tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post4316587326009896759..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: Taleb And IQAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-15338253351915641122019-01-07T08:20:25.118-05:002019-01-07T08:20:25.118-05:00Why a High IQ Won’t Make You Rich - Mr. Taleb demo...Why a High IQ Won’t Make You Rich - Mr. Taleb demonstrates how a person with the world’s highest IQ cannot outperform an average person tinkering - https://www.thetreeofawakening.com/the-tinkering-method-how-to-make-money-online-get-rich-fast-easy-earn-ways/Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10093009062383337534noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-15207287721400510022019-01-03T13:02:58.170-05:002019-01-03T13:02:58.170-05:00I was actually considering emailing you this week...I was actually considering emailing you this week to say that I don’t think Twitter works well for NNT. This thread actually bolsters my case I think. I don’t think his ideas are easily reducible to 280 characters. And there’s an art to threads that requires each individual tweet to flow into the next, that I don’t see in his work. And he seems to get crabby with people a lot when their tweets don’t have the precision he wants. Which again, is not easily done in 280 characters. GraniteDadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04851407860883846133noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-46687228293014844372019-01-02T16:44:00.024-05:002019-01-02T16:44:00.024-05:00You do know, I trust, that there are some people w...You do know, I trust, that there are some people who have been educated waaaaaaaay past their ability to learn.<br /><br />dmoelling, there are jobs where "book learning" is not even close to adequate, which is why those "mustangs" do so well. Experience pays off. Unless "management and administration" won't let them.Sam L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/00996809377798862214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-2120027549011501042019-01-02T15:15:36.567-05:002019-01-02T15:15:36.567-05:00As for SAT scores, I am guessing that people who c...As for SAT scores, I am guessing that people who can handle technical material would do well on the math, at least. Of course, the math sections are also probably overdependent on verbal skills, as word problems are. I have heard that the ACT is even worse in this regard, but i don't know. If I ran the world, I would double-weight the math portions, rather than adding in a writing section designed to weed out foreigners. <br /><br />Politicians, journalists, writers, and entertainers, if they did well on the SATs at all, did far better on the Verbal sections.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-20253651100404741672019-01-02T15:11:14.212-05:002019-01-02T15:11:14.212-05:00We have a geography professor from Texas A&M w...We have a geography professor from Texas A&M who has commented here and may still be an occasional reader. I was asking his opinion. Thank you for yours, Charles. There was much I did not know. Marxist/Foucault geographers were not something I expected.<br /><br />As for the hoax paper, I had known about it but was not thinking of it for this post. Good pickup.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-5869945099183599972019-01-02T14:10:04.751-05:002019-01-02T14:10:04.751-05:00Assistant Village Idiot wrote:
>> What'...<br />Assistant Village Idiot wrote: <br /><br />>> What's up with geographers? Is that one of the fields that experts <br />>> really have no place to go but colleges, and thus academics <br />>> still own the field? <br /><br />On the contrarary, many geographers don't work in academia. Geography is best understood as an umbrella discipline that unites, historically and sometimes in a departmental structure, four different approaches. <br /><br />1. Earth Science / Physical processes (typically water / soil / climate / meteorology--drawing the line typically to exclude "hard rocks" which is usually geology. Quaternery Studies is up for grabs, perhaps, since it's usually not studying rocks. <br /><br />2. Area studies (old fashioned area studies)<br /><br />3. Human Environmental Interaction--how human communties make a livelihood in a physical and cultural setting (such as a Midwestern corn belt farming area or a region of Central Asian pastoralists)<br /><br />4. Spatial Analysis, which is linked to techniques such as GIS, spatial statistics, and remote sensing. <br /><br />This is reasonably well illustrated in a classic article by Pattison. <br /><br />http://geog.ucsb.edu/~kclarke/G200B/four_20traditions_20of_20geography.pdf<br /><br />= - = - = - = -<br /><br />In the 1960s and 1970s Some people in Geography (such as David Harvey, who is fairly well known in academia) read Marx and became enchanted with a Marxian approach. In this stream of scholarship, people later went on to read Foucault or similar theorists, and became drawn into the sort of "critical studies" that have taken over a variety of disciplines, often to the detriment of scholarly progress. <br /><br />Geography is a field poorly understood in the USA, and historically has enjoyed a better reputation in British COmmonwealth countries. This may be linked to the fact that the British at one point administered a quarter of the world's land area and had the most powerful navy. <br /><br />But no, not all geographers are crazy, and not all of them are in academia, either. Even most of the ones in academia are not crazy or crazy sounding, despite what periodically may get published in journals. <br /><br />There is a tendency for geographers to maintain a "mutual non-aggression pact" with those colleagues who strike off in new directions. An index of this is the ever-growing number of "Specialty Groups" within the overall membership of the American Association of Geographers. <br /><br />Kind Regards, <br /><br />Charles W. Abbott<br /><br /><br />P.S.: I assume that you are alluding to the _Gender, Place, and Culture_ journal and the hoax article on dog parks. It's not at the top of my reading list. Probably such hoaxing can play a useful role in delimiting the boundaries between useful scholarship and articles that are primarily absurd, bogus, or otherwise questionable. <br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br />charliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02620434574883840006noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-63968428070848198432019-01-02T13:49:32.506-05:002019-01-02T13:49:32.506-05:00"We can say they are alert, smart enough to h..."We can say they are alert, smart enough to handle technical and commercial concepts and manage people."--Right, I hope there's no one who genuinely believes that a random college degree could conceivably be necessary (let alone adequate) to such skills. On the other hand, employers like simple tests that will enable them to sort through a pile of resumes and reduce it to a manageable size. As long as they think there's even a rough correlation between a college degree and the ability to run, say, a large industrial concern, they may default to demanding the degree.<br /><br />At some point, we may find that there's no useful correlation at all between the skill and the diploma--I mean, not just that the diploma test needlessly causes the employer to miss out on some excellent candidates, but that the diploma is so irrelevant that it's a complete waste of time to consider it. I assume employers will then give up on the diploma and figure out another approach to hiring, or universities will start offering a degree that provides more useful predictive power. We may already have reached the point where the degree tells an employee very little beyond whether a candidate is likely to make good tenured professor material. They say employers already are really using college degrees mostly as legal substitutes for the IQ tests they'd prefer to rely on if they didn't think they'd be sued. As proxies for IQ tests, college degrees aren't awful even if they're not particularly reliable. They're better than nothing, anyway.<br /><br />To Richard's point about perseverance, a college degree, like high school grades, does tell an employer a bit about that quality. Maybe no more than an employer could learn by seeing that someone established a successful business or made it through Ranger school or the like, but a degree is a metric that's easily available and simple to express as a job-pool qualification, and almost certainly won't buy you a disparate-impact lawsuit.<br /><br />I haven't done a lot of hiring in my time, but I have often tried to train informal paralegal assistants. Because I was dealing with potential candidates one by one, I couldn't have been less interested in a college degree, which couldn't tell me anything I couldn't establish more reliably by trying someone out and seeing how he learned things. But I wasn't trying to hire several dozen paralegals a year from a pool of 1,000 candidates, which is another task altogether.<br /><br />When I served on my law firm's recruiting committee, candidates didn't even make it to my attention unless some recruiting coordinator had already sorted through them, and often not before an advance team had interviewed on campus and narrowed down the field. Once they got to me, it was of no use at all to me to learn that someone had a college degree and a J.D.; they all did. It was of some use to know where the degrees were from, as a rough guide, but in the end it came down to how smart they were in person. Obviously I didn't expect them to know any law yet to speak of. I normally asked them questions that required them to compare nearly anything to anything else ("How was law school different from college?"), which shows a lot about how someone thinks and and how he expresses himself on the spot. A surprising fraction of interviewees couldn't even attempt an answer, I don't care where they got their degrees.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-56696505154758530022019-01-02T12:55:23.287-05:002019-01-02T12:55:23.287-05:00Paul Ehrlich qualified and joined. Some fawned ove...<i>Paul Ehrlich qualified and joined. Some fawned over him immediately (pathetic, I thought) and others wanted to have a go at what a fool he was straight off.</i><br /><br />Had fertility rates continued as they did in the 1960s, Paul Erlich would probably have been correct. But they did not. For example, in the 1960s, the fertility rate in the US declined from 3.65 in 1960 to 2.46 in 1969. But this trend was not as evident in the Third World. From 1960 to 1969, the fertility rate in Low Income countries went from 6.57 to 6.69- no demographic transition by 1969 (4.32 in 2016). East Asia: 5.81 in 1960 to 5.89 in 1969 (1.85 in 2016.)<br /><br />As Yogi Berra said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."<br /><br /><b>World Fertility rate, total (births per woman)</b><br />1960 <i> 4.98 </i><br />1961 <i> 5.01 </i><br />1962 <i> 5.04 </i><br />1963 <i> 5.06 </i><br />1964 <i> 5.07 </i><br />1965 <i> 5.05 </i><br />1966 <i> 5.00 </i><br />1967 <i> 4.97 </i><br />1968 <i> 4.92 </i><br />1969 <i> 4.85 </i><br />1998 <i> 2.72 </i><br />2016 <i> 2.44 </i><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN" rel="nofollow">World Bank: Fertility Rates.</a> <br />RichardJohnsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07490819511630683969noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-67870046846955872032019-01-02T12:23:29.811-05:002019-01-02T12:23:29.811-05:00Texan 99
IQ is both easily measured and solidly pr...Texan 99<br /><i>IQ is both easily measured and solidly predictive of academic success. It doesn't follow that it's entirely predictive of academic success, just that it's somewhat more predictive than any other single factor we know how to measure.</i><br /><br />A family friend's doctoral dissertation attempted to find out what best predicted college freshmen academic performance. In addition to high school grades and SAT/ACT scores, he looked at a battery of psychological tests. His conclusion was that the best predictors of freshmen academic performance were 1)high school grades, 2)SAT/ACT scores, and 3) a psychological attribute he called "stick-to-it-iveness," which could also be defined as the ability to persevere in the face of initial discouragement. Don't give up, in other words.<br /><br />RichardJohnsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07490819511630683969noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-45386911945644584062019-01-02T11:53:49.399-05:002019-01-02T11:53:49.399-05:00I work in the power industry where many plant mana...I work in the power industry where many plant managers rose up from technician ranks quite successfully. Many such "mustangs" were told they needed to have a college degree so they did on-line ones (I see a lot of University of Phoenix degrees). Now I think the on-line schools can do a good job, my real point is that it seems the college degree is not required to provide the skills to run a billion dollar industrial facility. This was the norm in the USA well up into the 1960s. Since many of these managers may never have taken the SAT but could have some military equivalent, we cannot say anything about their IQ's. We can say they are alert, smart enough to handle technical and commercial concepts and manage people.dmoellinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13128088863830769762noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-81761200448537576262019-01-02T11:14:00.168-05:002019-01-02T11:14:00.168-05:00You'd have to ask him. It's an interesting...You'd have to ask him. It's an interesting question. To a certain degree it's contingent, though: if he'd started the fund in 2008 or 2018, he'd have made a vast fortune (especially in 2008 given the high degree of leverage at work in the housing bubble, but to a lesser degree last month). But that doesn't make it a workable long-term strategic approach to what he calls 'fourth quadrant' market instability. It was a good application of all of his theories, but ultimately it depends on the same guesswork about the market cycle that all the other theories depend upon. I still think it's a sharp approach, but I can't make investments according to it because my resources are too limited -- and that will be true for almost all households. The only people who could leverage the approach to make fortunes are those who already have fortunes.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-42595313241300485032019-01-02T11:12:43.402-05:002019-01-02T11:12:43.402-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-78227046669702113082019-01-02T08:57:16.941-05:002019-01-02T08:57:16.941-05:00Grim - The principles were quite correct, but the ...Grim - <i>The principles were quite correct, but the thing didn't work for practical reasons.</i><br /><br />So does Taleb recognize that he falls in the group of people he's railing against?Christopher Bhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00396671757183163171noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-3442839741472804132019-01-02T02:37:27.383-05:002019-01-02T02:37:27.383-05:00Subhanallah..simple analogy but deep meaning. some...Subhanallah..simple analogy but deep meaning. something we know but we never realized, opened my mind and heart. <a href="http://www.solusisehatdenganherbal.com/2018/12/14/cara-mengobati-hematuria-kencing-berdarah-secara-alami/" rel="nofollow"> Cara Mengobati Hematuria </a><a href="http://solusi-sehat-dengan-herbal-alami.over-blog.com/2018/12/cara-melancarkan-haid-yang-terlambat-dengan-cepat-dan-aman.html" rel="nofollow"> Cara Melancarkan Haid </a><a href="http://solusi-sehat-dengan-herbal-alami.over-blog.com/2018/12/cara-mengobati-pilek-menahun-yang-tidak-kunjung-sembuh.html" rel="nofollow"> Obat Pilek Ampuh </a><a href="https://obattipesherbalalami859873212.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow"> Cara Mengobati Tipes Pada Anak </a><br />Lutfi Kurniawanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10822003838165909904noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-89597054898521617392019-01-01T23:23:22.026-05:002019-01-01T23:23:22.026-05:00The boarding school I was at when I was 14 tested ...The boarding school I was at when I was 14 tested IQ. Apparently I was having a good day.<br /><br />Later, in another state, when I took the ACT and SAT, 'good days" became apparent again. The SAT was geographically further away. For whatever reason, my parents allowed me to spend the night on a college campus with an older cousin before the SAT. Oh my... I got me some education that night and, possibly still drunk, took the SAT test. I did not do well, though my score was still high enough to get me into any college I was interested in at the time. My ACT scores (parents drove me to nearby testing after a good night's sleep) prompted a high school counselor to ask me how I managed to cheat. <br /><br /><br />Donna B.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16771075314473811594noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-11970343209453175062019-01-01T22:38:34.134-05:002019-01-01T22:38:34.134-05:00IQ is both easily measured and solidly predictive ...IQ is both easily measured and solidly predictive of academic success. It doesn't follow that it's entirely predictive of academic success, just that it's somewhat more predictive than any other single factor we know how to measure. One reason schools look at other qualities is that some of them are mildly predictive, too; GPA, for instance, tells us something about persistence and ability to go along with social structures, for whatever that's worth--and it's worth something, or college entrance committees would just throw dice instead, or judge by how many Bible verses a candidate has memorized, or how many shelter dogs he's adopted. Alternatively, colleges that value IQ test results would get out-competed by other colleges that used a better predictor, such as the ability to pay, or some other conveniently and even more easily measured quality.<br /><br />Again, it doesn't follow that the kind of academic success we're talking about is itself the be-all and end-all of human life. Colleges aren't looking for an entering class that will make good fathers or the next great inventor or saint or sculptor or movie star. Nor should we be looking at either colleges or IQ tests to judge who will most likely excel in those areas. But the importance of academic success is an assumption that undergirds our whole system of higher education. If we ever stop believing in that, we might as well ditch universities along with IQ tests. If succeeding at university academics is meaningless, why do we assign grades? Why do people pay tuition?<br /><br />It often seems to me that as a society we're trying to believe simultaneously that academic success is both critically important and an unjustified distraction from everything that's truly valuable.Texan99https://www.blogger.com/profile/10479561573903660086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-80137554700953631712019-01-01T21:40:44.892-05:002019-01-01T21:40:44.892-05:00Philosophical pragmatism holds, essentially, that ...Philosophical pragmatism holds, essentially, that it's only true if it works. It's a particularly American philosophy -- founded after the Civil War, through the early 20th century -- which to a certain degree squares the circle NNT is describing.<br /><br />I find NNT's theories about uncertainty plausible, but his investment strategy turned out to be unsustainable. That isn't to say he was wrong. He was right. It's just that no one could afford to sustain the slow, steady losses for years in order to be able to be positioned to take advantage of the massive windfall when the market did the unexpected. The principles were quite correct, but the thing didn't work for practical reasons. Grimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07543082562999855432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-3519866438227197152019-01-01T20:56:29.743-05:002019-01-01T20:56:29.743-05:00Perhaps one could think of theorists and experimen...Perhaps one could think of theorists and experimentalists/phenomenologists. If the theorist's model is good, within the limits of the model, the theorist's predictions can be superb. With air at a given density and a given viscosity function, if you give the baseball such and such an initial position and momentum and spin, you can predict very well where it will wind up. The calculation may not be quick if the non-uniformity of the baseball's surface matters. OTOH, the phenomenologist will say: if it looks like it is moving in such and such a way, take a tight swing. It's a more probabilistic approach, and doesn't claim great precision.<br /><br />One of the challenges in elementary physics courses is designing a setup that lets the students focus on one aspect at a time of what is really a complex situation. People who are very good at abstracting away the minor details can get good results when the details really are minor--I think that maps roughly into a lot of the academic high-IQ use. It demands a lot of intellectual horsepower to run the machinery, but it isn't the same as building the abstraction machinery for a system from scratch. <br />Other people can be better at spotting critical details on the fly, like "Fat Tony." It seems at least possible that both types of skills could be taught. OODA?jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.com