Crypto meltdown, ESP, Veritasium IQ video

Bitcoin now crashed to $26,300 (make that $25,700 as of hitting the publish button), which is even lower than I was expecting, and so soon:

The forecast couldn’t have gone better. The price imploded in the hours after making my post yesterday, breaking below $26k due to a combination of chart weakness, Space-X, and the Evergrande bankruptcy. It’s not gonna bounce back to $29k either. Nope going to $14k. I will remain bearish and short (see post where I said shorted at $30.4k) until the candlesticks show the necessary compression and smoothness as described in earlier posts. That’s why I ain’t lying when I say I got one of the highest IQs (>170) or am the best trader and investor in the world. It’s backed by quantifiable evidence and results. If I’m lying, I’m dying, in which I won’t be updating the blog anymore.

The ability to predict so well is possibly evidence of a limited form of ESP or clairvoyance that is within the permissible laws of physics. One way to measure very high IQ is something like ESP. I purpose four levels of ESP:

1. baseline or level 1. This is indistinguishable from randomness or a coin flip. The opposite of ESP is not always being wrong. Always being wrong would also provide useful information.

2. Level 2. This is somewhat better than random but unremarkable

3. Level 3. Sufficiently advanced pattern recognition and inferential ability may be indistinguishable from ESP, such as the ability to anticipate, to know, and to predict, at least in a limited context and permissible by the laws of physics. Knowing what the enemy is going to do has obvious strategic implications, which is why the CIA has taken an interest in ESP. To an outsider it may seem like such an individual has some ESP.

4. Level 4. Actual ESP. This is regarded as a pseudoscience.

So anyway, since we’re on the topic of IQ again, came across this Veritasium video from just 2 weeks ago about IQ, which went viral.

I had heard about this video but didn’t get around to watching it. People generally praised the video as being even-handed about an otherwise controversial and polarizing topic. I agree he did a good job providing a superficial overview of the topic and the controversy about IQ, and it exceeded my expectations. Here are some of my observations:

1. He suggests that the Flynn Effect explains the black-white IQ gap (which he mentions once in passing, understandably). Except that it does not explain the IQ gap at all in African Americans given that, despite the Flynn Effect, the gap still exists, and second, there is no agreement among researchers if the Flynn Effect is real, but he makes it seem like a foregone conclusion that it is. If in the US, Blacks and Whites have both seen IQ gains due to improved education and nutrition, why is the gap so wide and persistent (relative vs. absolute ability)? The gap holds for all SES levels, too.

2. A purely culture-fair IQ test may not exist, but the black-white gap is persistent in questions in which the contribution of cultural factors is (or can ) be assumed to be minimal to non-existent, such as digit span (forward and backwards), which he does not mention. He also does not mention that Asian Americans and Ashkenazi Jews also score higher than Blacks and Whites despite seemingly being at a cultural disadvantage (no mention of Jews at all in the video).

Regarding digit span, take a look at this excellent blog post. The black-white gap is widest at age 11 for reverse digit span. Why would alleged cultural factors play a much greater role for the reverse digit span compared to the forward digit span? We’ve controlled for every possible conceivable variable at this point.

Given how blacks are overrepresented in mainstream culture–such as music, sports, and the entertainment industry–why would they not understand cultural context as well as Asians, who are under-represented? Or Jews, who are also over-represented? Not to mention, many African Americans, similar to Protestant Whites, can trace at least part of their lineage to the early history of America, unlike second or third generation Jewish, Catholic, or Asian immigrants, as further evidence against cultural factors.

No one is allowed to ask these questions, much less address them, at least not on YouTube. So it’s understandable why he has to ignore this completely or pretend it does not exist.

3. His score of 134 on the IQ test he took seems about right. Adult normed IQ tests generally max out at around 140, which his IQ fell about half a dozen points below that. But given he maxed out the quantitative section, his IQ could be higher still, maybe >144. Claims of >150 IQs on IQ tests should always be viewed with a high index of skepticism, and if someone claims to have scored that high, inquire as to which test they took or at what age. Someone claiming so is likely misinformed or even lying. (The 170 IQ I mentioned earlier is self-assessed, not on a test, which would be false if I claimed so) And anyone claiming Einstein or Stephen Hawking
scored 160 is full of crap.

Childhood scores however can be much higher, but a ratio score does not translate into a normed score, so a 170 IQ on a ratio childhood test does not imply a 1-in-a-million rarity IQ, but something more like 144-150 or one-in-ten-thousand. This regression of childhood scores is described in more detail in the essay “The Outsiders” by Grady M. Towers. Assessed IQs above 145 generally require various proxies that correlate with IQ, like high SAT scores on ‘old’ versions of the test. [Attempts such as by Ronald K. Hoeflin have been made at creating and norming IQ tests with > 145 ceilings.]

4. Regarding Project 100,000, he says: “In total, 5,478 people recruited under this initiative died
at a fatality rate three times higher than ordinary recruits. So the military reinstated their requirements.” A few years back I did research on this, and the fatality rate was much less, nowhere close to 3x as high. This is partly because Project 100,000 recruits were almost always recruited for the Army, which had a considerably lower fatality rates compared to the Marines.

Yeah, a lot was missing or could have been investigated further, but to do the topic justice would take many hours (there is a reason The Bell Curve is an 800+ page book). But overall, not bad either.