Emil O W Kirkegaard

Altho @jonatanpallesen's critique of Taleb's many specific claims was extremely well-done, I still think much of Taleb's big pic critique of IQ (not his wild "Nazi" accusations at Quillette) are probably justified.

I have written elsewhere that IQ is 1 of the most well-validate measures in Psych. But I have written that to expose the hypocrisy in the field. If Fred loves the IAT or RWA or SDO, that's fine, but if he also condemns IQ, it is hard to take his arguments seriously.

BUT, if someone (Taleb, eg) says, in effect, "The whole field of Psych is mostly junk" he may be right or wrong, but he's not being disingenuous. I know some people in Science Reform who have similar views.

My view is that its not quite *that* bad** but it is bad enough. ** This may reflect my own residual professional bias of wanting to believe Psych needs lots of improvement but is not an all out disaster area.

Part of Taleb's critique that I do buy is that IQ/Cog ability tests (SATs, GREs, MCATs) etc select for "school smarts" and schools are gatekeepers of professional success so some of the validity of CogAbility tests reflects this social process.

Also, I think domain specific expertise-which will look a lot like intelligence-can be developed at very high levels across a wide range of IQ scores. Bottom line (for me): there is tons of uncertainty about what is going on just w/IQ, despite its (relative) impressive record.

Problem 2: Genetics and behavioral genetics. Nearly every biologically-trained geneticist I have interacted with says the whole "heritability" business is mostly or totally bunk. This is not my area, I have no bio training, but this is my limited understanding:

Not because results of twin studies etc are "wrong" but because the variance partitioning is wrong. Heritability studies typically separate observable variability (in behavior or physical traits) into a genetic and one or more environmental components.