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Why a High IQ Doesn't Mean You're Smart
D1gital_Prob3 writes "How can a 'smart' person act foolishly? Keith Stanovich, professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada, has grappled with this apparent incongruity for 15 years. He says it applies to more people than you might think. To Stanovich, however, there is nothing incongruous about it. IQ tests are very good at measuring certain mental faculties, he says, including logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and working-memory capacity — how much information you can hold in mind."
419 Scammers are probably the best supporting evidence of this research.
Countless rich, intelligent people throwing away vast amounts of cash.
There is a huge difference between being intelligent and having experience. The smartest 5 year old in the world may not be able to explain why you wait for someone to turn left before you go, even though they have their turn signal on!
Mensa and testing agencies have been making it clear for a couple decades now that IQ only measures your ability to take tests.
While that's strongly correlated with general intelligence, it means nothing specific for a specific individual.
I can see the fnords!
Book smart, Street stupid.
You can't buy or read about commonsense.
Come on...everyone knows a high Intelligence score isn't the same as a high Wisdom score!
When the GM at my first AD&D game explained the difference between INT and WIS....
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Any RPGer knows that Prof. Stanovich is attempting to correlate INT scores with WIS scores.
Silly scientist. No bonus priest spells for you.
/2nd Edition devotee
I can see the fnords!
As a member of mensa with a rather high IQ (160 on the cattel 3B), I know that my IQ is in at least the top percentile. However, my organisational skills are atrocious, and while I can remember something well short-term, I tend to forget things long-term. This led to my nearly dropping out of university because while I can write a decent essay, I often forgot to do so. Once I understand a mathematical concept I can do it well, but I tend to forget formulae, so I only got a middle-of-the-road grade in maths.
A high IQ means very little, and I'm not saying that because of jealousy; I'd rather be well-organised and "only" average in the more abstract ways of measuring ability.
An 'IQ' is quantitative. The term 'smart' is qualitative. Comparing them at all is like comparing ones 'income' with how 'rich' they are.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
IQ of 135, and you still missed the first post.
Stop corroborating the author!
Friend of mine, his father is a senior researcher for NIH. One of the smartest fellas you will ever meet, has multiple PhDs, charming and really has his act together professionally.
Came back from a concert one night, there was a note taped to the door. "I owe you a microwave." Inside, the house smells like burning compost, his Dad still forgets he can't microwave food with a fork inside. Has never been able to operate a microwave oven and this is about the tenth time he has done it.
His Dad owns a lot of land in Montgomery County, Maryland. He has made a lot of money off real estate investments. He has had a lot of disasters over the years as well, for things that would have seemed apparent to anyone else. Like not leaving untreated wood lying in pile all winter, not parking a backhoe at the top of a pile of dirt, not purchasing residentail land and trying to have it rezoned for multilevel commercial, etc.
It's not just forgetfulness, he has a hard time processing these realities of life. Without his family, I don't think he could function.
M
I've known this for years. From playing D&D, I know that there are two stats for Intelligence and Wisdom for a reason. They aren't the same thing.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
IQ tests measure only certain predetermined parts of human brain capacity. The problem with IQ tests are that it is hard to create an universal definition of "intelligent", and thus, what to measure. There are also many things that affect the results of those tests like current emotions, how well your brain has experience in such tasks and level awareness. Anyway, Stern, who created the bases to modern IQ tests never meant those tests to be used to compare people and their level of intelligent. People have to remember that intelligent behavior, mathematic power, short term task memory, wisdom, experience, knowledge, social intelligent and many others are all different things. It is pretty much impossible to measure humans mental capacities in a way that they would be comparable to other people.
For some reason, people have associated high IQs with knowing a lot about everything. Unfortunately, knowledge and IQ is different, as is wisdom and IQ. Sheesh, first year D&D players can tell you this.
Corollary: just because you're smart and know a lot about one subject doesn't mean you're opinion on another subject matters. I'm always astounded by how many smart developers think that because they know ASP inside out that they also know which economic system is better.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
There's usually a woman involved.
A smart person agrees with my politics.
A smart person agrees with my taste in music, clothes and food.
Frankly this article is an editorial. It starts out dubiously and doesn't give me want to finish it.
No one ever claimed that an IQ test tests for anything more than it tests for. And "smart" is not one of the things it tests for.
Based on no research and absolutely no scientific data I have come to measure a person's intelligence by how creative they are and how open to new ideas (especially ideas in conflict with their own belief system) they are.
I am a conservative, white, heterosexual, Christian male (source of all the world's problems according to many) and yet I understand that there are things I am probably wrong about and there are people who have radically different beliefs than I do and I can definitely learn from them. I consider myself pretty intelligent and yet understanding that I can learn from others is very key to my intelligence growing.
People who have closed their minds to new thoughts/ideas and who do not exercise their creative potential get stupid fast. I have met a LOT of them (in my white, hetero, Christian, male society) and I am the first to admit that my peers tend to be pretty dumb. TFL starts off bashing on George Bush and how his IQ is pretty high yet the author has obviously decided Bush is an idiot (an earned reputation) and he fits right into my category of society.
What I feel is important to note is that in American progressive society MY ethnicity/religion/political views/gender quickly get thrown into a category that I really don't thing I've earned. I try not to complain of racism/sexism/whateverelseism but it gets old some times.
Theres also a reason the ability to schmooze is given its own stat. Where else would all the politicians put their high ability scores?
I find that our "advanced" tests, such as the Wechsler IQ, provide a quite narrow and ethnocentric view of intelligence. Many "underdeveloped societies have multiple scales for measuring intelligence that our tests don't even touch on, such as social skills and dexterity.
You may now proceed with the gaming and nerd humor jokes.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
Just like computers, people are susceptible to the Garbage in, Garbage out phenomenon. If you learn the wrong stuff, you're still smart, but you will make bad decisions.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
In the Army it was a cliche (but mostly true) that the higher IQ (or score on the ASVAB) the soldier, the likelier he was to do remarkably stupid things.
This is because, in my experience, the more intelligent are more likely to wonder "What happens if I do this and then do it. This being some variant of (as Daffy Duck said) "Don't EVER push the wed one!"
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A real smart person would've known this and disregarded IQ scores long ago, but some people with high IQ scores may have propped up their self-respect with the results and probably neglected to nurture their smarts...
You took 15 years to realize that all an IQ test can measure is IQ? Didn't it seem a bit obvious? I mean, how smart would you have to be to make a test that actually measured intelligence? How would you grade it?
is "wisdom".
The opposite of "foolish" is not "smart". The opposite of "foolish" is "wise".
See also "book-smart" v. "street-smart", INT v. WIS (in D&D et al.), and the role of irrational thinking in decision processes.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I would much rather be attractive to women than have a high IQ, if I had to pick one...
Being attractive to the opposite sex is actually a much better indicator than IQ of your "success" in life...
My brother-in-law is one of the smartest people I know. Earned his PhD in optical physics and does some very high-level work with it. Way above the head of anybody he explains it to. He's written some pretty intense C++ programs to handle neural-network computations of extremely complicated mathematical problems.
But I can't count how many cellphones he's destroyed from accidental drops from his shirt pocket into the toilet. And a few times he lost his keys for a week because he left them hanging in the door lock.
He's a smart guy, but sometimes we wonder about him.
/* No Comment */
They're still smart, but even smart people can do dumb things. That's why it's important to be clear with phrases like "You are dumb" and "That was dumb." (I have finger puppets if the /. editors are confused about this...)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
High IQ is no benefit on the job; once you have the minimum required. More education also does not help. If the job's basic requirement is a PEng., having a Masters or PhD does you no good.
Over the years, there have been many studies supporting the above statement. The latest I have noticed is the Harvard Longitudinal Study of Adult Development. It started studying a group of Harvard students in 1942 and it is still ongoing. The ONLY reliable predictor that they could find, for almost any outcome, is the nature of a person's relationships as a child and as a young adult. Social class, intelligence, or anything else that they could think of, couldn't be used to predict a person's outcomes: income, social status, marriage, health, etc., etc.
My take was always that it dealt with creative side of reasoning and humility. I am terrible at memorizing but have been called a wise decision maker by many people better than I. I like to think it is because I see a choice and consider ramifications before the decision is made, is there a way to avoid some long term effects, is there a way to shift things in favor of the larger picture. This works for personal choices as well as business ones.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
Intelligence is a tool to be used toward a goal, and goals are not always chosen intelligently. -Larry Niven
IQ measures raw mental abilities. It's a bit like measuring raw CPU power and memory in a computer.
EQ (Emotional Quotient) measures things like self-motivation abilities (including things like optimism), self-control and inter-personal abilities. They're a bit like measuring the quality of the software that runs in a computer and how well it works together with other programs in the network.
[Sorry, no car metaphors]
In real life, even though a large IQ will allow you to solve incredibly complex problems, if you have a low EQ, you might actually be incapable of doing so because, for example:
In the end, a high EQ is much more highly correlated with success than a high IQ.
Simply put, being optimistic means you're more willing to take chances (which might eventually result in a big payout), being self-motivated means that you can keep going even when things are though, having self-control means you can deny yourself a small reward now for a much bigger one later and being good with people means you can more easily find the chances and convince others to work with you.
That said, the good news is that one can change one's own EQ over one's life - most of its component are behavioral traits that can be learned.
I have a first class university degree in electronics, however, while I would argue that I have a high degree of emotional intelligense I can be completely and utterly backwards in terms of common sense.
Bullying people around - when all else fails!
We're all familiar with Isaac Newton's brilliant accomplishments, but his superstitious beliefs are less well-known. The most interesting one is his fascination with the number seven. (That's why we have ROY G BIV instead of ROYGBV; Newton thought there SHOULD be a seventh color and included it despite the fact that the human eye doesn't see it as particularly distinct from its neighbors.)
My ex-wife had an amazing memory. She could remember names and phone numbers of people she had only met once. She could remember all the SKU numbers when she worked part time at Sears. When she got her RN license, she filled her head with drug information and could spout interactions on request.
... I have a terrible memory but can write code like crazy because I can keep several parts of a program in my head and understand the requirements, interactions, and dependencies. I never memorized math formulas, but the idea behind them.
... there are some battles that just aren't worth fighting. Because even if you win ... you lose.
But she wasn't so good at things like programming a VCR or directions. I noticed that while she had a great memory, she was terrible at spatial type tasks. Where I was just the opposite
Cooking was very telling. I'm a passable cook, but not very inventive. She was a better cook, but had problems when she had to cook more than a couple of items at a time in getting the sequence of the various recipes merged so that everything was ready at the same time. That part, I was very good at.
The telling point came one day when we were talking about taxes. We owed a lot because she had started working part time as an RN and we didn't pay attention to the amount being withheld from her paycheck for taxes. When I did the taxes normally, i.e. married filing jointly, we owed $3,000. She came back to me a few days later and said that if she filed as married, filing separately, she would get $1,000 back. I explained that I always did our taxes both ways and then when we did it that way, she did get $1,000 back, but I ended up owing $5,000. I was never able to get her to understand how the tax brackets worked and why this was the case. So I gave in and took it to HR Block. Guess what, the best way to file was married, filing jointly. For years she thought I was trying to cheat her out of money and refused to increase her withholding to the same percent of income as mine, so I had to withhold even more from mine. Which meant she had to put more into the household account in order to pay bills, so the end result was the same anyway.
As I told my son at the time
I remarried three years ago, and my lovely wife can talk with me about such matters. It's a wonderful thing to find someone that is smart, beautiful, and thinks sex is only dirty when it's done right.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I know a guy in Mensa who was genuinely surprised that I stopped talking to him after he hit on my wife and tried to talk her into divorcing me.
I don't think it's occurred to him yet that she and I actually speak to each other.
I read about this recently, tried it with several of my coworkers, and it really works. Simply lift your keyboard over your head while defocusing your eyes so the G and H keys overlap.
What do you see there?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Some of the wisest people I know have Down Syndrome.
And Daffy (who was selling an early home automation system) replied "Don't EVER push the wed one!"
Later, after Elmer pushed it and discovered it was an automatic house elevator to get out of the way of tsunamis, Daffy came by and offered to install a little blue button to get Elmer down.
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In my first job, as a teen, an older woman there told me that the "more book learning someone has, the less common sense they've got." Only on the rare anomalous occasion have I seen her proven wrong. I work at a Uni and I've seen people with 2 and 3 PHDs not be able to work a remote or walk away from their car with a door open and the keys still in it.
It is, IMHO, a rare genius who has both, common sense and intelligence.
"IQ" measures the ability to do well on IQ tests... no more, no less. It is in no way a predictor of success, with the exception of success in taking other types of tests. I'm a living example of someone with the ability to score over 99th percentile in intelligence tests, but still lacking in common sense (case in point: I'm wasting my time posting to slashdot!)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It doesn't, however, mean you're observant, grounded, emotionally stable, possess common sense, have even average social skills, or even an interest in using your intelligence for anything of consequence.
TFA references G. W. Bush, stating his IQ is estimated to be at or around 120 but even those close to him had concerns about his decision making skills, and "Bush himself has described his thinking style as "not very analytical"." Seems to me this is connected far more to his personality, shaped by his upbringing and experiences. IQ is an indicator of intellectual potential; if someone tests consistently in the 70 - 80 range, no amount of positive thinking or assistance is getting you through medical school; if someone tests in the 160 - 180 range (let's assume an accepted standardized scale, such as Wechsler), this indicates that academically there is nothing they are not capable of understanding if they applied themselves. That doesn't mean it's reasonable to assume someone with that level of intelligence *will* become a doctor or the like, only that if circumstances are right, they *could*.
It is not unusual for people with high IQs to fall short of their potential for myriad reasons, the one I think is most impactful is the significant difference between intellectually gifted (meant generically) and the average person. To qualify for organizations like Mensa, you need to be 2 standard deviations ahead of the average in intelligence, which is the same difference between the average person and someone considered to be retarded. People who are that far removed from the median (on either side of the scale) experience the world in a very different and often times alienating way. Perhaps the perceived "stupidity" of people with high IQs is simply the manifestation of their inability to communicate effectively with "little brains".
While many people with high IQs are perfectly functional and move among us unnoticed as braniacs,(Mensa members must be in the 98% percentile of the population which sounds lofty, but it means that roughly one in every 50 people are smart enough to make the cut, so you probably have a better shot at getting into Mensa than you do of winning a beauty pageant) some people with high IQs may never learn how to interact successfully with those around them... robbing them of the kinds of experiences that teach the very skills TFA suggests smart people don't manifest in a consistent manner.
Raw brain power isn't enough to guarantee success or even a base level of competence at anything, including living.
A truly high IQ by definition means you are smart, at least with respect to the particular flavor of intelligence we are talking about, i.e. math and logic.
However, a high score on a particular IQ test doesn't mean you have a high IQ, it could just mean you know how to take that particular IQ test, or that other factors such as an ideal testing situation or dumb luck boosted your score. Likewise, a low IQ score doesn't mean you are not smart, for similar reasons.
There are also many "kinds of intelligence," sometimes called talents, including innate musical ability, athletic ability, the ability to think on your feet, the ability to understand social situations easily, etc. etc. etc. that are not part of a typical Intelligence Quotient.
Oh, and being IQ-smart doesn't necessarily mean you'll be better at any given task than someone who isn't IQ-smart. You can also be smart but be seriously lacking in your ability to make good judgments.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Midvale School for the Gifted
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I think of wisdom as being a "bigger picture" thing than intelligence.
Intelligence helps you do things. Wisdom helps you decide what's worth doing.
Because politicians also need to get out of sticky situations.
Int != Wis
(I know I am likely setting myself up for a lot of responses that will be posted +5 funny, but what the heck...)
Am I smart developer? I had the program I'm supposed to write explained to me in painful detail via a 100+ page spec. It pretty much was the blueprint for everything I had to do. Am I smart because I know the programming language? I seem to spend a lot of time googling around to find the name of a method or a bit of code that someone else wrote that takes care of a particularly tricky bit of logic. Am I smart because the program worked? The testing team found a lot of bugs that I had to fix. When I came across a strange situation, back to Google I went to see if anyone else had ever seen a similar situation. Rinse-and-repeat until the testing team said it was ready to go, and off into production it went. It works well and I was told by the boss how smart I was to get this program up and running.
This is all tongue-and-cheek of course (uh, of course it is...right..), but what does it really take to be "smart" these days, where so much is seemingly done for you. If I wanted to brush up on a subject to *seem* smart, I could, theoretically, read the Wikipedia article a half-dozen times and, assuming I am just smart enough to be not seem like I'm reciting some fact from memory, appear to be well versed in the topic.
And, likewise, what about being "smart" about the wrong things? Say I know every possible thing to know about a Model T car. I know how to coax better performance out of it, I know how to fix the suspension by the side of the road, I not only know *how*, but I can also tell you *why*. But, in the 21st century, does any of that knowledge make me smart?
Reminds me of a quote I heard years and years ago, that I never thought was particularly useful, until now.
"Everyone thinks dogs are smarter than cats, until you ask a dog to climb a tree."
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
Oh, boy, an article dissing on IQ, and out of the woodwork come all the jealous haters.
You want to know why extraordinarily smart people do silly things? It is because they don't live in the same world as you do. They live in a world full of abstract complexity and wonder, and they don't notice or care about the tedium that is your day-to-day life. So what if they drop cell phones in the toilet and microwave forks? That has nothing to do with being "smart". They just don't care. Why learn what doesn't matter?
That's what you really hate, isn't it? It isn't just that some things are easier for them. It is that they dismiss what you consider important the way you dismiss the games of children.
I like to think being Clever is the best real-world tool to have over Intelligence or Wisdom. In some ways it is the product of the two. Wisdom allows one to solve problems involving morals, emotions, culture, interpersonal relations... Intelligence allows one to solve problems involving logic, puzzles, quandaries... Cleverness addresses all of the above.
Intelligence and common sense are two totally different things :)
Even Sir Isaac Newton fell for the South Sea Bubble of 1719, not once but twice!
You can have a high IQ, but you also need to have common sense, and be able to apply both to a situation.
Intimidate is CHA based. ;)
CHA is the only stat that is whatever you want it to be IRL. If you want a high Charisma, just pretend you have a high one until you actually do. The downside to the technique is that it does require a high INT and WIS.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
But a high IQ does indicate that you are not too dumb
Guard: Okay, sir. Now we will begin to proceed to obtain your IQ and aptitude test.
Joe: What for?
Guard: Okay, sir. This is to figure out what your aptitude's good at, and get you a jail job while you're being a particular individual in jail.
1. You're smart. 2. It has helped, not hindered you. 3. Those people are not as smart as you.
The brain does so many, many different things. Why does it take a study to know that you can be better at some things than others?
I would think, even for the lowest IQs among us, the extreme-examples (such as the archtypical "idiot-savant") would have pounded that home.
The only thing I have discovered about IQ is that someone ~3 standard deviations below yours will not be as curious about everything as you are and will not be able to hold a deep enough conversation about the things that you find interesting, objectively speaking of course. Now if someone is passionate about a subject IQ will make no difference at all but the subject range narrows a bit as IQ goes down. YMMV completely. This is an observation not an absolute statement.
Why bother
Franklin has a few horse/cow quotes along the same line. This is not the best one. He often tries clever ways of describing a FOOL; not just with this example but in other quotes. Given the circles he spent time in (and the time period,) one can see how he detested 'educated' fools.
Everybody does foolish things, even when "informed" about the topic-- but a fool does it more than normal. I would argue that to be a fool this has to be a common pattern in most areas-- not limited to just 1 or 2. For example: as a group, the American "news" media are fools.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I guess the article should have been titled 'deficiencies of techniques that measure your IQ today' and what it means to be 'smart'?
When a thief sees a saint, all he sees are his pockets!
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."
Albert Einstein
she earned a bachelors degree in psychology in college, she has lots of book learning intelligence, but not one lick of common sense.
Main Entry: common sense
Function: noun
: sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
So does this imply that the reverse is true as well, meaning that a 'stupid' person can have the occasional brilliant thought ?
I'll take the U.S. Senate for $400, Alex.
Why IQ tests are based on outdated values and concepts. Where logical reasoning is seen as somehow higher or better that the bazillon of other forms of abilities and intelligences that exist.
And the education system fully being concentrated on developing just that one concept of intelligence. (Actually more like: ...on becoming a nice little drone with no own set of values, never questioning what it gets told, ready to be dominated.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Wasn't it Einstein that always walked out the front door of his home only to return minutes later for pants that he forgot to put on?
stay tuned for the scientific report “size doesn’t madder”
"Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f-ing Peace Corps." - John 'Bluto' Blutarsky
Biggest bunch of dumb-fucks you'll ever meet. Sure, they have an aptitude for learning foreign languages, but when it comes to common sense they're riding the short bus.
And don't get me started on how many degenerates that career field attracts. Wife-swapping, gay orgies, gang-bangs, you name it Crypto-pukes have done it.
I have an IQ of 135, but if I was smart I would be at my class like I'm supposed to be.
I've seen quite a few intelligent and highly educated people who lack common sense. This could be a side effect of their picking one narrow specialty and developing their skills in that area rather than acquiring a base of general knowledge. That's more a failure of our educational system then their innate lack of abilities. Look at another example of such specialization: Jocks. Far too many people get pigeon-holed early in life as physically exceptional. And then they are allowed to slide through the rest of their school's curriculum. Many of them are not stupid, just uneducated.
Have gnu, will travel.
But at least you can have sex with a woman.
Black people are different on the outside, why can't they be different on the inside, too? ...and if they're different, why is it hard to believe that somebody with an agenda can make a test which shows that difference?
nb. If IQ is your only measure of a person then you're doing it wrong. There's very little relationship between 'high IQ' and 'being smart'.
No sig today...
Well, it's well known that Marilyn Vos Savant has an IQ off the charts, but her intellectual accomplishments are, at best, modest.
"Wisdom and intelligence are NOT the same thing."
Table-ized A.I.
When a smart person does something stupid, it's because he lacks common sense. When a stupid person does something stupid, it's because he's stupid.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is
full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are
omnipotent. The slogan "Press On" has solved and always will solve the
problems of the human race.
-Calvin Coolidge
Somebody buy that man some non-reactive space age plastic utensils.
One set would cost less than maybe the first two microwaves.
Bush obviously took the special presidential IQ test. He probably took it twice!
Umm, yes you can? If you couldn't read your way to common sense you just might just be SOL. You would likely have to learn every single lesson the hard way.
Dave Ramsey:
Financial Peace University
Thomas J Stanley ...And Start Living Like A Real Millionaire
Stop Acting Rich:
The Millionaire Next Door
The Millionaire Mind
John Miller
QBQ!
David Allen
Getting Things Done
Stephen R. Covey
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
The One Minute Manager
M.D. Spencer Johnson
There's the start to your reading list.
Ability/desire to take risks may be the top factor
Definitely. You can become a top programmer and earn a very good salary jsut by being bright. But to get rich you have to be willing to bet it all where other people won't.
Malcolm Gladwell does a pretty good job (for me at least) of explaining why IQ isn't all that will make you success. And studies suggest (cited in his book) that all that is needed for graduate school is an IQ of 115. But he didn't say what graduate school (I'd like to think that engineering needs a bit more).
A lot of talent comes from opportunity, that is why people with more leisure time (re: rich parents), if driven properly, will success more often. But not always.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
Thank you for posting this so succinctly. If I had mod points, I'd use them :-)
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
In classical reasoning, there's a difference between Intelligence and Wisdon. Intelligence roughly translates to intellectual capacity, whereas Wisdom represents the ability to make good choices given the knowledge you have, the experience you've gained, and the factors presented to you. Thus, using All in the Family as an example, we could say that Archie clearly had more Intelligence than Edith, but Edith clearly had more Wisdom.
I guess the AD&D rulebooks had it right after all, by have Intelligence and Wisdom as separate stats.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Context is important. I was not implying that actors are dumb, the parent was. I was simply indicating that no one I knew that was wealthy fit any of the criteria listed in his anti-wealthy screed.
Why you felt it necessary to attack my wife to make your point is beyond me. Fortunately for me, the actors she's most attracted to are openly gay so even if she was the cheating kind, actually met the relevant star, and attracted the actors attention, I still wouldn't have to worry because she's lacking the requisite equipment.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
It's silly to think that the color of a person's skin has anything at all to do with the development of their brain or their intelligence.
I'm sure I'll get marked as flamebait or troll for saying this but it's not actually inconceivable that skin color is genetically somehow connected to cognitive ability. There is NO evidence I am aware of that skin color and cognitive ability are connected and I truly hope they are not connected. BUT there also is no definitive evidence I am aware of that skin color and cognitive ability are not connected either. Genetics are complicated and it is quite common for genetic differences to have multiple effects. Look at Down's syndrome patients as an example. Down's syndrome is caused by a chromosomal disorder. They have outward physical changes in addition a generally lower cognitive ability. My wife is a MD specializing in skin (a dermatopathologist specifically) and she'll tell you that the skin often provides clues of genetic and disease disorders that unquestionably affect cognitive ability. Point is that though we think there is no link, we have no smoking gun evidence to the contrary either. Frankly I think race relations could be improved dramatically if there were clear evidence that skin color had no connection whatsoever to cognitive function. Such a discovery should win both the Nobel prizes for Medicine and Peace in the same year.
The smartest people with bad input will make bad decisions. It's simply a matter of "garbage in, garbage out". The real issue is not how smart people are but where do they get their information about how the world REALLY works. This is mostly about how people REALLY work. This is Slashdot so I know I'll get hammered because of my worldview but I'm feeling feisty today.
I believe the Christian bible tells us how people work with and without God's wisdom in them. The financial crisis is a perfect example of how smart people with a worldview different from God's can make such incredible errors. If you believe that most intelligent people are capable of "enlightened self-interest" then you would probably not see the crisis coming. The bible says that if you are not content with what you have then you will NEVER be content no matter how much money you have. "Unbridled Greed" is redundant. The only greed that exists is the unbridled kind.
America, despite the number of people that profess to be Christians, is considered to be a post-Christian country by many Christian denominations because it has become a title without an underlying belief system that matches scripture to a high degree. Because of this many people have switched to a worldview that ignores the selfish, self-centered nature of man that we are all born into. This means that they fail to understand that the system of laws and regulations in this country that mostly worked in the past, because more people "did the right thing", don't work anymore because people can always find a way around the laws if they don't want to do the right thing.
Be prepared for more smart people doing foolish things as this country heads for "every man for himself". Us Anglo-Saxons like order too much to go completely feral but I do expect things to get worse before they get better because people still think that the government can fix this country. The Republican party let things get bad and the Democratic party will let things get worse so hopefully most people will be disabused of the idea that government cares about people that can't pay for the legislation they want.
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
That you can project your own inadequacy onto others.
My wife laughs at you and your feeble attempt at humor.
"Perhaps the perceived "stupidity" of people with high IQs is simply the manifestation of their inability to communicate effectively with 'little brains'".
Reminds me of a line from the doctor in Idiocracy:
"Well, don't want to sound like a dick or nothin', but, ah... it says on your chart that you're fucked up. Ah, you talk like a fag, and your shit's all retarded."
Both readers and posters will tend to have a high IQ. There will be jokes and denials, but this statement is likely true.
Which is the cart, and which is the horse? Being dumb, or being poor?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
has at one point been confronted with a brilliant idiot. The kind of guy who wants to spend 2 weeks to make all dialog boxes come up 1/5 of a second faster, by coding his own dialog boxes, from scratch, which would require that everyone use his, and only his dialog boxes, and that the existing 2000 or so dialogs be converted.
Not that he couldn't code it, but... (ahem).
You know him. You've dealt with him. He is everywhere.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
...almost nothing, in fact.
I graduated high school 3rd out of a graduating class of 650, and if it weren't for the fact that I was lazy, I could have almost effortlessly beat out the number 1 and 2 people, both of which have frequently and openly stated (without any prompting or boasting from me) that I was way smarter than them. Math and science were subjects that I mastered with almost zero effort. Got accepted into the EECS program at U.C. Berkeley right out of high school, and thought for sure my superior IQ would result in things just falling into my lap, without me having to exert myself physically or mentally.
You can probably guess how this story played out. I got my ass handed to me at Berkeley. Not because I lacked the mental capacity to understand the course material, but because I was utterly lazy and unmotivated. I spent 3 years there trying to muster the drive and motivation required to succeed, and watching my grades see-saw between A's and D's, before finally dropping out one year shy of graduating.
I learned a hard lesson about what it takes to succeed. A high IQ and a buck will get you a cup of coffee, but if you're lacking in any number of other qualities (not least of which are discipline, determination, strong work ethic, imagination, etc), you're no better off than anyone else, regardless of IQ.
I used to think IQ was what it was all about, and I thought the guys with the big IQs were gods among men. Not so anymore. Nowadays, the people I really admire, and try to emulate, are those who have the discipline to make the best out of the cards they've been dealt. I look at people who are doing menial jobs, yet have a really strong work ethic, and I think to myself "That person is a better human being than I'll ever be." Having a high IQ and lacking the ability to put it to good use is a complete waste.
It's been nearly 20 years since I graduated high school, and I've worked hard to learn all those valuable life skills I was so lacking in back then. My self-discipline and work ethic are vastly improved, but I'd still gladly trade 20 IQ points to be truly passionate about something, or to have a stronger imagination, or to have the drive and determination to actually follow through on any of the numerous half-finished projects I've started over the years. And I'm still blown away by people who might only have 80% of my IQ, but who have all those other qualities in spades.
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Like a wealthy day trader who specializes in short sales may not know how to fix their car and his mechanic doesn't understand terminology such as calls, puts, longs, and shorts.
Maybe it's just me, but I tend to divide knowledge, which is what you are describing here and intelligence. Knowledge is what you know, while intelligence is what you are capable of knowing and more importantly understanding. In my admittedly anecdotal example I was referring to individuals who know less about computers than I, but are very intelligent none-the-less.
Also, the parent is a hostile classist and has more than appropriate hostility toward those that have more than him. I provided anecdotal evidence in contradiction of his assertions that lacked even that much corroborating evidence. He's free to respond to my post with something more substantial than blind hate or anecdote at which point I'll address him directly.
While anecdote is inadequate in the face of rigorous scientific study, it is still far better than blind assertions without any attempt at verification.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
The "work ethic" is just a mind trick to make the working class feel undeserving of a fair portion of the wealth that they are creating. If your IQ is in the top .1% you should be smart enough to see that.
What if I want to get an inaccurate assesment about my own level of ignorance?
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
There was an episode in the second or third season in which a big-game hunter lands on the island and decides he wants to hunt humans instead. So he discretely interviews each of the castaways to determine which would present the greatest challenge for him. When he interviews the Professor (Jungian archetype for intelligence) he concludes that he'd have the professor bagged & mounted before the professor could figure out his next move. The implication here is that there's an aspect of intelligence which suggests so-called intentionality, intelligence may be directed "toward" something, some problem, function, etc. Some problems are extremely complex and need some deliberation. Others are challenging in a different way, and need a snap/real-world decisions or cunning. Could be a language limitation also. We tend to confuse cleverness, wisdom, cunning, reptilian intelligence, memory, success, business or strategic/military knowledge, and learning ability all as "intelligence". I can't think of a single test which would gauge all of that.
Drink up folks, the end of the world is near!
You stereotypers are all the same...
I've known since 1979 (AD&D 1st ed) that Intelligence and Wisdom were two separate stats...
Doesn't everyone know this?
---dragoness
You solved the OutsideTheBox question.
If you put punctuation right on top of an emoticon,
A. "It's an eyebrow ring"
B. A lot of chat servers will then create a bastardized smiley out of it and you'll end up punctuating your sentence with a cup of coffee!
Take THAT english teachers!
If you really desire both, use five spaces between the punctuation and the emoticon. ................
(Back on topic)
Oh COME ON now. Did I just drill that out? Yes, I'm smart though you have me beat by a few of those pointy thingies. So the test penalizes weaknesses as well.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The difference between wealth and, say, sex is that you can never get enough wealth.
So... there is no difference.
Maybe I remember incorrectly, but I thought I learned in Psych 101 that Intelligence Quotients were designed to compare the relative intelligence development...IN CHILDREN. I remember something after the age of 12-ish that the quotient is no longer valid, as the test measurement devices end at that level of development. Not the case? Any psychology experts out there?
That book stunk on ice.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Fourth edition has "pointing" for your characters. None of that random crap
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
I scored 130-140 on my IQ tests (depending on the test, I took two or three through my life -_- stupid schools) and I know for a fact my brain is slower than average. I just retain knowledge above average. So by most definitions, I'm dumb and smart at the same time!
I've done both.
I've gone to public school on the south side of Chicago, and I've gone to uppity private schools (the same place Obama sent his kids). I've attended half a dozen colleges or universities, including the top-20 university where I am currently getting my 2nd graduate degree. I've also taken classes in the Chicago city collages. It has been my observation that good schools are full of people whose parents realize how important education is. Many of those people are very very smart. Less prestigious schools, are full of people who have full of people who had to figure out on their own that education is important.
My middle class parents had the $$ to send their lazy/cocky/underachieving 18 year-old to a decent college. Unimpressive. A few years after graduating, I went to one of Chicago's fine City Colleges, and I met many students who go from work to class. Many were my intellectual superior. Of those, many decided to go to school on their own, and they have to make significant sacrifices to get their education. Many times I've thought that if our situations were reversed, how much more they would have accomplished if they had gotten their 4 year education the easy way, and I suspect that in their position, I'd not have the drive to educate myself and succeed.
--AC
Some day, If I find myself in the position to be a generous alumnus, The City Colleges will be first on my list of donees.
Penny-wise and pound-foolish?
How do they score IQ? Are IQ tests timed? If so then practice should improve your score. How are they standardized? If they're multiple choice questions then they have "correct" answers. If so then practice should improve your score. If a score cannot be improved to the point of getting every question correct does that mean that you don't understand some of the questions? That you could never get them correct given enough time? Or does it just mean you don't have enough time? In the case of not enough time the test would only measure processing speed. If it's the case that you don't understand the question because the answer is incomprehensible to you then experience should improve your score.
I've taken standardized tests but don't remember ever taking an IQ test. My experience with standardized tests is that practice allows you to get a perfect score. What's different? The 3 questions in the article are very basic and easy mathematics questions.
I may have preconceptions but I don't have ignorance. I have experience.
Come to my neighborhood around the first of the month and we'll go shopping together. You will also notice a curious statistical anomaly. Poor and dumb are in fact very strongly correlated.
And please note that I have not said anything about race. Just "poor" and "dumb".
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
In general, Common sense is doing what others taught you, or what you think that others will want (hence "common"). Intelligence is the ability to reason in new directions. Basically, the smarter you are, the stronger your ability to overcome common sense. The problems come in when bright ppl do not have a strong moral ethics. For example, some of the brightest republicans have the least scruples; REAL BAD COMBO.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Something I've noticed is that intelligence isn't a quantity, but is instead how you process information. That process might be good at Task A, but terrible at Task B.
An example would be medical students. Basically, to get to that level you have to have to be skilled in the life sciences. Physics, though, is something most find nearly impossible. I never grasped how someone found the Krebs cycle easier than F=ma, but whatever.
This continues beyond school, because I've got one professor that has made several grade-school level math references in her lectures, all of which were fundamentally wrong. (E.g. an answer spread of 13%, 16%, 29%, 20%, 22% elicits a "Well, most of you got this one right so we don't need to discuss it".)
Another example would be the clichéd geek that's socially retarded. It is my suspicion that the phenomenon where some people's brains shut down when using a computer is another manifestation of this concept.
Eh, it depends. Sometimes intelligence or knowledge works like money, in that they contribute to that goal known as "success". It's a challenge to have friends that are far outside of one's socioeconomic status. These things can be life-defining whether you like it or not. It can be rather awkward if there's a substantial disparity between would-be friends' status, wealth, intelligence, or other measures of success.
I don't know what my IQ is. My parents do because they took me in to take the tests when I was pretty young, but I don't ask them because I'm not sure I care to know. I don't want to be defined in such a manner because I don't see it doing me much good. What am I going to do, list my IQ on a resume? I'm really sure that would land me an interview for my dream job. Tell a prospective date that I'm a Mensa member? Yeah, sure, and look like a fucking tool in the process. I haven't yet heard a sales pitch for flaunting a high IQ score or joining Mensa that makes it seem like a good idea. At best, taking a test might tell me something I already have a pretty good inkling about, at worst I'd probably just ignore it and rationalize it away.
And regardless of the outcome, I probably wouldn't change. I'm a slacker. I have a poor work & study ethic, I always have and don't feel like changing. I usually exercise my intellect and devise smart solutions because it saves me from having to actually work. I mean, look at me now, I'm at work, hardly working and posting on /., doesn't that just say it all?
Knowing is not enough, you have to apply. - Bruce Lee
-- All Gods were immortal.
-- S. Lem
That's odd. I microwave food with forks and other such metals in it all the time. My microwave is about 5 years old, and the last one before that was replaced because the door broke. Unless the forks he was using were badly designed (the tines were spaced too closely together so sparks occur, which can feedback and damage the magnetron), I would say that he either had crappy microwaves or was putting other stuff in it such as aluminium foil.
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Like not leaving untreated wood lying in pile all winter,
What's the problem with this? It rots?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I don't really get some of these tests, what exactlly is high iq about ripping apart and rephrasing poorly worded math basic problems? They are trying to trick you and that is what you are figuring out and once you know that then it's quite easy.
"1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?"
So the bat doesn't cost $1, that was the "trick" part. It cost $1+x and the ball cost x and the total is $1.10; 1+x+x=1.10; 2x=0.10 x=0.05; The ball is 5 cents.
"2) If it takes five machines 5 minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?"
Read it, seprate it and figure out that it takes 1 machine 5 minutes to make 1 widget. 5 machines running at the same time for 5 minutes make 5 widgets. So 100 machines will require 5 minutes to make 100 widgets.
"3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of it?"
Just count backwards, it shrinks to half the previous day so you just move backwards so on day 48 it was full, 47 half, 46 a quarter ...
Have the school system become so crap that people can't even figure this out? Is "high iq" just about solving other peoples crappy word problems?
I recall some basic math courses and the teacher was trying to be funny as some kinda thought experiment and wrote them down on the board. It took a few moments to figure out but once you figure out what they are looking for it's simple. But without context I guess it would have taken a while longer.
complete the sequence ... ottffss ... zzoottfe
complete the sequence
Feel the brain swell!
who can't balance their checkbooks
that nicely summarizes the contradictions between being "high iq" and "smart"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I can write single letters, too. Ones just as meaningful as yours.
T
I wouldn't say his sample questions are very hard but they could likely catch people with what I call the "hyper monkey grab fruit" syndrome. And there are a lot of them. If a person just _calmly_ steps back for a moment and thinks...
captain obvious gone rampant.
1. Extremes of intelligence (whatever that is) can be counter-productive. Some very smart people so rarely make mistakes that they become over-confident and when mistakes are made, they don't know how to respond or are even are not able to accept it.
2. Learning and unlearning are not the same, and learning something new is significantly more difficult if it involves unlearning something old. Letting go of flawed theories or bad information is probably a bigger part of what gets called intelligence than acquiring new ones.
How can a 'smart' person act foolishly?
Because being smart doesn't make you wise.
You just got troll'd!
That was great. Thanks.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
The article headline is completely wrong. Read the article. It is about how although we may have the capacity to analyse things properly, we may fail to do so because of bias, unwillingness etc. Being smart does not make you wise. It isn't even controversial. But the researchers talk about expanding the definition of intelligence or adding extra tests to measure this capacity.
Bitter and proud of it.
Test can only can test what is testable. e.g. There are bugs pass testes that is originated from bad software design.
I guess IQ can be same as bugs, which could be randomly occur and level on how you were developed from child.
While I'm pretty smart in an academic sense (physics PhD graduate, always found that stuff fairly easy to grasp), when it comes to actually getting things done I'm quite hopeless, and less "smart" people would run circles round me. I mean things like finding a job, organizing on holiday, deciding which to buy (unless tech related), all seem unreasonably hard due to the huge uncertainties involved and the lack of a straightforward structure for analysis and decision making.
I'd probably do a lot better being stupid but more tolerant of uncertainty.
No, Leela, brain make people smart.
From a very smart person, I give you Why Nerds are Unpopular. Short version: because it's unimportant. Smart people are - surprise! - smart enough to figure out what is really important, and it's not social skills or any of the other humdrum that makes up everyday life. Also very succinctly and eloquently paraphrased in this comment.
Nathan's blog
On the converse, a very low IQ test score means absolutely that you are a moron. So the tests are good for something. There's no better way of detecting those sorts of problems, right? ;^)
--
Toro
Chess legend Bobby Fischer was pretty much proof that just because you have a high IQ, it doesn't mean you're intelligent, well-spoken, or otherwise a decent human being. If he didn't have a chess board under his nose 24 hours a day, I'm pretty sure he would have headed his local Ku Klux Klan chapter along with other shit-mouthed racists.
I've worked alongside of some very poor folks. Some of these work very, very hard at low-end construction jobs, farm labor, and other physically exhaustive work. I'd say they don't work smart and most of them aren't intelligent. But never call them lazy. They don't have the money to spend irresponsibly, but yes, they often make poor choices. They aren't smart. They aren't communists (you fat capitalist pig), they make up a large percentage of our armed forces, dying for you, f*cker. They hate you.
Keep Doing Good.
"Bush's IQ score is estimated to be above 120, which suggests an intelligence in the top 10 per cent of the population." What was the baseline? Most countries have had greatly inflated IQ values during the last 100 years. The reason is improved and more wide-spread education and not biological improvements per se. So, if someone had his IQ tested in the 60s, it would mean that much today. The values were relevant at the time and cannot be compared across too distant time spans.
I'm majoring in psychology. In lower terms one is often subjected to participate in experiments and tests developed by more advanced students - thus getting much information about the extent of one's capabilities in a wide variety of situations (among them classical intelligence related tasks) in relation to the other students. Compared to my fellow students I score above average in classical IQ related tasks and I'm easily within the 95th percentile in a few more exotic tests (like the ones that measure the quality of intelligence application (see article)). The subject of study, being pretty exclusive where I come from (Germany), results in a pretty tight pre-selection of the interested pupils towards their intellectual abilities, so overall I seem to be not dumb.
On the other hand, I have an ADD. ADD is a perfect example of why IQ-testing (or here every salient testing in general) fails pretty hard for certain sub-populations and why the predictive power of those instruments on a general scale is not breath taking. The attention deficit is just one symptom of an underlying state of mind that's characterized by a very strong affective dominance (resulting in impulsivity; motivational problems if not interesting or annoying, etc.); living very much for the moment (possible future negative consequences are not recognized; past negative consequences are not memoried; long term memory is generally bad 'cause you dont't need it -now-; short term memory is selective because only that what one's doing at the very moment is important, the rest is is trashed); inability to determine what's important because -everything- is important (distractability, baby!), general dislike of intellectual activity, as long as it is not extremely interesting or in some way related to oneself not matter how high one's intelligence is; daydreaming; and other things that don't directly impair your brain power but makes you a constant nominee for the Darwin Arward (clumsyness, sensation seeking).
That pretty much nuclear-detonates every intention to use one's head unless very much necessary, irrespective of your true mental abilities.
The funny thing now is, that intelligence tests (or tests in general) are interesting enough for many people with an ADD to start using their head. -IF- thats happening, concentration exceeds the populational mean by far (hyper focus). Then they result with an IQ above of 150 and everybody will say that they -knew- that that person had it in him.
And on the next occassion that said person fails all his exams because he only learned what deemed interesting, arrived two hours late because timekeeping was wiped off his brain by that -really- hot chick over there and accidentally lit his pants on fire during the exam.
So Mensans would make good real-life wizards, but not very good clerics. I thought geeks would have known this for about 30 years now.
Constitutionally Correct
Lets look at it this way. The average IQ for Americans is 100. The retardation level was 80 and is now 60. 40 points difference. If you have an IQ that is low to middle for Slashdot, say 145. At 45 points difference you are farther from the average person than they are from retards or smart dogs.
I suspect that you will be as happy hanging around average people, as they would be hanging out with the kids from the short bus or the collie down the block. Lassie may be a clever dog but no one is going to ask him to be their best man.
Intelligence, as we commonly think of it, is a combination of ability and one's particularly accented variation of the Human Motivation Array. We build and execute from birth a behaviorspace to satisfy our HMA. You may have an Einsteinian IQ, but if you have the HMA of a comedian, you are not going to build a behaviorspace that includes study and thought about physics. You are not going to spend your life pursuing one particular area of physics. Remember, Einstein never accepted Quantum Mechanics. He had the IQ. He just did not have the HMA to do so. The IQ + HMA combination of Newton is amazing.
E Proelio Veritas.
Interestingly, I posted the married-person question (Q: Jack is looking at Anne, and Anne is looking at George; Jack is married, George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person? A: Yes, No, or Cannot Be Determined...) as my Facebook status. I got 5 responses (admittedly a terrible sample size), and the only 2 who got it right (immediately!...and not surprisingly) are math/computer science grads. The others are intelligent humanities/social science grads (one is getting a PhD in Anthropology).
I know you're just cracking a joke here, but a job can bring you benefits other than money.
Challenges that match your skill (the "flow" state). An opportunity to meet people who share your trade, a mentor, a student, a fellow student. Motivating realistic deadlines (if you have natural slacking tendencies). Something to accomplish, and the satisfaction of accomplishing it. A way of being useful to others instead of just yourself.
Of course, you could also get one of those dailywtf jobs, but those you quit. Right? ;-)
Huh. I was once told by a roommate that I had the highest IQ of any person he'd met, but my IQ was a set of measure zero. He meant I didn't much apply my talents to tasks of any use to anyone else. So true. He also meant that physics didn't have such ridiculous things as sets of measure zero (little did he know what was coming down the pike). In my defense, I was an internet junkie, but the internet hadn't been invented yet. It consumes a lot of mental resources to become addicted to something that hasn't been invented yet. After the internet was invented, people began to perceive me as less distracted, but in truth, I suspect nothing changed.
Wrong on the internet
I joke with my GF about this a lot. From time to time I heap wrath upon a post in slashdot--always in the nicest possible way. The thing is, I don't regard the targets of my scorn as imbeciles (though I mutter this loudly under my breath while I'm typing). What triggers me is the trick costume change: "I'll turn my brain off momentarily in the middle of this sentence, and woohoo, look at me come out the other side unscathed by contrary information."
Slashdot is practically a petri dish of smart people suffering from momentary mental brown-outs, willingly or not. I don't get this, it's not one of my many peccadilloes, but man, does it have popular appeal. We greatly discount this effect in public debate, much to the detriment of the outcome. I mean, if I were a white mouse studying humans, I'd never leave my keyboard, not since the day slashdot first opened its virtual doors. This can also be studied in the hot tub at my local swimming pool, but I'd soon fear for my sanity. Whatever a Jacuzzi stimulates, it ain't brain cells. Sadly, I can't handle the truth in its purest, undiluted form.
I've long opined that gambling is actually an internal money laundering operation. The spend side reasons "I'll win some/most/more than most of it back". But then, on the rare occasion when the deluded sot is momentary up on the house it's suddenly "drinks for everyone!" Ones proceeds, if they rematerialize at all, rematerialize directly into the bon vivant bucket, even if the money vested originated from the mortgage and sick kids bucket.
"I spent 90% of my money on women and drink. The rest I wasted." - George Best
Those who are less honest about this visit the casino. It's a way to pursue a certain reproductive strategy while framing it in a dingier, yet better accepted light.
Ideology is a lot like math: it doesn't matter where you hide the division by zero, once you've swapped the peanut, you can carry the result through to the end conclusion, whatever end conclusion your soul desires. It only takes the blink of a mind to go from premise A to conclusion !A through a long and highly respectable sequence of steps (bonus points: with heaps of "security theatre").
The people who argue from a deeper perspective have the habit of asking "does this still make sense?" after every step in the argument. But if that is not your agenda, you're soon conditioned not to do this. It merely interferes with arriving at your set conclusion.
I don't regard this phenomena of mentally jumping the tracks as shallow. There's many social situations where the round-trip checksum is not going to work out (that would contravene cherished consensus) unless an error is cleverly folded into one of the steps. More power to the guy in the frock with the force of will to control where that error transpires. Entire institutions have sprung up to wield that mighty staff, in every civilization of note.
These errors have tremendous cultural value (though this might be slowly waning so long as net neutrality prevails, which suggests it won't). Nor is it clear that these errors conserve mental energy. The hardest working people I've met are those who maintain an alternate reality field 24/7. These people can be pretty good at distracting you with where the marble goes. With some determi
I took IQ tests in elementary school, and was placed in the accelerated gifted program. Then I moved to another state, where I had to retake the IQ exam, and I just barely missed the cut. So, by one test I'm "gifted" and by another I'm not. I retook the test a year later, and what do you know? I'm gifted again!
This is why I think IQ tests are crap. They try to put a number on something as abstract as intelligence. It's hard to put a rigid cutoff to something abstract like this. I certainly didn't get dumber for that one year where I wasn't "gifted" by government standards. I would much rather see gifted programs that catered to student's ability to perform in areas like creativity and problem solving in a full on classroom or project environment, not some arbitrary number from a standardized tests. How can a single point on a test be the difference between a child that gets special attention and has their education more closely nurtured and the one that doesn't? I say gifted children are the ones that apply themselves the best in real-world situations and don't just memorize facts. But that's a much harder test to devise.
My parents did me a great service in that they never told me how I scored on any of the IQ tests. To this day, I still don't know. They were smart enough to realize the worthlessness of putting a number on something like intelligence. And there's no sense in penis-waving IQ scores, because they're just a general idea of where you fall over the whole populace and nothing more. And IQ tests should, therefore, not be treated like anything more.
I work operational support for sharp products. You would not believe the stupidity of the calls we get for basic operation of a tv. Some people take the unit out of the box, plug it in and call us because they are either to stupid or to lazy to read the directions and cant figure out what to do next... *select language, select placement (home or store) and auto channel scan (yes)*
And you would not BELIEVE how many calls i get where the customer calls in because he/she cant figure out something simple on a tv like changing inputs or changing the unit froma digital to analog station. I really love it when a supposed engineer calls in because he cant figure out something simple. I am always left wondering how the heck this person got their degree!