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Size Does Matter... But Only in Women
Frankenmoro writes "This online article at Nature notes that new research indicates that a woman's intelligence is directly related to the size of her brain. But, before you uber-male-geeks start to gloat, it may be that a woman with half your brain size has the same language processing power as you do, seeing as how you only use half of your brain to process language, and she's using it all... Lazy boy."
Of course, there is some correlation with intelligence. But then we'd have to define what intelligence is (which is very much open to debate).
Some people view intelligence as the ability to perform well in the society. In that case it should take into account social aspects (and health). Some think that intelligence is your ability to solve abstract problems (in which case IQ tests is more meaningful). Some think intelligence should somehow be a measure of your brains "capacity". In that case, it would make sense to view educated people as more intelligent. After all, it doesn't matter much with potentials, it's the end-result that matters. And so on...
That's like when people say you only use 4% of your brain... imagine if you could use 100%. Well, I IMAGINE that if you approached 6% of 'usage', your brain would probably melt... (not literally, but it wouldn't work quite right)
The percentage usage is based on concentrations of oxygen which are supposed to indicate usage... but really parts of your brain appear to be programmed to only be able to do certain things. ie, part of your brain will only be used to see, and as long as you can see, it will be used for that. So, it wouldn't make sense for you to use 100% of your brain to calculate math or compose and essay because X% will always be reserved for the tasks of seeing.
This isn't the sig you are looking for... Carry on...
The consensus of the active researchers in the field might be wrong, of course, but you are contradicting the researchers in a way that seems to assume they are fools that don't know about the scientific method.
A bit like creationism where all paleontologists and evolutionary biologists have to be idiots or in a conspiracy to hide the truth.
I'm sorry, but my bogosity counter went off.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
I both agree and disagree with you. If you are saying that as a practical matter it's very difficult or impossible to accurately and precisely measure general intelligence, I'll agree with you (at least on the "difficult" part). If you're saying that it's impossible as a matter of principle, or that there's no such thing as general intelligence, then I strongly disagree with you.
Don't believe me? Well, kill off three-quarters of someone's brain and try to convince me that they are not less intelligent. Is there a monolithic thing that is "intelligence"? I very, very much doubt that there is. But that doesn't mean that the term "general intelligence" is senseless. It could be, and probably is, our way of describing what we experience in ourselves and others as the composite level of functioning of most or all mental activities of which we are intuitively aware. Thus, "general intelligence", and even comparing intelligence across species, is meaningful as long as we understand what we mean. D'uh.
By the way, evolutionary psychology specifically (and, I think, correctly) argues on evolutionary grounds that a generalized rational ability doesn't exist in humans.
I'm of the opinion that we have a very long way to go till we achieve what was aimed at when the IQ test was developed. But I think it's possible. I do think that current tests are still greatly hampered by the fact that we understand our own minds so poorly. We do a lot of cognition, of course. Are we really trying to measure a true composite of every important cognitive task? I doubt it. And I doubt that the various tasks are weighed remotely correctly, nor tested without enormous bias.
It seems to me that language processing and abstract/mathematical reasoning are each quite important to us and amenable to measurement. They likely correlate pretty strongly to people's intuitive measure of "intelligence".
When I was in school, we spent a lot of time being very careful about defining our terms. There is something of a quandry when we are trying to talk about concepts expressed in everyday language. Is the thing what we explicitly think it is? That is to say, in this example, is what we're measuring the monolithic abstract intelligence that some people think "intelligence" is? On the other hand, we wouldn't use the word "intelligence" if it isn't meaningful in some sense. So I would always make the point that even if we figure out that we can't really say something like "you're smarter than him" and mean what we think we mean in one regard, that doesn't require that what we're saying is totally meaningless. In fact, it's often very interesting and revealing to discover what it is that we're groping for in language.