Taleb is clearly someone who is willing to bend his intellectual arguments to fit his politics and preconceptions, rather than the data. Just look at how badly he failed on Bitcoin and COVID.
Not unfair to call him a crank...
https://medium.com/incerto/no-covid-19-is-not-an-old-person-problem-6968f720d153
Anyway, the ugly reality is IQ is certainly real, genetically heritable, and IQ distributions vary. The reason why so few engineers are black isn't primarily racism. It's because black populations around the world tend to have lower IQ.
Conversely, in spite of vicious racism in the past (and present...) Jews still managed to dominate the sciences is mainly because their average IQ is high. Same with Asians, though not as extreme.
Of course, distributions are distributions, and some people will beat the odds and you should evaluate individuals on their own merits. But as long as the genetics (and culture) of so much of the world is awful, those parts of the world will remain poor and backwards. And allowing the more talented people in those parts of the world to immigrate to western countries just increases that inequality through brain drain, while dragging down our countries if we're not careful. Canada's prior immigration policy was careful... and probably did the rest of the world a disservice by taking their best people.
The irony here is convincing yourself that IQ isn't real takes intelligence... 😂
Do you actually have a (link to a) serious argument as to how his IQ statistical reasoning is wrong?
To the extend I read it back in the day, along with his book Statistical Consequences of Fat Tail, it seemed plausible. I've learned enough statistics back in uni to be extremely skeptical of any social science statistics, and I'm about 90% confident Charles Murray (where most of this stuff comes from) is a grifter.
(don't want to force anyone to work through Taleb books though, we can just disagree on this topic)
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It's Taleb. I've got better things to do than debunk him given how he's obviously become a crank.
As for IQ in general, anyone with a bit of sense can see how obviously some people are just smarter than others, and how children tend to be similarly intelligent as their parents. Intelligence in general is _obviously_ a genetic trait: humans have it in ways animals _clearly_ do not, and different animals _clearly_ have it in different degrees.
As I said, you have to actively fool yourself to convince yourself otherwise; the burden of proof is not on my views here. The only reason there is an IQ denial movement is because IQ (especially the inherited component of it) is so utterly toxic to DEI beliefs.
Diversity Equity Inclusion (pretty much on its way out)
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If you believe Jordan Peterson, at least in areas of his expertise, IQ is the best predictor of professional success, especially when coupled with conscientiousness (which, I think, consists of diligence plus industriousness).
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