Oolite Bulletins

Cody wrote:

Selezen wrote:

"The higher the average IQ in a community, the more likely it is that chaos will ensue".

Hmm... which says what about this mostly chaos-free forum that we frequent here?

It says that we're the exception that proves the rule, of course!

Selezen wrote:

The higher their intelligence then the more they value their own opinions

I'd not at all be surprised to see a positive correlation between IQ and overconfidence. My definition of intelligence would also have a correlation, but in the opposite direction...

cim wrote:

I'd not at all be surprised to see a positive correlation between IQ and overconfidence. My definition of intelligence would also have a correlation, but in the opposite direction...

There is a correlation between low ability and overconfidence, called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

(the link malfunctions because of the hyphen, and I know I'm too dumb to fix it ...)

Dunning and Kruger's paper, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments" won the 2000 IgNobel award for Psychology. It's possible though that this effect - or some percentage of it - may be cultural. Unskilled non-Westerners might be more willing to accept an unskilled status.

"Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error."

Disembodied wrote:

cim wrote:

I'd not at all be surprised to see a positive correlation between IQ and overconfidence. My definition of intelligence would also have a correlation, but in the opposite direction...

There is a correlation between low ability and overconfidence, called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

Sure. I'm thinking of a slightly different effect, though, where people who both are and know they are good at one area thus overestimate their abilities in other areas (e.g. prominent academics in one field commenting on a different field and overlooking basic - to the interested layperson, even - knowledge from that field)

Though, I think attempts to define or quantify "intelligence" as opposed to specific ability at a specific set of tasks are probably at best misguided.

Disembodied wrote:

It's possible though that this effect - or some percentage of it - may be cultural

Yeah, a lot of psychology research has turned out to be either not applicable at all to different cultures or to come to wrong conclusions through misunderstanding the culture it was carried out in (often things that their colleagues in sociology or anthropology would have been able to point out, too, and later interdisciplinary research has done). The "WEIRD" effect, where US university students are around four thousand times more likely to be experimental subjects than anyone else, really hasn't helped either.

I find the field of human psychology really interesting, but there's a definite need for the experimenters to be a lot more rigorous about their assumptions. (I don't know if the D-K paper is one of them, since I haven't read it)

People are basically random. Some intelligent people are down to earth non-egotists who are willing to take on another point of view, whereas some intelligentsia are people who think they can solve all the world's problems just by writing a sentence on a forum. The sort of people who are in the 12th percentile and estimate themselves to be in the 62nd I would describe as "too stupid to know how stupid they are".

In the middle of those points are a huge, varied and ever shifting miasma of abilities and perceptions. None of which I feel can be quantified.

The difficulty comes when "intelligence" isn't broken down into component parts. An intelligent person could fathom Pi to the 210th decimal place but not be entirely sure how to spell "definitely". I've spoken to teachers and college professors with letters after their names in my Games Workshop days who confidently and consistently wrote the word "emporer".

There's book learning, then there's life skills, then there's wisdom, then there's common sense. As well as other stuff that makes up an individual. Categorising and generalising don't work. Each person is in a category of one.

I am Dave. I can spell "definitely" and "emperor" and write software to measure tunnels, but can't do division without a calculator and can be a bit of a pretentious t*t. Is there a psycho-social category for me, or am I "just Dave"?

Selezen wrote:

Is there a psycho-social category for me, or am I "just Dave"?

No doubt Google is working on one ...

It's a fair point, though. I think it's pretty clear that Einstein, for example, was a genius when it came to physics, and indeed much else - but he was also a pretty lousy husband and father. We tend to value some skills more than others, for no easily apparent reasons (although much of that, too, is cultural). I suppose in Einstein's case, his ability at physics was huge, and apparent to all, whereas his lousy-husband-and-fatherness was not that unusual, and only affected his family.

Thanks.

That does bring another thought to mind though. Einstein probably sacrificed his ability as a husband and father to focus on the things that mattered more to him - his sciences.

How many people do it the other way round? How many people out there hold the secrets of the universe in their minds, but haven't exercised those theories or visions because they have made a life decision to be a good husband and/or a good father? How many cures for cancer are out there in the minds of the masses, trapped by a sense of duty to a family or a career?

Creativity can be stifled by the routine. 40 hours a week behind a desk or 40 hours a week stacking shelves, but given an opportunity, that daydream of something greater might actually have been something tangible if presented to those who could have fanned the flame to expand and understand it.

Einstein's family probably lament a lot about his failings as a family man, but I hope they understand that if he had been a better father then the world may have been a very different place...

"Sorry, doctor, I can't come to the reactor test, my son has a cold."

Selezen wrote:

How many people do it the other way round? How many people out there hold the secrets of the universe in their minds, but haven't exercised those theories or visions because they have made a life decision to be a good husband and/or a good father? How many cures for cancer are out there in the minds of the masses, trapped by a sense of duty to a family or a career?

<only half-joking answer>Perhaps the other half of mankind. Those who still in most advanced societies are not really given the option of being something else than a good wife and/or a good mother. The Goddess only knows how many breakthroughs were not made for this reason.</only half-joking answer>

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit not a vegetable. Wisdom is not putting a tomato into a fruit salad.

Professor Brian Cox said in an interview when described as being a genius - "I'm not a genius, I work with lots of real genius, so I know I'm not, but I love physics and I'm very very curious."

He's my kind of Physicist - I scraped my Physics 1st degree mainly out of curiosity - because I'm not that bright but love the subject - pretty much the same process got me my Masters too. (Although I am resisting the pressure from work to start a PhD)

cim wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

It's possible though that this effect - or some percentage of it - may be cultural

Yeah, a lot of psychology research has turned out to be either not applicable at all to different cultures or to come to wrong conclusions through misunderstanding the culture it was carried out in (often things that their colleagues in sociology or anthropology would have been able to point out, too, and later interdisciplinary research has done). The "WEIRD" effect, where US university students are around four thousand times more likely to be experimental subjects than anyone else, really hasn't helped either.

I'm rather pleased (and a touch surprised) to see I'm not the only one here who follows this stuff.. the paper on the WEIRD effect was quite interesting..

Commander McLane wrote:

<only half-joking answer>Perhaps the other half of mankind. Those who still in most advanced societies are not really given the option of being something else than a good wife and/or a good mother. The Goddess only knows how many breakthroughs were not made for this reason.</only half-joking answer>

Spectacular answer. Shame there are very few ladies here to read it*, or you may have been inundated with fan mail and proposals of marriage.




* which kinda illustrates the point.

Selezen wrote:

or you may have been inundated with fan mail and proposals of marriage.

Sadly neither, so far.

Although I'd like to see myself as being only so gender-aware as could be expected from any man in my age group (mid 40's), it seems time and again as though I have to lower my expectations in this regard. Which is, if you think about it for a moment, infinitely more sad than the above.

Selezen wrote:

How many people do it the other way round? How many people out there hold the secrets of the universe in their minds, but haven't exercised those theories or visions because they have made a life decision to be a good husband and/or a good father? How many cures for cancer are out there in the minds of the masses, trapped by a sense of duty to a family or a career?

I think that sacrificing family responsibilities is a common theme of bright people with vision -  Dr. Emanuel Bronner (on my avatar) did the same thing.

Commander McLane wrote:

<only half-joking answer>Perhaps the other half of mankind. Those who still in most advanced societies are not really given the option of being something else than a good wife and/or a good mother. The Goddess only knows how many breakthroughs were not made for this reason.</only half-joking answer>

That's totally a valid point - how many women have had breakthroughs that we as humanity have missed out on? I'd hate to reckon....

It makes perfect and regrettable sense that our society would benefit from female input in a lot of scientific fields. They apparently have a far more logical approach to things, and often a different take on the creative process that can be so important in science and development.

Re Assange:

At a meeting last week between Alban and Hugo Swire, the Foreign Office minister responsible for Latin America, Alban is said to have asked: “What are we going to do about the stone in the shoe?” To which Swire reportedly replied: “Not my stone, not my shoe.”