I would like to figure out what benefits intelligent people have over others. Basically I would like to draw correlations based on level of intellegence.

Personally I think 80% of the population is dumb. I guess that would mean that 20% are smart with lognormal distribution. I guess one could argue that 50% are dumb and 50% are smart.

I also feel that dumb people cost way more than what they produce and are to some extent really bringing at least the US down ... and I am sure other countries.

I would like to see the following things with correlations on intellegence:

teenage pregnancy
hard drug use
gang membership
family abuse
child abuse
assult
pop music


Now I know that some of these things are from poverty ... so I think that is hard to factor out. I agree that these things may be higher for poor people and I can understand that. But I am more interested in drawing the lines to see if intellegence comes into play.

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It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
-AE
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
-Socrates

It is a very sensitive subject and although statistics may be kept the analysis may not help correct perceived imbalances.

For a start different regions have different needs and some people bloom later in life or contribute in ways not related to IQ.

About a couple of months back a statistician caused more than a few problems when the comments on the numbers kept were upsetting to some people.

Ultimately people are people and a combination of motivations and abilities strengths and weaknesses. In my walks I have seen some that may not be as academically suited but as human beings and a precious resource this world is better for having known them.

Likewise there are those who are destructive and unhelpful and so on and as bad as they are they make the rest of us look good, really good. Yes society does need to step in at times and it can be a very hard call with no defined right or wrong answer, just a method of coping. Does that help?

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"Nature is obliged to let reality determine its laws, whereas mathematics is under no such constraint."

Well, you think wrong!

Intelligence fits very nicely on a bell curve with a standard deviation of 15! That means that 1/3 of the population has an IQ between 85 and 115, 1/3 is lower than 85 and 1/3 is over 115. That is very far from your supposition that 80% are dumb!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

When I was in high school, a girl I'd known since kindergarten got pregnant. She then proceeded to graduate early, have her baby, and get a scholarship (a full one, I believe) to a local college. Not dumb by any stretch. Further, almost every person I know listened to what was popular when they were a teenager, even my sheltered friends. Practically everyone within five years of my age, for example, actually manages to know some of the lyrics to "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Which is, as you may know, pretty challenging to figure out.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

How do you define "intelligence" and how do you propose to measure it?

teenage pregnancy
hard drug use
gang membership
family abuse
child abuse
assault
pop music

I will also point out that intellect plays no role in the bad choices a person might make in their lives.
Wisdom and experience play a role. IQ does not.
Intelligent people are equally likely to behave in abusive fashion, use drugs or alcohol to excess, or have social problems.

There is no correlation based on intellect.

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"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." -- Vaclav Havel

Quote:

We just don't know much.

Yet if not for those words, what would science be for? - KaiYeves

I propose an ATM corollary to Godwin's law: an ATM'er will inevitably compare himself to Copernicus (Or Galileo), when the going gets tough. - CodeSlinger

The Valedictorian of my graduating class in high school flunked out of college. They let him back in and he finished his degree (barely).

As far as the definition of intelligence goes, I believe current IQ tests aren't very good. Depending on which one I've taken, there's a 45-point spread in what they report.

I believe both aptitudes (innate abilities) and experience are equally important, if not more important, than raw IQ. Some of my childhood friends who had IQs of around 100 have faired far better than me over time. And one, that valedictorian I mentioned, who had an IQ in excess of 150, hasn't faired very well at all.

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WIKIPEDIA and GOOGLE are your friends! But only if you use them.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often, not a very good one at that.

Perception is what happens between the senses and consciousness. Reality is what happened before that. If you think the two are equivalent, you've never heard of Von Claustwicz, Sun Tsu, or street magicians.

Formal Logical Fallacy List

tommac:

Why are you so obsessed with "dumb people"? This is the fourth thread you've started on topics related to "dumb people", two of them closed.

Be a smart person. Please don't start anymore "dumb people" threads.

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

I was going to ask if dumb people should be banned, but...

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

tommac seems to have...eh "ego elitism"?

Given high employment, and the substantial gap between the wage costs of production and what we pay, owing to taxes, overheads, profit, etc, I think the there is substantial evidence that what most ordinary people produce is worth a great deal more than what they are paid. So their hidden costs would have to be high if they are worth less than their output. Also population pressure keeps the wages of basic labour down - after the Black Death which killed off about a third to half the population in several European countries (and as much as 70% in some), the wages of labour increased substantially.

This kind of thought led some (eg Marx) to argue that it is the "workers" who produce the value, and the managers and financiers who are the parasites.

I know two scientist/mathematicians/astronomers who were drug abusers.
These guys contributed a lot to our society, think prime numbers and no I am not going to name them.

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This whole internet thing is probably not a passing fad.-Ronald Brak
While speech might be free, consequences cost.-Doodler

I think far more important than one's IQ is one's EQ, that is, one's emotional quotient.
My brother in law, who holds a Bachelors in Psychology, a Masters in Human Resources, an MBA and is HR Director for a sizable hospital in Cincy, has problems with pushing and grabbing his wife when arguing - assault.
I don't find that to be very intelligent at all.

A close friend who holds Bachelors and MFA, who teaches at university, is terribly depressed and can't shake a couple of "vices" - drug abuse.

These are intelligent people yet exhibit dysfunctional behaviors.

Is there a correlation?

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

This whole discussion is rendererd meaningless by the underlying assumption that there is something called "intelligence" that can be quantified by some measure (brain size, brain weight, IQ test score, etc.). This is what Steven J Gould referred to as the fallacy of reification in his classic book The Mismeasure of Man. I'd recommend that anyone jumping into a discussion like this read it if they haven't already.

Yes, some people are more "intelligent" than others, but making efforts to shoehorn this very complex phenomenom into a single number and assume that that number means anything is futile. It is, as Lord Kelvin would say, "Knowledge of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind."

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

Ah yes; the 2 major causes of the world's problems; poor spelling and pop music.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

Well, it does mean something; just maybe not what some people want it to mean. Maybe this was your way of saying you don't agree or don't like what some or most people think it to mean.

Your first sentence confuses me. It appears you are stating that the assumption that intelligence can be quantified renders the discussion as meaningless; though I get the distinct impression you disagree with that assumption. Perhaps you meant that WITHOUT that assumption, the discussion is meaningless. (An assumption being something accepted as truth, to be used as part of a deductive process to prove other truths). But then you concede that "Yes, some people are more intelligent than others, . . ." If it can not be quantified, how can you tell if one person has more or less than any other?

An excellent anectdotal example by the way of my hypothesis that for most humans, emotions trump logic.

So I'm curious; since you obviously disagree with the traditional method of testing and assigning an IQ, but state that some are more intelligent than others, what is your measurement criteria?

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

My objection is that people will claim to be "intelligent" and then point to an IQ or SAT test score as proof of that. All the IQ test score is evidence of is how well one scores on IQ tests. It does not measure intelligence. Intelligence is too complex a phenomenom to reduce to a single measure like that.

Now, IQ test scores may be one indicator of a certain kind of intelligence, but they do not quantify intellingence. Other indicators also exist (musical skill, mathematical skill, etc). The anecdotes of acknowledged "geniuses" who scored poorly on tests or did poorly in school are legion almost to the point where some claim poor test scores is a sign of genius.

To have a discussion on "what intelligent people do" presupposes an independent standard of intelligence. I argue that such a standard does not exist, especially in the form of test scores. This is not to say that one cannot recognize that one person is more skilled or knowledgable than another. It is to say that one cannot look at a test score or any other measure and say that it will predict certain behaviors and merit. Although anecdote isn't the plural of data, the cases of "intelligent" people doing "stupid" things such as discussed above indicate what I'm saying.

As to my standard, it's based on the old Potter Stewart standard for pornography. "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

What's "dumb" about pop music?!

That you have deep complexes and no life and you like just 200 year old Bach music doesn't mean you are superior to me you freaking elitist!

Agreed. I think most who react strongly in a negative manner, or who like to discount the traditional methods are assuming they mean much more than they do.

I think of traditional IQ as measuring the assimilation, storage, and use of information in an abstract/academic manner. It measures the brain the way we would measure a computer's storage, recall, and processing powers. I suspect it is a strong factor in functioning effectively in our society, but concede that it is certainly not a direct (1:1) correlation.

I like the line from Forrest Gump - - Stupid is as stupid does.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

Eta C, farmerjumperdon,

Would you agree with me that the problem with intelligence is that
it is sufficiently complex that we don't understand it very well, can't
define it, and don't really know how to measure it? Most people are
very good at judging intelligence subjectively, but for science and
many practical purposes, objective measures are wanted, so IQ tests
are developed. They work, but are limited in scope compared to
subjective methods. IQ tests test only a small handful of abilities and
characteristics that people have, while subjective methods can take
into account all kinds of observed behaviors. There is no fundamental
reason that objective tests could not be developed to take all relevant
behaviors into account. With computers, that is likely to be RSN.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"The other planets?
Well, they just happen to be there, but the point of rockets is to explore them!"
-- Kai Yeves