Twitter/X

Gary Marcus reports his tweet received ~32,000 views while the post he critiques…

2026-05-10 · 15:06 UTC ·@GaryMarcus ·1 min read

Brief

Gary Marcus highlights a reach disparity—his tweet got ~32,000 views versus ~2.2M for the misleading post (one cited tweet had 1.4M)—and rebuts a viral claim about chess by noting the cited paper shows a moderately positive IQ–chess correlation in children, not that low-IQ players are best, warning that oversimplified, unsupported claims spread widely.

Why it matters

Gary Marcus reports his tweet received ~32,000 views while the post he critiques reached ~2.2 million (he cites an example tweet with 1.4M views), arguing misinformation outperforms debunking by roughly 100×.

Key details

  • He states the linked chess paper actually finds a “moderately positive correlation between intelligence and chess skill” in the full sample of children; the contrary claim arose from a tiny, selective subgroup and the study primarily concerns kids, not elite adult players.
  • Marcus calls out oversimplified, data-free comparisons (e.g., Michael Jordan, LeBron, Kobe versus Manute Bol, Muggsy Bogues, Spud Webb; Robert Redford on acting) as viral-ready distortions that lack supporting evidence.
Source evidence

32,000 views for my tweet; 2.2 million for the nonsense it critiques.

so typical. lies and distortions beating debunking by a factor of roughly 100.

Gary Marcus (@GaryMarcus)

Wanna get a million views? Make stuff up. Take a tiny tiny bit of truth and distort it wildly.

Consider the tweet below, 1.4M views.

Take the chess thing. The paper that is linked doesn’t actually say that “among elite chess players people with lowest IQ are best.” or anything close to that. It actually concludes that “When we tested the whole sample of children, some of whom had just recently started to play chess, we found a moderately positive correlation between
intelligence and chess skill” (though they found something different in a tiny, selective sample), and in any case most of the paper is about kids, not adults. [bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/…].

And yeah Michael Jordan and LeBron and Kobe were shorter than Manute Bol but all were better than Muggsy Bogues and Spud Webb. No data given for that part here.

And Robert Redford was pretty darn talented etc. No data given for acting here, either.

Wild oversimplifications will get you a million views on X.

But a lot of what you read here (and I don’t just mean this tweet) ain’t true.

— https://nitter.net/GaryMarcus/status/2053188141595721803#m