Category: Human Behavior and Cognitive Science

MORE FALSIFYING OF TALEB’S NONSENSE ON IQ
Kareem:
I’ve addressed this issue for years now, and it resurfaces with every generation of college grads. One of the virtues of the internet and social media is that ideas—good and bad—become widely accessible.

Unfortunately, bad ideas have extraordinary durability, much like rumor, gossip, bad faith, undermining, and sedition.

Why? Because post-1960 college education trains people to be witty and utilitarian in persuasion, not smart, true, or moral. (and they are trying to redefine moral as infantilizing out of responsibility rather than ‘adulting’ into responsibility.

You might already understand the differences in mathematical, algorithmic, physical, operational, and verbal reducibility—the limits of each, especially mathematics. Certainly Wolfram is trying to address the first two.

However, you may not be aware of the intuitionistic movement in mathematics, the operational movement in physics, the praxeological(Operational) movement in economics, or the operationalist movement in psychology. These are all responses—albeit only marginally successful—to the challenge of explaining the limits of mathematics, logic, and philosophy.

As an operational epistemologist, I require that a claim not only reflect correlation in data but also be constructible from first principles (think universal laws at each scale of emergent complexity that overcome entropy) – each of those sales reflecting the disciplines.

I posted a similar response yesterday, but as you can see from my archives, I’ve debated this issue with Taleb for years. He has blocked me on every platform because of it.

Why? Because he has an agenda—a career built on that agenda—which is not only a malinvestment, but false, immoral and unethical. His attacks on IQ are just another attempt to perpetuate that malinvestment and failure – a failure which undermines his important insight of black swan events on one hand, and mandelbrot’s understanding of mathematical and computational representation.

LINK TO THE FOLLOWING POST
https://t.co/D02Jl5EByP

TEXT OF THE POST

Q: Curt—”Excuse me if you’ve already expounded upon this, but what are your thoughts on Taleb’s (@nntaleb) argument?”–
Joe Waldmann @J58039716

A: I’ve written about this, made a video, argued with Taleb, and been blocked by him on every platform. So yes, I’ve expounded on it. 😉

Here’s a rough summary, with links below:

Taleb’s Sophistry:
He’s employing the same sophistry he used in his commentary on the stock market. He defends individuals who act with lower ethical standards, doing so as part of his “ethnic defense.” The character Fat Tony, for example, is not moral. Neither is Taleb. Their strategies rely on exploiting high-trust cultures where the majority act morally—making their amoral behavior profitable. This dynamic highlights why the West is particularly vulnerable to Semitic deceptions. Taleb resides in New York, within one of the least moral demographics in the most moral country capable of the highest capital formation, not in the Middle East, where such ethics are ordinary but capital formation is impossible.

The Graph:
Taleb’s argument centers on individual returns on intelligence, not the returns on the distribution of intelligence within a polity. This reflects his bias toward individualism and tribalism over European commons-oriented thinking.

Key Points:

(a) Conscientiousness outweighs intelligence for wealth accumulation, regardless of IQ.

(b) Intelligence grants access to novelty and increasing scales of complexity, but its primary benefits are error reduction and risk mitigation—not necessarily creativity or innovation.

(c) Intelligence is most effective in producing returns within a population whose members are within a certain percentage of your ability. (This might require further explanation, but it’s intuitive once understood.)

(d) The higher one’s intelligence, the harder it is to create marginal differences with peers, even with conscientiousness and extraordinary work capacity.

(e) Highly intelligent individuals rely less on wealth accumulation because they already possess significant “intelligence capital.”

(f) Ergo, diminishing marginal returns on intelligence arise from decreasing incentives, smaller audiences capable of engaging with your knowledge, and fewer opportunities for direct application. (Ideas must be simplified as they cascade through populations of declining comprehension.)

LINKS TO MORE MATERIAL:
Video and Script:
https://t.co/8VrdgNqMez

Response to @jollyheretic:
Intelligence in evolutionary context:
https://t.co/GfF2Ud0IKj
Incentives behind Taleb’s IQ denial:
https://t.co/vmMg9dxtk5
Taleb’s campaign of immorality:
https://t.co/vcWE6m1gi7

More Material:
Comments on Weinstein Brothers and Taleb:
https://t.co/rIi5cb9rft
To Nassim Taleb re: A Decline in Violence is Not a Decline in Predation – But A Shift:
https://t.co/2ExVpMsXla
Limits of 20th-Century Thought:
https://t.co/iNu5GW6RW9

There’s more, but this should suffice.
CHEERS
-CD

Reply addressees: @kareem_carr