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Scientists Postulate Extinct Hominid With 150 IQ
Hugh Pickens writes "Neuroscientists Gary Lynch and Richard Granger have an interesting article in Discover Magazine about the Boskops, an extinct hominid that had big eyes, child-like faces, and forebrains roughly 50% larger than modern man indicating they may have had an average intelligence of around 150, making them geniuses among Homo sapiens. The combination of a large cranium and immature face would look decidedly unusual to modern eyes, but not entirely unfamiliar. Such faces peer out from the covers of countless science fiction books and are often attached to 'alien abductors' in movies. Naturalist Loren Eiseley wrote: 'Back there in the past, ten thousand years ago. The man of the future, with the big brain, the small teeth. He lived in Africa. His brain was bigger than your brain.' The history of evolutionary studies has been dogged by the almost irresistible idea that evolution leads to greater complexity, to animals that are more advanced than their predecessor, yet the existence of the Boskops argues otherwise — that humans with big brains, and perhaps great intelligence, occupied a substantial piece of southern Africa in the not very distant past, and that they eventually gave way to smaller-brained, possibly less advanced Homo sapiens — that is, ourselves. 'With 30 percent larger brains than ours now, we can readily calculate that a population with a mean brain size of 1,750 cc would be expected to have an average IQ of 149,' write Lynch and Granger. But why did they go extinct? 'Maybe all that thoughtfulness was of no particular survival value in 10,000 BC. Lacking the external hard drive of a literate society, the Boskops were unable to exploit the vast potential locked up in their expanded cortex,' write Lynch and Granger. 'They were born just a few millennia too soon.'"
Of course it is "arguably". If Einstein had been born in Congo he would have raped his mother at 12.
Pure intelligence is not what makes discoveries, opportunity and education are. A monkey with IQ 200 can't deduce Special Relativity from a falling drop of water. Most physics majors(Many not wise enough to avoid smoking) can understand it. And however intelligent you are you cannot discover it anymore.
Oh,and universal health care is Socialist. Yet it is a good thing. Get over it.
its our ability to communicate richly
i don't care what these hominid's brainpower was like. if all they could do is grunt and hoot, they're 150 iq points of nothing. whatever that went on in that braincase that was truly amazing doesn't mean a damn thing if it has no way to get out of that braincase. and lo and behold, they're extinct. completely unsurprising
social intelligence is far, far more important than things like spatial intelligence, mathematical intelligence, or even strategic intelligence. and the iq test doesn't test social intelligence. the whole cult of the iq test is really pointless. the iq test has a very limited specific application and it is given far too much weight than what it actually deserves in contemporary society. i think it has something to do with the panic the west was experiencing as the soviets overtook the west in the space race in the 1950s, and suddenly the emphasis on math and the sciences became paramount. but even in scientific disciplines, its the guys with the social intelligence that dominate: jobs, gates, ellison: these are business guys first, programmers second
a guy with subpar intelligence with good communication skills dominates the guy with the stellar iq who doesn't have very good communication skills. you see it in these forums: "i hate my phb boss". well, why is your phb boss your boss? simply because he communicates better than you. yeah, he's dumber than you. but he COMMUNICATES better than you. this is not some perverse warping of justice, this is very much in line with the way things should be. i don't care how many games of chess you can play in your head at the same time, if you have no charisma and you cannot communicate well, you have less influence, and therefore less power, and less money. its perfectly logical how this plays out
a bad idea communicated well is FAR more important than a good idea communicated badly. not because i say so, but simply because of how reality works. if there is any injustice in this world, its that someone told you because you have a high iq you somehow deserve something superior, or that you yourself believe you are superior because of a test that only determines how well you manipulate complex 3D topologies in your head. guess what: its an amazing skill, but it doesn't actually help you get ahead in life about the things that really matter. your social iq is what really matters, and if you don't have it, you won't go far in this world, no matter how much your iq score is off the charts. in fact, we have a name for people who are extremely brilliant in limited ways but can't communicate: autistic savants. in some iq tests they would be way off the charts. but, like in the movie "rainman", they can't tell the difference between the price of a car and the price of a candy bar
that's a hard cold truth a lot of people in these forums probably still haven't accepted, but its true: your iq score means far less than you think. meanwhile, the idiot down the hall who knows how to talk the panties off girls: he will be your boss some day
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"OK, I need all you zombies to go over there and stand next to the propane tank. Yeah, hold hands and sing Kum-bi-Brainsi-yah or something. That's good."
Who is John Cabal?