Malcolm and Simone do an in-depth analysis and critique of Nassim Taleb's controversial article "IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle". They break down his motivations, concessions, rhetorical tactics, and arguments against IQ testing. They explain why his solutions are impractical and highlight where he contradicts himself. Malcolm outlines a framework for reading critiques like this - looking for motivation, proposed alternatives, concessions, repeated bad arguments, and more. They agree IQ isn't everything but make the case it still matters, especially if IQ is declining.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] when you look at our prison system, the vast majority of people in it are at Very low accused. And when you deny that they had a systemic disadvantage when compared to you, when you tell people to throw that out, what?

You are taking the most vulnerable people in our society who are in a situation to do something they had no control over. And completely acting like they had the same advantage as you did in life. It is sick. It is sick. It is not moral. And you need to get your f*****g s**t together and actually look at the data instead of trying to blow smoke in people's faces so you can play your little virtue game.

Okay? Because people are suffering for your b******t. And so you can feel like a hero without having to challenge actual real world problems and fix them and take responsibility for the advantages that you were born with, which other people weren't. he ends up making an argument. That needs to say that he has achieved everything that he has achieved in life without systemic advantages at [00:01:00] all.

He has just willed himself to this. Place that he is

Simone: simultaneously while flaunting that systemic advantage, right? In every sense like to a fault, like to a point of illegibility.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: So Malcolm, what if I told you that obviously a wealth doesn't predict success because there are tons of millionaires and billionaires who just do nothing with their lives and piss away all their money. And obviously being like super, super poor, like under the poverty line is a problem, but like above a certain level, it really doesn't matter about how much money you have.

Oh, I think that

Malcolm: would make a lot of sense. I think that's exactly the type of thing a wealthy person would argue. Right. So I got to talk about how we got on this topic. We had a fan of the show stay over at our house because they happened to be passing through the area. And one of the things that they mentioned, because they were like, well, this is an area where I question something that you guys talk about a lot.

Specifically, he believed that [00:02:00] IQ didn't matter at all. And the reason he believes this is because another smart person who he looked up to had argued this very passionately. Specifically, Nassim Taleb. and he wrote this medium post about this

called IQ is largely a pseudo-scientific swindle. And I read this medium post and I saw it as a really interesting opportunity because self-contained within the me the post its itself was the proof that he was manipulating data and essentially lying to the reader. But what we want to try to do on this episode is to not just show that yes, IQ likely does matter, but give you the tools necessary to, even if you don't understand the scientific language was which a person is arguing, i.

e. in this case, like advanced statistics. Even if you don't [00:03:00] understand that. Understand the telltale signs that a person is lying to you and be able to tell that they are lying to you even if you don't understand what they are saying and better than all of that, get to deeper truth than you even could from reading an article from the perspective of somebody who is Agreed with what is true or what you already believe.

And by that what I mean is if somebody who really believes in career is invested in IQ mattering, writes an article that IQ matters. Well, they can't really trust it either because they might be lying with statistics as well. Right. There's somebody who deeply believes IQ doesn't matter, or at least.

tries to argue that has sprinkled throughout his article, little admissions to where IQ does matter. You can know that at least in those areas, it definitely matters because he has everything at stake in showing that it doesn't. So that's why learning to read articles in this way is really important.

Now, before we go further with [00:04:00] this, I want to elaborate on the analogy that Simone started the show is because I think this is where we're going as a society. And a lot of these people today who, We're born with advantages over people, born with usually really high IQs, and then they pretend like they've achieved everything that they've achieved on their own.

It is not the look that they think it is. It's very much the new, I don't see race. Pretending you don't see a systemic advantage that you have had over other people your entire life, and taking credit being like, well, I was starting from the same position they were, is not humble, okay? It is dehumanizing, and it is cruel and evil, and it prevents us as a society from potentially solving systemic issues for people who weren't born with your immense privilege.

I say this to Nassib, because he is somebody who was born with this immense privilege. Yeah, he's

Simone: clearly someone... Who [00:05:00] is very smart and who benefits from a high IQ. And if he were to, in good faith, take an IQ test, he would probably end up with a very high IQ score. Like it's pretty apparent.

I want to start off too with some caveats that like, you know, a lot of what he says is we agree with, you know, IQ, like if you have a really high IQ, it doesn't mean you're going to be super successful. Obviously not. You know, this is why with our school, we still like for, I will, as we say, and not IQ, because, you know, being really smart does not predict success, but he claims that's what like IQ enthusiasts also claim, which is not, it's just not true.

So he makes a lot of false claims on that. I just want to say that we agree. He also says that a really key thing with IQ is like it, where it is most predictive and where it is the biggest deal is where there's really low IQ, but he seems to like. I don't know. Just discount that that's not important when actually like it's been a really big deal.

This is why lead remediation, you know, like reducing lead exposure for populations has been such a big deal. He

Malcolm: also caught and measured through IQ. This is the place where IQ in [00:06:00] public policy has had a Has made a big impact on the lives of pretty much everyone living on earth today.

Simone: Yeah, because people were willing to admit that, you know, the low IQ is a problem.

And then also he talks about you know, people misusing IQ often in very unsavory, disgusting ways. You know, he points to racism a lot. That's totally true, but all sorts of messed up people use like misuse all sorts of science and pseudoscience and other nonsense. To forward their agendas.

Just because you see one idiot use something in a poor way, doesn't mean it's not. You know, it's not a, it's not a relevant field in other ways. So

Malcolm: before we go further with this I think we can break this down into a few core points when you're analyzing an article like this. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Let's go.

So one is you're looking for what the motivation is. Then you want to look at the data sets that they present, you want to look at. that what they think the alternatives are that they're presenting, if IQ doesn't matter, what are the alternatives? [00:07:00] You need to look at where they concede that the other side has points and you need to look at what I call repeated hand flails.

A repeated hand flail is a really bad argument that is used repeatedly. And that is obviously a bad argument, but that at first glance can seem like it's a really powerful argument. So I'll start with a repeated hand flail that he uses throughout the piece. It's really obvious. And it really got on my nerves which was IQ doesn't matter because the same individual, if you test them again with an IQ test on average, that test is going to differ from their first score by about a third, a standard deviation.

And that's a big difference. And therefore that proves that IQ tests don't matter. Now I ask a person to just, and this is how, when you're hearing something like this and you're like, okay, he's using a lot of words like the standard deviation and comparing this to different parts of the IQ stuff, [00:08:00] ignore all of that.

Just use your common sense. Okay. So replace IQ tests with a different test, like a biology test, right? Like I'm taking a. a 10th grade biology test. And I am comparing my knowledge of biology to the other students in the room's knowledge of biology. Now, if I retake that test, if you retake any test about, you are going to differentiate from your previous results by about a third of a standard deviation.

If it's like a really big test. That's just normal. Anyone should know you're not going to get the same results. Like every time you retake a test, that's a normal function of tests. However, that being the case, That doesn't mean that biology test isn't measuring anything in terms of a student's knowledge of biology.

Yeah. And so this is the first thing, when they are criticizing something, like if they are continually using an argument, think, Okay, but is there something else that we all generally agree on? That the bar is a good way to... measure how good a lawyer is doing or that driver's [00:09:00] exams are a good way to measure, you know, do these have different results when a single individual retakes the test?

Yeah. And if the answer is yes well then why does he keep bringing this up? Why is this so important? It is because, well, it's just a weird rhetorical tactic he keeps going back to.

Simone: Yeah. I think connected to this kind of is at the very beginning, and this was like a big trigger for me. He, he says technical backbone, like he links to a technical backbone as here's just like at the top of his article.

Here's my link to basically what he implies is Oh, if you really want to understand why I'm correct and you want to see it on a technical standpoint, an academic peer reviewed standpoint, this will explain everything. And you click over to it and it's just. It's just a research journal article pointing to examples of people mistaking correlation with causation.

It isn't actually related to the arguments he makes in his blog post. And it's one of those things that really bothers me because often people will link to something and be like, Oh, here's what backs up my argument. And it, [00:10:00] I mean, usually it's at least broadly related to their argument. This even wasn't really related to his argument.

He sometimes argued that Oh, people don't understand correlation and causation. But yeah that, that really bothered me when people

Malcolm: are like, read this other thing. You mentioned that I would note as well, should be a big red flag with people. Smart people can write in a way that dumb people can understand.

Yes. When we were right people like who watch our channel and stuff like that, they sometimes accuse us. Of talking like we have a thesaurus in front of us. Okay, whatever. I don't think that we do that. To me, I talk really plain and that reminds me of that scene in Idiocracy where they're like...

. I think it might be because of these drugs the army put me on. But if you could, uh, just get me well enough to get back to base. Right. Kick ass. Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothing, but, uh, it says on your chart that you're fucked up.

Uh, you talk like a fag, and your s**t's all retarded. What I do is just like, you [00:11:00] know, like, you know what I mean, like. No, I'm serious here.

I need help. There's that fag talk we talked about.

Malcolm: But yeah. And there's that scene where he's just trying to talk normal and the other person just from a different cultural group hears it. It's him intentionally trying to sound erudite. Well, but I, you know,

Simone: He does really gatekeep throughout this essay.

For example, like in, in one sentence, he's well, however, if you take up a Perry and Havankian view of intelligence in another sentence, he's IQ doesn't detect convexity of mistakes.

Malcolm: What? No, but the point being here is, what I was saying is that for us, when we use words that sound I don't know, to somebody different from us that we're using a thesaurus or something, they are still intelligible in context.

They are not intentionally meant to get a viewer to disengage or sort of shut down and just listen to the other one. Yeah, and be like,

Simone: Oh, I guess I'll have to take your word for it because I don't understand this and therefore you must be smarter than me, [00:12:00] so I'm just going to assume that

Malcolm: you're right.

Yeah. And I would say that if you notice that happening in a piece and never, ever take away from that, this person knows what they're talking about. Yeah, but can you believe, he's

Simone: literally, in an article that he's using to disprove IQ as like a thing, he's using IQ correlated. Vocabulary.

Using SAT words. Yeah. I'm like, the f**k? You know, he talks always, he's well, you know, this isn't Gaussian. And okay. You know what? Honestly, like I've been out of academia long enough to have forgotten that Gaussian meant was in reference to a normal distribution. He could have just said normal distribution.

This man who apparently throughout his writing makes it very clear that he really hates academia uses a lot of academic speech, which is

Malcolm: also really interesting. The techniques. And I love the first point you mentioned, which is a huge red flag. If somebody says, here's a source. And the source has nothing to do with what they're talking about really or is really just meant to s**t on academics.

That's all it was trying to do. And he doesn't say that's what this is. You need to be aware that at [00:13:00] the very outset of this piece, he is saying, I am willing to mislead you to try to make my point. That is what is being signaled here. But first we got to go back to this framework I set up.

Okay. So what is his motivation with this piece? Because he cites his motivation throughout the piece very plainly. He cites very clearly that he believes that if IQ is a real thing, then the racists are correct. And racists will be able to implement racist policy, which will hurt people if IQ is a real thing. . This is like second paragraph. People bent on showing that some populations have inferior mental IQ abilities based on IQ equals intelligence.

Those have been upset with me for robbing them of this quote unquote scientific tool. His goal, right here, he lays it out. Second paragraph. I am trying to rob racists of a

Simone: tool. Now see the way I read that section is he gives a bulleted list and he's like basically IQ was something championed by, first he says racists and eugenicists, and second he says [00:14:00] psychometrics peddlers looking for suckers.

And I thought what he was trying to do there was basically associate this domain with unsavory people. And exploitative people

Malcolm: I think he also

Simone: uses the association to discredit anyone who talks about IQ by just saying they're racists. Okay, so

Malcolm: he's using it for two reasons. But it is very clear from the piece that he believes that if IQ is a real thing, then the racists are right.

. Again the outro. The argument that, quote unquote, some races are better at running, hence inference about the brain is stale, mental capacity is much more he goes over this, over and over.

It is very clear Wait, so he's

Simone: implying that not all rac listen, he's implying that all races are equally good at running?

Malcolm: No, he's implying that doesn't mean that there would be, okay, listen to this point. This is actually a really good point of somebody messing with you. Okay. The argument that, quote, Some races are better at running, end quote, Hence, some inference about the brain is stale.

Mental capacity is much more dimensional and not defined in the [00:15:00] same way running a hundred meter dashes. What? So what he's saying is that because this is a more complicated thing to measure, that it axiomatically doesn't vary between different ethnic groups. Oh,

Simone: okay. Right, right, right. Because intelligence is harder to measure and like nail down, and it's this

Malcolm: glummy weird thing.

It's just a hand wave. Now, there are reasons why, and we have done. videos on this. Why? If you can measure anything in a group, measure anything in a group. And it's clear that he believes this. And this is why he is so sold on this point. You can measure anything in a group like tennis ability.

You are going to find systemic differences between groups. That's just natural. The reason why IQ based race realism is irrelevant, and we've done this before, is because it changes so quickly intergenerationally. If you look, like we were looking, okay, we had 50 embryos, like just our family, and we choose five embryos out of those 50 based on IQ, [00:16:00] pure generation, with existing technology, and our kids only marry other families who did that, within just Five generations, the average member of our family would be three standard deviations higher in IQ than the average American citizen today.

And keep in mind that within the next 75 years, we're likely looking at IQ dropping by a standard deviation. So for like just astronomically higher. And what this shows is that it doesn't matter. This would be true if we were black. This would be true if we were Asian. IQ doesn't matter, not because it doesn't differ between groups.

Everything if you measure it, if you can put a number to it, it's going to differ between

Simone: groups. Yeah. But any selective or evolutionary bottle, like you're trying to say it matters because it doesn't

Malcolm: persistently differ between. Yeah. And it can quickly change and it matters a lot more what like family you come from or what religion you come from.

Simone: Yeah, or what environment you're in and what the selective pressures

Malcolm: are. Yeah. What small, yeah. So, so that's why it doesn't matter. But he hasn't thought of that argument. And so he is just completely dedicated because he [00:17:00] knows the moment you could put, and this becomes very clear later in his argumentation, the moment you could put a number on general competence.

That there would be differences between ethnic groups because of course, I mean, they might be minor differences, but people would still pick up on that and then that motivates racism and you can actually tell this is his core motivation by again, I say, what is he proposing as the alternative to IQ?

Right? So. If he was being, I think, genuine I just think IQ tests are bad and we could be measuring this better, you would be proposing a way to measure it better. But he doesn't propose a way to

Simone: measure it better. Yeah, that's true. And we I mean, we, I think we inherently under we would agree with him that current measures of IQ...

Oh yeah, they could definitely

Malcolm: improve, but let's, I need, I want to read this. If you want to detect how someone fares at a task, say loan sharking, tennis playing, or a random matrix theory, make him or her do that task. We don't need [00:18:00] theoretical exams for real world function by probability challenged psychologists.

So think about what this is saying and how completely insane this is. He is actually saying that I am unwilling to have any sort of broad measure of competence put on a person. And the reason he has to take this position is because whatever measure of competence he found, you would find differences in it between groups.

So he needs there to be no standard measure of competence given his world framing. That he has laid out. If you can put a measure on people's competence, then it will differ between groups, that it can be used by racists to promote their agenda. That is a core thing. So, so going into this piece, he's going into it with the world perspective, that if you could put any sort of broad measure of competence on a group, that it will lead to racism.

And so we should not have that. But think about how insane that would be for a society. That would also mean, well, you can't have SATs. You can't have, you can't really have [00:19:00] any sort of a broadly applicable test. Every test, it needs to only study what a person is about to do. But the problem is that we hire people, and we accept people into

Simone: college.

Based on totally unrelated

Malcolm: measures. To do broad ranges of tasks. What if the court places like he was using? As he mentions in the piece is in the military, and that's because you need a

Simone: broad spectrum because it's predictive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it doesn't seem to be predictive of outcome. And, you know, again we want to emphasize here that we're not, we don't disagree with the basic argument.

He's making the school that we're designing. It whenever possible tests people through natural assessments. Hey, can you write fan, you know, can you write content that audience, like widespread audiences okay, well, let's see if you can write a fan fiction. A lot of people read, like we believe in natural assessments and we believe that's the best way to tell if someone's good at something.

But we also are practical

Malcolm: at the same time. We accept that some people are born with an intellectual state that gives them a huge [00:20:00] systemic advantage over other people. And this, again, it's not an ethnic thing. As we said, it changes so quickly. It's irrelevant to tie this to ethnic groups. But and again it, most of these gene people, you go to these genetics channels, right?

And they'll tell you on these channels, yeah, it looks like in the developed world in the next 75 years, IQ in the developed world is going to drop by about one standard deviation. And then they're also like complaining, it's so, so the developed world is mostly white people. That means white people on average will be dumber than everyone else because we're not seeing this effect in the developing world.

So it's one of these things where it's don't play that game. Yeah. It's not it's not.

Simone: If we were going to go back to the wealth analogy obviously like first, and we also agree you know, having a super high IQ doesn't mean obviously you're going to be super successful.

There are lots of people with crazy high IQs who do absolutely nothing, who do a lot of really dumb stuff. However, when you have a really high IQ and you also have a bunch of other factors like drive, ambition, values, you know, a vision for something you are. going to have a much easier time achieving things.

And it's just it's similar to having a lot of wealth. There are tons of [00:21:00] billionaires and millionaires who genuinely don't do anything

Malcolm: great. Ignoring your privilege is not a virtue. Yeah. No, continue. I'm sorry. I got to continue as a piece of them. So the so what you see here, first of all, is it the solution he's arguing is impractical and specifically caters to the reason he wrote the piece.

No. Another thing to note is you need to go through and see, okay, where does he concede that the other side makes a good point? Never,

Simone: never. No, he does. Oh no, he does. I guess when he says that basically like super low IQ does have a, an impact, right?

Malcolm: He does. No, but no. He says something that absolutely destroys the entire piece.

Really? I missed that. Yes, I will read it because he says it so dismissively that you could miss what he's saying. Okay. Okay. The best measure charlatans. IQ is reminiscent of risk charlatans insisting on selling value at risk VAR and risk metrics saying it's the best measure. That best [00:22:00] measure being unreliable blew them up many times. Note the class of suckers for whom a bad measure is better than no measure across domains.

Now, Simone, you just heard that and you probably heard nothing. Because one, it was written poorly, it was structured poorly, it didn't really get across the point, but it did make a concession. Okay. A very important concession that IQ actually is the single best measure that we have access to for adult success.

He conceded it's the best measure. He just thinks even being the best measure. It is not a good enough measure because it is imperfect because it's imperfect. And therefore we shouldn't use it at all. But the fact that he has now conceded that out of all conceivable measures ever developed, it is the best one that kind of sinks everything else that he's.

talking about because what that means is that when you're dealing with broad based science, which regularly needs to use something like this, like lead in the water, hurting a population [00:23:00] or is this academic solution working or not working or is IQ declining in a population or is IQ increasing in a population in another part here, he mentions the Flynn effect.

should warn us not just that IQ is somewhat environmentally dependent, but that it is at least partially circular. So he's saying he concedes when IQ measures support his belief system, then they're

Simone: real and they're real, which

Malcolm: is that IQ is nutritionally based to some extent is shown by the Flynn effect.

And I had the reverse funnel thing, but the Flynn effect means that the Flynn effect is real. So, so he's willing To use it when it supports his worldview and he distances himself from it when it goes against his worldview. Oh dear. And then the final thing that I would say is, and he fortunately does this for you, the reader, is look at the actual data points the person is using.

He will put up data points and be like, Oh look, the data points are all over the place and I'm going to put them on the screen for the viewers here. But if you [00:24:00] actually look at these data points. You can eyeball what it would look like if you drew a line through this scatterplot. It would look like a line going

Simone: up and to the right.

I know, but he seems to not understand I don't know, linear regression. No, so

Malcolm: he believes that because there is high variability and keep in mind, high variability once a person is rich. So basically he conceives two things. He conceives that low IQ matters, and that IQ is really highly determinate of how much money you make.

under a certain amount of money. However, anyone who even does believe in IQ like us would largely say, yeah, but people who are earning like over a hundred K a year, the amount that they earn is largely just luck based. It's not based on competence. Anyone would tell you that, but most people are earning under that amount.

And that is why we focus on things like IQ because that's where it is determinant. So hold on, but this is just like more broadly. The real key thing was a piece like this when you're going through it is [00:25:00] to look for what they are conceding because that can tell you the few things that are really strongly true.

The points he concedes is that IQ is the best measure we have available to us right now of you know, correlating with adult success. He does concede that it works really well for low paying jobs and that low IQ does really seem to hurt people. He does concede. That it works really well for things like the military.

He does concede that, so, so, across all of these areas, I think what you can see is that, yeah, IQ probably is a really useful measure. And all of this comes back to Oh, but you

forgot,

Simone: he also makes this argument that it's immoral. He claims the concept is immoral. He uses that word

Malcolm: of the concept of IQ, the moral, and again, this comes to a, now this comes looking outside of a piece.

Right. So, you know, before I was like, okay, don't look outside the piece, but you can just sanity test. It'd be like, okay. Well, if IQ is a bad measure of competence, [00:26:00] right? Does it correlate? What other things do I correlate with competence as an individual? Does the person think, like broadly, I guess if I was trying to determine how good a group would be at, say, graduating from college, because NCE have a very big financial incentive to be able to determine that.

Well, they don't use IQ tests. What are they using? They're using SATs. , like just Google. What's the correlation between IQ tests and a like , 0. 84, like really high, like very high correlation. And so this is the problem, all sort of tests of intelligence because intelligence is cross correlated across domains are going to correlate with each other.

If I was looking at a school and I was looking at people who were scoring well on biology tests, I could broadly guess and bet pretty effectively that they would also score better than other students on history tests, or on math tests. And this is why when you're looking at things like But then what's interesting, and a lot of people might not know this, is that then you expand this to other domains.

You look at their probability of raping someone, it's also a lot lower. [00:27:00] You look at their probability of being in jail, it's also a lot lower. You look at their probability of murdering someone, it's also a lot lower. You look at their probability of getting in a car accident, it's also a lot lower.

Generally, within any of these things, it's almost... I'm not going to say it's irrelevant what you're measuring, because some are better measures than others. But you're clearly measuring something if it's cross correlated against all of these different domains. And so I think a lot of people will try to like blow smoke in your face.

And it's really good to be able to recognize when they're doing that. And for them, like I even think from his perspective, ideologically, what's at stake for him? One, he thinks if IQ can be proven to be real, that means that racism is right. Which it doesn't as we have copiously pointed out on this show, it is not intergenerationally durably tied to an ethnic group enough to matter, but anything that you can measure and put a number to is obviously going to differ between population groups.

Duh. But that doesn't mean like one is better or something like that. It would, I guess, if it didn't change in between generations, [00:28:00] but it changes so, so, so quickly. And then the second is that he ends up making an argument. That needs to say that he has achieved everything that he has achieved in life without systemic advantages at all.

He has just willed himself to this. Place that he is

Simone: simultaneously while flaunting that systemic advantage, right? In every sense like to a fault, like to a point of illegibility.

Malcolm: Yeah. And if you look at people like Simone and I will admit that I. Well, actually I don't think I have a high iq.

Well, I do have a You do? Okay. I do have a high IQ when it's measured. Shut up. So, I mean, is it ex Simone might not mention this, but she's in the top fraction of a percent. She was measured recently for the autism exam. But hold on, 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 things is different enough that it's not just like being smart.

Like typically when I start something, 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] class. No, I graduated obviously really near the top but I started bottom half. When I went to SAT prep, I remember I almost got laughed out of the room because I said I wanted to go to Harvard or Stanford, which obviously I did end up going to for my MBA.

But they were like, but you are the single lowest scores in the entire prep class. What are you talking about? So I'm one of these people who always starts like really lower than other people and then somehow. ends up if I'm just persistent at something really sort of figuring out and getting it to click at the end of the day.

But I think it might just be because I see things differently, but this seeing things differently has to have some genetic component. The advantages I have over other people, I should never deny them because that removes my ability to empathize with an individual who tells me, you don't understand. I can't just do this thing that you went out there and did.

Simone: Well, I wonder, so one, one argument that Nassim Taleb makes also in his essay, which we haven't, I think, touched on a whole lot, is like you know, only pencil, like paper [00:30:00] pusher, academic types who to play with bureaucracy and follow direction perform well on I. Q. tests. And I mean, to your point, right?

You as actually a very anti authoritarian, anti bureaucracy. I'm not going to listen to you kind of person. Do really suck at a lot of IQ, you know, correlated, whatever tests in the beginning, but you also have the good sense and tenacity to learn the system. And I think a lot of what these tests may also be measuring is people's willingness to work with a system to their personal advantage and a lack of willingness to work with that system, a lack of willingness to adapt and read directions and listen is.

Malcolm: Regardless, it might not be measuring intelligence, but it's measuring

Simone: willingness to learn how to do what you need to do to get

Malcolm: ahead in life. And let's keep in mind what IQ is really measuring because I think a lot of people miss it. It is not we use it as a quote unquote intelligence measure, but it's really, it's claimed to fame is that it has the highest correlatory.

And that like economic outcomes, mostly, but other life outcomes, [00:31:00] and that's what we're looking at. That's why we care about it as a statistic. And I would say life outcomes where intelligence matters. I'd argue that the amount that you make over 100 K a year. Your intelligence doesn't matter.

You're mostly dealing with luck at that point. And so it does not surprise me at all that it wouldn't be correlated at that point. But in his world of I guess, ultra smarty pants who have make billions of dollars a year, like that's where he's applying it instead of it, population levels.

Yeah.

Simone: I don't know if they for years have even

come into contact with people. who have an IQ like below 110, like they just don't. So I think it's also hard for them to even understand like the true variance in IQ that's out there and the effect that it has

Malcolm: on people. Yeah. And I would say the most important reason why IQ matters right now and why people need to be paying attention to IQ right now.

especially when he's well, IQ only matters when it's really low. Well, if we're dealing with a quickly dropping IQ for genetic reasons, which it looks like we are about [00:32:00] again, one standard deviation drop in the next 75 years is what we see not just from IQ being measured in developed countries. We see this the polygenic scores.

So this is like the genetic. The makeups as they are correlated to I. Q. We can see them appearing at a lower and lower frequency in genetic banks over time. We can then correlate the genes associated with a high I. Q. and look at how much they what other things are highly tied to. They are extremely highly tied to a person's.

Fertility success. So the higher, the same genes that are correlated with IQ are also correlated with low success in fertility situations.

Like you're looking at a car and you can measure how fast it goes and predict that. You can predict how fast it might go by looking at its engineering. You can read a report about how fast it's supposed to go. And all of these numbers correlate.

That's sort of what we're looking at with this IQ drop. If it turns out that's real. And we are ignoring that. Well then IQ is really gonna f*****g matter. Because almost all of us in the developed [00:33:00] world are going to be at this incredibly low level of IQ that he... Even he says, oh, this actually does have a very big effect.

And that's a problem. That you ignore this because it says something. Yeah,

Simone: it's kind of like being like, well, money makes no difference unless you're like impoverished. And yet like humanity is moving in this direction toward poverty. And let's. Just ignore the issue though, because it doesn't matter at all.

Malcolm: Yeah. And so, yeah, I just wanted to close out with that, that is the number one reason why we can't just ignore IQ right now, even though it might be convenient to ignore IQ right now. And. It's a shame, but it, and as we pointed out, IQ being real does not support the racist positions so long as you are actually familiar with the genetics of IQ, it is because IQ is.

It's so heritable that it doesn't matter from an ethnic perspective because it's extreme level of heritability is what allows it to change so quickly intergenerationally, which thank goodness, persistently tied to an individual's ethnicity.[00:34:00]

Simone: Yeah, I mean, and let's be clear we would prefer a world in which everyone had the same potential for achievement on everything, you know, like a blank slate world would be way cooler.

We would prefer to be in one. But, you know, to pretend that is how it. Is just because you feel like that's a more moral world doesn't mean it's a more moral world. Right? You could be like, oh, death is immoral. So I don't believe in it, but that's not going to change the fact that you're going to die.

Malcolm: So, well, and it can cause you to make decisions that hurt a lot of and that's what gets me the most about this, you know, when you look at our prison system, the vast majority of people in it are at Very low accused. And when you deny that they had a systemic disadvantage when compared to you, when you tell people to throw that out, what?

You are taking the most vulnerable people in our society who are in a situation to do something they had no control over. And completely acting like they had the same advantage as you did in life. It is sick. It is sick. It [00:35:00] is not moral. And you need to get your f*****g s**t together and actually look at the data instead of trying to blow smoke in people's faces so you can play your little virtue game.

Okay? Because people are suffering for your b******t. And so you can feel like a hero without having to challenge actual real world problems and fix them and take responsibility for the advantages that you were born with, which other people weren't.

Simone: And there you have it.

Malcolm: Okay. Have a good one, Simone. You too,

Simone: gorgeous.

 For anyone who wants to go to that pro natalist conference, that's being held in Austin. A few points of clarification. We are not running it. We have no control over who's going. We don't make any money from it. However, we will be speaking there and we will be there and we would be happy to meet up with people who watch our show. If you happen to be in the area, might even put something together.

If you guys reach out and we get a critical mass of people, , we have secured a discount [00:36:00] code for our fans, which is pro Natalus all caps. And it should get you about 30% off the price of a ticket leave. Avery you are going.

Again, this is not affiliated with the foundation, but if we can make things cheaper for our fans, we're going to do it. And if we can meet with people who are interested in this topic, or further evangelize our brand of perinatal ism, we are very excited to take every opportunity we can to do that.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe