years,

00:16:16.300 we're likely looking at IQ dropping by a standard deviation. So for like just astronomically higher.

00:16:22.000 And what this shows is that it doesn't matter. This would be true if we were black. This would be 0.84

00:16:27.580 true if we were Asian. IQ doesn't matter, not because it doesn't differ between groups. Everything,

00:16:34.060 if you measure it, if you can put a number to it, it's going to differ between groups.

00:16:37.020 No, but any selective or evolutionary bottleneck you're trying to say.

00:16:39.720 It matters because it doesn't persistently differ between. And it can quickly change. And it matters

00:16:45.320 a lot more what like family you come from or what religion you come from.

00:16:48.860 Yeah. Or what environment you're in and what the selective pressures are.

00:16:51.640 What small segment. Yeah. So, so that's why it doesn't matter, but he hasn't thought of that argument.

00:16:56.560 And so he is just completely dedicated because he knows the moment you could put,

00:17:01.880 and this becomes very clear later in his argumentation, the moment you could put a number

00:17:07.220 on general competence, that there would be differences between SNCC groups, because of

00:17:13.200 course, I mean, they might be minor differences, but people would still pick up on that.

00:17:16.860 Yeah. And then that motivates racism. And you can actually tell this is his core motivation

00:17:22.320 by, again, I say, what is he proposing as the alternative to IQ? Right? So if he was being,

00:17:29.940 I think, genuine, I just think IQ tests are bad and we could be measuring this better,

00:17:35.320 you would be proposing a way to measure it better, but he doesn't propose a way to measure it better.

00:17:39.260 Yeah, that's true. And we would respect that. I mean, we, I think we inherently under,

00:17:42.960 we would agree with him that current measures of IQ, you know, are perfect.

00:17:47.280 Oh yeah, they could definitely improve. But let's, I want to read this.

00:17:50.700 If you want to detect how someone fares at a task, say loan sharking, tennis playing,

00:17:55.640 or a random matrix theory, make him or her do that task. We don't need theoretical exams for

00:18:00.980 real world function by probability challenge psychologists. So think about what this is

00:18:06.800 saying and how completely insane this is. He is actually saying that I am unwilling to have

00:18:12.000 any sort of broad measure of competence put on a person. And the reason he has to take this position

00:18:16.920 is because whatever measure of competence he found, you would find differences in it between groups.

00:18:22.240 So he needs there to be no standard measure of competence, given his world framing that he has

00:18:28.580 laid out. If you can put a measure on people's competence, then it will differ between groups

00:18:33.060 that it can be used by racists to promote their agenda. That is a core thing. So, so going into this

00:18:39.920 piece, he's going into it with the world perspective that if you could put any sort of broad measure of

00:18:47.640 competence on a group, that it will lead to racism. And so we should not have that, but think about how

00:18:53.920 insane that would be for a society. That would also mean, well, you can't have SATs. You can't have,

00:18:59.060 you can't really have any sort of a broadly applicable test. Every test that needs to only study

00:19:04.180 what a person is about to do. But the problem is that we hire people and we accept people into

00:19:09.680 college. Based on totally unrelated measures. To do broad ranges of tasks. One of the core

00:19:14.660 places like he was using, as he mentions in the piece, is in the military. And that's because you

00:19:21.220 need a broad spectrum. Because it's predictive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and it does seem to be

00:19:25.200 predictive of outcome. And, you know, again, we want to emphasize here that we're not, we don't

00:19:29.420 disagree with the basic argument he's making. The school that we're designing, whenever possible,

00:19:35.500 tests people through natural assessments. Hey, can you write fan, you know, can you write content

00:19:39.580 that audience, like widespread audiences? Okay, well, let's see if you can write a fan fiction

00:19:43.220 a lot of people read. Like we believe in natural assessments and we believe that's the best way

00:19:47.020 to tell if someone's good at something, but we also are practical. Yeah. Well, I think also at the

00:19:52.260 same time, we accept that some people are born with an intellectual state that gives them a huge

00:19:59.760 systemic advantage over other people. And this, again, it's not an ethnic thing. As we said,

00:20:04.800 it changes so quickly, it's irrelevant to tie this to ethnic groups. Yeah. But, and again,

00:20:09.920 in most of these gene people, you go to these genetics channels, right? And they'll tell you

00:20:14.340 on these channels, yeah, it looks like in the developed world in the next 75 years, IQ in the

00:20:18.960 developed world is going to drop by about one standard deviation. And then they're also like

00:20:23.180 complaining. So the developed world is mostly white people. That means white people on average will be

00:20:27.980 dumber than everyone else because we're not seeing this effect in the developing world. 0.99

00:20:31.020 So it's one of these things where don't play that game. Yeah. It's not. If we were going to go back 0.99

00:20:35.740 to the wealth analogy, obviously like first, and we also agree, you know, having a super high IQ

00:20:40.600 doesn't mean obviously you're going to be super successful. There are lots of people with crazy

00:20:43.680 high IQs who do absolutely nothing, who do a lot of really dumb stuff. However, when you have a really 0.98

00:20:48.960 high IQ and you also have a bunch of other factors like drive, ambition, values, you know, a vision for

00:20:54.220 something, you are going to have a much easier time achieving things. And it's just, it's similar to having a lot

00:20:58.920 of wealth. There are tons of billionaires and millionaires who genuinely don't do anything

00:21:01.920 very interesting. Ignoring your privilege is not a virtue. Yeah. No, continue. Sorry, I got to

00:21:05.800 continue as a piece, Simone. So the, so what you see here, first of all, is that the solution he's

00:21:11.400 arguing is impractical and specifically caters to the reason he wrote the piece. Now, another thing to

00:21:19.460 note is you need to go through and see, okay, where does he concede that the other side makes a good

00:21:25.660 point? Never, never. No, he does. Oh, no, he does. I guess when he says that basically like super low

00:21:30.160 IQ does have an impact, right? He does. No, but he says something that absolutely destroys the entire

00:21:35.580 piece. Really? I missed that. Yes. I will read it because he says it so dismissively that you could

00:21:41.680 miss what he's saying. Okay. Okay. The best measure charlatans. IQ is reminiscent of risk charlatans

00:21:51.540 insisting on selling value at risk VAR and risk metrics saying it's the best measure. That best

00:21:59.120 measure being unreliable blew them up many times. Note the class of suckers for whom a bad measure is 0.97

00:22:07.220 better than no measure across domains. Now, Simone, you just heard that and you probably heard nothing 0.90

00:22:12.260 because one, it was written poorly. It was structured poorly. It didn't really get across

00:22:15.940 this point, but it did make a concession, a very important concession that IQ actually is the single

00:22:23.960 best measure that we have access to for adult success. He conceded it's the best measure. He

00:22:31.500 just thinks even being the best measure, it is not a good enough measure. Because it is imperfect.

00:22:36.600 Because it's imperfect and therefore we shouldn't use it at all. But the fact that he has now conceded

00:22:41.700 that out of all conceivable measures ever developed, it is the best one, that kind of

00:22:47.820 sinks everything else that he's talking about. Because what that means is that when you're

00:22:52.360 dealing with broad-based science, which regularly needs to use something like this, like lead in the

00:22:58.720 water hurting a population, or is this academic solution working or not working, or is IQ declining

00:23:03.720 in a population, or is IQ increasing in a population? In another part here, he mentions the Flynn effect

00:23:09.880 should warn us, not just that IQ is somewhat environmentally dependent, but that it is at

00:23:15.040 least partially circular. So he's saying, he concedes when IQ measures support his belief system.

00:23:22.820 Then they're real.

00:23:23.760 Then they're real. Which is that IQ is nutritionally based to some extent, is shown by the Flynn effect,

00:23:30.220 and I had the reverse Flynn effect, but the Flynn effect means that the Flynn effect is real.

00:23:33.860 So he's willing to use it when it supports his worldview, and he distances himself from it when

00:23:40.540 it goes against his worldview.

00:23:41.940 Oh dear.

00:23:42.780 And then the final thing that I would say is, and he fortunately does this for you, the reader,

00:23:48.060 is look at the actual data points the person is using. He will put up data points and be like,

00:23:53.760 oh, look, the data points are all over the place, and I'm going to put them on the screen for the viewers

00:23:58.400 here. But if you actually look at these data points, you can eyeball what it would look like

00:24:04.220 if you drew a line through this scatterplot. It would look like a line going up and to the right.

00:24:08.980 I know, but he seems to not understand, I don't know, linear regression.

00:24:14.020 No. So he believes that because there is high variability, and keep in mind, high variability

00:24:19.860 once a person is rich. So basically he conceives two things. He conceives that low IQ matters,

00:24:24.680 and that IQ is really highly determinate of how much money you make under a certain amount of

00:24:31.560 money. However, anyone who even does believe in IQ, like us, would largely say, yeah, but people

00:24:37.440 who are earning like over 100K a year, the amount that they earn is largely just luck-based. It's not

00:24:43.440 based on competence. Anyone would tell you that. But most people are earning under that amount,

00:24:48.060 and that is why we focus on things like IQ, because that's where it is determinate.

00:24:51.900 So hold on, but this is just like more broadly. The real key thing was a piece like this,

00:24:58.260 when you're going through it, is to look for what they are conceding, because that can tell you the

00:25:03.680 few things that are really strongly true. The points he concedes is that IQ is the best measure we have

00:25:09.540 available to us right now of correlating with adult success. He does concede that it works really well

00:25:16.100 for low-paying jobs, and that low IQ does really seem to hurt people. He does concede that it works

00:25:22.200 really well for things like the military. He does concede that... So across all of these areas,

00:25:29.080 I think what you can see is that, yeah, IQ probably is a really useful measure. And all of this comes

00:25:35.560 back to... Oh, but you forgot he also makes this argument that it's immoral. He claims the concept

00:25:41.800 is immoral. He uses that word. The concept of IQ is immoral. And again, this comes to... Now,

00:25:47.240 this comes looking outside of a piece, right? So, you know, before I was like, okay, don't look

00:25:53.260 outside the piece, but you can just sanity test it. Be like, okay, well, if IQ is a bad measure of

00:25:59.240 competence, right, does it correlate? What other things do I correlate with competence as an individual?

00:26:05.660 You're the person saying like broadly, I guess if I was trying to determine how good a group would be

00:26:10.300 at say graduating from college, because colleagues have a very big financial incentive to be able to

00:26:16.280 determine that. Well, they don't use IQ tests. What are they using? They're using SA and just Google.

00:26:20.360 What's the correlation between IQ tests and SA? Like 0.84, like really high, like very high

00:26:27.560 correlation. And so this is the problem. All sort of tests of intelligence, because intelligence is

00:26:34.160 cross correlated across domains are going to correlate with each other. If I was looking at a school and I was

00:26:39.520 looking at people who were scoring well on biology tests, I could broadly guess and bet pretty

00:26:45.080 effectively that they would also score better than other students on history tests or on math tests.

00:26:50.800 And this is why when you're looking at things like IQ, but then what's interesting, and a lot of people

00:26:54.260 might not know this, is that then you expand this to other domains. You look at their probability of

00:26:58.380 raping someone. It's also a lot lower. You look at their probability of being in jail. It's also a lot

00:27:02.480 lower. You look at their probability of murdering someone. It's also a lot lower. You look at their

00:27:05.840 probability of getting in a car accident. It's also a lot lower. Generally, within any of these

00:27:10.020 things, it's almost, I'm not going to say it's irrelevant what you're measuring because some are

00:27:13.180 better measures than others, but you're clearly measuring something if it's cross correlated against

00:27:19.320 all of these different domains. And so I think a lot of people will try to like blow smoke in your

00:27:24.520 face. And it's really good to be able to recognize when they're doing that. And for them, like I even

00:27:31.400 think from his perspective, ideologically, what's at stake for him? One, he thinks if IQ can be proven

00:27:36.700 to be real, that means that racism is right, which it doesn't. As we have copiously pointed out on this

00:27:42.300 show, it is not intergenerationally durably tied to an ethnic group enough to matter. But anything that

00:27:48.760 you can measure and put a number to is obviously going to differ between population groups. Duh.

00:27:53.880 But that doesn't mean like one is better or something like that. It would, I guess, if it didn't change in

00:27:59.280 between generations, but it changes so, so, so quickly. And then the second is that he ends up making an

00:28:06.360 argument that needs to say that he has achieved everything that he has achieved in life without systemic

00:28:11.620 advantages. He has just willed himself to this place that he is. Simultaneously while flaunting that systemic

00:28:20.040 advantage. Right. In every single, like to a fault, like to a point of illegibility.

00:28:25.140 Yeah. And if you look at people like Simone and I will admit that I, well, actually, I don't think I have a

00:28:31.560 high IQ. Well, I do have a, I do have a high IQ when it's measured. What I mean is it, Simone might not mention

00:28:37.680 this, but she's in the top fraction of a percent. She was measured recently for the autism exam, but hold on

00:28:42.840 Simone, I won't brag on you. So what we do need to know is that the way that my brain works when it comes to

00:28:49.640 things is different enough that it's not just like being smart. Like typically when I start something,

00:28:55.320 I'm really bad at it. Like when I started high school, I was in the top, you know, half of my

00:29:00.000 class. I know I graduated obviously really near the top, but I started bottom half. When I went to SAT

00:29:05.500 prep, I remember I almost got laughed out of the room because I said I wanted to go to Harvard or

00:29:08.860 Stanford, which obviously I did end up going to for my MBA, but they were like, but you are the single 0.86

00:29:13.900 lowest scores in the entire prep class. What are you talking about? So I'm one of these people who

00:29:18.920 always starts like really lower than other people. And then somehow ends up if I'm just

00:29:25.260 persistent at something really sort of figuring out and getting it to click at the end of the day.

00:29:29.600 But I think it might just be because I see things differently, but this seeing things differently

00:29:33.720 has to have some genetic component. The advantages I have over other people, I should never deny them

00:29:41.120 because that removes my ability to empathize with an individual who tells me you don't understand.

00:29:47.500 I can't just do this thing that you went out there and did.

00:29:50.840 Well, and I wonder, so one argument that Nassim Tilla makes also in his essay, which we haven't,

00:29:55.380 I think, touched on a whole lot, is like, you know, only pencil, like paper pusher academic types

00:30:01.240 who to play with bureaucracy and follow direction perform well on IQ tests. And I mean, to your point,

00:30:07.220 right, you as actually a very anti-authoritarian, anti-bureaucracy, I'm not going to fucking listen to you 0.97

00:30:11.980 kind of person, do really suck at a lot of IQ, you know, correlated whatever tests in the beginning. 0.90

00:30:18.140 But you also have the good sense and tenacity to learn the system. And I think a lot of what 0.52

00:30:23.140 these tests may also be measuring is people's willingness to work with a system to their

00:30:27.780 personal advantage. And a lack of willingness to work with that system, a lack of willingness

00:30:31.900 to adapt and read directions and listen, is, you know, also something more intelligent.

00:30:37.040 Regardless, it might not be measuring intelligence, but it's measuring-

00:30:39.900 It's measuring willingness to learn how to do what you need to do to get ahead in life.

00:30:44.120 And let's keep in mind what IQ is really measuring, because I think a lot of people miss this. It is

00:30:47.840 not, we use it as a quote unquote intelligence measure, but it's really, it's cling to fame is that

00:30:53.420 it has the highest correlatory factor with life outcomes. And that like economic outcomes mostly,

00:30:58.820 but other life outcomes. And that's what we're looking at. That's why we care about it as a

00:31:02.520 statistic. And I would say life outcomes where intelligence matters. I'd argue that the amount

00:31:06.880 that you make over a hundred K a year, your intelligence doesn't matter. You're mostly

00:31:10.720 dealing with luck at that point. And so it does not surprise me at all that it wouldn't be

00:31:13.940 correlated at that point. But in his world of, I guess, ultra smarty pants who have make

00:31:18.320 billions of dollars a year, like that's where he's applying it instead of at population levels.

00:31:24.580 Yeah. I think a lot of people like him, people like him, like, I don't know if they, for years

00:31:30.440 have even come into contact with people who have an IQ like below 110. They just don't. So I think

00:31:36.640 it's also hard for them to even understand like the true variance in IQ that's out there and the

00:31:40.940 effect that it has on people. Yeah. And I would say the most important reason why IQ matters right

00:31:45.620 now and why people need to be paying attention to IQ right now, especially when he's, well, IQ only

00:31:51.660 matters when it's really low. Well, if we're dealing with a quickly dropping IQ for genetic

00:31:57.200 reasons, which it looks like we are about again, one standard deviation drop in the next 75 years

00:32:02.740 is what we see, not just from IQ being measured in developed countries. We see this, the polygenic 1.00

00:32:09.160 scores. So this is like the genetic makeups as they are correlated to IQ. We can see them appearing

00:32:16.060 at a lower and lower frequency in genetic banks over time. We can then correlate the genes associated

00:32:22.300 with a high IQ and look at how much they, what other things are highly tied to. They are extremely

00:32:27.440 highly tied to a person's fertility success. So the higher, the same genes that are correlated with IQ

00:32:34.420 are also correlated with low success in fertility situations. Like you're looking at a car and you

00:32:37.980 can measure how fast it goes and predict that. You can predict how fast it might go by looking at

00:32:42.840 engineering. You can read a report about how fast it's supposed to go. And all of these numbers

00:32:47.420 correlate. That's sort of what we're looking at with this IQ drop. If it turns out that's real

00:32:52.000 and we are ignoring that, well, then IQ is really going to fucking matter because almost all of us in 0.91

00:32:59.400 the developed world are going to be at this incredibly low level of IQ that he, even he says, 0.86

00:33:06.300 oh, this actually does have a very big effect. And that's a problem that you ignore this because it

00:33:13.360 says something. Yeah. It's kind of like being like, well, money makes no difference unless you're like

00:33:17.720 impoverished. And yet like humanity's moving in this direction toward poverty. And let's just ignore

00:33:22.260 the issue though, because it doesn't matter at all. Yeah. Yeah. And so I just wanted to close out with

00:33:27.000 that. That is the number one reason why we can't just ignore IQ right now, even though it might be

00:33:32.840 convenient to ignore IQ right now. And it's a shame, but, and as we pointed out, IQ being real

00:33:39.520 does not support the racist positions so long as you are actually familiar with the genetics of IQ.

00:33:44.820 It is because IQ is so heritable that it doesn't matter from an ethnic perspective because its extreme 0.88

00:33:51.700 level of heritability is what allows it to change so quickly intergenerationally. Yeah. Which thank

00:33:56.840 goodness persistently tied to an individual's ethnicity. Yeah. I mean, and let's be clear,

00:34:01.780 we would prefer a world in which everyone had the same potential for achievement on everything,

00:34:08.140 you know, like a blank slate world would be way cooler. We would prefer to be in one,

00:34:12.100 but you know, to pretend that is how it is just because you feel like that's a more moral world

00:34:17.480 doesn't mean it's a more moral world, right? You could be like, oh, death is immoral. So I don't

00:34:21.980 believe in it, but that's not going to change the fact that you're going to die. So. 0.92

00:34:25.620 Well, and it can cause you to make decisions that hurt a lot of people. And that's what

00:34:29.020 gets me the most about this. You know, when you look at our prison system, the vast majority of

00:34:34.380 people in it are at very low IQs. And when you deny that they had a systemic disadvantage when

00:34:40.700 compared to you, when you tell people to throw that out, that what you are taking the most

00:34:46.520 vulnerable people in our society who are in a situation to do something they had no control over

00:34:52.320 and completely acting like they had the same advantages you did in life. It is sick. It is

00:34:59.020 sick. It is not moral. And you need to get your fucking shit together and actually look at the

00:35:04.460 data instead of trying to blow smoke in people's faces. So you can play your little virtue game. 1.00

00:35:09.000 Okay. Because people are suffering for your bullshit. And so you can feel like a hero without 1.00

00:35:15.780 having to challenge actual real world problems and fix them and take responsibility for the

00:35:22.500 advantages that you were born with, which other people worked.

00:35:26.780 And there you have it.

00:35:29.060 Okay. Have a good one, Simone. 0.58

00:35:31.820 You too, gorgeous.

00:35:33.880 For anyone who wants to go to that pro natalist conference that's being held in Austin, a few

00:35:39.420 points of clarification. We are not running it. We have no control over who's going. We don't make

00:35:44.480 any money from it. However, we will be speaking there and we will be there and we would be happy

00:35:49.140 to meet up with people who watch our show if you happen to be in the area. Might even put

00:35:53.660 something together if you guys reach out and we get a critical mass of people. We have secured a

00:35:59.160 discount code for our fans, which is pro natalist, all caps, and it should get you about 30% off the

00:36:06.540 price of a ticket if you are going. Again, this is not affiliated with the foundation, but if we can make

00:36:12.620 things cheaper for our fans, we're going to do it. And if we can meet with people who are interested

00:36:17.380 in this topic or further evangelize our brand of pro natalism, we are very excited to take every

00:36:24.260 opportunity we can to do that.

Based Camp - October 23, 2023

Nassim Taleb's Anti-IQ Article Deconstructed (Yes, IQ Matters)

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