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Society is created largely by and for the average, who are the vast majority of the population. On the whole we have the intelligence to deal with the challenges we face. Where we fail is with greed and myopic thinking, and this is actually more of a problem with the highly intelligent: it's the really smart ones who exploit the rest of society for individual gain.
For instance, the burning of fossil fuels which has led to climate change wasn't a stupid thing to do for those who were driving it, they profited well and got exactly what they wanted. There's plenty of evidence that energy companies knew quite well the consequences of what they were doing, they were plenty smart enough to realize that, as well as realize that they could profit from it while leaving others in the future to pay for the consequences.
Intelligence isn't the problem in society, it's the lack of caring about other people.
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But if this lack of caring has catastrophic consequences, as climate change could do, then from a species point of view, the actions that led to it can not be called intelligent. The short term gain of the few at the expense of the species - even if not terminal decline, at least a heavy price - is not very smart, really.
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart." - Linus van Pelt.
"If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't think you were so smart!" - Charlie Brown.
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When asking about IQ scores you are talking about individual intelligence. Projecting intelligence onto the species as a whole is a bit of a stretch, the species is set of genetic code not a thinking being.
There is nothing to say that intelligence is necessarily good for a species if the goal of a species is survival and reproduction. Bacteria aren't very intelligent, but from a survival standpoint they have us beat don't they?
To put it another way, what is smart for the individual may be bad (or "dumb") for the species in the aggregate. We are much more likely to wipe ourselves out by being too smart than not being smart enough.
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Those who think human intelligence is not measurable in the aggregate are mistaken. One can argue successfully only about how accurately it can be measured, what measure is best, and how useful the assessed IQ of a single individual is. Human intelligence appears to be normally distributed with a standard deviation of 15 points, so that 65% of the population measures between 85 and 115.
That means most of the population is pretty freakin' average.
That means for every engineer with an IQ of 135, there is a developmentally disabled person with an IQ of 65. I don't see a lot of either walking around.
That means that an Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein with an IQ of 200+ comes along once or twice in 100 years over the whole world, so the poster who thinks his IQ is 200 has much to prove.
It means China, with its population of 1.2 billion, should generate Einsteins at a rate four times that of the United States. This applies to mere geniuses too, of which there are significantly more. This should worry anyone concerned about US competitiveness in the world.
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Well, you have to consider the fact that most of those geniuses are likely born into grinding poverty and are lucky to survive to adulthood, let alone get an education and make use of their brains. For the sake of competitiveness, providing things like health care, education, and opportunity matter a lot more than the size of the talent pool.
China may understand this better than the US though, since they seem to be trying hard to improve those things while the US has been going backwards for decades.
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That means for every engineer with an IQ of 135, there is a developmentally disabled person with an IQ of 65. I don't see a lot of either walking around.
I encounter plenty of people with IQs of 135, in programming and physics (occupationally), law (a former SO was a law professor who once told me "you're pretty smart, and you're not even a lawyer"), and Mensa (132 on Stanford-Binet, which has an SD of 16, is the minimal requirement for entry).
That means that an Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein with an IQ of 200+ comes along once or twice in 100 years over the whole world,
Not really. I know two brothers, both of whom have over IQs over 200. One scored in the top 100 on the Putnam exam and got his PhD in algebraic topology from UCLA when he was 23. Through him I met a fellow who scored in the top 10 on the Putnam. IQ tests are child's play for people at that level.
Mathematician Terence Tao and physicist Chris Herata purportly have IQs over 220, and Guinness listed Korean engineer Kim Ung Yong at 210 and Marilyn vos Savant at 228 (they no longer have a highest IQ category because of unreliability at those levels). Oh, and Einstein, while of course brilliant and deeply insightful, is estimated to have had an IQ about the same as Stephen Hawking's -- 160. IQ measures something, but it isn't the thing folks like that have.
so the poster who thinks his IQ is 200 has much to prove.
Yeah, internal evidence strongly indicates that he's lying. It's particularly amusing that he claims that he missed the Mensa entrance by 1 point (despite other people claiming that Mensa scores are inflated by 20% so as to qualify more people and thus make more money -- bwahahah) because his multiplication and division were rusty, and making the age old excuse of people who fail odd-one-out tests that the correct answers are chosen arbitrarily.
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That means for every engineer with an IQ of 135, there is a developmentally disabled person with an IQ of 65. I don't see a lot of either walking around.
I encounter plenty of people with IQs of 135, in programming and physics (occupationally), law (a former SO was a law professor who once told me "you're pretty smart, and you're not even a lawyer"), and Mensa (132 on Stanford-Binet, which has an SD of 16, is the minimal requirement for entry).
That means that an Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein with an IQ of 200+ comes along once or twice in 100 years over the whole world,
Not really. I know two brothers, both of whom have IQs over 200. One scored in the top 100 on the Putnam exam and got his PhD in algebraic topology from UCLA when he was 23. Through him I met a fellow who scored in the top 10 on the Putnam. IQ tests are child's play for people at that level.
Mathematician Terence Tao and physicist Chris Herata purportly have IQs over 220, and Guinness listed Korean engineer Kim Ung Yong at 210 and Marilyn vos Savant at 228 (they no longer have a highest IQ category because of unreliability at those levels). Oh, and Einstein, while of course brilliant and deeply insightful, is estimated to have had an IQ about the same as Stephen Hawking's -- 160. IQ measures something, but it isn't the thing folks like that have.
so the poster who thinks his IQ is 200 has much to prove.
Yeah, internal evidence strongly indicates that he's lying. It's particularly amusing that he claims that he missed the Mensa entrance by 1 point (despite other people claiming that Mensa scores are inflated by 20% so as to qualify more people and thus make more money -- bwahahah) because his multiplication and division were rusty, and making the age old excuse of people who fail odd-one-out tests that the correct answers are chosen arbitrarily.
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Member 12023988 wrote: because his multiplication and division were rusty
More to the point, anyone with an IQ in the 180 range would not have to remember or even be taught how to do multiplication and division. Someone on that level would be able to quickly derive methods for doing so on the spot, easily.
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Well, that's not "more to the point", because it's not me who was explaining why he failed the test questions, I was simply quoting his explanation. As I said, his moronic and dishonest explanation that his multiplication and division were "rusty" was "particularly amusing". As I wrote elsewhere,
Quote: There's no division on these tests that even a halfwit can't do in their heads, and even if there were such problems, manual multiplication and division are trivial rote procedures that high IQ brains don't forget. People with 200 IQs can visualize in multiple dimensions; they don't struggle with arithmetic. If this person scored 200 on "official" tests, how did he manage that with such poor skills, and why did he do so much worse on a test that purportedly has scores inflated by 20%? These are the sorts of obvious questions that people with average IQs don't bother to ask.
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here is some quantitative data that might actually give you some insight into your question:
[^]
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I work with software engineers and other technologists, so my world is populated by folks with average IQ well above 100 - probably 120's. I was tested at 160 in grade school, but only got middling grades through high school because I was much more interested in tearing around the farm on my dirtbike. However, when I got excited about electrical engineering I got top grades because I started studying. My university grades would not have been possible without both the CPU and the effort.
Is a high IQ test score meaningful? Not in isolation - but it certainly indicates potential.
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Wombat:
(a) IQ score determines individual success pretty much in proportion to the prevailing level of meritocracy.
(b) Ie, rigidly structured societies heavily dampen IQ sorting. In history we can often find the top strata of some societies infested with complete maroons.
(c) Wombats have square poop. I have one that often browses through my back yard, leaving scat.
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It's actually quite an important question - as "dumb" jobs get automated the entry level for having a real job gets higher. That means that a growing number of people must be unable to find work. So their lives can - to them - lack validation. If I were one of them I would get angry. So when a person of average intelligence can't find something meaningful to do, all hell might break loose.
Needs a better brain than mine to re-engineer society.
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Is a Stormtrooper poker night just a Game of Clones?
Did anyone notice a theme this week?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
modified 6-May-16 11:18am.
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Sigh. I'd been looking forward to being distracted by "The Thought". You've sunk solo.
(Modified: just fixed a typo)
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
modified 6-May-16 14:56pm.
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Like C3PO, you may be fluent in over 6 million forms for communication, but humour isn't one of them!
veni bibi saltavi
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If these keep up I may have to Luke the other way.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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OriginalGriff wrote: Did anyone notice a theme this week?
That's the Vader do it!
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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That won't get you Leia-ed.
Mongo: Mongo only pawn... in game of life.
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But this is an excerpt from a Quick Answers, but it's not Quick Answers that the actual target of my comment:
What I have tried:
I tried to learn .net from youtube by watching tutorials on .net. I am not good that much to develope any projects.
Please help me what should i do.
But isn't this a rather pathetic comment on the state of the incoming generation? Going to YouTube as your source for learning? We're not talking about a how-to on changing the battery in a cell phone (cell-phone reference is deliberate additional snipe). I look at the state of politics in the US (both parties) and can only shake my head. Not side-to-side, but nodding up and down: It all makes perfect sense. I guess the poster wanted to learn "ASP.NET for Cute Kittens" .
It seems, extrapolating, that if it's viral it must be good. If it's an effort, it's probably not worth it.
(Just call me sunshine)
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos wrote: It seems, extrapolating, that if it's viral it must be good. If it's an effort, it's probably not worth it.
I agree with that! 
It's been a long, insidious process to get us where we are today. Look at the entertainment on TV for starters - most people would prefer to sit in front of a brain-dead "comedy" for 30 minutes with low-brow "humour" or "funny" statements deriding the culture and history of the country instead of watching something educational or useful or a thought-provoking (not politically correct) movie, or even - [gasp] - reading a book. Don't get me started on the education system.
Like most things in life, you get out what you put in. And here we are today! 
The whole thing's rigged to blow, touch those tanks and "boooom"!
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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I'm going to coin a phrase for the current state of politics (non-partisan):
Competent is Boring
Begging the old saws: "Be careful of what you ask for: you may get it" and the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times"
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Competent is boring..? We wouldn't know over this side of the pond 
The whole thing's rigged to blow, touch those tanks and "boooom"!
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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I'd offer that in some of those distant realms of yours, even the incompetent are boring!
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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"You can starve me and you can beat me and you can kill me. Just don't bore me."
The whole thing's rigged to blow, touch those tanks and "boooom"!
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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