You have been auditing my five years of mandatory DEI training! This eloquently captures the cost:
“This is not science. It is not even good pedagogy. It is moral theatre, performed for an audience of educators who want to believe they are doing the right thing without having to prove it. And the applause comes not from improved student outcomes, but from the warm glow of shared moral conviction.”
But it's practically certain that intelligence is a spectrum, just like science, technology, progress, and so on. The issue is that people aren't ready for this discussion about intelligence being a spectrum with multiple dimensions and so on. Science is also a spectrum in this regard. The problem is that people still treat science as something black and white instead of a spectrum with multiple dimensions and axes. Science today is treated as an ideology, as a dogma, and as a secular religion by various sectors of society. Because if you think about empirical and scientific evidence, evidence can indeed be fabricated and made to order, just as empirical reality is neither linear nor exact; that is, the problem is that there is confirmation bias on all sides, which is why the spectrum theory of science is valid. If you think about it a lot, science is just about seeking patterns that repeat themselves in a chaotic, dynamic, and complex world for the purpose of mastering technique. This article was translated, copied, and pasted into that magazine Questão de Ciência, and people share such articles without even questioning them. This is why neopositivism treats science like a religion. When someone says that "science has become a religion," they mean, in the same tone, that "whoever believes that Marxism is science has more faith than a Christian (this anti-communist lie is easy to refute, but unfortunately there are many neopositivist communists who believe in this lie)." To believe that current science under Neoliberalism is 100% neutral/impartial/unbiased/without ideology, etc., the same for scientific evidence, the scientific method, etc., you need to have much more faith than a Christian, perhaps even more than the most fundamentalist Christians who believe that the rapture will happen at any moment. Neopositivism and scientism (both are practically the same thing, but it's good to use both terms) are indeed based on faith and belief, because to completely reject the spectrum theory of science (science as a spectrum) and hold a binary (practically Manichean) view of science, believing that science and pseudoscience are determined by "giving quick and momentary results (without considering the clear long term or any other factors)," you have to possess the same level of faith and belief as a Christian who believes the rapture will happen at any moment. Nowadays, evidence can indeed be fabricated, manipulated, tailored, and commissioned, just as all facts and things are cherry-pickable. But unfortunately, many of you are not ready for this discussion.
Mas é praticamente certo que a inteligência é um espectro, assim como a ciência, a tecnologia, o progresso e afins. A questão é que as pessoas não estão prontas para esta discussão sobre a inteligências ser um espectro com várias dimensões e afins. A ciência também é um espectro nesta questão. O problema é que as pessoas ainda tratam a ciência como algo preto e branco ao invés de um espectro com várias dimensões e eixos. A ciência hoje em dia é tratada como uma ideologia, como um dogma e como uma religião secular por vários setores da sociedade. Pois se vc por pensar nisso de evidências empíricas e científicas, evidências podem sim ser fabricadas e feitas sob encomenda, assim como que a realidade empírica ela não é linear nem exata, ou seja, o problema é que existe viés de confirmação de todos os lados, por isso da teoria do espectro da ciência ser válida. Se você pensar muito sobre, a ciência é apenas sobre buscar padrões que se repetem em um mundo caótico, dinâmico e complexo para fins de domínio da técnica. Este artigo foi traduzido, copiado e colado naquela revista Questão de Ciência, e as pessoas compartilham tais artigos sem nem questionar. Por isso do neopositivismo tratar a ciência como uma religião. Quando alguém fala que "a ciência virou uma religião" eles querem dizer no mesmo tom que "quem acredita que o Marxismo é ciência tem mais fé que cristão (essa mentira anticomunista é fácil de desmentir, mas infelizmente tem muito comunista neopositivista que acredita nessa mentira)", para você acreditar que a ciência atual sob o Neoliberalismo é 100% neutra/imparcial/sem viés/sem ideologia etc, o mesmo para as evidências científicas, método científico etc você precisa ter muito mais fé que um cristão, talvez até mesmo que os cristãos mais fundamentalistas que acreditam que o arrebatamento vai acontecer a qualquer momento. O neopositivismo e o cientificismo (ambos são a mesma coisa na prática, mas é bom usar ambos os termos) são sim baseados em fé e crença, pois para você rejeitar por completo a teoria do espectro da ciência (da ciência como um espectro) e possuir uma visão binária (praticamente maniqueísta) da ciência e de que ciência e pseudociência é determinado por "dar resultados rápidos e momentâneos (sem considerar o longo prazo claro ou quaisquer outros fatores)" você tem que possuir o mesmo nível de fé e de crença que um cristão que acredita que o arrebatamento vai acontecer a qualquer momento. Hoje em dia evidências podem sim ser fabricadas, manipuladas, feitas sob medida e encomendadas, assim como que todos os fatos e coisas são cherry-pikable. Mas infelizmente muitos de vocês não estão prontos pra esta discussão.
But like, the Science Spectrum Theory is right despite no formalization yet, just like Intelligence Spectrum Theory. You could argue about Ahaiyuta's General/Special Frequency Field Unification Theory or about Nyx Land's Metaphysical/Spiritual Materialism. But yeah, the G Factor is also a Spectrum according to G Factor Spectrum Theory as well.
As a debunking of Gardner's specific theory, this is all very persuasive and clear-cut. But as an outsider to psychometry, I wonder how much that tells us about whether or not 'intelligence' is in fact a single, unified thing or whether there is are, in a looser sense, different forms of 'intelligence' that can come apart. First, I don't think it's obvious you need something like specific, dedicated modules for this to be the case. So the main salient evidence seems to be correlation. However, just because there is a strong correlation, I don't see why this tells us one way or another about independence. Many things that are in principle separable correlate strongly with each other. The way to find out if they are indeed distinct is simply to look for cases where they do clearly come apart, rather than to look at aggregate statistical data (though maybe I am missing something here due to my lack of scientific training). With intelligence, we do in fact see at least one kind of case where intelligence test subscores can come apart significantly: autism.
It is common for autistic people who take intelligence tests like the WAIS-IV to have significant differences among their subscores. When I was diagnosed, my verbal score was two standard deviations above my perceptual reasoning score and four standard deviations above my processing speed score (this profile wasn't the sole basis for my diagnosis, but it was part of it). I've earned a PhD in a humanities discipline where no perceptual reasoning was really required, but where my strength in verbal intelligence has served me well. It's very hard to look at my subscores, my life trajectory and also those of many other autistic people and not conclude that something like verbal intelligence and perceptual intelligence are meaningfully distinct forms of intelligence.
Am I misunderstanding or missing something important here? Again, I understand my tack is a bit tangential to Gardner's theory specifically - I don't intend to defend it (nor emphasizing multiple intelligence in education policy for the general population).
I'm actually well aware of this history! Though I'm in the humanities, disability is a major area of study for me so I know a fair bit about the parts of science that have their roots in eugenics.
I don't think the history is of the right kind to generate a genealogical argument for entirely jettisoning the notion ("merely race science and eugenics all the way down" is an overstatement I think). I'm skeptical of concepts like 'g' for the reasons indicated in my post and more. But working on disability, I think it's also going to amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we throw out any kind of intelligence testing or psychometry. Eugenicists had very horrific reasons for wanting to be able to measure disability, but that does not mean that attempting to use measurement to understand disability is inherently horrific. Intellectual disability does exist and tests are one kind of (imperfect) tool in our kit towards helping us understand it better (which helps us improve the lives of those people and accomodate them).
"Science is basically a religion... created to deceive you." In this provocative lecture, Professor Jiang Xueqin explains why modern society, with its obsession with the individual and science, has made us more depressed and powerless than the ancient Greeks, who accepted fate and focused on the collective.
🧠 The Illusion of Control: Why believing you control your synapses (science) enslaves you more than believing in gods (polytheism).
🏫 School = Brainwashing: The theory that school doesn't exist to teach, but to indoctrinate and separate "intelligent" from "stupid" people, something that didn't exist in the past.
🤝 Collective Happiness: How we lost true happiness (holding feasts for the community) by focusing on individual success and accumulation.
💊 Critique of Psychiatry: Why the professor suggests walking and talking with friends instead of seeking psychiatrists who create dependency.
🏛️ Eudaimonia: The Greek concept of "flourishing" vs. the modern, empty pursuit of immediate pleasure.
00:00 Lesson 1 | How Does Power Work?
Kant, reality as imagination, and the greatest alchemy in history: banks creating money out of thin air while convincing you that it is scarce.
56:10 Lesson 2 | Why Do Societies Fall?
The 3 definitive theories (Piketty, Turchin, and Spengler) that explain why every empire, every civilization, and every nation has an expiration date.
01:39:51 Lesson 3 | The Death of Gerontocracy
When elites age, they lose vitality, and the entire system begins to rot from the inside out.
02:21:20 Lesson 4 | Why Does Evil Always Win?
The secret mechanism that makes "evil" not the exception—it is the rule of the power game.
02:56:19 Lesson 5 | How Did Evil Originate?
The origin of monotheism, the modern individual, and the nation-state as the greatest tools of control ever created by humanity.
"School is not a place to teach you knowledge. School is a place that indoctrinates you for war." In this lesson, Professor Jiang Xueqin deconstructs the foundations of modern power, revealing how concepts we take for granted—school, money, the individual, and the nation-state—are actually recent inventions designed for social control.
The Origin of School: From Sparta to Prussia, how compulsory education arose not to educate, but to prepare societies for war, separating children from parents to facilitate indoctrination.
We live in the richest society in human history, and yet we are the most anxious, indebted, and miserable. Why does the current system seem designed to exhaust us? In this video, Professor Jiang Xueqin reveals how the elite uses debt, war, and secret society rituals to extract every drop of productivity from the "modern peasant."
The analysis begins by demystifying the goal of capitalism: it's not just about accumulating capital, but about directing people's energy and focus through artificial anxiety. Xueqin details the elite's three control mechanisms:
The Illusion of Freedom: The belief that we have choice and a voice, when the system is rigid.
Money as God: The transformation of an abstract concept into the sole purpose of human existence.
Anxiety via Debt and Destruction: The use of unpayable interest rates and the cyclical destruction of wealth (wars and recessions) to ensure that no one stops working.
The professor also explores the concept of Transnational Capital, where the ultra-rich have no loyalty to nations, moving to "capitals" like Dubai and Singapore as soon as the social conflict they themselves created becomes unbearable. Finally, he connects this elite to Secret Societies and the Milgram Experiment, explaining how occultism serves to exempt the individual from moral responsibility for terrible acts, attributing them to superior forces like Saturn or Cronus.
Do you feel your life is dictated by an anxiety that isn't your own? Leave your reflection in the comments: is the system natural or artificial?
The Lie of the Nation-State: How the school implants a "false memory" to make us believe that countries like China or France are real entities that deserve our sacrifice, replacing local loyalties with an abstraction.
The Monotheistic Revolution: The central thesis that the idea of a "single true God" was the catalyst for the creation of the three pillars of modernity: Money, the Individual, and the Nation-State. The Alchemy of Power: Defining power as the ability to transform nothing (abstract concepts) into everything (tangible reality that controls our lives).
The Accident of History: How this system was not planned, but an "accident of the human imagination," and how controlling that imagination is the key to a different future.
IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (Argument Closed)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
14 min read
·
Jan 1, 2019
UPDATE
ARGUMENT CLOSED (2025): The argument is now closed thanks to paper by Brown, Wai, and Chabris that tried to rebut the piece below, but confirmed all of its conclusions. The piece, most recent one on IQ and relying on multi-cohort studies, unintentially showed that IQ explains almost nothing in educational attainment, occupational attainment, and …income! And that, in spite of the circularity. I did not notice the paper until 2024.
Also note that country IQ is fake news.
PREVIOUS ARTICLE AND ARGUMENTS
For some technical backbone to this piece,see here.
(Revised draft (2021): added comments on sinister country profiling. Also 1) Used the same data as researchers to find that R² for IQ-wealth and IQ-income is effectively 0 in spite of the circularity. 2) Turns out IQ beats random selection in the best of applications by less than 6%, typically <2%, as the computation of correlations have a flaw and psychologists do not seem to know the informational value of correlation in terms of “how much do I gain information about B knowing A” and propagation of error (intra-test variance for a single individual). 3) Added information showing the story behind the effectiveness of Average National IQ is, statistically, a fraud. The psychologists who engaged me on this piece — with verbose writeups —made the mistake of showing me the best they got: papers with the strongest pro-IQ arguments. They do not seem to grasp what noise/signal really means in practice. )
Background : “IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning difficulties), as well as, to a lesser extent (with a lot of noise), a form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects — how good someone is at taking some type of exams designed by unsophisticated nerds. It is via negativa not via positiva. Designed for learning disabilities, and given that it is not too needed there (see argument further down), it ends up selecting for exam-takers, paper shufflers, obedient IYIs (intellectuals yet idiots), ill adapted for “real life”. (The fact that it correlates with general incompetence makes the overall correlation look high, even when it is random, see Figures 1 and 2.) The concept is poorly thought out mathematically by the field (commits a severe flaw in correlation under fat tails and asymmetries; fails to properly deal with dimensionality; treats the mind as an instrument not a complex system), and seems to be promoted by
Racists/eugenists, people bent on showing that some populations have inferior mental abilities based on IQ test=intelligence; those have been upset with me for suddenly robbing them of a “scientific” tool, as evidenced by the bitter reactions to the initial post on twitter/smear campaigns by such mountebanks as Charles Murray. (Something observed by the great Karl Popper, psychologists have a tendency to pathologize people who bust them by tagging them with some type of disorder, or personality flaw such as “childish” , “narcissist”, “egomaniac”, or something similar). Note the online magazine Quillette seems to be a cover for a sinister eugenics program (with tendencies I’ve called “neo-Nazi” under the cover of “free thought”.) Note I am finding statistical flaws in Richard Plomin’s work — the pope of twin studies (see intransitivity of correlation in my technical addendum; he doesn’t get it).
Psychometrics peddlers looking for suckers (military, large corporations) buying the “this is the best measure in psychology” argument when it is not even technically a measure — it explains at best between 2 and 13% of the performance in some tasks (those tasks that are similar to the test itself)[see interpretation of .5 correlation further down], minus the data massaging and statistical cherrypicking by psychologists; it doesn’t satisfy the monotonicity and transitivity required to have a measure (at best it is a concave measure). No measure that fails 80–95% of the time should be part of “science” (nor should psychology — owing to its sinister track record — be part of science (rather scientism), but that’s another discussion).
Typical confusion: Graphs in Intelligence showing an effect of IQ and income for a large cohort. Even ignoring circularity (test takers get clerical and other boring jobs), injecting noise would show the lack of information in the graph. Note that the effect shown is lower than the variance between tests for the same individual!
Fig 1: The graph that summarizes the first flaw (assuming thin tailed situations), showing that “correlation” is meaningless in the absence of symmetry. We construct (in red) an intelligence test (horizontal), that is 100% correlated with negative performance (when IQ is, say, below 100) and 0% with upside, positive performance. We progressively add noise (with a 0 mean) and see correlation (on top) drop but shift to both sides. Performance is on the vertical axis. The problem gets worse with the “g” intelligence based on principal components. By comparison we show (graph below) the distribution of IQ and SAT scores. Most “correlations” entailing IQ suffer the same pathology. Note: this is in spite of the fact that IQ tests overlap with the SAT! (To echo Haldane, one ounce of rigorous algebra is worth more than a century of verbalistic statisticopsycholophastering).
Given that those designing IQ tests aren’t geniuses, the problems are drawn from a finite set of archetypal classes — idempotent transformations, structural isomorphisms, invariance under group operations, compositional rule sequences, and inductive category formations. Therefore IQ tests recycle a finite repertoire: idempotent patterns, structural isomorphisms, invariances, and compositional rules disguised as novelty. This is sooooooooooo gamable with training: working on a nice balcony with a breeze, coffee, and nice background music (Rachmaninov) — if you have nothing else to do in life.
It is at the bottom an immoral measure that, while not working, can put people (and, worse, groups) in boxes for the rest of their lives.
There is no significant statistical association between IQ and hard measures such as wealth. Most “achievements” linked to IQ are measured in circular stuff s.a. bureaucratic or academic success, things for test takers and salary earners in structured jobs that resemble the tests. Wealth may not mean success but it is the only “hard” number, not some discrete score of achievements. You can buy food with a $30, not with other “successes” s.a. rank, social prominence, or having had a selfie with the Queen.
But it's practically certain that intelligence is a spectrum, just like science, technology, progress, and so on. The issue is that people aren't ready for this discussion about intelligence being a spectrum with multiple dimensions and so on. Science is also a spectrum in this regard. The problem is that people still treat science as something black and white instead of a spectrum with multiple dimensions and axes. Science today is treated as an ideology, as a dogma, and as a secular religion by various sectors of society. Because if you think about empirical and scientific evidence, evidence can indeed be fabricated and made to order, just as empirical reality is neither linear nor exact; that is, the problem is that there is confirmation bias on all sides, which is why the spectrum theory of science is valid. If you think about it a lot, science is just about seeking patterns that repeat themselves in a chaotic, dynamic, and complex world for the purpose of mastering technique. This article was translated, copied, and pasted into that magazine Questão de Ciência, and people share such articles without even questioning them. This is why neopositivism treats science like a religion. When someone says that "science has become a religion," they mean, in the same tone, that "whoever believes that Marxism is science has more faith than a Christian (this anti-communist lie is easy to refute, but unfortunately there are many neopositivist communists who believe in this lie)." To believe that current science under Neoliberalism is 100% neutral/impartial/unbiased/without ideology, etc., the same for scientific evidence, the scientific method, etc., you need to have much more faith than a Christian, perhaps even more than the most fundamentalist Christians who believe that the rapture will happen at any moment. Neopositivism and scientism (both are practically the same thing, but it's good to use both terms) are indeed based on faith and belief, because to completely reject the spectrum theory of science (science as a spectrum) and hold a binary (practically Manichean) view of science, believing that science and pseudoscience are determined by "giving quick and momentary results (without considering the clear long term or any other factors)," you have to possess the same level of faith and belief as a Christian who believes the rapture will happen at any moment. Nowadays, evidence can indeed be fabricated, manipulated, tailored, and commissioned, just as all facts and things are cherry-pickable. But unfortunately, many of you are not ready for this discussion.
Mas é praticamente certo que a inteligência é um espectro, assim como a ciência, a tecnologia, o progresso e afins. A questão é que as pessoas não estão prontas para esta discussão sobre a inteligências ser um espectro com várias dimensões e afins. A ciência também é um espectro nesta questão. O problema é que as pessoas ainda tratam a ciência como algo preto e branco ao invés de um espectro com várias dimensões e eixos. A ciência hoje em dia é tratada como uma ideologia, como um dogma e como uma religião secular por vários setores da sociedade. Pois se vc por pensar nisso de evidências empíricas e científicas, evidências podem sim ser fabricadas e feitas sob encomenda, assim como que a realidade empírica ela não é linear nem exata, ou seja, o problema é que existe viés de confirmação de todos os lados, por isso da teoria do espectro da ciência ser válida. Se você pensar muito sobre, a ciência é apenas sobre buscar padrões que se repetem em um mundo caótico, dinâmico e complexo para fins de domínio da técnica. Este artigo foi traduzido, copiado e colado naquela revista Questão de Ciência, e as pessoas compartilham tais artigos sem nem questionar. Por isso do neopositivismo tratar a ciência como uma religião. Quando alguém fala que "a ciência virou uma religião" eles querem dizer no mesmo tom que "quem acredita que o Marxismo é ciência tem mais fé que cristão (essa mentira anticomunista é fácil de desmentir, mas infelizmente tem muito comunista neopositivista que acredita nessa mentira)", para você acreditar que a ciência atual sob o Neoliberalismo é 100% neutra/imparcial/sem viés/sem ideologia etc, o mesmo para as evidências científicas, método científico etc você precisa ter muito mais fé que um cristão, talvez até mesmo que os cristãos mais fundamentalistas que acreditam que o arrebatamento vai acontecer a qualquer momento. O neopositivismo e o cientificismo (ambos são a mesma coisa na prática, mas é bom usar ambos os termos) são sim baseados em fé e crença, pois para você rejeitar por completo a teoria do espectro da ciência (da ciência como um espectro) e possuir uma visão binária (praticamente maniqueísta) da ciência e de que ciência e pseudociência é determinado por "dar resultados rápidos e momentâneos (sem considerar o longo prazo claro ou quaisquer outros fatores)" você tem que possuir o mesmo nível de fé e de crença que um cristão que acredita que o arrebatamento vai acontecer a qualquer momento. Hoje em dia evidências podem sim ser fabricadas, manipuladas, feitas sob medida e encomendadas, assim como que todos os fatos e coisas são cherry-pikable. Mas infelizmente muitos de vocês não estão prontos pra esta discussão.
You (your comments I mean) basically confirmed the Intelligence Spectrum Theory, Knowledge Spectrum Theory, Empirical Spectrum Theory, Science Spectrum Theory, Progress Spectrum Theory, Technology Spectrum Theory, Dynamic-Complex Systems Theory, and the like. It's amazing to see there are still hope in this world. And yeah, Revista Questão de Ciência basically copied and pasted this article translating it to Portuguese. Yeah, it's sad how much Science communication under Neoliberal Capitalism also has its own interests and how evidence can be manufactured and made under order. Yeah, I think we should start with the Inteligence Spectrum Theory for sure. And without forgetting of Ahaiyuta's General/Special Frequencies Field Unification Theory (Everything is frequency and everything has a frequency) for explaining basically all human experiences, including spiritual/astral/divine/mystical ones.
Yeah, it's not a fully formalized theory yet. Maybe it's some kind of bias I have that made me see your comments as confirmation of the Science as a Spectrum and Intelligence as a Spectrum, but it happens so many times out there lol, we are humans after all.
Yeah, about Neoliberalism affecting Science, it doesn't affect so much fields like physics etc. But rather fields like cognitive sciences, social sciences, humanities etc, but it's something for a whole different discussion/comment section.
I agree with you about how lack of formalization leads into less understanding, as in not everyone can publish papers this easy, and also there are some kind of cronyism regarding paper publications as well, but it's for another comment section.
IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (Argument Closed)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
14 min read
·
Jan 1, 2019
UPDATE
ARGUMENT CLOSED (2025): The argument is now closed thanks to paper by Brown, Wai, and Chabris that tried to rebut the piece below, but confirmed all of its conclusions. The piece, most recent one on IQ and relying on multi-cohort studies, unintentially showed that IQ explains almost nothing in educational attainment, occupational attainment, and …income! And that, in spite of the circularity. I did not notice the paper until 2024.
Also note that country IQ is fake news.
PREVIOUS ARTICLE AND ARGUMENTS
For some technical backbone to this piece,see here.
(Revised draft (2021): added comments on sinister country profiling. Also 1) Used the same data as researchers to find that R² for IQ-wealth and IQ-income is effectively 0 in spite of the circularity. 2) Turns out IQ beats random selection in the best of applications by less than 6%, typically <2%, as the computation of correlations have a flaw and psychologists do not seem to know the informational value of correlation in terms of “how much do I gain information about B knowing A” and propagation of error (intra-test variance for a single individual). 3) Added information showing the story behind the effectiveness of Average National IQ is, statistically, a fraud. The psychologists who engaged me on this piece — with verbose writeups —made the mistake of showing me the best they got: papers with the strongest pro-IQ arguments. They do not seem to grasp what noise/signal really means in practice. )
Background : “IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning difficulties), as well as, to a lesser extent (with a lot of noise), a form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects — how good someone is at taking some type of exams designed by unsophisticated nerds. It is via negativa not via positiva. Designed for learning disabilities, and given that it is not too needed there (see argument further down), it ends up selecting for exam-takers, paper shufflers, obedient IYIs (intellectuals yet idiots), ill adapted for “real life”. (The fact that it correlates with general incompetence makes the overall correlation look high, even when it is random, see Figures 1 and 2.) The concept is poorly thought out mathematically by the field (commits a severe flaw in correlation under fat tails and asymmetries; fails to properly deal with dimensionality; treats the mind as an instrument not a complex system), and seems to be promoted by
Racists/eugenists, people bent on showing that some populations have inferior mental abilities based on IQ test=intelligence; those have been upset with me for suddenly robbing them of a “scientific” tool, as evidenced by the bitter reactions to the initial post on twitter/smear campaigns by such mountebanks as Charles Murray. (Something observed by the great Karl Popper, psychologists have a tendency to pathologize people who bust them by tagging them with some type of disorder, or personality flaw such as “childish” , “narcissist”, “egomaniac”, or something similar). Note the online magazine Quillette seems to be a cover for a sinister eugenics program (with tendencies I’ve called “neo-Nazi” under the cover of “free thought”.) Note I am finding statistical flaws in Richard Plomin’s work — the pope of twin studies (see intransitivity of correlation in my technical addendum; he doesn’t get it).
Psychometrics peddlers looking for suckers (military, large corporations) buying the “this is the best measure in psychology” argument when it is not even technically a measure — it explains at best between 2 and 13% of the performance in some tasks (those tasks that are similar to the test itself)[see interpretation of .5 correlation further down], minus the data massaging and statistical cherrypicking by psychologists; it doesn’t satisfy the monotonicity and transitivity required to have a measure (at best it is a concave measure). No measure that fails 80–95% of the time should be part of “science” (nor should psychology — owing to its sinister track record — be part of science (rather scientism), but that’s another discussion).
Typical confusion: Graphs in Intelligence showing an effect of IQ and income for a large cohort. Even ignoring circularity (test takers get clerical and other boring jobs), injecting noise would show the lack of information in the graph. Note that the effect shown is lower than the variance between tests for the same individual!
Fig 1: The graph that summarizes the first flaw (assuming thin tailed situations), showing that “correlation” is meaningless in the absence of symmetry. We construct (in red) an intelligence test (horizontal), that is 100% correlated with negative performance (when IQ is, say, below 100) and 0% with upside, positive performance. We progressively add noise (with a 0 mean) and see correlation (on top) drop but shift to both sides. Performance is on the vertical axis. The problem gets worse with the “g” intelligence based on principal components. By comparison we show (graph below) the distribution of IQ and SAT scores. Most “correlations” entailing IQ suffer the same pathology. Note: this is in spite of the fact that IQ tests overlap with the SAT! (To echo Haldane, one ounce of rigorous algebra is worth more than a century of verbalistic statisticopsycholophastering).
Given that those designing IQ tests aren’t geniuses, the problems are drawn from a finite set of archetypal classes — idempotent transformations, structural isomorphisms, invariance under group operations, compositional rule sequences, and inductive category formations. Therefore IQ tests recycle a finite repertoire: idempotent patterns, structural isomorphisms, invariances, and compositional rules disguised as novelty. This is sooooooooooo gamable with training: working on a nice balcony with a breeze, coffee, and nice background music (Rachmaninov) — if you have nothing else to do in life.
It is at the bottom an immoral measure that, while not working, can put people (and, worse, groups) in boxes for the rest of their lives.
There is no significant statistical association between IQ and hard measures such as wealth. Most “achievements” linked to IQ are measured in circular stuff s.a. bureaucratic or academic success, things for test takers and salary earners in structured jobs that resemble the tests. Wealth may not mean success but it is the only “hard” number, not some discrete score of achievements. You can buy food with a $30, not with other “successes” s.a. rank, social prominence, or having had a selfie with the Queen.
"In any case, it is a scientific finding (in the sense of observation, etc.) that science and academia do indeed occupy the space that religion (Christianity/monotheism) and the church had in the Middle Ages and even centuries ago. Just as the financial system (banks, financial/economic elites, financial/economic bureaucrats) does indeed occupy the place that the nobility and the like had in the Middle Ages and even centuries ago. Of course, today we have globalization and the industrial revolution, but the system of social control and the like remain the same. Just as we can say that logic, reason, rationality, critical thinking, skepticism, positivism, neopositivism and the like today occupy the place that theology, metaphysics, esotericism, occultism, gnosticism, spirituality (in the religious sense of the word) and magical thinking occupied in the Middle Ages until centuries ago. Of course, you can disagree with this as much as you want. But that doesn't negate that in fact..." Daniel Cidade is partly correct on this point, since nowadays science and academia occupy the same places/spaces of power that religion and the church occupied until centuries ago. Perhaps we can't change that, and the best way is to live as best we can in this world as it is, as Professor Jiang Xueqin would say."
"Science is basically a religion... created to deceive you." In this provocative lecture, Professor Jiang Xueqin explains why modern society, with its obsession with the individual and science, has made us more depressed and powerless than the ancient Greeks, who accepted fate and focused on the collective.
🧠 The Illusion of Control: Why believing you control your synapses (science) enslaves you more than believing in gods (polytheism).
🏫 School = Brainwashing: The theory that school doesn't exist to teach, but to indoctrinate and separate "intelligent" from "stupid" people, something that didn't exist in the past.
🤝 Collective Happiness: How we lost true happiness (holding feasts for the community) by focusing on individual success and accumulation.
💊 Critique of Psychiatry: Why the professor suggests walking and talking with friends instead of seeking psychiatrists who create dependency.
🏛️ Eudaimonia: The Greek concept of "flourishing" vs. the modern, empty pursuit of immediate pleasure.
00:00 Lesson 1 | How Does Power Work?
Kant, reality as imagination, and the greatest alchemy in history: banks creating money out of thin air while convincing you that it is scarce.
56:10 Lesson 2 | Why Do Societies Fall?
The 3 definitive theories (Piketty, Turchin, and Spengler) that explain why every empire, every civilization, and every nation has an expiration date.
01:39:51 Lesson 3 | The Death of Gerontocracy
When elites age, they lose vitality, and the entire system begins to rot from the inside out.
02:21:20 Lesson 4 | Why Does Evil Always Win?
The secret mechanism that makes "evil" not the exception—it is the rule of the power game.
02:56:19 Lesson 5 | How Did Evil Originate?
The origin of monotheism, the modern individual, and the nation-state as the greatest tools of control ever created by humanity.
"School is not a place to teach you knowledge. School is a place that indoctrinates you for war." In this lesson, Professor Jiang Xueqin deconstructs the foundations of modern power, revealing how concepts we take for granted—school, money, the individual, and the nation-state—are actually recent inventions designed for social control.
The Origin of School: From Sparta to Prussia, how compulsory education arose not to educate, but to prepare societies for war, separating children from parents to facilitate indoctrination.
We live in the richest society in human history, and yet we are the most anxious, indebted, and miserable. Why does the current system seem designed to exhaust us? In this video, Professor Jiang Xueqin reveals how the elite uses debt, war, and secret society rituals to extract every drop of productivity from the "modern peasant."
The analysis begins by demystifying the goal of capitalism: it's not just about accumulating capital, but about directing people's energy and focus through artificial anxiety. Xueqin details the elite's three control mechanisms:
The Illusion of Freedom: The belief that we have choice and a voice, when the system is rigid.
Money as God: The transformation of an abstract concept into the sole purpose of human existence.
Anxiety via Debt and Destruction: The use of unpayable interest rates and the cyclical destruction of wealth (wars and recessions) to ensure that no one stops working.
The professor also explores the concept of Transnational Capital, where the ultra-rich have no loyalty to nations, moving to "capitals" like Dubai and Singapore as soon as the social conflict they themselves created becomes unbearable. Finally, he connects this elite to Secret Societies and the Milgram Experiment, explaining how occultism serves to exempt the individual from moral responsibility for terrible acts, attributing them to superior forces like Saturn or Cronus.
Do you feel your life is dictated by an anxiety that isn't your own? Leave your reflection in the comments: is the system natural or artificial?
The Lie of the Nation-State: How the school implants a "false memory" to make us believe that countries like China or France are real entities that deserve our sacrifice, replacing local loyalties with an abstraction.
The Monotheistic Revolution: The central thesis that the idea of a "single true God" was the catalyst for the creation of the three pillars of modernity: Money, the Individual, and the Nation-State. The Alchemy of Power: Defining power as the ability to transform nothing (abstract concepts) into everything (tangible reality that controls our lives).
The Accident of History: How this system was not planned, but an "accident of the human imagination," and how controlling that imagination is the key to a different future.
I have no idea what you are talking about. My degree in education came from the State University of Iowa in 1964 before anyone talked about multiple intelligences. But my son has autism. He struggled with school and was a “visual learner.” He needed to see a picture. As a young child he loved the Berenstein bear books — in which the picture depicted the story. He said, “In those books you learn something.”
I believe many of his special education teachers in the public schools had been trained I multiple intelligences. I told them he was a visual learner. Not one of them tried to teach him using visuals. So I don’t know what the modern education degrees equipped them to do.
Finally after trying five different schools in both Washington DC and Iowa, I drove through the cornfields near Kalona Iowa and enrolled him in The Iowa Mennonite School. The Mennonite school had a special teacher who helped the students who struggled academically. I don’t think she had studied multiple intelligences. She was Mennonite. She just asked, “How can I help you?” And she did help. She found him a tutor who was a recent graduate of the school. I told Kyle,”He is a visual learner.” Kyle opened the textbook to a picture and began explaining. My son came home from school and reported, “When Kyle explains it, I understand it.”
Perhaps this will sound like a defense of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences; the points the article makes do not refute the theory of multiple intelligences, but rather show that multiple intelligences are dynamic and exist within a dynamic-complex and perhaps even relativistic system.
The article has a certain bias in defense of the IQ theory and the G Factor, not that both are inherently wrong. But the article sounded more like a defense of IQ and the G Factor than a refutation of the theory of multiple intelligences.
In fact, Howard Gardner, who proposed the theory of multiple intelligences, certainly did not know about science and about our minds being dynamic-complex and relativistic systems. But just as there is IQ and the G Factor, it is also possible to create an analogue of IQ and several specific factors for each of these intelligences.
That is, there is a marketing ploy even within science on various topics, mainly cognitive and related topics.
The spectrum theory of science also helps to understand this issue. including even helping the theory of the absolute in science regarding demarcation.
The problem is also the debunking culture, which is another problem for another discussion. The debunking culture literally has the same problems as cancel culture, to make a simple analogy.
But anyway, all these "neuromyths" and "psychomyths" have their backgrounds in neurotruths and psychotruths, just as there are several "neurotruths" and "psychotruths" that have their backgrounds in neuromyths and psychomyths.
And as other comments here have pointed out, just because Howard Gardner's explanations are wrong or incomplete doesn't mean his entire theory is wrong; this has happened a lot in cognitive sciences, social sciences, and even in the exact, natural, and related sciences.
But unfortunately, in this period of scientific polarization, saying that science is n-dimensional, n-variational, and n-axial, as well as a spectrum and a dynamic-complex system, is likely to be met with a lot of scientific dogmatism, scientific purity, scientific neo-Pentecostalism, scientific neoliberalism, etc.
Unfortunately, scientific tribalism does exist, and the spectrum theory of science, as well as evolutionary psychology, evolutionary cognitive science, and evolutionary social science, can explain this very well.
Talvez isso irá soar como uma defesa da Teoria das Multiplas Inteligências, os pontos que o artigo apontam não refutam a teoria das multiplas inteligências, mas sim mostram que as multiplas inteligências são dinâmicas e existem dentro de um sistema dinâmico-complexo e talvez até mesmo relativísticos.
O artigo tem um certo viés em defesa da teoria do QI e do Fator G, não que ambos estejam inerentemente errados. Mas o artigo mais soou como uma defesa do QI e do Fator G que propriamente uma refutação a teoria das múltiplas inteligências.
De fato, Howard Gardner que propôs a teoria das multiplas inteligências certamente não sabia sobre a ciência e sobre nossas mentes serem sistemas dinâmicos-complexos e relativísticos. Mas assim como existe QI e Fator G, é também possível criar um análogo do QI e vários fatores específicos para cada uma destas inteligências.
Ou seja, existe uma jogada de marketing até mesmo dentro da ciência sobre vários temas, principalmente temas cognitivos e afins.
A teoria do espectro da ciência também ajuda a entender esta questão. inclusive até mesmo ajudando a teoria do absoluto da ciência na questão de demarcação.
O problema também é a cultura do debunking, que aí é um outro problema para uma outra discussão. Que a cultura do debunking literalmente possui os mesmos problemas da cultura do cancelamento fazendo uma analogia simples.
Mas enfim, todos os tais "neuromitos" e "psicomitos" possuem seus fundos de neuroverdades e psicoverdades, assim como que tem várias "neuroverdades" e "psicoverdades" que possuem seus fundos de neuromitos e psicomitos.
E como outros comentários aqui apontaram, não é por que as explicações de Howard Gardner estão erradas ou incompletas que quer dizer que toda a teoria dele está errada, inclusive isso aconteceu muito nas ciências cognitivas, sociais e até mesmo nas ciências exatas, naturais e afins.
Mas infelizmente no período de polarização científica dizer que a ciência é n-dimensional, n-variacional e n-axial assim como um espectro e um sistema dinâmico-complexo é motivo de ser muito recebido com dogmatismo científico, pureza científica, neopentecostalismo científico, neoliberalismo científico etc.
Infelizmente o tribalismo científico de fato existe, e isso a teoria do espectro da ciência, assim como a psicologia evolutiva, ciências cognitivas evolutivas e ciências sociais evolutivas podem explicar muito bem.
I've read the article again, this time focusing on the details, and it doesn't really debunk the intelligence spectrum theory nor the science spectrum theory, but rather show how the spectrum is interdependent and dynamic-complex, it's not because what he proposed was wrong that the Multidimensional Intelligences can't be adapted, like, it's possible to make IQ-like coefficients for all those things and them measure them separately but correlated. It's like the fields in science. Yeah, neopositivism is a major issue here. But it's far from a "comfortable myth", but rather that Intelligence, science, and even we humans, including all living beings and maybe the universe we live in, are dynamic-complex system and exist as an interdependent n-dimensional and n-axes spectrum.
Carl Hendrick’s critique, *“Comfortable Fictions: The Myth of Multiple Intelligences,”* exposes a familiar—and pernicious—dynamic in education: well-meaning metaphors and moral certainties gain traction despite weak empirical grounding. Hendrick shows how ideas framed as kinder, more humane ways to think about learners can survive as “moral theatre” rather than science, and in so doing they distort practice and assessment.
The problems Hendrick highlights—persistence of neuromyths, the rhetorical power of comforting stories, and the gap between what educators feel is right and what evidence supports—are not merely intellectual disagreements; they shape classroom choices, policy, and teacher training. Empirical surveys and policy reviews likewise document widespread belief in learning myths among teachers, which helps explain why these fictions are difficult to dislodge. The challenge is therefore both conceptual and institutional.
The N-Dimensional Intelligence Theory, nested within a broader Intelligence Spectrum Theory, offers a conceptual remedy: instead of treating “intelligences” as a small set of categorical labels (or as an undifferentiated single IQ score), we model cognitive capacities as coordinates across many continuous axes. Each axis corresponds to measurable processes or capacities (e.g., working memory dynamics, pattern abstraction, sensorimotor integration, social reasoning) and any individual’s profile is a point or region in that multidimensional space. That shift reframes pedagogical questions from “what type of intelligence is this student?” to “which cognitive dimensions are relatively strong, which ones are underdeveloped, and how do they interact?” — a move that is falsifiable, operationalizable, and resistant to comforting but unsupported narratives.
The N-Dimensional *Spectrum* of Intelligence Theory extends this by emphasizing spectra (ranges and distributions) rather than isolated coordinates: it foregrounds variance, developmental trajectories, and context-dependent expression of abilities. Where Hendrick rightly warns against moral comfort masquerading as science, the spectrum approach explicitly separates descriptive mapping from prescriptive value—so educational compassion need not be justified by pseudoscience. Practically, the spectrum model forces more precise measurement, hypothesis testing, and intervention design (for instance, targeting cognitive processes with evidence-based pedagogies rather than matching lessons to an ill-defined “style”). In short, these theories render “multiple intelligences” scientifically tractable rather than rhetorically attractive.
The parallel move in the philosophy of science—the N-Dimensional Theory of Science and the N-Dimensional Spectrum of Science Theory—supplies the epistemic infrastructure for this reform: science is viewed as evaluation across multiple validation axes (replicability, mechanistic plausibility, predictive power, ecological validity, ethical fit), not as a single score of “scientificness.” This helps explain why some educational ideas look persuasive (ethical salience, intuitive appeal) while failing other dimensions of scientific appraisal. By making those dimensions explicit, policymakers and educators can better weigh humane aims against robustness of evidence, avoiding both cynicism and credulity.
Concretely, adopting these N-Dimensional frameworks implies several policy and practice changes aligned with Hendrick’s recommendations: (a) teacher education programs that teach how to read multidimensional cognitive profiles and the limits of simple labels; (b) assessment systems that report spectra of ability and learning process indicators rather than single labels; (c) research agendas that preregister multidimensional hypotheses and measure outcomes across correlated axes; and (d) communication strategies that preserve empathy and agency for learners while refusing to cloak interventions in unsupported scientific claims. Such steps reduce the space for “comfortable fictions” to propagate by replacing narrative comfort with transparent, testable models.
To conclude, Hendrick’s article is an important provocation: we must refuse easy consolations that masquerade as evidence. The N-Dimensional Intelligence and Spectrum theories—together with their N-Dimensional counterparts for science—offer a constructive pathway out of the impasse he describes: they preserve the pluralistic, humane aims that motivate educators while insisting on the precision, measurement, and plural validation that make claims educationally useful. If education is to be both compassionate and effective, our metaphors must be replaced by models that invite testing, revision, and the modesty Hendrick calls for.
The N-Dimensional Theory of Science begins with a rejection of the idea that scientific validity can be captured by a single metric—such as falsifiability, replication success, or predictive accuracy alone. Instead, it models scientific inquiry as a multidimensional landscape composed of many evaluative axes. These include empirical robustness, mechanistic coherence, mathematical tractability, ecological realism, methodological transparency, cross-disciplinary convergence, and social–ethical impact. By treating each scientific claim or theory as a vector in this multidimensional space, the framework avoids the reductive tendency to equate “good science” with a single philosophical criterion. It also helps illuminate why educational theories with moral appeal but weak evidence persist: they score high on certain axes (ethical resonance, intuitive coherence) while scoring poorly on others (empirical support, causal specificity).
The N-Dimensional Spectrum of Science Theory takes this further by emphasizing that scientific validity is rarely an all-or-nothing property. Instead, each evaluative axis expresses a spectrum of strengths, and different fields or research programs distribute themselves unevenly across them. For example, physics may score highly on predictive precision but lower on ecological realism; the social sciences may excel at contextual sensitivity while facing challenges in replicability or model simplicity. This spectrum view discourages the false certainty and binary judgments that often fuel both scientism and anti-scientific sentiment. It also mirrors the distributional nature of evidence in education, where interventions seldom succeed universally but instead exert differentiated effects across contexts and learner profiles.
By embedding educational research within such an N-dimensional evaluative space, the theory provides a systematic explanation for why simplistic frameworks—such as the myths addressed by Hendrick—take hold. They collapse the dimensionality of scientific assessment into emotionally appealing narratives. When a flawed idea promises ethical clarity or pedagogical reassurance, practitioners often accept it even when it fails across methodological or empirical dimensions. The N-Dimensional Spectrum of Science Theory forces a disaggregation of these dimensions, making transparent where comfort is substituting for evidence and where partial strengths are being mistaken for comprehensive validity.
This multidimensional epistemic model also creates a natural methodological bridge to the N-Dimensional Intelligence frameworks. If intelligence is multidimensional and context-expressive, then the science that studies intelligence must also be evaluated multidimensionally. A unidimensional philosophy of science cannot adequately support a multidimensional model of cognition. Theories of intelligence, learning, development, or pedagogy should therefore be evaluated not only on whether they are “empirically supported,” but also on dimensions such as mechanistic plausibility, sociocognitive generality, contextual fidelity, and developmental sensitivity. The failure of many educational myths lies not just in insufficient data, but in incomplete multidimensional profiles of scientific adequacy.
Furthermore, this N-dimensional scientific lens offers a practical solution to the institutional problems Hendrick identifies. Instead of asking educators to select between “popular” theories and “scientific” ones—an oversimplified dichotomy—the framework trains them to evaluate where a theory is strong, where it is weak, and which dimensions matter most for their specific instructional goals. This prevents the wholesale adoption of appealing but flawed frameworks, while also avoiding the narrow dismissal of promising ideas that may possess partial or emerging strengths along specific axes. Ultimately, the spectrum approach cultivates epistemic humility without collapsing into relativism.
In policy and research design, the theory requires a shift toward multi-metric evaluation. Educational interventions would no longer be judged by a single headline effect size but by a profile: replicability scores, mechanism maps, contextual constraints, cost-benefit analyses, and longitudinal resilience. Such multidimensional reporting would drastically reduce the allure of oversimplified narratives by making visible the full evidential texture behind pedagogical claims. It also aligns with contemporary movements toward open science, preregistration, and multimethod triangulation—each of which naturally occupies a distinct axis of the N-dimensional space.
In sum, the N-Dimensional Theory of Science and its Spectrum extension provide the conceptual scaffolding needed to move beyond the “comfortable fictions” Hendrick critiques. They replace narrative convenience with structured complexity, moral theatre with transparent multidimensional evaluation, and unidimensional myths with models capable of accommodating nuance, uncertainty, and context. By adopting these frameworks, educators and researchers can cultivate a scientific culture that is both more rigorous and more intellectually honest—precisely the antidote to the problems highlighted in the article.
Carl, your article powerfully articulates a crucial schism in education: the gap between what feels intuitively right and what is empirically supported. Your critique of Multiple Intelligences (MI) as a "comfortable fiction" is perfectly framed, highlighting how its appeal lies in its democratic and optimistic view of human potential, which has unfortunately led to its uncritical adoption in pedagogical practice. You are absolutely correct that the theory has been elevated to a neurological fact in the minds of many educators, guiding instructional choices in ways that lack an evidence base.
Where I would add a layer of nuance is in the outright classification of MI as a "neuromyth." I see these concepts not as binary truths and falsehoods, but as existing on a spectrum of validity and utility. The core intuition behind MI—that people exhibit diverse strengths and aptitudes—is observable. Some students are naturally more kinesthetically gifted, others more linguistically deft, and others seem to think in a more logical-mathematical pattern. The "myth" isn't this observation itself, but the subsequent and unjustified leap to reify these aptitudes into discrete, independent "intelligences" with dedicated neural real estate and to then build entire teaching methodologies upon them.
This is where the "Science Spectrum Theory" applies. On one end, we have robust, predictive, and falsifiable scientific theories. On the other, we have pseudoscience. MI theory, in its popularized form, has certainly drifted toward the pseudoscience end due to the claims made in its name. However, its original formulation by Gardner was more of a philosophical challenge to the hegemony of IQ than a hard scientific theory. It becomes a damaging neuromyth when we cross the threshold from using it as a descriptive framework for appreciating student diversity to a prescriptive one for designing instruction, especially when it replaces methods with stronger evidence, like direct instruction and cognitive load theory.
Therefore, the real "comfortable fiction" may not be the entire concept, but the oversimplified and misapplied version of it. We can acknowledge the spectrum of human talent without subscribing to the neuromyth that we must teach to a specific "intelligence." Your article is vital for forcing us to confront the uncomfortable truth that what feels good in education is often not what is most effective, and that moving beyond this fiction is necessary for evidence-informed practice to thrive.
Thank you for sharing this thought-provoking article. While it raises important critiques, I believe a defense of Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory can be mounted by viewing it not as a rigid, neuromyth-based model, but as a dynamic and complex framework for understanding human potential.
A primary criticism often leveled against MI theory is that it is a "neuromyth" due to a lack of evidence for entirely separate neural modules for each intelligence. However, this critique can be addressed by shifting the perspective:
MI Theory is About a Spectrum of Potentials, Not Fixed Learning Styles
A widespread misunderstanding is conflating MI with "learning styles," an approach Howard Gardner himself has explicitly rejected. The theory was never intended to label students as a single type of learner. Instead, it proposes that we all possess a spectrum of intelligences that we use in combination to navigate the world. The goal is to broaden our understanding of human capability beyond the narrow confines of linguistic and logical-mathematical abilities prized in traditional education. Presenting material in multiple ways doesn't cater to a fixed "style," but rather provides multiple entry points into learning, making it more accessible and engaging for a diverse group of students.
MI Aligns with a Dynamic-Complex Systems View of the Brain
The critique that neuroscience has not found dedicated brain modules for each intelligence is valid if one expects a one-to-one correspondence. However, modern neuroscience reveals the brain to be a complex, interconnected system where regions work in concert for various tasks. MI theory can be seen as a description of the distinct cognitive domains or patterns of thinking that emerge from this dynamic system.
Gardner's own criteria for an intelligence support this systems-view. He looked for evidence from multiple domains, including:
· Biology: Potential for isolation by brain damage and a place in evolutionary history.
· Psychology: A distinct developmental progression and the existence of savants and prodigies.
This multi-faceted approach acknowledges that intelligence is not a single,monolithic factor but a constellation of abilities with biopsychological origins. The "modules" Gardner described are better understood as specialized networks within a larger, complex system, not as isolated, independent organs.
The Proof is in the Pedagogical Practice
Ultimately, the value of a theory in education is often measured by its practical benefits. MI theory has been widely embraced because it works in the classroom. It encourages educators to:
· Move beyond one-size-fits-all teaching and diversify their methods.
· Create more inclusive and equitable classrooms where students with different strengths can shine.
· Foster the development of the whole child, including social-emotional, creative, and physical skills through interpersonal, intrapersonal, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences.
When students are given multiple ways to access information and demonstrate understanding, engagement and motivation increase. This is not a "myth"; it's a practical response to the complex reality of the classroom.
In conclusion, dismissing MI theory as a "comfortable fiction" may stem from a rigid interpretation of its claims. When viewed through the lens of a spectrum of cognitive domains emerging from a dynamic and complex brain system, it remains a powerful and relevant framework for creating richer, more effective, and more human educational experiences.
Just because Gardner's claim to dedicated neural networks has not been confirmed, does not mean this type of thinking doesn't belong in our schools. Presenting the idea of learning styles or MI to new teachers gives them a framework for providing multiple ways for students to access the curriculum. It makes learning more interesting and motivating, culturally sustaining, and allows for a degree of choice and shared control. In addition, the mindset that goes along with these ideas helps educators honor different ways of being and varied ways of knowing, which is necessary if we are to achieve equity in our schools. It is disheartening that you state that because the science has been debunked, that an approach that makes sense and works for teachers should be thrown out altogether. It's typical for education researchers and influencers to throw everything away when they find one part that is not quite right. How about a reframe that we can all feel comfortable with instead of getting rid of ideas that inspire teachers and work well for varying approaches which are research based, such as UDL. This "throw it all away" mentality in education just puts us all back to the start and keeps everyone confused and trying to catch up with the next new thing, which will also have its problems.
I agree with you on that, that's the why the model of Science Spectrum Theory and N-Dimensional Spectrum of Science Theory is able to fix that. Intelligence Spectrum Theory and N-Dimensional Spectrum of Intelligence Theory are still up there, if people stop treating science as white and black but rather as a spectrum, mainly as a N-Dimensional Spectrum, we would be able to fix so many problem, including most to all the problems you mentioned there. A field can't be entirely debunked as there are just very few examples of entire science fields being entirely debunked. Unfortunately debunking nowadays basically became the same as refutation/rebuttal, but most people aren't ready for talking about how debunking nowadays is mostly about putting other perspectives rather than actual debunking.
Experts have dug their own grave by claiming to stand by things that have later proven false. There's a good reason for people to distrust the medical establishment, including vaccines, and it is all because of "experts"
Well, practically speaking, Nassim Nicholas Taleb conclusively proved that IQ and similar things aren't as scientific as they seem https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39. I even understand all the hype related to IQ, the G factor, and the like. In this case, Thomas Kuhn is right that science is made up of paradigms, just as Zhenli is right that non-bizarre scientific conspiracies do exist in practice. Unfortunately, I see that there's a lot of hype against the theory of multiple intelligences in defense of IQ, the G factor, etc. I wouldn't say that this is lobbying per se, just as I haven't yet seen proof of the existence of an "IQ Lobby" or a "G Factor Lobby," despite appearances (it requires independent and in-depth investigation until no doubts remain). I even understand that the theory of multiple intelligences is sidelined because it's not very interesting for lobbying purposes, as is the spectrum theory of science and similar theories. But, like, that empirical and scientific evidence can be manipulated, tailored, taken out of context, and/or made to fit within a certain paradigm, that's 100% true. After all, as Ahaiyuta says, it's always good to have a healthy skepticism, especially when dealing with issues like this.
But, like, would it be possible for someone to write an article on "Other Comfortable Fictions: The Myth of IQ and the G Factor - Why the certainty of the current paradigm keeps bad ideas and misinterpretations alive in our scientific studies and communications," in the style of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's article? about IQ, or an article on "Neuromyths, Neurotruths and Neuromanias: How Much Neuromyths are Neurotruths and Neurotruths are Neuromyths - Why empirical and scientific evidence is affected by our current paradigm".
You're right, like, there are some basic things like Science Spectrum Theory, Intelligence Spectrum Theory, G Factor Spectrum Theory, Ahaiyuta's General/Special Frequencies Field Unification Theory and then you have the bizarre cases you said. Yeah, there's a big difference between distrusting Donovan Hilton Rawcliffe from an Ahaiyuta-like perspective or a Science Spectrum-like perspective compared to a totally Antiscience perspective. I think you know it already.
You have been auditing my five years of mandatory DEI training! This eloquently captures the cost:
“This is not science. It is not even good pedagogy. It is moral theatre, performed for an audience of educators who want to believe they are doing the right thing without having to prove it. And the applause comes not from improved student outcomes, but from the warm glow of shared moral conviction.”
But it's practically certain that intelligence is a spectrum, just like science, technology, progress, and so on. The issue is that people aren't ready for this discussion about intelligence being a spectrum with multiple dimensions and so on. Science is also a spectrum in this regard. The problem is that people still treat science as something black and white instead of a spectrum with multiple dimensions and axes. Science today is treated as an ideology, as a dogma, and as a secular religion by various sectors of society. Because if you think about empirical and scientific evidence, evidence can indeed be fabricated and made to order, just as empirical reality is neither linear nor exact; that is, the problem is that there is confirmation bias on all sides, which is why the spectrum theory of science is valid. If you think about it a lot, science is just about seeking patterns that repeat themselves in a chaotic, dynamic, and complex world for the purpose of mastering technique. This article was translated, copied, and pasted into that magazine Questão de Ciência, and people share such articles without even questioning them. This is why neopositivism treats science like a religion. When someone says that "science has become a religion," they mean, in the same tone, that "whoever believes that Marxism is science has more faith than a Christian (this anti-communist lie is easy to refute, but unfortunately there are many neopositivist communists who believe in this lie)." To believe that current science under Neoliberalism is 100% neutral/impartial/unbiased/without ideology, etc., the same for scientific evidence, the scientific method, etc., you need to have much more faith than a Christian, perhaps even more than the most fundamentalist Christians who believe that the rapture will happen at any moment. Neopositivism and scientism (both are practically the same thing, but it's good to use both terms) are indeed based on faith and belief, because to completely reject the spectrum theory of science (science as a spectrum) and hold a binary (practically Manichean) view of science, believing that science and pseudoscience are determined by "giving quick and momentary results (without considering the clear long term or any other factors)," you have to possess the same level of faith and belief as a Christian who believes the rapture will happen at any moment. Nowadays, evidence can indeed be fabricated, manipulated, tailored, and commissioned, just as all facts and things are cherry-pickable. But unfortunately, many of you are not ready for this discussion.
Mas é praticamente certo que a inteligência é um espectro, assim como a ciência, a tecnologia, o progresso e afins. A questão é que as pessoas não estão prontas para esta discussão sobre a inteligências ser um espectro com várias dimensões e afins. A ciência também é um espectro nesta questão. O problema é que as pessoas ainda tratam a ciência como algo preto e branco ao invés de um espectro com várias dimensões e eixos. A ciência hoje em dia é tratada como uma ideologia, como um dogma e como uma religião secular por vários setores da sociedade. Pois se vc por pensar nisso de evidências empíricas e científicas, evidências podem sim ser fabricadas e feitas sob encomenda, assim como que a realidade empírica ela não é linear nem exata, ou seja, o problema é que existe viés de confirmação de todos os lados, por isso da teoria do espectro da ciência ser válida. Se você pensar muito sobre, a ciência é apenas sobre buscar padrões que se repetem em um mundo caótico, dinâmico e complexo para fins de domínio da técnica. Este artigo foi traduzido, copiado e colado naquela revista Questão de Ciência, e as pessoas compartilham tais artigos sem nem questionar. Por isso do neopositivismo tratar a ciência como uma religião. Quando alguém fala que "a ciência virou uma religião" eles querem dizer no mesmo tom que "quem acredita que o Marxismo é ciência tem mais fé que cristão (essa mentira anticomunista é fácil de desmentir, mas infelizmente tem muito comunista neopositivista que acredita nessa mentira)", para você acreditar que a ciência atual sob o Neoliberalismo é 100% neutra/imparcial/sem viés/sem ideologia etc, o mesmo para as evidências científicas, método científico etc você precisa ter muito mais fé que um cristão, talvez até mesmo que os cristãos mais fundamentalistas que acreditam que o arrebatamento vai acontecer a qualquer momento. O neopositivismo e o cientificismo (ambos são a mesma coisa na prática, mas é bom usar ambos os termos) são sim baseados em fé e crença, pois para você rejeitar por completo a teoria do espectro da ciência (da ciência como um espectro) e possuir uma visão binária (praticamente maniqueísta) da ciência e de que ciência e pseudociência é determinado por "dar resultados rápidos e momentâneos (sem considerar o longo prazo claro ou quaisquer outros fatores)" você tem que possuir o mesmo nível de fé e de crença que um cristão que acredita que o arrebatamento vai acontecer a qualquer momento. Hoje em dia evidências podem sim ser fabricadas, manipuladas, feitas sob medida e encomendadas, assim como que todos os fatos e coisas são cherry-pikable. Mas infelizmente muitos de vocês não estão prontos pra esta discussão.
But like, the Science Spectrum Theory is right despite no formalization yet, just like Intelligence Spectrum Theory. You could argue about Ahaiyuta's General/Special Frequency Field Unification Theory or about Nyx Land's Metaphysical/Spiritual Materialism. But yeah, the G Factor is also a Spectrum according to G Factor Spectrum Theory as well.
As a debunking of Gardner's specific theory, this is all very persuasive and clear-cut. But as an outsider to psychometry, I wonder how much that tells us about whether or not 'intelligence' is in fact a single, unified thing or whether there is are, in a looser sense, different forms of 'intelligence' that can come apart. First, I don't think it's obvious you need something like specific, dedicated modules for this to be the case. So the main salient evidence seems to be correlation. However, just because there is a strong correlation, I don't see why this tells us one way or another about independence. Many things that are in principle separable correlate strongly with each other. The way to find out if they are indeed distinct is simply to look for cases where they do clearly come apart, rather than to look at aggregate statistical data (though maybe I am missing something here due to my lack of scientific training). With intelligence, we do in fact see at least one kind of case where intelligence test subscores can come apart significantly: autism.
It is common for autistic people who take intelligence tests like the WAIS-IV to have significant differences among their subscores. When I was diagnosed, my verbal score was two standard deviations above my perceptual reasoning score and four standard deviations above my processing speed score (this profile wasn't the sole basis for my diagnosis, but it was part of it). I've earned a PhD in a humanities discipline where no perceptual reasoning was really required, but where my strength in verbal intelligence has served me well. It's very hard to look at my subscores, my life trajectory and also those of many other autistic people and not conclude that something like verbal intelligence and perceptual intelligence are meaningfully distinct forms of intelligence.
Am I misunderstanding or missing something important here? Again, I understand my tack is a bit tangential to Gardner's theory specifically - I don't intend to defend it (nor emphasizing multiple intelligence in education policy for the general population).
I'm actually well aware of this history! Though I'm in the humanities, disability is a major area of study for me so I know a fair bit about the parts of science that have their roots in eugenics.
I don't think the history is of the right kind to generate a genealogical argument for entirely jettisoning the notion ("merely race science and eugenics all the way down" is an overstatement I think). I'm skeptical of concepts like 'g' for the reasons indicated in my post and more. But working on disability, I think it's also going to amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we throw out any kind of intelligence testing or psychometry. Eugenicists had very horrific reasons for wanting to be able to measure disability, but that does not mean that attempting to use measurement to understand disability is inherently horrific. Intellectual disability does exist and tests are one kind of (imperfect) tool in our kit towards helping us understand it better (which helps us improve the lives of those people and accomodate them).
As Professor Jiang Xueqin would say:
"Science is basically a religion... created to deceive you." In this provocative lecture, Professor Jiang Xueqin explains why modern society, with its obsession with the individual and science, has made us more depressed and powerless than the ancient Greeks, who accepted fate and focused on the collective.
🧠 The Illusion of Control: Why believing you control your synapses (science) enslaves you more than believing in gods (polytheism).
🏫 School = Brainwashing: The theory that school doesn't exist to teach, but to indoctrinate and separate "intelligent" from "stupid" people, something that didn't exist in the past.
🤝 Collective Happiness: How we lost true happiness (holding feasts for the community) by focusing on individual success and accumulation.
💊 Critique of Psychiatry: Why the professor suggests walking and talking with friends instead of seeking psychiatrists who create dependency.
🏛️ Eudaimonia: The Greek concept of "flourishing" vs. the modern, empty pursuit of immediate pleasure.
00:00 Lesson 1 | How Does Power Work?
Kant, reality as imagination, and the greatest alchemy in history: banks creating money out of thin air while convincing you that it is scarce.
56:10 Lesson 2 | Why Do Societies Fall?
The 3 definitive theories (Piketty, Turchin, and Spengler) that explain why every empire, every civilization, and every nation has an expiration date.
01:39:51 Lesson 3 | The Death of Gerontocracy
When elites age, they lose vitality, and the entire system begins to rot from the inside out.
02:21:20 Lesson 4 | Why Does Evil Always Win?
The secret mechanism that makes "evil" not the exception—it is the rule of the power game.
02:56:19 Lesson 5 | How Did Evil Originate?
The origin of monotheism, the modern individual, and the nation-state as the greatest tools of control ever created by humanity.
"School is not a place to teach you knowledge. School is a place that indoctrinates you for war." In this lesson, Professor Jiang Xueqin deconstructs the foundations of modern power, revealing how concepts we take for granted—school, money, the individual, and the nation-state—are actually recent inventions designed for social control.
The Origin of School: From Sparta to Prussia, how compulsory education arose not to educate, but to prepare societies for war, separating children from parents to facilitate indoctrination.
We live in the richest society in human history, and yet we are the most anxious, indebted, and miserable. Why does the current system seem designed to exhaust us? In this video, Professor Jiang Xueqin reveals how the elite uses debt, war, and secret society rituals to extract every drop of productivity from the "modern peasant."
The analysis begins by demystifying the goal of capitalism: it's not just about accumulating capital, but about directing people's energy and focus through artificial anxiety. Xueqin details the elite's three control mechanisms:
The Illusion of Freedom: The belief that we have choice and a voice, when the system is rigid.
Money as God: The transformation of an abstract concept into the sole purpose of human existence.
Anxiety via Debt and Destruction: The use of unpayable interest rates and the cyclical destruction of wealth (wars and recessions) to ensure that no one stops working.
The professor also explores the concept of Transnational Capital, where the ultra-rich have no loyalty to nations, moving to "capitals" like Dubai and Singapore as soon as the social conflict they themselves created becomes unbearable. Finally, he connects this elite to Secret Societies and the Milgram Experiment, explaining how occultism serves to exempt the individual from moral responsibility for terrible acts, attributing them to superior forces like Saturn or Cronus.
Do you feel your life is dictated by an anxiety that isn't your own? Leave your reflection in the comments: is the system natural or artificial?
The Lie of the Nation-State: How the school implants a "false memory" to make us believe that countries like China or France are real entities that deserve our sacrifice, replacing local loyalties with an abstraction.
The Monotheistic Revolution: The central thesis that the idea of a "single true God" was the catalyst for the creation of the three pillars of modernity: Money, the Individual, and the Nation-State. The Alchemy of Power: Defining power as the ability to transform nothing (abstract concepts) into everything (tangible reality that controls our lives).
The Accident of History: How this system was not planned, but an "accident of the human imagination," and how controlling that imagination is the key to a different future.
IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (Argument Closed)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
14 min read
·
Jan 1, 2019
UPDATE
ARGUMENT CLOSED (2025): The argument is now closed thanks to paper by Brown, Wai, and Chabris that tried to rebut the piece below, but confirmed all of its conclusions. The piece, most recent one on IQ and relying on multi-cohort studies, unintentially showed that IQ explains almost nothing in educational attainment, occupational attainment, and …income! And that, in spite of the circularity. I did not notice the paper until 2024.
Also note that country IQ is fake news.
PREVIOUS ARTICLE AND ARGUMENTS
For some technical backbone to this piece,see here.
(Revised draft (2021): added comments on sinister country profiling. Also 1) Used the same data as researchers to find that R² for IQ-wealth and IQ-income is effectively 0 in spite of the circularity. 2) Turns out IQ beats random selection in the best of applications by less than 6%, typically <2%, as the computation of correlations have a flaw and psychologists do not seem to know the informational value of correlation in terms of “how much do I gain information about B knowing A” and propagation of error (intra-test variance for a single individual). 3) Added information showing the story behind the effectiveness of Average National IQ is, statistically, a fraud. The psychologists who engaged me on this piece — with verbose writeups —made the mistake of showing me the best they got: papers with the strongest pro-IQ arguments. They do not seem to grasp what noise/signal really means in practice. )
Background : “IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning difficulties), as well as, to a lesser extent (with a lot of noise), a form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects — how good someone is at taking some type of exams designed by unsophisticated nerds. It is via negativa not via positiva. Designed for learning disabilities, and given that it is not too needed there (see argument further down), it ends up selecting for exam-takers, paper shufflers, obedient IYIs (intellectuals yet idiots), ill adapted for “real life”. (The fact that it correlates with general incompetence makes the overall correlation look high, even when it is random, see Figures 1 and 2.) The concept is poorly thought out mathematically by the field (commits a severe flaw in correlation under fat tails and asymmetries; fails to properly deal with dimensionality; treats the mind as an instrument not a complex system), and seems to be promoted by
Racists/eugenists, people bent on showing that some populations have inferior mental abilities based on IQ test=intelligence; those have been upset with me for suddenly robbing them of a “scientific” tool, as evidenced by the bitter reactions to the initial post on twitter/smear campaigns by such mountebanks as Charles Murray. (Something observed by the great Karl Popper, psychologists have a tendency to pathologize people who bust them by tagging them with some type of disorder, or personality flaw such as “childish” , “narcissist”, “egomaniac”, or something similar). Note the online magazine Quillette seems to be a cover for a sinister eugenics program (with tendencies I’ve called “neo-Nazi” under the cover of “free thought”.) Note I am finding statistical flaws in Richard Plomin’s work — the pope of twin studies (see intransitivity of correlation in my technical addendum; he doesn’t get it).
Psychometrics peddlers looking for suckers (military, large corporations) buying the “this is the best measure in psychology” argument when it is not even technically a measure — it explains at best between 2 and 13% of the performance in some tasks (those tasks that are similar to the test itself)[see interpretation of .5 correlation further down], minus the data massaging and statistical cherrypicking by psychologists; it doesn’t satisfy the monotonicity and transitivity required to have a measure (at best it is a concave measure). No measure that fails 80–95% of the time should be part of “science” (nor should psychology — owing to its sinister track record — be part of science (rather scientism), but that’s another discussion).
Typical confusion: Graphs in Intelligence showing an effect of IQ and income for a large cohort. Even ignoring circularity (test takers get clerical and other boring jobs), injecting noise would show the lack of information in the graph. Note that the effect shown is lower than the variance between tests for the same individual!
Fig 1: The graph that summarizes the first flaw (assuming thin tailed situations), showing that “correlation” is meaningless in the absence of symmetry. We construct (in red) an intelligence test (horizontal), that is 100% correlated with negative performance (when IQ is, say, below 100) and 0% with upside, positive performance. We progressively add noise (with a 0 mean) and see correlation (on top) drop but shift to both sides. Performance is on the vertical axis. The problem gets worse with the “g” intelligence based on principal components. By comparison we show (graph below) the distribution of IQ and SAT scores. Most “correlations” entailing IQ suffer the same pathology. Note: this is in spite of the fact that IQ tests overlap with the SAT! (To echo Haldane, one ounce of rigorous algebra is worth more than a century of verbalistic statisticopsycholophastering).
Given that those designing IQ tests aren’t geniuses, the problems are drawn from a finite set of archetypal classes — idempotent transformations, structural isomorphisms, invariance under group operations, compositional rule sequences, and inductive category formations. Therefore IQ tests recycle a finite repertoire: idempotent patterns, structural isomorphisms, invariances, and compositional rules disguised as novelty. This is sooooooooooo gamable with training: working on a nice balcony with a breeze, coffee, and nice background music (Rachmaninov) — if you have nothing else to do in life.
It is at the bottom an immoral measure that, while not working, can put people (and, worse, groups) in boxes for the rest of their lives.
There is no significant statistical association between IQ and hard measures such as wealth. Most “achievements” linked to IQ are measured in circular stuff s.a. bureaucratic or academic success, things for test takers and salary earners in structured jobs that resemble the tests. Wealth may not mean success but it is the only “hard” number, not some discrete score of achievements. You can buy food with a $30, not with other “successes” s.a. rank, social prominence, or having had a selfie with the Queen.
https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39
I found this article about Intelligence Spectrum Theory, sadly it's paywalled https://medium.com/@biodunrhoda/beyond-a-single-spark-redefining-intelligence-as-a-spectrum-291edcfa218b
But it's practically certain that intelligence is a spectrum, just like science, technology, progress, and so on. The issue is that people aren't ready for this discussion about intelligence being a spectrum with multiple dimensions and so on. Science is also a spectrum in this regard. The problem is that people still treat science as something black and white instead of a spectrum with multiple dimensions and axes. Science today is treated as an ideology, as a dogma, and as a secular religion by various sectors of society. Because if you think about empirical and scientific evidence, evidence can indeed be fabricated and made to order, just as empirical reality is neither linear nor exact; that is, the problem is that there is confirmation bias on all sides, which is why the spectrum theory of science is valid. If you think about it a lot, science is just about seeking patterns that repeat themselves in a chaotic, dynamic, and complex world for the purpose of mastering technique. This article was translated, copied, and pasted into that magazine Questão de Ciência, and people share such articles without even questioning them. This is why neopositivism treats science like a religion. When someone says that "science has become a religion," they mean, in the same tone, that "whoever believes that Marxism is science has more faith than a Christian (this anti-communist lie is easy to refute, but unfortunately there are many neopositivist communists who believe in this lie)." To believe that current science under Neoliberalism is 100% neutral/impartial/unbiased/without ideology, etc., the same for scientific evidence, the scientific method, etc., you need to have much more faith than a Christian, perhaps even more than the most fundamentalist Christians who believe that the rapture will happen at any moment. Neopositivism and scientism (both are practically the same thing, but it's good to use both terms) are indeed based on faith and belief, because to completely reject the spectrum theory of science (science as a spectrum) and hold a binary (practically Manichean) view of science, believing that science and pseudoscience are determined by "giving quick and momentary results (without considering the clear long term or any other factors)," you have to possess the same level of faith and belief as a Christian who believes the rapture will happen at any moment. Nowadays, evidence can indeed be fabricated, manipulated, tailored, and commissioned, just as all facts and things are cherry-pickable. But unfortunately, many of you are not ready for this discussion.
Mas é praticamente certo que a inteligência é um espectro, assim como a ciência, a tecnologia, o progresso e afins. A questão é que as pessoas não estão prontas para esta discussão sobre a inteligências ser um espectro com várias dimensões e afins. A ciência também é um espectro nesta questão. O problema é que as pessoas ainda tratam a ciência como algo preto e branco ao invés de um espectro com várias dimensões e eixos. A ciência hoje em dia é tratada como uma ideologia, como um dogma e como uma religião secular por vários setores da sociedade. Pois se vc por pensar nisso de evidências empíricas e científicas, evidências podem sim ser fabricadas e feitas sob encomenda, assim como que a realidade empírica ela não é linear nem exata, ou seja, o problema é que existe viés de confirmação de todos os lados, por isso da teoria do espectro da ciência ser válida. Se você pensar muito sobre, a ciência é apenas sobre buscar padrões que se repetem em um mundo caótico, dinâmico e complexo para fins de domínio da técnica. Este artigo foi traduzido, copiado e colado naquela revista Questão de Ciência, e as pessoas compartilham tais artigos sem nem questionar. Por isso do neopositivismo tratar a ciência como uma religião. Quando alguém fala que "a ciência virou uma religião" eles querem dizer no mesmo tom que "quem acredita que o Marxismo é ciência tem mais fé que cristão (essa mentira anticomunista é fácil de desmentir, mas infelizmente tem muito comunista neopositivista que acredita nessa mentira)", para você acreditar que a ciência atual sob o Neoliberalismo é 100% neutra/imparcial/sem viés/sem ideologia etc, o mesmo para as evidências científicas, método científico etc você precisa ter muito mais fé que um cristão, talvez até mesmo que os cristãos mais fundamentalistas que acreditam que o arrebatamento vai acontecer a qualquer momento. O neopositivismo e o cientificismo (ambos são a mesma coisa na prática, mas é bom usar ambos os termos) são sim baseados em fé e crença, pois para você rejeitar por completo a teoria do espectro da ciência (da ciência como um espectro) e possuir uma visão binária (praticamente maniqueísta) da ciência e de que ciência e pseudociência é determinado por "dar resultados rápidos e momentâneos (sem considerar o longo prazo claro ou quaisquer outros fatores)" você tem que possuir o mesmo nível de fé e de crença que um cristão que acredita que o arrebatamento vai acontecer a qualquer momento. Hoje em dia evidências podem sim ser fabricadas, manipuladas, feitas sob medida e encomendadas, assim como que todos os fatos e coisas são cherry-pikable. Mas infelizmente muitos de vocês não estão prontos pra esta discussão.
Yeah, sorry for the long essay, lol, I was inspired and feeling high for writing so.
You (your comments I mean) basically confirmed the Intelligence Spectrum Theory, Knowledge Spectrum Theory, Empirical Spectrum Theory, Science Spectrum Theory, Progress Spectrum Theory, Technology Spectrum Theory, Dynamic-Complex Systems Theory, and the like. It's amazing to see there are still hope in this world. And yeah, Revista Questão de Ciência basically copied and pasted this article translating it to Portuguese. Yeah, it's sad how much Science communication under Neoliberal Capitalism also has its own interests and how evidence can be manufactured and made under order. Yeah, I think we should start with the Inteligence Spectrum Theory for sure. And without forgetting of Ahaiyuta's General/Special Frequencies Field Unification Theory (Everything is frequency and everything has a frequency) for explaining basically all human experiences, including spiritual/astral/divine/mystical ones.
Yeah, it's not a fully formalized theory yet. Maybe it's some kind of bias I have that made me see your comments as confirmation of the Science as a Spectrum and Intelligence as a Spectrum, but it happens so many times out there lol, we are humans after all.
Yeah, about Neoliberalism affecting Science, it doesn't affect so much fields like physics etc. But rather fields like cognitive sciences, social sciences, humanities etc, but it's something for a whole different discussion/comment section.
I agree with you about how lack of formalization leads into less understanding, as in not everyone can publish papers this easy, and also there are some kind of cronyism regarding paper publications as well, but it's for another comment section.
You're welcome, thanks for recognizing that.
Why in the world would you link to that Nazi Cremieux?
He's a Nazi?
https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=7102822e0eeb923ea3f0ea79a65ecf11119138b1909cc40590fe2ee891bef01aJmltdHM9MTc1OTg4MTYwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=0e450981-a4da-6371-08d3-1fa6a58c6211&psq=cremieux+white+nationalist&u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlYXRsYW50aWMuY29tL3RlY2hub2xvZ3kvYXJjaGl2ZS8yMDI1LzA3L2NyZW1pZXV4LXJhY2Utc2NpZW5jZS1uZXcteW9yay10aW1lcy82ODM0NzQv
That's unfortunate.
QI is 100% Pseudoscience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unG_frIaHJc
IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle (Argument Closed)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
14 min read
·
Jan 1, 2019
UPDATE
ARGUMENT CLOSED (2025): The argument is now closed thanks to paper by Brown, Wai, and Chabris that tried to rebut the piece below, but confirmed all of its conclusions. The piece, most recent one on IQ and relying on multi-cohort studies, unintentially showed that IQ explains almost nothing in educational attainment, occupational attainment, and …income! And that, in spite of the circularity. I did not notice the paper until 2024.
Also note that country IQ is fake news.
PREVIOUS ARTICLE AND ARGUMENTS
For some technical backbone to this piece,see here.
(Revised draft (2021): added comments on sinister country profiling. Also 1) Used the same data as researchers to find that R² for IQ-wealth and IQ-income is effectively 0 in spite of the circularity. 2) Turns out IQ beats random selection in the best of applications by less than 6%, typically <2%, as the computation of correlations have a flaw and psychologists do not seem to know the informational value of correlation in terms of “how much do I gain information about B knowing A” and propagation of error (intra-test variance for a single individual). 3) Added information showing the story behind the effectiveness of Average National IQ is, statistically, a fraud. The psychologists who engaged me on this piece — with verbose writeups —made the mistake of showing me the best they got: papers with the strongest pro-IQ arguments. They do not seem to grasp what noise/signal really means in practice. )
Background : “IQ” is a stale test meant to measure mental capacity but in fact mostly measures extreme unintelligence (learning difficulties), as well as, to a lesser extent (with a lot of noise), a form of intelligence, stripped of 2nd order effects — how good someone is at taking some type of exams designed by unsophisticated nerds. It is via negativa not via positiva. Designed for learning disabilities, and given that it is not too needed there (see argument further down), it ends up selecting for exam-takers, paper shufflers, obedient IYIs (intellectuals yet idiots), ill adapted for “real life”. (The fact that it correlates with general incompetence makes the overall correlation look high, even when it is random, see Figures 1 and 2.) The concept is poorly thought out mathematically by the field (commits a severe flaw in correlation under fat tails and asymmetries; fails to properly deal with dimensionality; treats the mind as an instrument not a complex system), and seems to be promoted by
Racists/eugenists, people bent on showing that some populations have inferior mental abilities based on IQ test=intelligence; those have been upset with me for suddenly robbing them of a “scientific” tool, as evidenced by the bitter reactions to the initial post on twitter/smear campaigns by such mountebanks as Charles Murray. (Something observed by the great Karl Popper, psychologists have a tendency to pathologize people who bust them by tagging them with some type of disorder, or personality flaw such as “childish” , “narcissist”, “egomaniac”, or something similar). Note the online magazine Quillette seems to be a cover for a sinister eugenics program (with tendencies I’ve called “neo-Nazi” under the cover of “free thought”.) Note I am finding statistical flaws in Richard Plomin’s work — the pope of twin studies (see intransitivity of correlation in my technical addendum; he doesn’t get it).
Psychometrics peddlers looking for suckers (military, large corporations) buying the “this is the best measure in psychology” argument when it is not even technically a measure — it explains at best between 2 and 13% of the performance in some tasks (those tasks that are similar to the test itself)[see interpretation of .5 correlation further down], minus the data massaging and statistical cherrypicking by psychologists; it doesn’t satisfy the monotonicity and transitivity required to have a measure (at best it is a concave measure). No measure that fails 80–95% of the time should be part of “science” (nor should psychology — owing to its sinister track record — be part of science (rather scientism), but that’s another discussion).
Typical confusion: Graphs in Intelligence showing an effect of IQ and income for a large cohort. Even ignoring circularity (test takers get clerical and other boring jobs), injecting noise would show the lack of information in the graph. Note that the effect shown is lower than the variance between tests for the same individual!
Fig 1: The graph that summarizes the first flaw (assuming thin tailed situations), showing that “correlation” is meaningless in the absence of symmetry. We construct (in red) an intelligence test (horizontal), that is 100% correlated with negative performance (when IQ is, say, below 100) and 0% with upside, positive performance. We progressively add noise (with a 0 mean) and see correlation (on top) drop but shift to both sides. Performance is on the vertical axis. The problem gets worse with the “g” intelligence based on principal components. By comparison we show (graph below) the distribution of IQ and SAT scores. Most “correlations” entailing IQ suffer the same pathology. Note: this is in spite of the fact that IQ tests overlap with the SAT! (To echo Haldane, one ounce of rigorous algebra is worth more than a century of verbalistic statisticopsycholophastering).
Given that those designing IQ tests aren’t geniuses, the problems are drawn from a finite set of archetypal classes — idempotent transformations, structural isomorphisms, invariance under group operations, compositional rule sequences, and inductive category formations. Therefore IQ tests recycle a finite repertoire: idempotent patterns, structural isomorphisms, invariances, and compositional rules disguised as novelty. This is sooooooooooo gamable with training: working on a nice balcony with a breeze, coffee, and nice background music (Rachmaninov) — if you have nothing else to do in life.
It is at the bottom an immoral measure that, while not working, can put people (and, worse, groups) in boxes for the rest of their lives.
There is no significant statistical association between IQ and hard measures such as wealth. Most “achievements” linked to IQ are measured in circular stuff s.a. bureaucratic or academic success, things for test takers and salary earners in structured jobs that resemble the tests. Wealth may not mean success but it is the only “hard” number, not some discrete score of achievements. You can buy food with a $30, not with other “successes” s.a. rank, social prominence, or having had a selfie with the Queen.
https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39
"In any case, it is a scientific finding (in the sense of observation, etc.) that science and academia do indeed occupy the space that religion (Christianity/monotheism) and the church had in the Middle Ages and even centuries ago. Just as the financial system (banks, financial/economic elites, financial/economic bureaucrats) does indeed occupy the place that the nobility and the like had in the Middle Ages and even centuries ago. Of course, today we have globalization and the industrial revolution, but the system of social control and the like remain the same. Just as we can say that logic, reason, rationality, critical thinking, skepticism, positivism, neopositivism and the like today occupy the place that theology, metaphysics, esotericism, occultism, gnosticism, spirituality (in the religious sense of the word) and magical thinking occupied in the Middle Ages until centuries ago. Of course, you can disagree with this as much as you want. But that doesn't negate that in fact..." Daniel Cidade is partly correct on this point, since nowadays science and academia occupy the same places/spaces of power that religion and the church occupied until centuries ago. Perhaps we can't change that, and the best way is to live as best we can in this world as it is, as Professor Jiang Xueqin would say."
As Professor Jiang Xueqin would say:
"Science is basically a religion... created to deceive you." In this provocative lecture, Professor Jiang Xueqin explains why modern society, with its obsession with the individual and science, has made us more depressed and powerless than the ancient Greeks, who accepted fate and focused on the collective.
🧠 The Illusion of Control: Why believing you control your synapses (science) enslaves you more than believing in gods (polytheism).
🏫 School = Brainwashing: The theory that school doesn't exist to teach, but to indoctrinate and separate "intelligent" from "stupid" people, something that didn't exist in the past.
🤝 Collective Happiness: How we lost true happiness (holding feasts for the community) by focusing on individual success and accumulation.
💊 Critique of Psychiatry: Why the professor suggests walking and talking with friends instead of seeking psychiatrists who create dependency.
🏛️ Eudaimonia: The Greek concept of "flourishing" vs. the modern, empty pursuit of immediate pleasure.
00:00 Lesson 1 | How Does Power Work?
Kant, reality as imagination, and the greatest alchemy in history: banks creating money out of thin air while convincing you that it is scarce.
56:10 Lesson 2 | Why Do Societies Fall?
The 3 definitive theories (Piketty, Turchin, and Spengler) that explain why every empire, every civilization, and every nation has an expiration date.
01:39:51 Lesson 3 | The Death of Gerontocracy
When elites age, they lose vitality, and the entire system begins to rot from the inside out.
02:21:20 Lesson 4 | Why Does Evil Always Win?
The secret mechanism that makes "evil" not the exception—it is the rule of the power game.
02:56:19 Lesson 5 | How Did Evil Originate?
The origin of monotheism, the modern individual, and the nation-state as the greatest tools of control ever created by humanity.
"School is not a place to teach you knowledge. School is a place that indoctrinates you for war." In this lesson, Professor Jiang Xueqin deconstructs the foundations of modern power, revealing how concepts we take for granted—school, money, the individual, and the nation-state—are actually recent inventions designed for social control.
The Origin of School: From Sparta to Prussia, how compulsory education arose not to educate, but to prepare societies for war, separating children from parents to facilitate indoctrination.
We live in the richest society in human history, and yet we are the most anxious, indebted, and miserable. Why does the current system seem designed to exhaust us? In this video, Professor Jiang Xueqin reveals how the elite uses debt, war, and secret society rituals to extract every drop of productivity from the "modern peasant."
The analysis begins by demystifying the goal of capitalism: it's not just about accumulating capital, but about directing people's energy and focus through artificial anxiety. Xueqin details the elite's three control mechanisms:
The Illusion of Freedom: The belief that we have choice and a voice, when the system is rigid.
Money as God: The transformation of an abstract concept into the sole purpose of human existence.
Anxiety via Debt and Destruction: The use of unpayable interest rates and the cyclical destruction of wealth (wars and recessions) to ensure that no one stops working.
The professor also explores the concept of Transnational Capital, where the ultra-rich have no loyalty to nations, moving to "capitals" like Dubai and Singapore as soon as the social conflict they themselves created becomes unbearable. Finally, he connects this elite to Secret Societies and the Milgram Experiment, explaining how occultism serves to exempt the individual from moral responsibility for terrible acts, attributing them to superior forces like Saturn or Cronus.
Do you feel your life is dictated by an anxiety that isn't your own? Leave your reflection in the comments: is the system natural or artificial?
The Lie of the Nation-State: How the school implants a "false memory" to make us believe that countries like China or France are real entities that deserve our sacrifice, replacing local loyalties with an abstraction.
The Monotheistic Revolution: The central thesis that the idea of a "single true God" was the catalyst for the creation of the three pillars of modernity: Money, the Individual, and the Nation-State. The Alchemy of Power: Defining power as the ability to transform nothing (abstract concepts) into everything (tangible reality that controls our lives).
The Accident of History: How this system was not planned, but an "accident of the human imagination," and how controlling that imagination is the key to a different future.
"...the Bad Guys.." ?
This is baby talk, ffs. This is not 'ideological conviction' and ought not be ennobled as such.
This is awful. "it makes good feelings, so let's keep it". Useful? For what? His grants, adulatory cooings, cocktail parties?
Yeesh, 'follow the science"? Give me a *reason* and a man worth following.
I have no idea what you are talking about. My degree in education came from the State University of Iowa in 1964 before anyone talked about multiple intelligences. But my son has autism. He struggled with school and was a “visual learner.” He needed to see a picture. As a young child he loved the Berenstein bear books — in which the picture depicted the story. He said, “In those books you learn something.”
I believe many of his special education teachers in the public schools had been trained I multiple intelligences. I told them he was a visual learner. Not one of them tried to teach him using visuals. So I don’t know what the modern education degrees equipped them to do.
Finally after trying five different schools in both Washington DC and Iowa, I drove through the cornfields near Kalona Iowa and enrolled him in The Iowa Mennonite School. The Mennonite school had a special teacher who helped the students who struggled academically. I don’t think she had studied multiple intelligences. She was Mennonite. She just asked, “How can I help you?” And she did help. She found him a tutor who was a recent graduate of the school. I told Kyle,”He is a visual learner.” Kyle opened the textbook to a picture and began explaining. My son came home from school and reported, “When Kyle explains it, I understand it.”
My son is 34 and a filmmaker.
Perhaps this will sound like a defense of the Theory of Multiple Intelligences; the points the article makes do not refute the theory of multiple intelligences, but rather show that multiple intelligences are dynamic and exist within a dynamic-complex and perhaps even relativistic system.
The article has a certain bias in defense of the IQ theory and the G Factor, not that both are inherently wrong. But the article sounded more like a defense of IQ and the G Factor than a refutation of the theory of multiple intelligences.
In fact, Howard Gardner, who proposed the theory of multiple intelligences, certainly did not know about science and about our minds being dynamic-complex and relativistic systems. But just as there is IQ and the G Factor, it is also possible to create an analogue of IQ and several specific factors for each of these intelligences.
That is, there is a marketing ploy even within science on various topics, mainly cognitive and related topics.
The spectrum theory of science also helps to understand this issue. including even helping the theory of the absolute in science regarding demarcation.
The problem is also the debunking culture, which is another problem for another discussion. The debunking culture literally has the same problems as cancel culture, to make a simple analogy.
But anyway, all these "neuromyths" and "psychomyths" have their backgrounds in neurotruths and psychotruths, just as there are several "neurotruths" and "psychotruths" that have their backgrounds in neuromyths and psychomyths.
And as other comments here have pointed out, just because Howard Gardner's explanations are wrong or incomplete doesn't mean his entire theory is wrong; this has happened a lot in cognitive sciences, social sciences, and even in the exact, natural, and related sciences.
But unfortunately, in this period of scientific polarization, saying that science is n-dimensional, n-variational, and n-axial, as well as a spectrum and a dynamic-complex system, is likely to be met with a lot of scientific dogmatism, scientific purity, scientific neo-Pentecostalism, scientific neoliberalism, etc.
Unfortunately, scientific tribalism does exist, and the spectrum theory of science, as well as evolutionary psychology, evolutionary cognitive science, and evolutionary social science, can explain this very well.
Talvez isso irá soar como uma defesa da Teoria das Multiplas Inteligências, os pontos que o artigo apontam não refutam a teoria das multiplas inteligências, mas sim mostram que as multiplas inteligências são dinâmicas e existem dentro de um sistema dinâmico-complexo e talvez até mesmo relativísticos.
O artigo tem um certo viés em defesa da teoria do QI e do Fator G, não que ambos estejam inerentemente errados. Mas o artigo mais soou como uma defesa do QI e do Fator G que propriamente uma refutação a teoria das múltiplas inteligências.
De fato, Howard Gardner que propôs a teoria das multiplas inteligências certamente não sabia sobre a ciência e sobre nossas mentes serem sistemas dinâmicos-complexos e relativísticos. Mas assim como existe QI e Fator G, é também possível criar um análogo do QI e vários fatores específicos para cada uma destas inteligências.
Ou seja, existe uma jogada de marketing até mesmo dentro da ciência sobre vários temas, principalmente temas cognitivos e afins.
A teoria do espectro da ciência também ajuda a entender esta questão. inclusive até mesmo ajudando a teoria do absoluto da ciência na questão de demarcação.
O problema também é a cultura do debunking, que aí é um outro problema para uma outra discussão. Que a cultura do debunking literalmente possui os mesmos problemas da cultura do cancelamento fazendo uma analogia simples.
Mas enfim, todos os tais "neuromitos" e "psicomitos" possuem seus fundos de neuroverdades e psicoverdades, assim como que tem várias "neuroverdades" e "psicoverdades" que possuem seus fundos de neuromitos e psicomitos.
E como outros comentários aqui apontaram, não é por que as explicações de Howard Gardner estão erradas ou incompletas que quer dizer que toda a teoria dele está errada, inclusive isso aconteceu muito nas ciências cognitivas, sociais e até mesmo nas ciências exatas, naturais e afins.
Mas infelizmente no período de polarização científica dizer que a ciência é n-dimensional, n-variacional e n-axial assim como um espectro e um sistema dinâmico-complexo é motivo de ser muito recebido com dogmatismo científico, pureza científica, neopentecostalismo científico, neoliberalismo científico etc.
Infelizmente o tribalismo científico de fato existe, e isso a teoria do espectro da ciência, assim como a psicologia evolutiva, ciências cognitivas evolutivas e ciências sociais evolutivas podem explicar muito bem.
I've read the article again, this time focusing on the details, and it doesn't really debunk the intelligence spectrum theory nor the science spectrum theory, but rather show how the spectrum is interdependent and dynamic-complex, it's not because what he proposed was wrong that the Multidimensional Intelligences can't be adapted, like, it's possible to make IQ-like coefficients for all those things and them measure them separately but correlated. It's like the fields in science. Yeah, neopositivism is a major issue here. But it's far from a "comfortable myth", but rather that Intelligence, science, and even we humans, including all living beings and maybe the universe we live in, are dynamic-complex system and exist as an interdependent n-dimensional and n-axes spectrum.
Carl Hendrick’s critique, *“Comfortable Fictions: The Myth of Multiple Intelligences,”* exposes a familiar—and pernicious—dynamic in education: well-meaning metaphors and moral certainties gain traction despite weak empirical grounding. Hendrick shows how ideas framed as kinder, more humane ways to think about learners can survive as “moral theatre” rather than science, and in so doing they distort practice and assessment.
The problems Hendrick highlights—persistence of neuromyths, the rhetorical power of comforting stories, and the gap between what educators feel is right and what evidence supports—are not merely intellectual disagreements; they shape classroom choices, policy, and teacher training. Empirical surveys and policy reviews likewise document widespread belief in learning myths among teachers, which helps explain why these fictions are difficult to dislodge. The challenge is therefore both conceptual and institutional.
The N-Dimensional Intelligence Theory, nested within a broader Intelligence Spectrum Theory, offers a conceptual remedy: instead of treating “intelligences” as a small set of categorical labels (or as an undifferentiated single IQ score), we model cognitive capacities as coordinates across many continuous axes. Each axis corresponds to measurable processes or capacities (e.g., working memory dynamics, pattern abstraction, sensorimotor integration, social reasoning) and any individual’s profile is a point or region in that multidimensional space. That shift reframes pedagogical questions from “what type of intelligence is this student?” to “which cognitive dimensions are relatively strong, which ones are underdeveloped, and how do they interact?” — a move that is falsifiable, operationalizable, and resistant to comforting but unsupported narratives.
The N-Dimensional *Spectrum* of Intelligence Theory extends this by emphasizing spectra (ranges and distributions) rather than isolated coordinates: it foregrounds variance, developmental trajectories, and context-dependent expression of abilities. Where Hendrick rightly warns against moral comfort masquerading as science, the spectrum approach explicitly separates descriptive mapping from prescriptive value—so educational compassion need not be justified by pseudoscience. Practically, the spectrum model forces more precise measurement, hypothesis testing, and intervention design (for instance, targeting cognitive processes with evidence-based pedagogies rather than matching lessons to an ill-defined “style”). In short, these theories render “multiple intelligences” scientifically tractable rather than rhetorically attractive.
The parallel move in the philosophy of science—the N-Dimensional Theory of Science and the N-Dimensional Spectrum of Science Theory—supplies the epistemic infrastructure for this reform: science is viewed as evaluation across multiple validation axes (replicability, mechanistic plausibility, predictive power, ecological validity, ethical fit), not as a single score of “scientificness.” This helps explain why some educational ideas look persuasive (ethical salience, intuitive appeal) while failing other dimensions of scientific appraisal. By making those dimensions explicit, policymakers and educators can better weigh humane aims against robustness of evidence, avoiding both cynicism and credulity.
Concretely, adopting these N-Dimensional frameworks implies several policy and practice changes aligned with Hendrick’s recommendations: (a) teacher education programs that teach how to read multidimensional cognitive profiles and the limits of simple labels; (b) assessment systems that report spectra of ability and learning process indicators rather than single labels; (c) research agendas that preregister multidimensional hypotheses and measure outcomes across correlated axes; and (d) communication strategies that preserve empathy and agency for learners while refusing to cloak interventions in unsupported scientific claims. Such steps reduce the space for “comfortable fictions” to propagate by replacing narrative comfort with transparent, testable models.
To conclude, Hendrick’s article is an important provocation: we must refuse easy consolations that masquerade as evidence. The N-Dimensional Intelligence and Spectrum theories—together with their N-Dimensional counterparts for science—offer a constructive pathway out of the impasse he describes: they preserve the pluralistic, humane aims that motivate educators while insisting on the precision, measurement, and plural validation that make claims educationally useful. If education is to be both compassionate and effective, our metaphors must be replaced by models that invite testing, revision, and the modesty Hendrick calls for.
The N-Dimensional Theory of Science begins with a rejection of the idea that scientific validity can be captured by a single metric—such as falsifiability, replication success, or predictive accuracy alone. Instead, it models scientific inquiry as a multidimensional landscape composed of many evaluative axes. These include empirical robustness, mechanistic coherence, mathematical tractability, ecological realism, methodological transparency, cross-disciplinary convergence, and social–ethical impact. By treating each scientific claim or theory as a vector in this multidimensional space, the framework avoids the reductive tendency to equate “good science” with a single philosophical criterion. It also helps illuminate why educational theories with moral appeal but weak evidence persist: they score high on certain axes (ethical resonance, intuitive coherence) while scoring poorly on others (empirical support, causal specificity).
The N-Dimensional Spectrum of Science Theory takes this further by emphasizing that scientific validity is rarely an all-or-nothing property. Instead, each evaluative axis expresses a spectrum of strengths, and different fields or research programs distribute themselves unevenly across them. For example, physics may score highly on predictive precision but lower on ecological realism; the social sciences may excel at contextual sensitivity while facing challenges in replicability or model simplicity. This spectrum view discourages the false certainty and binary judgments that often fuel both scientism and anti-scientific sentiment. It also mirrors the distributional nature of evidence in education, where interventions seldom succeed universally but instead exert differentiated effects across contexts and learner profiles.
By embedding educational research within such an N-dimensional evaluative space, the theory provides a systematic explanation for why simplistic frameworks—such as the myths addressed by Hendrick—take hold. They collapse the dimensionality of scientific assessment into emotionally appealing narratives. When a flawed idea promises ethical clarity or pedagogical reassurance, practitioners often accept it even when it fails across methodological or empirical dimensions. The N-Dimensional Spectrum of Science Theory forces a disaggregation of these dimensions, making transparent where comfort is substituting for evidence and where partial strengths are being mistaken for comprehensive validity.
This multidimensional epistemic model also creates a natural methodological bridge to the N-Dimensional Intelligence frameworks. If intelligence is multidimensional and context-expressive, then the science that studies intelligence must also be evaluated multidimensionally. A unidimensional philosophy of science cannot adequately support a multidimensional model of cognition. Theories of intelligence, learning, development, or pedagogy should therefore be evaluated not only on whether they are “empirically supported,” but also on dimensions such as mechanistic plausibility, sociocognitive generality, contextual fidelity, and developmental sensitivity. The failure of many educational myths lies not just in insufficient data, but in incomplete multidimensional profiles of scientific adequacy.
Furthermore, this N-dimensional scientific lens offers a practical solution to the institutional problems Hendrick identifies. Instead of asking educators to select between “popular” theories and “scientific” ones—an oversimplified dichotomy—the framework trains them to evaluate where a theory is strong, where it is weak, and which dimensions matter most for their specific instructional goals. This prevents the wholesale adoption of appealing but flawed frameworks, while also avoiding the narrow dismissal of promising ideas that may possess partial or emerging strengths along specific axes. Ultimately, the spectrum approach cultivates epistemic humility without collapsing into relativism.
In policy and research design, the theory requires a shift toward multi-metric evaluation. Educational interventions would no longer be judged by a single headline effect size but by a profile: replicability scores, mechanism maps, contextual constraints, cost-benefit analyses, and longitudinal resilience. Such multidimensional reporting would drastically reduce the allure of oversimplified narratives by making visible the full evidential texture behind pedagogical claims. It also aligns with contemporary movements toward open science, preregistration, and multimethod triangulation—each of which naturally occupies a distinct axis of the N-dimensional space.
In sum, the N-Dimensional Theory of Science and its Spectrum extension provide the conceptual scaffolding needed to move beyond the “comfortable fictions” Hendrick critiques. They replace narrative convenience with structured complexity, moral theatre with transparent multidimensional evaluation, and unidimensional myths with models capable of accommodating nuance, uncertainty, and context. By adopting these frameworks, educators and researchers can cultivate a scientific culture that is both more rigorous and more intellectually honest—precisely the antidote to the problems highlighted in the article.
Carl, your article powerfully articulates a crucial schism in education: the gap between what feels intuitively right and what is empirically supported. Your critique of Multiple Intelligences (MI) as a "comfortable fiction" is perfectly framed, highlighting how its appeal lies in its democratic and optimistic view of human potential, which has unfortunately led to its uncritical adoption in pedagogical practice. You are absolutely correct that the theory has been elevated to a neurological fact in the minds of many educators, guiding instructional choices in ways that lack an evidence base.
Where I would add a layer of nuance is in the outright classification of MI as a "neuromyth." I see these concepts not as binary truths and falsehoods, but as existing on a spectrum of validity and utility. The core intuition behind MI—that people exhibit diverse strengths and aptitudes—is observable. Some students are naturally more kinesthetically gifted, others more linguistically deft, and others seem to think in a more logical-mathematical pattern. The "myth" isn't this observation itself, but the subsequent and unjustified leap to reify these aptitudes into discrete, independent "intelligences" with dedicated neural real estate and to then build entire teaching methodologies upon them.
This is where the "Science Spectrum Theory" applies. On one end, we have robust, predictive, and falsifiable scientific theories. On the other, we have pseudoscience. MI theory, in its popularized form, has certainly drifted toward the pseudoscience end due to the claims made in its name. However, its original formulation by Gardner was more of a philosophical challenge to the hegemony of IQ than a hard scientific theory. It becomes a damaging neuromyth when we cross the threshold from using it as a descriptive framework for appreciating student diversity to a prescriptive one for designing instruction, especially when it replaces methods with stronger evidence, like direct instruction and cognitive load theory.
Therefore, the real "comfortable fiction" may not be the entire concept, but the oversimplified and misapplied version of it. We can acknowledge the spectrum of human talent without subscribing to the neuromyth that we must teach to a specific "intelligence." Your article is vital for forcing us to confront the uncomfortable truth that what feels good in education is often not what is most effective, and that moving beyond this fiction is necessary for evidence-informed practice to thrive.
Thank you for sharing this thought-provoking article. While it raises important critiques, I believe a defense of Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory can be mounted by viewing it not as a rigid, neuromyth-based model, but as a dynamic and complex framework for understanding human potential.
A primary criticism often leveled against MI theory is that it is a "neuromyth" due to a lack of evidence for entirely separate neural modules for each intelligence. However, this critique can be addressed by shifting the perspective:
MI Theory is About a Spectrum of Potentials, Not Fixed Learning Styles
A widespread misunderstanding is conflating MI with "learning styles," an approach Howard Gardner himself has explicitly rejected. The theory was never intended to label students as a single type of learner. Instead, it proposes that we all possess a spectrum of intelligences that we use in combination to navigate the world. The goal is to broaden our understanding of human capability beyond the narrow confines of linguistic and logical-mathematical abilities prized in traditional education. Presenting material in multiple ways doesn't cater to a fixed "style," but rather provides multiple entry points into learning, making it more accessible and engaging for a diverse group of students.
MI Aligns with a Dynamic-Complex Systems View of the Brain
The critique that neuroscience has not found dedicated brain modules for each intelligence is valid if one expects a one-to-one correspondence. However, modern neuroscience reveals the brain to be a complex, interconnected system where regions work in concert for various tasks. MI theory can be seen as a description of the distinct cognitive domains or patterns of thinking that emerge from this dynamic system.
Gardner's own criteria for an intelligence support this systems-view. He looked for evidence from multiple domains, including:
· Biology: Potential for isolation by brain damage and a place in evolutionary history.
· Psychology: A distinct developmental progression and the existence of savants and prodigies.
This multi-faceted approach acknowledges that intelligence is not a single,monolithic factor but a constellation of abilities with biopsychological origins. The "modules" Gardner described are better understood as specialized networks within a larger, complex system, not as isolated, independent organs.
The Proof is in the Pedagogical Practice
Ultimately, the value of a theory in education is often measured by its practical benefits. MI theory has been widely embraced because it works in the classroom. It encourages educators to:
· Move beyond one-size-fits-all teaching and diversify their methods.
· Create more inclusive and equitable classrooms where students with different strengths can shine.
· Foster the development of the whole child, including social-emotional, creative, and physical skills through interpersonal, intrapersonal, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligences.
When students are given multiple ways to access information and demonstrate understanding, engagement and motivation increase. This is not a "myth"; it's a practical response to the complex reality of the classroom.
In conclusion, dismissing MI theory as a "comfortable fiction" may stem from a rigid interpretation of its claims. When viewed through the lens of a spectrum of cognitive domains emerging from a dynamic and complex brain system, it remains a powerful and relevant framework for creating richer, more effective, and more human educational experiences.
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Just because Gardner's claim to dedicated neural networks has not been confirmed, does not mean this type of thinking doesn't belong in our schools. Presenting the idea of learning styles or MI to new teachers gives them a framework for providing multiple ways for students to access the curriculum. It makes learning more interesting and motivating, culturally sustaining, and allows for a degree of choice and shared control. In addition, the mindset that goes along with these ideas helps educators honor different ways of being and varied ways of knowing, which is necessary if we are to achieve equity in our schools. It is disheartening that you state that because the science has been debunked, that an approach that makes sense and works for teachers should be thrown out altogether. It's typical for education researchers and influencers to throw everything away when they find one part that is not quite right. How about a reframe that we can all feel comfortable with instead of getting rid of ideas that inspire teachers and work well for varying approaches which are research based, such as UDL. This "throw it all away" mentality in education just puts us all back to the start and keeps everyone confused and trying to catch up with the next new thing, which will also have its problems.
I agree with you on that, that's the why the model of Science Spectrum Theory and N-Dimensional Spectrum of Science Theory is able to fix that. Intelligence Spectrum Theory and N-Dimensional Spectrum of Intelligence Theory are still up there, if people stop treating science as white and black but rather as a spectrum, mainly as a N-Dimensional Spectrum, we would be able to fix so many problem, including most to all the problems you mentioned there. A field can't be entirely debunked as there are just very few examples of entire science fields being entirely debunked. Unfortunately debunking nowadays basically became the same as refutation/rebuttal, but most people aren't ready for talking about how debunking nowadays is mostly about putting other perspectives rather than actual debunking.
Experts have dug their own grave by claiming to stand by things that have later proven false. There's a good reason for people to distrust the medical establishment, including vaccines, and it is all because of "experts"
Well, practically speaking, Nassim Nicholas Taleb conclusively proved that IQ and similar things aren't as scientific as they seem https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39. I even understand all the hype related to IQ, the G factor, and the like. In this case, Thomas Kuhn is right that science is made up of paradigms, just as Zhenli is right that non-bizarre scientific conspiracies do exist in practice. Unfortunately, I see that there's a lot of hype against the theory of multiple intelligences in defense of IQ, the G factor, etc. I wouldn't say that this is lobbying per se, just as I haven't yet seen proof of the existence of an "IQ Lobby" or a "G Factor Lobby," despite appearances (it requires independent and in-depth investigation until no doubts remain). I even understand that the theory of multiple intelligences is sidelined because it's not very interesting for lobbying purposes, as is the spectrum theory of science and similar theories. But, like, that empirical and scientific evidence can be manipulated, tailored, taken out of context, and/or made to fit within a certain paradigm, that's 100% true. After all, as Ahaiyuta says, it's always good to have a healthy skepticism, especially when dealing with issues like this.
But, like, would it be possible for someone to write an article on "Other Comfortable Fictions: The Myth of IQ and the G Factor - Why the certainty of the current paradigm keeps bad ideas and misinterpretations alive in our scientific studies and communications," in the style of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's article? about IQ, or an article on "Neuromyths, Neurotruths and Neuromanias: How Much Neuromyths are Neurotruths and Neurotruths are Neuromyths - Why empirical and scientific evidence is affected by our current paradigm".
I wouldn't say so, I use Dumuabzu as an Internet pen name just like Nyx Land and Ahaiyuta do. And I'm using an actual email of mine in this account.
You're right, like, there are some basic things like Science Spectrum Theory, Intelligence Spectrum Theory, G Factor Spectrum Theory, Ahaiyuta's General/Special Frequencies Field Unification Theory and then you have the bizarre cases you said. Yeah, there's a big difference between distrusting Donovan Hilton Rawcliffe from an Ahaiyuta-like perspective or a Science Spectrum-like perspective compared to a totally Antiscience perspective. I think you know it already.
Bravo.