Nassim Taleb's Anti-IQ Article Deconstructed (Yes, IQ Matters)
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Summary
In this episode, we talk about the idea that IQ matters, why it matters, and why it's a pseudoscientific swindle. We also talk about why you should care about the data and why you need to stop playing the virtue game.
Transcript
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When you look at our prison system, the vast majority of people in it are at very low accused.
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And when you deny that they had a systemic disadvantage when compared to you, when you
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tell people to throw that out, that what you are taking the most vulnerable people in our society
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who are in a situation to do something they had no control over and completely acting like they
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had the same advantages you did in life. It is sick. It is sick. It is not moral. And you need
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to get your fucking shit together and actually look at the data instead of trying to blow
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smoke in people's faces so you can play your little virtue game. Okay. Because people are
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suffering for your bullshit. And so you can feel like a hero without having to challenge
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actual real world problems and fix them and take responsibility for the advantages that you were
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born with, which other people worked. He ends up making an argument that needs to say that he has
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achieved everything that he has achieved in life without systemic advantages. He has just
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Simultaneously while flaunting that systemic advantage.
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In every single, like to a fault, like to a point of illegibility.
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So Malcolm, what if I told you that obviously wealth doesn't predict success because there are
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tons of millionaires and billionaires who just do nothing with their lives and piss away all their
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money. And obviously being like super, super poor, like under the poverty line is a problem,
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but like above a certain level, it really doesn't matter at all how much money you have.
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Oh, I think that would make a lot of sense. I think that's exactly the type of thing a wealthy
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person would argue. Right. So I got to talk about how we got on this topic. We had a fan of the show
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stay over at our house because they happen to be passing through the area. And one of the things that
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they mentioned, because they were like, well, this is an area where I questioned something that you
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guys talk about a lot. Specifically, he believed that IQ didn't matter at all. And the reason he
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believes this is because another smart person who he looked up to had argued this very passionately,
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specifically Nassim Taleb. He wrote this medium post about this called IQ is largely a pseudoscientific
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swindle. And I read this medium post and I saw it as a really interesting opportunity because
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self-contained within the post itself was the proof that he was manipulating data and essentially lying
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to the reader. But what we want to try to do on this episode is to not just show that yes, IQ likely
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does matter, but give you the tools necessary to, even if you don't understand the scientific language
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which was which a person is arguing, i.e. in this case, like advanced statistics, even if you don't
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understand that, understand the telltale signs that a person is lying to you and be able to tell
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that they are lying to you, even if you don't understand what they are saying. And better than
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all of that, get to deeper truths than you even could from reading an article from the perspective of
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somebody who agreed with what is true or what you already believe. And by that, what I mean
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is if somebody who really believes in career is invested in IQ mattering, writes an article that
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IQ matters, well, they can't really trust it because they might be lying with statistics as well.
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If somebody who deeply believes IQ doesn't matter, or at least tries to argue that,
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has sprinkled throughout his article little admissions to where IQ does matter,
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you can know that at least in those areas, it definitely matters because he has everything
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at stake in showing that it doesn't. So that's why learning to read articles in this way is really
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important. Now, before we go further with this, I want to elaborate on the analogy that Simone
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started this show is, because I think this is where we're going as a society. And a lot of these
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people today who were born with advantages over people, born with usually really high IQs,
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and then they pretend like they've achieved everything that they've achieved on their own.
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It is not the look that they think it is. It's very much the new, I don't see race.
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Pretending you don't see a systemic advantage that you have had over other people your entire life,
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and taking credit being like, well, I was starting from the same position they were,
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is not humble, okay? It is dehumanizing, and it is cruel and evil, and it prevents us as a society
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from potentially solving systemic issues for people who weren't born with your immense privilege.
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I say this to Naseed because he is somebody who was born with this immense privilege.
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He's clearly someone who is very smart and who benefits from a high IQ. And if he were to,
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in good faith, take an IQ test, he would probably end up with a very high IQ score.
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Like, it's pretty apparent. I want to start off, too, with some caveats that, like,
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you know, a lot of what he says is, we agree with, you know, IQ, like, if you have a really high IQ,
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it doesn't mean you're going to be super successful. Obviously not. You know, this is why
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with our school, we select for I will, as we say, and not IQ, because, you know, being really smart
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does not predict success. But he claims that's what, like, IQ enthusiasts also claim,
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which is not, it's just not true. So he makes a lot of false claims on that. I just want to say
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that we agree. He also says a really key thing with IQ is, like, it, where it is most predictive
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and where it is the biggest deal is where there's really low IQ. But he seems to, like, I don't know,
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just discount that. That's not important. When actually, like, it's been a really big deal.
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This is why lead remediation, you know, like, reducing lead exposure for populations has been
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Which was caught and measured through IQ. This is a place where IQ in public policy has
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had a positive impact on the lives of pretty much everyone living on Earth today.
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Yeah, because people were willing to admit that, you know, low IQ is a problem. And then also,
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he talks about, you know, people misusing IQ often in very unsavory, disgusting ways. You know,
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he points to racism a lot. That's totally true. But all sorts of messed up people use,
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like, misuse all sorts of science and pseudoscience and other nonsense to forward their agendas.
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Just because you see one idiot use something in a poor way doesn't mean it's not, you know,
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it's not a, it's not a relevant field in other ways. So before we go further with this, I think
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we can break this down into a few core points when you're analyzing an article like this.
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So one is you're looking for what the motivation is.
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Then you want to look at the data sets that they present. You want to look at what they think the
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alternatives are that they're presenting. If IQ doesn't matter, what are the alternatives?
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You need to look at where they can see that the other side has points. And you need to look at
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what I call repeated hand flails. A repeated hand flail is a really bad argument that is used
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repeatedly. And that is obviously a bad argument, but that at first glance can seem like it's a
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really powerful argument. So I'll start with a repeated hand flail that he uses throughout the
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piece because it's really obvious and it really got on my nerves, which was IQ doesn't matter
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because the same individual, if you test them again with an IQ test, on average, that test is going
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to differ from their first score by about a third, a standard deviation. And that's a big difference.
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And therefore that proves that IQ tests don't matter. Now I ask a person to just, and this is
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how, when you're hearing something like this and you're like, okay, he's using a lot of words
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like the standard deviation and comparing this to different parts of the IQ stuff, ignore all of
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that. Just use your common sense. Okay. So replace IQ tests with a different test, like a biology test,
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right? Like I'm taking a, a 10th grade biology test and I am comparing my knowledge of biology to the
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other students in the room's knowledge of biology. Now, if I retake that test, if you retake any test
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about, you are going to differentiate from your previous results by about a third of a standard
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deviation. If it's like a really big test, that's just normal. Anyone should know you're not going to get
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the same results. Like every time you retake a test, that's a normal function of tests. However,
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that being the case, that doesn't mean that biology test isn't measuring anything in terms of a
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student's knowledge of biology. And so this is the first thing when they are criticizing something,
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like if they're continually using argument, think, okay, but is there something else that we all
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generally agree on that the bar is a good way to measure how good a lawyer is doing or the driver's
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exams are a good way to measure, you know, do these have different results when a single
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individual retakes the test? And if the answer is yes, well then why does he keep bringing this up?
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Why is this so important? It is because, well, it's just a weird rhetorical tactic he keeps going back
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to. Yeah. I think connected to this kind of is at the very beginning, and this was like a big trigger
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for me. He, he says technical backbone, like he links to a technical backbone as here's just like
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at the top of his article, here's my link to basically what he implies is, oh, if you really
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want to understand why I'm correct and you want to see it on a technical standpoint, an academic peer
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reviewed standpoint, this will explain everything. And you click over to it and it's just, it's just a
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research journal article pointing to examples of people mistaking correlation with causation.
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It isn't actually related to the arguments he makes in his blog post. And it's one of those
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things that really bothers me because often people will link to something and be like, oh,
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here's what backs up my argument. And it, I mean, usually it's at least broadly related to their
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argument. This even wasn't really related to his argument. He's sometimes argued that, oh, people
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don't understand correlation and causation, but yeah, that, that really bothered me when people are
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like, read this other thing. You mentioned that I would note as well should be a big red flag with
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people. Smart people can write in a way that dumb people can understand when we write people like
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who watch our channel and stuff like that. They sometimes accuse us of talking. Like we have a
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theotaurus in front of us. Okay. Whatever. I don't think that we do that to me. I talk really plain.
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And that reminds me of that scene in idiocracy where they're like, I think it might be because
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of these drugs the army put me on. But if you could, uh, just get me well enough to get back
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to base. Right. Kick ass. Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothing, but, uh, it says on your
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chart that you're fucked up. Uh, you talk like a fag and your shit's all retarded. What I do is just
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like, you know, you know what I mean? Like, no, I'm serious here. I need help. There's that fag
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talk we talked about. But yeah. And there's that scene where he's just trying to talk normal and
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the other person just from a different cultural group hears it. It's him intentionally training
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to sound erudite. Well, but I, you know, he doesn't really gatekeep throughout this essay. For example,
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like in, in one sentence, he's, well, however, if you take up a Perry and have Venkian view of
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intelligence in another sentence, he's IQ doesn't detect convexity of mistakes. Like.
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So with the point being here is what I was saying is that for us, when we use words, it sounds,
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I don't know, to somebody different from us that we're using a CS source or something,
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they are still intelligible in context. They are not intentionally meant to get a viewer to
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disengage or sort of shut down and just listen to the other one. Yeah. And be like, oh, I guess
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I'll have to take your word for it because I don't understand this. And therefore you must be smarter
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than me. So I'm just going to assume that you're right. Yeah. And I would say that if you notice that
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happening in a piece and never, ever take away from that, this person knows what they're talking
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about. Yeah. But can you bring it in? He's like literally in an article that he's using to disprove IQ
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as like a thing. He's using IQ correlated vocabulary. He's using SAT words. Yeah. I'm
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like the fuck, you know, he talks always, he's, well, you know, this isn't Gaussian. And you know
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what? Honestly, like I've been out of academia long enough to have forgotten that Gaussian was
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in reference to a normal distribution. He could have just said normal distribution. This man who
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apparently throughout his writing makes it very clear that he really hates academia uses a lot of
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academic speech, which is also really interesting. The techniques. And I love the first point you
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mentioned, which is a huge red flag. If somebody says, here's a source and the source has nothing
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to do with what they're talking about really, or is really just meant to shit on academics. That's
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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
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the very outset of this piece, he is saying, I am willing to mislead you to try to make my point.
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That is what is being signaled here. But first we got to go back to this framework I set up. Okay. So
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what is his motivation with this piece? Because he cites his motivation throughout the piece
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very plainly. He cites very clearly that he believes that if IQ is a real thing,
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then the racists are correct. And racists will be able to implement racist policy,
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which will hurt people if IQ is a real. This is like second paragraph. People bent on showing that
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some populations have inferior mental abilities based on IQ equals intelligence. Those have been
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upset with me for robbing them of this quote unquote scientific tool. His goal right here,
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he lays it out. Second paragraph. I am trying to rob racists of a tool.
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Now see, the way I read that section is he gives a bulleted list and he's like, basically IQ was
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something championed by first, he says racist and eugenicists. And second, he says psychometrics,
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peddlers looking for suckers. And I thought what he was trying to do there was basically associate
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this domain with unsavory people and exploitative people.
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I think he also uses the association to discredit anyone who talks about IQ by just saying they're
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racists. Okay. So he's using it for two reasons, but it was very clear from the piece that he believes
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that if IQ is a real thing, then the racists are right.
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I get in the outro, the argument that quote unquote, some races are better at running,
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hence inference about the brain is stale. Mental capacity is much more. He goes over this over
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and over. It is very clear. Wait, so he's implying that not all race, listen,
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he's implying that all races are equally good at running.
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No, he's implying that doesn't mean that there would be, okay, listen to this point. This is
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actually a really good point of somebody messing with you. Okay. The argument that quote,
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quote, some races are better at running, end quote, hence some inference about the brain is stale.
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Mental capacity is much more dimensional and not defined in the same way running a hundred meter
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dashes. What? So what he's saying is that because this is a more complicated thing to measure,
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that it axiomatically doesn't vary between different ethnic groups.
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Oh, okay. Right, right, right. Because intelligence is harder to measure and like nail down.
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And it's this glomming weird thing. It's just a hand wave. Now there are reasons why,
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and we have done videos on this, why if you can measure anything in a group, measure anything in
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a group, and it's clear that he believes this. And this is why he is so sold on this point.
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You can measure anything in a group like tennis ability. You are going to find systemic differences
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between groups. That's just natural. The reason why IQ based race realism is irrelevant. And we've done
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this before is because it changes so quickly. If you look like we were looking, okay, we had 50
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embryos, like just our family. And we choose five embryos out of those 50 based on IQ pure generation
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with existing technology. And our kids only marry other families who did that within just five
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generations, the average member of our family would be three standard deviations higher in IQ
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than the average American citizen today. And keep in mind that within the next 75 years,
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we're likely looking at IQ dropping by a standard deviation. So for like just astronomically higher.
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And what this shows is that it doesn't matter. This would be true if we were black. This would be
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true if we were Asian. IQ doesn't matter, not because it doesn't differ between groups. Everything,
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if you measure it, if you can put a number to it, it's going to differ between groups.
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No, but any selective or evolutionary bottleneck you're trying to say.
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It matters because it doesn't persistently differ between. And it can quickly change. And it matters
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a lot more what like family you come from or what religion you come from.
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Yeah. Or what environment you're in and what the selective pressures are.
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What small segment. Yeah. So, so that's why it doesn't matter, but he hasn't thought of that argument.
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And so he is just completely dedicated because he knows the moment you could put,
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and this becomes very clear later in his argumentation, the moment you could put a number
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on general competence, that there would be differences between SNCC groups, because of
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course, I mean, they might be minor differences, but people would still pick up on that.
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Yeah. And then that motivates racism. And you can actually tell this is his core motivation
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by, again, I say, what is he proposing as the alternative to IQ? Right? So if he was being,
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I think, genuine, I just think IQ tests are bad and we could be measuring this better,
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you would be proposing a way to measure it better, but he doesn't propose a way to measure it better.
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Yeah, that's true. And we would respect that. I mean, we, I think we inherently under,
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we would agree with him that current measures of IQ, you know, are perfect.
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Oh yeah, they could definitely improve. But let's, I want to read this.
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If you want to detect how someone fares at a task, say loan sharking, tennis playing,
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or a random matrix theory, make him or her do that task. We don't need theoretical exams for
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real world function by probability challenge psychologists. So think about what this is
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saying and how completely insane this is. He is actually saying that I am unwilling to have
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any sort of broad measure of competence put on a person. And the reason he has to take this position
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is because whatever measure of competence he found, you would find differences in it between groups.
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So he needs there to be no standard measure of competence, given his world framing that he has
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laid out. If you can put a measure on people's competence, then it will differ between groups
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that it can be used by racists to promote their agenda. That is a core thing. So, so going into this
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piece, he's going into it with the world perspective that if you could put any sort of broad measure of
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competence on a group, that it will lead to racism. And so we should not have that, but think about how
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insane that would be for a society. That would also mean, well, you can't have SATs. You can't have,
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you can't really have any sort of a broadly applicable test. Every test that needs to only study
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what a person is about to do. But the problem is that we hire people and we accept people into
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college. Based on totally unrelated measures. To do broad ranges of tasks. One of the core
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places like he was using, as he mentions in the piece, is in the military. And that's because you
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need a broad spectrum. Because it's predictive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and it does seem to be
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predictive of outcome. And, you know, again, we want to emphasize here that we're not, we don't
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disagree with the basic argument he's making. The school that we're designing, whenever possible,
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tests people through natural assessments. Hey, can you write fan, you know, can you write content
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that audience, like widespread audiences? Okay, well, let's see if you can write a fan fiction
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a lot of people read. Like we believe in natural assessments and we believe that's the best way
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to tell if someone's good at something, but we also are practical. Yeah. Well, I think also at the
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same time, we accept that some people are born with an intellectual state that gives them a huge
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systemic advantage over other people. And this, again, it's not an ethnic thing. As we said,
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it changes so quickly, it's irrelevant to tie this to ethnic groups. Yeah. But, and again,
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in most of these gene people, you go to these genetics channels, right? And they'll tell you
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on these channels, yeah, it looks like in the developed world in the next 75 years, IQ in the
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developed world is going to drop by about one standard deviation. And then they're also like
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complaining. So the developed world is mostly white people. That means white people on average will be
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dumber than everyone else because we're not seeing this effect in the developing world.
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So it's one of these things where don't play that game. Yeah. It's not. If we were going to go back
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to the wealth analogy, obviously like first, and we also agree, you know, having a super high IQ
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doesn't mean obviously you're going to be super successful. There are lots of people with crazy
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high IQs who do absolutely nothing, who do a lot of really dumb stuff. However, when you have a really
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high IQ and you also have a bunch of other factors like drive, ambition, values, you know, a vision for
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something, you are going to have a much easier time achieving things. And it's just, it's similar to having a lot
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of wealth. There are tons of billionaires and millionaires who genuinely don't do anything
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very interesting. Ignoring your privilege is not a virtue. Yeah. No, continue. Sorry, I got to
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continue as a piece, Simone. So the, so what you see here, first of all, is that the solution he's
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arguing is impractical and specifically caters to the reason he wrote the piece. Now, another thing to
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note is you need to go through and see, okay, where does he concede that the other side makes a good
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point? Never, never. No, he does. Oh, no, he does. I guess when he says that basically like super low
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IQ does have an impact, right? He does. No, but he says something that absolutely destroys the entire
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piece. Really? I missed that. Yes. I will read it because he says it so dismissively that you could
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miss what he's saying. Okay. Okay. The best measure charlatans. IQ is reminiscent of risk charlatans
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insisting on selling value at risk VAR and risk metrics saying it's the best measure. That best
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measure being unreliable blew them up many times. Note the class of suckers for whom a bad measure is
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better than no measure across domains. Now, Simone, you just heard that and you probably heard nothing
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because one, it was written poorly. It was structured poorly. It didn't really get across
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this point, but it did make a concession, a very important concession that IQ actually is the single
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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.
00:23:23.760
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
00:23:42.780
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.
00:35:33.880
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