I have no desire to join the anti-Sullivan jihad on IQ, but I will tell you why I dislike the study of IQ so much. It’s because people think it means something, that a higher IQ means you’re “smarter”. People don’t do this with other measurements, they don’t say Willie Gault had a 40 yard time that was three-tenths of a second faster than Jerry Rice, therefore Gault was a better wide receiver than Jerry Rice. But they do say things like that about IQ-type things.
An acquaintance of mine once told me that he thought that Heisenberg could have figured out how to make nuclear bombs if he’d really wanted to since the Allied scientists did and Heisenberg was smarter than they were. The proof that he was smarter was that he had beat some of the Allied scientists in chess.
One of my best friends was a world-class math problem solver, on the Romanian Olympiad (often the strongest in the world) team several times. As an adult, he is also an excellent math researcher. He tells me that he has always done terribly on IQ type tests because when they say “what’s the next number here” or whatever, his mind says “it could be anything, that’s not much of a pattern there yet”.
I just don’t understand the need to take the human mind, in all its glory and potential, and reduce it to a number based on some stupid test that people made up. It makes me sad that some people want to view human intellectual promise (and even accomplishment) that way. We may suck as a species, but we are also the species of Michelangelo and Newton and Shakespeare and the rest (sorry to name only western men here, I don’t know intellectual history very well, and these are the names that came to mind). Maybe we should ignore that because who knows how they would have done on an IQ test.
It’s strange to me that people who obsess about “racial” differences in IQ are the same people who think we should ignore GDP projections, the holes in Paul Ryan’s budget plans, atmospheric temperature readings etc. because only an un-Burkean fool thinks he can figure out the truth from “data”.
David in NY
Agree. The really smart people I know think IQ tests are stupid. Which also tells you something about Sullivan.
Veritas
AGAIN, folks, this all comes down to Teh Buttsex, as usual with Sullivan.
RealityCheck
slag
You don’t have to. We already know the reason.
It’s because IQ is not acceptable word play in Scrabble. And yet you get those same damned letters every. single. time.
I feel your pain, man.
dmsilev
(pounds head against nearby wall). Heisenberg was indisputably brilliant. He was also a theoretician with no background in either building apparatus or organizing other people into doing such. _Copenhagen_ was a wonderful play, but it is hardly the last word on the subject.
RalfW
There is just no way for a test designed by even well-intentioned people can accurately discern something as complex as intelligence.
Intelligence is something that, to my mind, anyway, occurs on multiple axes, and formal IQ tests only examine a few of them.
Gex
The need to do this tells us a little about the psyche of these guys. There’s a piece of them that is scared that all their privilege is just randomly thrust upon them and not at all earned via their greatness. Rather than accept a demotion to “merely human” they seek out ways to prove they are superior.
mapaghimagsik
People who are good at them need something to brag about? I knew a guy who *constantly* bragged about is IQ and wanted to compare IQ with everyone. He was also the most shiftless bum ever and couldn’t hold a job to save his life. And when I mean shiftless bum, I mean, lived high on the hog off his folk’s inheritance and when that began to run out let his wife supported him. Physically capable, and sure smart, but completely unable and unwilling to work for a living, and felt it was his due. Maybe he was smart, but he sure wasn’t much of a human being.
efroh
These words should be carved in granite and dropped on Sullivan’s doorstep.
KG
@RalfW: so, what you’re saying is, there’s like 11 dimensions to intelligence?
But yeah, you’re right. Intelligence is a complicated thing and reducing it to a number is just stupid. They say Einstein couldn’t tie his shoes; and my guess is that Dickens probably couldn’t solve for X, nor could Van Gogh tell a story without a canvas.
Chris
Tokoloko troll bait to end all troll bait. *braces self…
cathyx
I once worked on an estate with a woman who was very intelligent, went to Swarthmore College, graduating with a straight A average, and probably had a very high IQ. But one thing she could never do was back up a tractor that was towing a cart. No matter how many times she tried, no matter how much she could intellectualize it, she just couldn’t do it. And I, having rather average intelligence, went to Ohio University graduating with a B average, had no trouble with it.
Omnes Omnibus
@cathyx: I can back up a 1984 VW Rabbit with a U-Haul trailer. Does that count?
El Cruzado
There’s Good Science and Bad Science.
According to far too many people, Good Science is whatever science agrees with their preconceived notions and/or suggests a course of action in their benefit.
Bad science would, of course, be the opposite.
Cat Lady
The need to make IQ an issue comes from the same place as needing to make V!agra and needing to make disparaging comments about someone’s 1040. It’s about aging white men with inadequacy issues who read The Bell Curve and then can feel smug while they figure out how to stave off the threats from women, younger men, and the hordes of brown people about to crash their party, who are smarter, better looking and way more fun.
Gex
It’s funny, because what makes civilization works is that we have a diversity of skills and aptitudes that all contribute to society in different ways. But, acknowledging that we are all worthwhile in our society puts some question as to why some people are very highly compensated for doing their part while others nearly starve while doing their part. For conservatives, and libertarians, that’s a road they don’t want to go down.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: I can back up a dually pulling a 4 horse slant or a 6 horse straight load. I guess I’m much smarter than you are. Cooler too, given my LinkedIn network.
A high IQ means that the bearer is very good at taking IQ tests. Perhaps also good at standardized tests, but not necessarily. Likely to be a high achiever academically, but not necessarily. Guaranteed, however, to be very good at taking IQ tests.
Cat Lady
The need to make IQ an issue comes from the same place as the need to make V!a*ra and the need to make disparaging comments about someone’s 1040. It’s about aging white men with inadequacy issues who read The Bell Curve and then can feel smug while they figure out how to stave off the threats from women, younger men, and the hordes of brown people about to crash their party, who are smarter, better looking and way more fun.
FYWP for moderating me because of a d!ck p!ll.
David in NY
Wonder how Andrew would respond to this analogy?
joel hanes
Still can’t fathom why people read Sullivan.
The conversations he provokes are characterized by much smoke but little heat and less light.
cthulhu
I think it always has to be remembered that Binet’s original goal was purely to assess students for specific deficits and then to apply specific remediation. He never seriously considered the upper end of the scale as useful or even meaningful. He was also quite worried that his tests might be used to exclude children from schooling and tried to make sure the tests were too improve education and not a barrier to same.
Of course Terman and colleagues at Stanford, with tons of money from the Army, etc., took it in a different, more sinister direction.
Anyway, as a psychometrician, I don’t find much use for general IQ. Then again, it’s not the only widely misused scale out there.
4jkb4ia
I have done very well on every one of that type of test I have been given, except for the blocks, at which I utterly failed. But you guys know the limits of what I can do.
There was a book that came out years ago about the original Terman kids who were identified as the highest-IQ (top 1% in intelligence). The author judged that the person who had done the most significant thing for society in that group was the one who helped create “I Love Lucy”. In that case IQ meant the ability simply to blend into what society expected of them.
IQ certainly does not measure creativity and it does not measure taking the effort and commitment to think and to be good at tasks/professions that require thinking.
Raven
I’m a high school dropout with a GED that I earned in Korea (2 months before my class graduated in 1967). My research interest and dissertation topic was adult literacy and the GED. Steven Cameron and James Heckman, of Bell Curve fame, did a study called “The Non-Equivalence of High School Equivalency Tests”. In a draft version he said “you can’t make a silk-purse out of a sow’s ear” in reference to GED grads. By comparing the earnings of a cohort of urban AA males who were traditional grads, ged’s and dropouts, they found the earnings of the ged’s were closer to the dropouts than the grads. When I spoke with econ prof’s they warned me not to challenge these dudes on methodological grounds so I didn’t. I did a qual study of 8 GED grads to try to get at why they quit, why they went back and what the experience of pursuing the credential meant to them. It was a very rewarding experience and learning from them was truly enlightening.
People bust their asses to try to better themselves through education even when evidence suggests education may not be enough. Cooking them down to a bunch of numbers does everyone a disservice.
Donut
@slag:
No but “QI” is a perfectly acceptable Scrabble word, so who cares? :)
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): My experience is that having a high IQ means that one is generally good at taking standardized tests. This can lead to high academic achievement, but does not necessarily do so. Other roads can also lead to high academic achievement. I have never tried to back up a dually pulling a 4 horse slant or a 6 horse straight load. The Rabbit/U-haul thing is as far as I have gone. The coolness thing, I can’t argue. I did have a beer with Paul Westerburg once, if that helps.
slag
@RalfW:
I’ve tried (and failed) to banish the terms “smart” and “stupid” from my vocabulary. When I stop to think about it, it’s obvious how meaningless those words are. And why use meaningless words?
But those fundamentally flawed concepts appear to be deeply ingrained, so I’ve settled on a compromise in which I consciously have to define them for myself in every situation I use them. It’s just mere coincidence that Republicans are statistically more inclined than non-Republicans to find themselves in my “stupid” category. Mere coincidence.
Raven
@Omnes Omnibus: Try backing a 105mm Howitzer in an M35A1 multifuel when you can’t see anything!
Warren Terra
I have vague memories of taking the Stanford-Binet test as a young teenager. What I can remember was mostly short-term memory tests, and some spatial manipulations. Both were interesting tests, and each was surely quantifiable (with all the obvious caveats about venue, test administration, nerves, etcetera). But I’m not sure how either, or both, could be reliably interpreted to assess “intelligence”. I’m quite certain I scored very well on the tests, and I like to think I’m no dummy – but I’ve met many people who are absolutely brilliant in various and even in very conventional ways who I’m certain would have their scores torpedoed by deficits of short-term memory or spatial reasoning.
Mind you, none of this justifies the saccharine and extremely patronizing pronouncements of the “multiple intelligences” hucksters I’ve heard on the radio.
Anonymous37
If you want to have a bitter laugh, Google “Richard Feynman IQ”. The summary, for those who want to save themselves some time, is that his measured IQ was 125. A remarkably low number for a Physics Nobel Laureate; something like 5% of the population have higher IQs than this.
So instead of this data point weakening the belief that IQ is an accurate measure of innate intelligence, you’ll read a lot of internet commenters tie themselves in knots to argue away his IQ. Have fun, I mean, “fun”.
noabsolutes
To help you the argument Sully &Co want to make has no way to recognize that we’re the species of Wangari Maathai, Amy Jacques Garvey, Shaka Zulu, Nzinga of Ndongo, and Sundiata Keïta, as well. And Jesus, right? They might not have taken IQ tests but I wouldn’t want to get into a debate with any of them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven: That is what I had sergeants for. I had them tell other people to do that. My driver was very good with the HMMW-V though.
/officer scum
Edited for increased obnoxiousness
Raven
@Omnes Omnibus: :)
Villago Delenda Est
There are some people who are savants, who are really clueless in some areas, but absolutely sharp as tacks in others. Any number of US Senators obviously have no clues about a great many things, but they’re very good at getting elected, and getting re-elected, for example.
“Intelligence” is such an elusive thing that really is difficult to quantify, which drives the literal-minded (particularly the spreadsheet dependent types) absolutely bonkers. I’ve held jobs in which my role was essential, but not very easily quantified in such way to allow the literal-minded much “proof” that I was valuable…yet when I wasn’t around, things didn’t seem to function as well.
Jared Diamond points this out in Guns, Germs, and Steel that “intelligence” is all a relative thing, and inherently difficult to boil down reliably across contextual barriers. IQ tests are great at determining how good you are at taking IQ tests. Otherwise, not so reliable.
BruinKid
I just found it funny you brought up Jerry Rice, since I’m living just down the hall from his son, who’s a backup wide receiver on our football team here at UCLA. 8-)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: Indeed I think the Paul Westerburg beer helps; he’s certainly much more interesting looking than Adrian Belew. Of course, the coolest person I ever spent any time with is long gone, and I was but a wee tot. Not to mention that the nursery school staff thought I was perhaps slightly misguided when I wailed “He was a friend of ours – he was in our kitchen” during the funeral. Why anyone would let 3-5 year olds watch a televised funeral is in fact a wholly different question.
Raven
@BruinKid: Heard Puff diddy’s son just signed.
tavella
I think the clearest demonstration of how dumb-ass the “racial” distinction is the first chart here:
http://z-letter.com/2010/02/22/how-we-got-where-we-are/
In terms of genetic diversity, there are 14 “races” in Africa. And the rest of the world is a not very genetically diverse branching of just one of them.
There are places on the continent where groups 20 miles apart are more genetically distant from one another than a Swede from an Australian aborigine.
slag
@Donut: True. I’ve used it myself when I’ve absolutely had no other choice. And, to tell the sad truth, I’ve never actually been tempted to use IQ in Scrabble. More often than not, if the word is composed of fewer than 8 letters, I’m not interested. So, anyone who cares a lot about scoring points will easily kick my ass at Scrabble. I’m in it for the lexophilia.
PhoenixRising
@Omnes Omnibus:
Backing a trailer is easier in proportion to how far away the third axle is from the second, as well as how far apart the first two are. IOW, you can do the much harder thing, anyone can back a dually with a 30 foot trailer. (sorry…)
Sully is far too intelligent to think that IQ is a proxy for anything meaningful about a group. The data show that IQ tests are a fine proxy for demographic differences between populations.
Since we have a less loaded way to get those data points–like asking the test taker–IQ tests are a dumb way to measure the race, income, educational attainment and fluency of parents.
JGabriel
@David in NY:
I don’t think they’re stupid, per se, but I think their utility, predictive power, and meaning are way overrated. Basically, I think IQ tests can be a useful tool, among others, for identifying students with gifts or disabilities who can benefit from further or specialized attention.
Beyond that, I don’t think they tell us very much that is useful.
.
Skip Schloss
In my previous incarnation as a Clinical Psychologist, I administered a lot of IQ tests, mostly the Wechsler, which back then was the standard test (and some variation of the Wechsler might still be, for all I know.)
In short summary, a final IQ score depends a lot on how the test is administered. Rapport between the giver and the taker of the test does have an effect on the final score as does the skill and, frankly, the bias of the test giver.
Which relates to WHY the test is being given. IQ tests aren’t given just at random, they’re administered in a context. For example, the first IQ test I was given was by the Army, when I was 16. The Army was trying to find out if I was smart enough to receive financial aid to go to college. (I was the child of an Army officer, they had their eye on me.) Once it became obvious I wasn’t a complete dolt, they kicked in the points and the result was a completely unrealistic score. Their goal was to churn out Officer Candidates.
Anyway, one of the first things you learn in psychometrics is that, as @hip hop said above, all IQ tests test is the ability to do well on the test. The IQ test result isn’t predictive of much of anything except with really low results. IQ’s under, say…60…do have fairly good predictive value. That result predicts “special needs”.
So the whole “IQ argument” is one any Psych student has been through many a time, and if Sullivan had taken Psychometrics 301 he wouldn’t have written that column.
Raven
@Skip Schloss: Are you familiar with Project 100,000?
http://www.aavw.org/protest/homepage_draft_100000.html
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@PhoenixRising: I knew someone was gonna point that out, because that’s the kind of specialized knowledge that lets you know the impressive sounding feat really isn’t. I kinda figured Omnes would, if he had enough commas.
I have always assumed that much of the “skill,” regardless of axle spacing, is a function of exposure to the task. I started young, with hay wagons behind tractors.
Spencer
The same situation came up in Neal Stephenson’s masterpiece Cryptonomicon. (mild spoiler alert) The main cryptographer gets an IQ test from the navy, and the first question is something like a boat is moving downriver at 10mph and a second boat 100 miles away is moving 25mph, and the current is flowing at 5mph, when will the boats meet.” and instead of doing the simple math, he invents new equations to model the situation more accurately, accounting for drag, etc, and uses all his time on the first question, fails his IQ test and gets assigned to play xylophone in the navy band.
John Cole
Does anyone here even know what their IQ is? I know I was given one as a kid, but for the life of me I have no idea what the score was. Nor why I would care.
David in NY
@JGabriel: I think the point made above,that Binet intended his test to sort for those who would not perform, not to determine the top of the scale, covers this. But even so, as another commenter noted, by itself it hardly tells you anything.
I think my son’s Harvard and MIT math and science friends would say that, in general, standardized tests are stupid.
Lojasmo
@slag:
However QI is a perfectly acceptable scrabble word.
Raven
@John Cole: Your asvab should be on your 214.
David in NY
@John Cole: I think I know mine, which was the basis on which I skipped fourth grade, but it would be deceptive to consider it, even if it measured something — I think I was much farther ahead of my cohort in taking such tests then than I am now.
ETA: Or really what I mean is, high IQ or not, the life outcomes, the success, of people has far less correlation to IQ than one might think. That’s my view.
bin Lurkin'
The Rabbit with the U-Haul would be harder to back up straight than the dually with either horse trailer.
Short trailers are harder to back up than long ones and bumper hitches are harder to back up than fifth wheel ones. I have a relative that grew up driving a garden tractor with a little trailer behind it and at sixteen he could back up a big RV trailer better than any adult I’ve ever met.
ETA: I see the point was already made while I was posting…
Lojasmo
Shit! Beaten by the pastry.
My IQ is pretty high, but I take it with a salt lick, because I am an absolute moron. Also, too.
Josie
Any mom with more than one child can testify that there are different kinds of intelligences. I have one who can take tests like a whiz kid and memorize everything that is put in front of him, one who can solve problems and build machines to do whatever he wants them to, and one who can play and write music that would make you cry. Every one of them has a high IQ in his area, and it has nothing to do with race or gender or any other divisive label.
Samara Morgan
wallah, so poor psychometric instruments are a reason to not study intelligence?
good thing these guys didnt give up when they had no measurement tools.
a lot of us are interested in intelligence, because of Strong AI.
you think we should just wave our hands and say thats enough?
again, my question.
do you think scientific research should be controlled and/or moderated?
and think of this before you answer.
Bmaccnm
@cathyx: Undergrad at University of Maine, graduate school at Oregon Health Sciences University, A average at both, and I can’t back up a trailer, either. I can draw it out, but I can’t do it. There’s a particular set of spatial understandings that I don’t have. I speak three languages and travel well. There are different subsets of intelligence.
Anonymous37
John Cole @ 44: Does anyone here even know what their IQ is? I know I was given one as a kid, but for the life of me I have no idea what the score was. Nor why I would care.
I absolutely do — I became obsessed with figuring out why I topped out at a master’s instead of the doctorate I was aiming for, so I took a bunch of them. Some of them multiple times.
And I got the answer designed to drive me completely crazy. I got a score which was just on the cusp of really, really smart, but not a genius. There it was! There was the reason why my cohorts in the physics department found the problems in the qualifying examinations so much easier than I did! There was the reason why I couldn’t bring myself to do the research: I was being “lazy” to prevent myself from seeing that I was not smart enough!
There’s a lesson here: some not-insignificant fraction of blog commenters obsessed with IQs can tell similar stories, if they are being honest. Now, the bit about the inverse correlation between penis size and IQ — thinking about Rushton’s (and others’) obsession with that can lead to all sorts of unpleasant mental images. So don’t do that.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Cole: I happen to know mine, but I also remember my SAT scores, my phone numbers from everyplace I have lived, and the combination to my bike lock from when I was a kid.
adc
Totally agree. Great post.
slag
@John Cole: No idea.
@David in NY:
I think this is true. Pretty much anyone who scores well on standardized tests knows what garbage they are. I strongly suspect that they play a much larger role in the minds of those who don’t do as well on them.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I have never driven a tractor.
Dr. Squid
Heisenberg may have been smarter.
slag
@Lojasmo:
Not your fault. It was my lameass joke.
cthulhu
@John Cole: Well, even if you remembered your tested score, for child IQ it is relative to your age. Adult IQ is generally more reliable (i.e., in the statistical definition of reliable). One can “learn” some of the elements of the tests, however, so there is a limit to how much repeated testing should be done in an individual.
cathyx
@Omnes Omnibus: I learned how to drive a standard transmission car by first learning how to drive a tractor. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to drive a car compared to a tractor.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan:
Straw man. No one is arguing that.
@cathyx: Motorcycle to standard transmission for me.
Janet
@John Cole: I know mine and I know my son’s. I think IQ tests are probably helpful when looked at as part of a larger set of factors. On its own it is probably not predictive. On the other hand, most people who trash the IQ test don’t have any idea what it is or what their score is or don’t think their score is high enough and therefore hate the test.
cathyx
@John Cole: This might be a score better left unknown. It could be either very disappointing or give you a big ego.
FlipYrWhig
I’ve always been able to rock standardized tests. It has made my mother very proud over the years.
Conversely, economics and philosophy make no sense to me. And I can _never_ remember which switch goes to which light.
WaterGirl
@John Cole: I know what mine is from my test as a kid.
Skip Schloss
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned Mensa yet.
Jennifer
@Lojasmo: As I’m fond of saying, there’s way too much stupid in the world for stupid people to be responsible for all of it.
I don’t agree with all of you who say “the test only shows who’s good at taking it.” The test measures things like pattern recognition, mental calculation skills, some spatial recognition – very specific logical tasks. People who score high on an IQ test are likely to be proficient at math or things that rely on pattern recognition and stuff requiring dexterity with spatial relationships. Not just at “taking the test.” Of course, as others correctly note there are umpteenth different things it doesn’t measure at all: artistic ability, language skills, capacity for creative thought – which renders it useless for determining who’s “smarter”. That’s a question that can’t be answered and it’s a fool’s errand to try, which is why Sullivan is so entranced with it.
Spike
@cathyx: How hard is it to intellectualize “Put your hand on the bottom of the steering wheel instead of the top”? My grandfather never even went to high school and he taught me that trick.
David in NY
@Samara Morgan: If I understand you, I think you are attacking a straw person. Nobody is complaining about investigating how intelligence, in the Turing sense, works or can be achieved. That is a perfectly sensible and important endeavor.
But that endeavor is not at all what Sullivan is interested in. He’s interested only in ranking people by IQ, and, really not even people, but whole groups of people, particularly those of different “races,” whatever that means. He’s not interested in analyzing what intelligence is, or how it works, because he thinks he know — it’s success on an IQ test.
Oddly, people in the AI business do not give their computers IQ tests. I wonder why?
slag
@cathyx:
I actually think this may be true for everybody. For all the reasons to which DougJ alludes and more.
Or, in the immortal words of Batman Begins…
patrick II
@Anonymous37:
I had read that about Feynman. I have also read that a fellow professor walked in Feynman’s office only to see him laying on his belly on his desk, arms outstretched and eyes closed. It turns out he was imagining being a subatomic particle and seeing how it would move.
There is not an IQ test in the world that could measure that ability.
Omnes Omnibus
@Skip Schloss: An analogy: My grandfather never joined the VFW because they were a bunch of rightwing gasbags. He always said that, to the extent that it mattered at all, the important thing was eligibility to join.
David in NY
@cthulhu:
So, if you’re looking for an innate quality, “intelligence,” an IQ test is not measuring it, right?
DougJ
@BruinKid:
Really? I love Jerry Rice, my all-time favorite football player.
chopper
@John Cole:
i was given a test recently. WAIS iirc. the number is generally worthless as an indicator of anything tho outside of the fact that i’m a really good test taker.
David in NY
@Omnes Omnibus:
My grandma thought the same of the DAR. Maybe this stuff is inheritable.
Omnes Omnibus
@DougJ: James Lofton was better. So was Don Hutson.
Skip Schloss
And if I may:
I spend afternoons working with one of the smartest humans I’ve ever met.
He would not do particularly well on an IQ test, he doesn’t read or write all that well, yet he is faced, daily, with a different kind of IQ test.
Butch builds handmade custom cars.
Today, we were getting ready to send a car to the upholstery shop for carpet. The car’s engine had been started a couple times but the heater, inside the passenger compartment, had never been tested.
Butch: “We need to fire the engine, circulate coolant through the heater, and test it for leaks before the carpet goes in. I don’t want it leaking on the new carpet.”
Me: “But Butch, the heater is brand new.”
Butch: “Did you ever hear the words “factory defect” before? We test, we do not trust.”
Real World smart.
David in NY
@Skip Schloss:
Okay. Mensa schmensa!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: Lofton was arguably better. But Jerry Rice, well, that was kinda magic. Speaking of Jerry Rice, anyone her old enough to know who Greg Cook is/was? If you know how that spun off, you probably do.
normal liberal
@Omnes Omnibus: I also remember my SAT, LSAT, GRE and various banks of IQ and “achievement” tests, but I had overexposure to thank. For seven years I attended laboratory schools at the local state university, and we got tested six ways from Sunday. The school was pretty careless about safeguarding results, so our standard adolescent traumas were overlaid with test performance anxiety.
We eventually all figured out that the tests were bunk.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: oh yes DougJ is arguing that.
i just proved it to you on the other thread.
slag
@Jennifer:
You’re missing the converse here. What if you score low on an IQ test? Does that mean you are not likely to be proficient at math or things…”?
I know many people who are brilliant at math, computers, spatial relationships, the works…If you asked them their IQ scores, they likely wouldn’t be able to tell you. And yet, they still managed to do what they liked best. Even without the burden of knowing what they were predictively good at.
vernon
Right on, Doug J. I agree with every word of this post. This is the point I was hoping someone would make.
Ruckus
Scientologists like data. Lots of “data” They use it to back up their wacky beliefs. They hope you don’t notice that the “data” has no truth in of itself but is just mostly random noise stuffed in a box. If you do notice that’s when they start yelling. Louder and louder.
jl
@Jennifer:
“I don’t agree with all of you who say “the test only shows who’s good at taking it.” The test measures things like pattern recognition, mental calculation skills, some spatial recognition – very specific logical tasks”
I do not agree with the idea that IQ tests only measure ability to take standardized tests either, but I think you miss an important point. You say
“The test measures things like pattern recognition, mental calculation skills, some spatial recognition very specific logical tasks”
Note: I added the emphasis.
They do not measure these skills directly. One, they measure a specific cultural formulation of the underlying logical tasks. Different formulations with the same logical content are harder or easier for people from different groups to solve, on average, depending on the formulations they are familiar with. The formulation may make no difference to the people who score in the top 1 percent, but that is irrelevant, since the whole debate is about the significance of average scores in different groups of people.
Two, the test is always taken in some cultural context, and there is recent evidence that stereotype effects concerning different groups have a big difference in how they perform.
So, I do think that IQ, and other aptitude tests are more than statistical constructs, but I think the understanding about what these tests measure is currently extremely crude. And I might be wrong, they might be artifacts, at least in terms of the significance of average score for a group.
Evolving Deep Southerner (tense changed for accuracy)
@John Cole: I’m told I scored really high back in first grade. That’s the last time I was tested as far as I know. I’ve killed a hell of a lot of brain cells and otherwise abused my mind mercilessly since then.
eemom
I can’t drive a stick shift. Tried once, never again.
Now we need a new car and the husband wants to get a Fiat 500 or a Ford Fiesta and he insists it has to be a stick shift. I insist it has to be an automatic and he says it’s ridiculous to get that kind of car in an automatic, and that he WILL teach me to drive a stick shift.
Then he says that people a lot less smart than I am know how to drive stick shifts, and walks off like he thinks he’s won the argument. But he hasn’t.
David in NY
I remember when I was a kid a half-century ago, they told us that, say, studying for the SAT’s was useless, they were measuring innate ability. Now, that was wonderful for keeping your stress levels low, but really didn’t improve your chances of getting into a good college. Turned out that actually prepping for the test did improve those chances, as the superior performance of those who took Mr. Kaplan’s course soon showed. Kaplan, whatever his IQ or SAT scores, turned out to be vastly more successful than almost all of his students.
LongHairedWeirdo
Well… psychometry – measuring people’s brains – is more advanced than most people think. IQ scores do have a lot of good correlations to them. They’re not useless, or stupid.
(That’s not to say that a lot of people shouldn’t call them stupid, in the sense of “I don’t care what my (expletive deleted) IQ is”.)
But it seems pretty obvious to me that, while the test correlate to a lot of things that we think of as intelligence based, it’s still a test intended to correlate to intelligence, *not* a measure of intelligence.
It strikes me as unbelievably arrogant to assume that the measure has gotten so good, so perfect, that an expected value of a lower score in one population says something important about the population, especially when the difference is small.
David Fud
There is an academic area that focuses a fair amount of effort and energy on applied IQ research. Industrial/Organizational psychologists (those of Army Alpha fame (or infamy)) design personnel selection systems that companies implement.
In those contexts, IQ does have the highest validity of any predictor, especially in complex jobs. Recently, narrower intelligences have been researched as predictors of performance. The early evidence suggests that g is not as predictive as a combination of more narrow intelligences that are matched with the job requirements.
Hunter and Schmidt churned out a massive number of articles and pioneered new statistical techniques to show the relationship between IQ and job performance. Of course, these are basically correlational studies, but given the nature of field studies on organizational contexts, it is often difficult to do much better in terms of study design.
IQ is reasonably widely used in organizations and they often have to do validity studies to ensure that it predicts performance in that particular job. The problem with IQ is that it does discriminate against minorities (here’s where the arguments get started), and if you don’t have a validation of your particular job, it leaves the company open to being sued (lack of validation creates a prima facie case since Griggs v. Duke Power (1971) was decided).
Anyhow, disparate impact lawsuits can either 1) be avoided by designing an overall selection test that doesn’t proportionally hire too many more non-protected classes than protected classes, or 2) be defended by showing the disparate impact is related to job performance or business necessity (e.g., reducing risk in the workplace), or because a person isn’t appropriate for a job (think Hooters or a Catholic institution hiring Catholics; see BFOQ for additional explanation).
And, no, I don’t know my IQ either.
Villago Delenda Est
@Skip Schloss:
Butch is obviously a craftsman, who takes great pride in his work.
We need more like him. Fewer banksters and other gambling addicts, and more craftsmen.
Mnemosyne
I was given an IQ test recently, because they were testing for something else and needed a baseline. And, sure enough, I scored well above average on three of the four parts (especially the verbal ones), but when it came to the memory portions, I was average at best. Which was one of the things that confirmed that, yes, I’ve got ADHD (which many researchers now think is more of a working memory/executive memory problem than a problem with attention per se).
So, yes, IQ tests are helpful in conjunction with other tests, but pulling that one number out of everything else doesn’t tell you jack shit.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: I will let him answer that for himself if he is dumb enough to get drawn into it. Saying, however, that something is not of interest to one or that one dislikes a subject is different than try to prevent it from being studied. I mean, Jesus Christ in high heels and a push-up bra, my lack of interest in studying particle physics should have no effect on whether or not the field is pursued by someone else.
jeff
Andrew just posted yet again. I’m done. He’s got a hang up on skin color and intelligence, which is 100% a bullshit topic with a history of dangerous bullshit, none of it legitimate.
He’s had ample help in figuring out why he’s not even wrong, and at this point, he should just be left to himself.
I might have some patience with research on the topic from a non-ideologically-avowed-racialist in the future, but I’m done with Sully, who seems permanently resilient to any influence from reality.
WHITNEY
@slag: yes. but qi works…er uh…back to words with friends for me.
David Fud
Please de-moderate my way-too-long way-too-documented comment that I should have not bothered to write.
Ruckus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I can back a 50ft 3 axle with a 27ft tractor between 2 semis with 3ft on each side. It was better after turning off the CB so the laughter didn’t bother me, but still.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: My mother did not drive at all until she was in her 30s despite encouragement from my father; one day while walking home from the store while carrying groceries, she saw one of the slowest kids from her first year of teaching 3d grade drive by her. That evening, when my father came home from work, driving lessons began. She quickly became and remains a very good, if less than daring, driver.
Mnemosyne
@Samara Morgan:
Do you think scientific research should be subjected to further testing, or should we always accept the first result and assume that it’s right? Because that’s what you’re advocating — never examining results or re-testing an experiment, just going with whatever showed up the first time.
Scientific research is always controlled and/or moderated — that’s what peer review and repeatability mean. What you’re advocating isn’t science at all since you don’t think we should even try to get repeatable results.
Villago Delenda Est
@David Fud:
Hmmm…you probably used the boner-pill string in there someplace, or mentioned the proper Latin name for the most prominent (ahem) male reproductive organ.
Or, WP is being a bitch.
Take your pick.
David Fud
@Villago Delenda Est: WP is being a bitch… All references to industrial psych in wikipedia. Nothing even faintly pen!sish.
FYWP!
Villago Delenda Est
It’s the lazy managerial way of doing EVERYTHING. Reduce it to numbers. Simple. Easy. Uncomplicated. And, remarkably, it works very, very well in convincing similar lazy managerial types of your points. Graphs are great for this.
Gex
@Omnes Omnibus: And what if Cris Carter had played for the salary cap cheating, two consecutive hall of fame QBs, 49ers versus the Sean Salisburys etc. that he played with in Minny?
Let’s face it – Jerry played for a team that was at the top for more years than a dynasty usually lasts (cap cheating) and got unusually lucky in QBs (Montana, Young). I always keep that in mind when people want to talk about how much better Jerry is than other WRs.
Mnemosyne
@David Fud:
You can only post three links per comment, and if you hit the “reply” button, that counts as a link. So I’m guessing that may be the problem.
David Fud
@Mnemosyne: Good to know. That is my violation. Hmmmm. What to do.
schrodinger's cat
@eemom: I learned to drive on a stick shift it is fun, you should try it.
SiubhanDuinne
@John Cole:
Well, I know my score from tests taken 45-50 years ago. It’s a respectably high score, and has diddley-shit to do with the way I sometimes function in real life.
Shorter: I’m pretty smart on paper but am dumb beyond belief in my everyday decisions.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ve watched an officer try to back (commands, not actual steering) a 450ft destroyer. Mud is so unforgiving. Of course this person did not seem all that smart in any of his other endeavors.
David Fud
There is an academic area that focuses a fair amount of effort and energy on applied IQ research. Industrial/Organizational psychologists (those of Army Alpha fame (or infamy)) design personnel selection systems that companies implement.
In those contexts, IQ does have the highest validity of any predictor, especially in complex jobs. Recently, narrower intelligences have been researched as predictors of performance. The early evidence suggests that g is not as predictive as a combination of more narrow intelligences that are matched with the job requirements.
Hunter and Schmidt churned out a massive number of articles and pioneered new statistical techniques to show the relationship between IQ and job performance. Of course, these are basically correlational studies, but given the nature of field studies on organizational contexts, it is often difficult to do much better in terms of study design.
IQ is reasonably widely used in organizations and they often have to do validity studies to ensure that it predicts performance in that particular job. The problem with IQ is that it does discriminate against minorities (here’s where the arguments get started), and if you don’t have a validation of your particular job, it leaves the company open to being sued (lack of validation creates a prima facie case since Griggs v. Duke Power (1971) was decided).
(to be continued…)
David Fud
Anyhow, disparate impact lawsuits can either 1) be avoided by designing an overall selection test that doesn’t proportionally hire too many more non-protected classes than protected classes, or 2) be defended by showing the disparate impact is related to job performance or business necessity (e.g., reducing risk in the workplace), or because a person isn’t appropriate for a job (think Hooters or a Catholic institution hiring Catholics; see BFOQ for additional explanation).
And, no, I don’t know my IQ either.
WHITNEY
@Donut: dammit beat me to the punch.
brendancalling
i’m just so glad I don’t read many blogs anymore. I miss out on the incredibly stressful and agitating freakouts.
I mean, holy shit, ANDREW SULLIVAN WROTE SOMETHING DICKISH????
A few months ago I might be pounding the keyboard in outrage. Now I’m like “Dude, Toni Daytona’s gonna quit her job at the fire station if they don’t give Brad DeGroot his job back. And like, they’re in love, OK?”
And that is NOT a lie or hyperbole.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: My sister struggles with ADHD, so I am intrigued by your mention of’ working memory/executive memory problem than a problem with attention per se.
I googled and mostly just found wikipedia and a bunch of scholarly articles i didn’t want to wade through. But if you have ready access to a link to more information about that, I would gladly check it out.
Ruckus
@Jennifer:
…which renders it useless for determining who’s “smarter”. That’s a question that can’t be answered and it’s a fool’s errand to try, which is why Sullivan is so entranced with it.
10 points, Gets right to the heart of the matter.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gex: Carter still would not be as good as Lofton or Hutson. So there.
jeff
@David Fud:
I hope yours is better than mine, which probably isn’t worthy of so much moderation, since it basically just said I’m done with Sully. (Sully posted yet again, and I realized I’m done giving him attention.)
BD of MN
@Ruckus:
as a truck driver, I LOL’d…
Several people have commented that backing up something longer is easier, but there’s a diminishing return on that, I drive a short day cab and a 48′ flatbed with sliding tandems and it’s much easier to do everything with the tandems forward than all the way in the back…
Omnes Omnibus
@BD of MN: I am just jealous that the former Bella Q can drive a tractor.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
I thought Power Point replaced graphs.
thm
If we’re going to ditch IQ, where does that leave us when discussing, say, the impact of early childhood exposure to lead on brain development? If we came at that with the presumption that IQ doesn’t matter and shouldn’t be measured, then we might not have much to pin on exposure to levels now recognized to be harmful.
handsmile
On personal IQ: Yes, I know it. It was a source of great joy, then later bewilderment, for my mother. Still don’t know how to play a musical instrument.
On backing things up: I once backed up an African elephant in its enclosure at the National Zoo in Washington. Its keeper was nearby just in case. I was not riding it.
On wide receivers: Art Monk.
On intelligence: Howard Gardner.
David in NY
@David Fud: “In those contexts, IQ does have the highest validity of any predictor, especially in complex jobs.”
Are “those contexts” any personnel decision, as you seem to suggest? Or are the “contexts” you speak of actually limited? And what do you mean by “predictor”?
I haven’t taken an IQ test for over 50 years, but from what I remember, I’d be stunned if it predicted much about abilities in many employment areas, and would be even more stunned if there weren’t more task-related tests with better predictabilty (if I understand that) for most occupations. But I’ve been wrong lots of times before.
cthulhu
@Samara Morgan:
Like pretty much all human endeavors, it basically is via limitation of resources. NIH, etc., has only so much cash to dole out and investigating racial differences in IQ just isn’t going to be very high on their list. And I don’t see the private sector jumping in to fill the gap. Maybe Sullivan needs to start a foundation to support this research. Oh wait, isn’t that Cato?
Gex
@Omnes Omnibus: I wasn’t saying otherwise. I’m not even disparaging Jerry, just noting how he had some unique factors contributing to his success during his career.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gex: You are not helping me to derail this thread into the Great Wide Receiver Fight of Ought-Twelve.
Ruckus
@BD of MN:
It was my first drive in the rig, end of a long day, fuel stop. Had to slide it in the only hole available. Didn’t take as long as I feared, but much longer than I liked. Fortunately I’ve learned to live with my failings.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Omnes Omnibus: But I’m only admitted in one state, even along with 3 federal trial and appellate bars within it. So you’re ahead of me in the admissions department! I should have waived into KY when a firm offered to pay for it.
Ruckus
@handsmile:
Wins the thread. In backing up.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): I’m also guessing I am taller than you. Law of averages and all that.
@Ruckus: Yeah, hard to argue that one.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
This whole disussion has been interesting, and not just fro the many reasons I’ve been spewing on this blog. A couple of days before this brawl started, I picked up another work on Emotional Intelligence, which is all the rage in some circles.
And I think there’s a point there. I have no doubt that what we’ll colloquially call “raw” intelligence, the spacial/math/quasi-memory stuff we tend to think of as “smarts”, has a quantifiable aspect for some jobs.
But for life itself? Even focusing on the complex nature of the modern mainstream corporate environment, raw smarts only gets you so far, excuses so much — and so much more in other parts of life. You have to also be able to succeed, and that takes some level of being able to grasp people, even if it’s just to browbeat and manipulate. I mean, how many scientific breakthroughs have been about knowing how and when to grab the credit, to get the media focus?
I think a lot of the brawl over IQ is people who think that’s unfair, that there should be a “pure” way to choose the sharpest people, the best ideas. And in a way, it’s true it’s unfair.
But their solutions are so ham-fisted, so soul-sucking, so uncreative that they would wreak the very aspects of the human race that makes us kind of awesome, on the way to getting rid of some of the awful. It’s like my fellow programmer friend who I debate because she doesn’t get that coding is really Art; and that if you read and talk to the best programmers, they treat it that way.
The kick-ass science workers, like Feynman, they too are artists, are creators, are people who overlay a vision of the world as it “is”, and then use maths as their paints and canvas. That’s a trick that takes, yes, some raw “smarts” — but adds in a factor that we’ve yet to really tie down, to really loop an full understanding around, yet — at least to me — seems as real a Quotient as anything around “Intelligence”.
Anyway.
cthulhu
@David in NY:
Well, true, “innate” is a bit tricky. A human infant raised in a particularly barbaric environment will not thrive mentally. As with basic dimensions like height. So to begin with, we know that “IQ genes” can’t will out over everything. The question is what are the environments that represent equal/fair starting points such that adult IQ becomes sortable on a purely “innate” basis.
One is left with figuring out if that sorting has any meaning, in any case.
maye
The Wechsler (sp?) IQ test is actually a test that measures 4 different components of cognitive functioning:
1. Perceptive reasoning
2. verbal comprehension
3. working memory
4. processing speed
Each section has it’s own score. For example, my learning disabled son has a processing speed of 88 (low) and a perceptive reasoning of 127 (superior). His verbal comprehension is also superior and his working memory is also low.
The testing is helpful because it explains why he can do Algebra but it takes him a week to write a five paragraph essay. He’s good at science (finite answers to finite questions) but terrible at any kind of literary analysis.
Also, for some reason beyond my understanding, he’s good at regular standardized tests (scantron, color in the bubble).
I, for one, am very grateful someone invented this testing because it helps guide my son toward his strengths and it explains his weaknesses.
Caz
I think it’s very telling that the only names that came to your mind were those three white, European men. The whole “sorry I couldn’t think of a smart black guy, but trust me, I’m not a closet racist” statement was a pathetic attempt to excuse your racist leanings when it comes to which people are the smartest.
A most ironic and hypocritical post, with a healthy splash of denial – good stuff!
RSA
@John Cole: I don’t think I’ve ever taken an IQ test. I’m reasonably smart and a highly educated person, as Sullivan would put it. But it’s not really important. In my world, it’s rare that I’m the smartest person in the room, unless it’s just me and the cat.
As some other commenters have mentioned, I think IQ tests are great if they can identify people who might need extra help in getting by in life. But otherwise a lot of non-academic writing on the topic seems to be trying to figure out how to keep people in line, where they “belong”.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@cthulhu:
I know this is an m/c question, and I have her blocked, so forgive this hijack:
Fuck. Yes.
Science deserves moderation, as much as any other human endeavor. Science is not fuckin’ pure, and although I’d fight over what kinds and nature of regulations scientific endeavors need, the basic idea that they need them? Yes, of course, what fool wouldn’t?
Let me just go ahead and hit the Godwin Button on this — unmoderated science leads to what happened in Nazi lands during WWII. Or the Tuskegee syphilis experiments on African-Americans — hell, it could have been my parents or grandparents who got it, from the timeframes involves!
Or me, by just a handful of years and a few miles of soil.
So please, keep spewing whatever you’re saying that clearly, from responses, makes no sense at best, and is bigoted and ugly at worse. Show that your actual concern for people is skin-deep, your burning desire to “represent” for the oppressed goes only until you can’t have any more fun, or lord your wisdom and knowledge over the assembled.
You are a small, small person, and I wish I could hate you, but honestly, I post this so others know how much you need to be set aside. For your words are but poison to the spirit of human enterprise, social advancement, and scientific inquiry.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Caz: And could you please have kinder words for toads> They are among my favorites (I know, odd choice). I think you know which comment I mean, in an earlier thread on this topic.
kthnxbai.
jprfrog
“The Mismeasure of Man” S. J. Gould, does a first-rate job of deconstructing the IQ business, including a history which includes fraudulent data (Karl Pearson) and no little racism.
Jnc
People who think IQs don’t mean anything are about as stooped as people who think it means everything.
Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill
@maye:
Exactly. As mentioned upthread, this was the point of the whole damned thing to begin with — the fact that it got hijacked by people with a long standard agenda around “proving who’s smartest” is an ugly sideshow of hubris and privilege.
There are problems with these tests, well-documented ones. But they can also do a wealth of good in shaping how to understand development, especially the arrested kind, and in making those folk’s lives a little better, a little more manageable in a complex and fast-paced world.
I hesitate to say much more, because I’m not anywhere near an expert on the latest methodologies and criticism (and I’ve already talked a LOT). I will say that my personal belief is that a moderate, focused approach to using these tests is a benefit to society.
In contrast, the debate you see raging, maye, is about people unleashing that focused approach in ways it was not designed for, nor do anyone but the already-empowered in our societies very much good.
4jkb4ia
This is a perfectly relevant quote/example from Karen Ho’s Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (I got this from the Crooked Timber OWS library thread. It looks as if it’s going to be really good, and I hope it is going to be the last Wall Street book for a while. I still haven’t read A Dance With Dragons yet.):
Ho makes the perfectly obvious point that I made myself in some Ian Welsh thread somewhere that Wall Street is the next logical step for these young people. The Wall Street recruiters, many of whom have attended the same school, tempt the students by telling them that this will be a Harvard/Princeton-like environment–they will have more than wealth, they will have great prestige and great responsibility and most of all, it will be understood that they are smart. Ho defines a culture of “smartness” as “continued aggressive striving to perpetuate elite status”. But then she has an informant from Morgan Stanley who went to Spelman, and had the experience of one of the principals at her firm–who actually cared about diversity–saying that he didn’t understand why they kept recruiting at historically black colleges because if the students there were really smart enough to be at Harvard or Princeton they showed poor judgment in not going there. And the principal had egg on his face because he didn’t know that she had gone to Spelman. This is just a reflection of the idea of intelligence being seen as shot through with race and status, not just the idea of IQ.
And Ho is an anthropologist. Think if you are a quant at one of these large investment banks and you do not expect your boss to really be able to understand what you did.
@John Cole: The actual IQ tests that I remember don’t have a number. But they showed that my right brain skills were behind the left brain ones, which will not exactly stun or amaze anyone here.
Samara Morgan
@Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill:
tyvm. tells me all i need to know.
;)
gwangung
@Samara Morgan: Which is very little, o dim one.
You don’t know how science actually works, do you, o dim one?
David Fud
@David in NY: In terms of context, new hires most specifically, but also promotion to a much smaller extent.
By predictor, I mean the use of tests, interviews, and various instruments to attempt to predict job performance. Then one asks, “What is job performance?” to which I answer: a lot of things, including supervisor ratings, objective performance, and many other things. Most often, though, just supervisor ratings.
Just to put it to rest: IQ (g) does predict job performance remarkably well across almost every job title and class, most often better than any other predictor (such as personality, physical capabilities, experience, and a number of other predictors). Other predictors help find the “right” employee, just not quite as well as IQ.
Chuck Derperton
@David in NY:
Yeah, I am still convinced they only said you can’t/shouldn’t study for the SAT to poor people.
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: Let’s put Woodrow’s implicit question to you: Were the Tuskegee experiments acceptable in your view?
DougJ
@thm:
It is perfectly valid to use it in many contexts, the same way that it is perfectly valid to use 40 yard times to scout NFL players. It’s not that it doesn’t have its place, it’s that Sullivan and others want to elevate it to something that it’s not.
Shawn in ShowMe
http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologicaltesting/a/int-history.htm
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: nope, and neither were Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Answer your question?
Loneoak
Somehow race researchers have never explained the leap between social categories and significant biological categories yet we continue to take their claims seriously. What reason do we have to believe that African Americans, Asians, and Whites sort into categories of beings that have a genes with significance for cognitive function? We have never identified any genes related to cognitive function, let alone determined if they are sorted by “race.” Yes, we can sort people genetically in manners that map onto our social categorizations, but we can only do that with functionally arbitrary markers or immunological genes that accumulate mutations quickly. But there is “brain gene” that whites have that AA’s don’t. And sorting people by IQ will never help discover those genes because you’re looking from the wrong direction.
MattMinus
Another DougJ homerun.
9/10
Jager
@Skip Schloss:
A friend’s Dad was a mechanic with an 8th grade education, he constantly amazed us all. My pal bought an old XKE (I doubt his old man had ever seen one) he rebuilt the engine and the driveline. Its still runs perfectly after 20 odd years. When the old guy moved into his retirement house, my pal went over to see him one Saturday and the his Dad had torn all the kitchen cabinets apart and was rebulding them. My friend said what the hell are you doing? His Dad said they were out of plumb and I can’t stand it anymore. My friend rode with his dying Dad in the ambulance to the hospice, where he died less than a week later, the old mechanic pulled down his oxygen mask, motioned his son near and said, “Tell the guy driving this thing, that it needs a new left rear wheel bearing!” We need more guys like that, in this world.
khead
@John Cole:
Yeah, I know it. Since I was a kid.
But I also believe in the value of EQ – so what the hell do I know?
Shawn in ShowMe
@DougJ:
Is there even one sub 4.3 guy at receiver who is in the Hall of Fame? Just wondering. As far as I know, Randy Moss will be the first one.
MagicPanda
You guys DO realize that when Sullivan posts something controversial about, say, race and IQ, he is essentially trolling the entire blogosphere for traffic, right?
Omnes Omnibus
@Samara Morgan: So you believe in limits to scientific inquiry. Now it is just an argument about where to appropriately place those limits.
DougJ
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Yeah, I think Moss will be the first. I bet there are plenty of sub-4.3 DBs in there though.
Omnes Omnibus
@DougJ: I am sure a large number of old school receivers weren’t sub-4.3 guys.
cyntax
@maye:
Good point. And that is exactly the kind of situation it was designed to help with.
What it wasn’t designed to do was explain differences between various racial and ethnic groups, the very definitions of which are fungible and not in any way static or discrete. Socio-economic factors do a very good job of explaining why some groups are more successful than others, but people like Sullivan have a vested interest in ignoring those factors–quelle surprise.
PurpleGirl
@John Cole: I don’t believe I was given an IQ when they were testing my speech problem at the Board of Education. I know that first standardized reading test I had was in the 6th grade (circa 12 yo). I must have shocked everyone, reading at 11th grade level because due to the stutter, they had placed me in the “slower but not stupid” group in elementary school. That 11th grade reading level meant they had to jump me up into the college-bound group. (I was 7 or 8 (haven’t worked out the ages precisely) when I was tracked in school, based on oral reading ability in the 3rd grade.)
Shawn in ShowMe
@Omnes Omnibus:
As far as sub 4.3 cornerbacks in the Hall, I can think of Deion Sanders, Darrell Green and Michael Haynes off the top of my head. There were quite a few sub 4.3 40 receivers over the last 25 years, they just haven’t been Hall of Fame caliber, apart from Moss. The next group of speedsters are at the Willie Gault, Ron Brown, Joey Galloway level.
phein
Confession: I tested at 177 as an eighth-grader, which helped me get into an exclusive private school, where I scored some really good drugs and wound up as an paratrooper in the Vietnam-era Army.
To score high on IQ tests, you need to be quick, to be able to make associations between different pieces of data quickly. I’m great at Trivial pursuit, and have never lost at Tri-Bond or Scrabble, but that alone doesn’t make me smart in any useful way. It just means that I can master topics that require association of complex data quickly, more easily than other kids in my class.
The downside? I can easily impress people that I know what they are talking about when I really don’t.
Bill Arnold
@Woodrow/asim Jarvis Hill:
I see it as a talent for teasing the obvious out of the inexplicable, before anyone else.
David Fud
@khead: Unfortunately, EQ is hype and always has been. To use the technical jargon, it doesn’t have construct validity. That means that EQ means whatever the hell someone who is using it wants it to mean. It is also (irony) correlated with IQ.
It has a theoretical foundation that is unsupported by the data, unfortunately, but that hasn’t stopped pop psych/business writers and way too many researchers from pursuing it because of Goleman’s pursuit of $$$.
dead existentialist
Well my IQ is 182.33.
Ooops. That’s my checking account balance.
My bad. What were we talking about?
PurpleGirl
@Anonymous37: There is a mathematician at NYU (at least when I also worked there as a mathematical typist) who won one of those MacArthur genius awards… the man COULD NOT SPELL asymptotic to save his life. And he worked with asymptotic expansions all the time. (He was modeling blood through the heart.)
Very good with mathematics, not so good with spelling.
jl
@cthulhu:
” Like pretty much all human endeavors, it basically is via limitation of resources ”
In the case of using average group IQ scores to determine whether one broad racial category is ‘smarter’ than another it is more than that.
The only data available, and that ever will be available both for practical and ethical reasons, is observational. The effects of genes, environmental and developmental, and social factors are hopelessly confounded in these observational data. The application of statistical techniques like regression analysis, factor analysis (no matter how many factors you want to extract, or how, and whatever fancy rotations you do), or analysis of variance, one way, two way, n way, or multivariate do no good, they cannot make up for the flaws in the available data. You can calculate parameter estimates all you want, but it is easy to present very plausible arguments why, given the flawed data, they will be misleading.
The arguments linked to in one of these IQ threads about using analogies between genetics and environment and height to think about intelligence miss the point. We have a lot of evidence for the causal links between genes, environment, child nutrition, growth and adult height, and we have plenty of data that can be used to support or not support those causal theories. That is exactly what we do not have for the use of average group IQ to measure relative smarts in different groups.
I think that discouraging approaches to addressing research questions that are fatally flawed is a reason to ‘control’ scientific research.
From my reading there is plenty of ongoing research on intelligence and other intellectual abilities that are very useful at advancing knowledge about environmental, gene, social and developmental applications. There is research on the different dimensions of intelligence and ability, and how it should be measured. I just finished reading some articles in decision analysis and recent research on the representation problem (as I have mentioned before, different formulations of the same damn problem get different results. How can you disentangle the represntation from the underlying pure smarts to solve the logical problem itself?) The problem seems to be with some people that, as Gawker says, there isn’t enough research that calculates parameter estimates that do not lead right way quick like a bunny, to the conclusion that black folk are stupid.
As a final analogy, workmen should be free to do their work as best they see fit, but if a carpenter keeps trying to unscrew a bolt with a hammer, then that carpenter should be ‘controlled’ if he makes no progress with the problem. There are plenty of other avenues for researching the genetic and environmental influences on smarts, it just does not always involve running lots of fancy statistical techniques on poor quality observational data using flawed study designs.
Lyrebird
@cthulhu: Binet was also trying to identify which schools were failing their students! (not the usual use of IQ today)
I have gotten over A. S.’ racist statements w.r.t. Cynthia McKinney, but keeping on with this oh-so-many-times debunked, noxious, kid-damaging garbage is really troubling in my book.
Lyrebird
@Anonymous37: Bless you … phds are just a persistence prize, so far as i can tell. (yes i have one) You may well be “smarter” by various definitions than many of the finishers.
maybe you found better things to do with your life!
Anonymous37
Purple Girl @167: Oh, of course. When I mention the effect that learning my IQ had, it’s not that I still feel that way. I now realize that it’s ridiculous to think that if my IQ were, say, 10 points higher, there would be no doubt that I had the intellect to get a physics Ph.D., but with my IQ as it is, there’s no way I could have done it.
I do suspect that there are a lot of people out there who look at their IQs and wonder what went wrong, or like I did, use it as an explanation for the turns their lives took.
Ruckus
@PurpleGirl:
He may have been dyslexic. Recognizing discrete numbers and letters and putting them in the correct order is difficult. Recognizing them as groups helps immensely. Words are harder to do that with because there are more discrete letters than numbers. Seeing the numbers/words allows one to group them. Hearing them allows them to be jumbled much easier. If I see your phone number it is easy to write down, and or remember. It is very difficult to get the correct order if you speak it, unless you do it slowly and break it into sections(area code, prefix, number). Spelling checkers are a lifesaver to a dyslexic.
Anonymous37
Lyrebird @170: Well, if I had dropped out right after getting my master’s, maybe. I gave it another couple of years before throwing in the towel. Kind of the worst of both worlds.
There was another student who entered 4 or 5 years before me. His advisor was a Nobel Laureate and he landed a post-doc at the prestigious Institute for Advanced Studies after getting his doctorate. And then he attempted to get a faculty position. He tried the top-tier schools, got no offers. He tried the second-tier schools, got no offers. Then, when he applied to the third-tier schools, he decided to also apply to a few Wall Street firms. He got no offers from the schools, and the Wall Street firms offered him a starting base salary of $150k (this was 13 years ago).
And I realized that academic physics research was a door that was rapidly closing. I can literally name 3 out of the 15-odd people in our incoming graduate school class who got faculty jobs. One of whom won the MacArthur.
Still, I do wish I had got the Ph.D, if only for the prestige. C’est la vie.
cthulhu
@jl: Well, science advances pretty well in a lot of areas based upon correlational data. And I agree that studies of cognition, perception, thinking, problem solving etc. are quite important and as are studies about feelings, social bias, and so forth. And there is PLENTY of funding, both public and private, going to tons of projects in these areas. Figuring out how the brain works is important.
But meta-level correlations of very generalized (and pretty ill-defined) variables? Not that important for advancing knowledge that will be helpful.
I recently had to review a paper that involved the supposed greater “religiousity” of blacks and Hispanic/Latinos compared to whites. I recommended rejection for a number of reasons but one was the fact that they didn’t control for religious denomination. There’s a bit of a chicken/egg issue there as people often have their religious denomination selected for them by their same race parents, but my thought was, are you really trying to claim that, within a given church, the black adherents are more religious than the white ones (once you control for all the other third variables)? And if denomination has more explanatory value than race you should really be talking about that.
But this does bring up an area of inquiry that does seem to be more stifled in social science research: differences by religion. The particular study I was reviewing ultimately was focused on cancer. I get the sense it is easier to publish that blacks may have a poorer cancer outcomes because of some aspects of their “religiousity” compared to claiming baptists are more likely to die from cancer than jews.
DougJ
@Anonymous37:
They physics job market has been terrible for so long. It’s a shame, because it’s such a great field.
OTOH, physics should get with the program of trying to attract more undergrad majors, the way we have in math. That would lead to more faculty positions.
Maude
I took the Stanford Binet as a kid and I filled in the holes to make a pattern on the page.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@dead existentialist:
Mine is 666. I’m devilishly smart!
Yeah, I know mine (test taken at 20) and while it’s a good number, in the end it’s just a number. If anything, IMO it’s indicative of little more than environmental awareness. There’s much more to a person than that one ability (or lack of), with this being one small part of it.
Sully is silly. Silly people should never be taken seriously but unfortunately other silly people do just that, thus the existence of Sully.
Mold grows in the right conditions. Also. Too.
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
They don’t really understand why it is, so there aren’t specific articles about it, but it’s turning out to be one of the more common hallmarks. This software called Cogmed is getting touted hard, but they don’t seem to have any really good studies to prove it yet.
Some of the big things my new doctor is emphasizing: exercise, a healthy diet with lots of protein and omega 3’s, and getting enough sleep.
jl
@cthulhu: What I wrote was kind of rant, so sorry. I have to deal with people who think they can blow off problems with data and study design simply by applying enough fancy multivariate statistical techniques. I think the whole research project represented by the Bell Curve is guilty of that attitude.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for the info. I found this part to be really interesting:
That is my sister’s major issue. She never completes what she sets out to do because she gets distracted by other stuff. This explains a lot.
She gave up on medication because it didn’t seem to work and there were side effects she hated, but she has gotten really good results from taking high doses of vitamin D. Interesting to see the focus on protein – she developed this problem in adulthood and she has been a vegetarian (without making an effort to get complete proteins) since she was 10 or so. My other sister and I have often wondered if her low protein consumption and low fat diet had caused the ADHD symptoms….
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
I doubt that not getting enough protein could have caused her symptoms, but given how much emphasis they’re putting on nutrition now, it could have exacerbated the problem.
There’s also the possibility that it’s not ADHD if it didn’t manifest at all until she was an adult. In retrospect, I had symptoms my whole life (which is why one of my teachers tied me to my chair during recess) but girls didn’t have ADHD in the 1970s and 1980s, so I was never diagnosed. Has she been screened for depression and/or bipolar?
(Fixed for clarity)
Canuckistani Tom
@PurpleGirl:
Makes perfect sense to me
Math: 1 + 1 = 2
English Language: ghoti = fish
slightly_peeved
Olympic Sprinter? Shortstop for the Red Sox? Victoria’s Secret model? Male porn star?
Clean out your desk; as of Monday, Marilyn vos Savant will be doing all your jobs.
Mitchell Porter
@David in NY #71: “Oddly, people in the AI business do not give their computers IQ tests. I wonder why?”
Because IQ is supposed to be a measure of “general intelligence”, and existing AI is domain-specific. However, there is a line of research which amounts to defining IQ for computer programs:
http://www.vetta.org/2011/11/aiq/
Jebediah
@slightly_peeved:
Google is failing me (or I am failing at Google) but I seem to remember, long ago, reading a column of hers in which she espoused the GENIUS IDEA that guilty people shouldn’t get legal counsel. Does anyone else remember that? It might be too old for the Google; I may have read it in the late 80’s.
I am hoping somebody remembers that and can fill in some of the details; I would hate to inaccurately malign the ideas of a genius. I do remember thinking that she was an idiot.
Ecks
@KG: Dickens sure could write a cracking book with penetrating social insight, but was he ever an enormous dick to his wife. She had so many of his kids that he left her for a young hot actress because she was old and ugly now, and he was rich and famous. Then he let her stick around in the house, so long as she did the housework and didn’t bug him ever.
It turns out that even social justice IQ isn’t nearly the unitary construct you’d think it should be.
THE
@Mitchell Porter:
Hey Mitchell, Matoko is Samara Morgan here if you haven’t been lurking.
Samara Morgan
@jl:
wallah.
Sometimes all you have is a hammer.
And there are plenty of places of science where the bolt finally gives.
Left-bioluddite resistance to the differential heritability of intelligence is analogous to right-bioluddite insistance on medieval ensoulment, ie the “personhood” of diploid oocytes.
That is why we will be buying very expensive bene tleilax host wombs from the Japanese instead of developing them here.
And why we are falling behind globally in intelligence research.
norbizness
“I sure hope Carrot Top reads my ideas on how to improve his prop comedy, even though I respect neither Carrot Top nor the idea of prop comedy.”
Samara Morgan
@Mitchell Porter: well…we could IQ test Strong AIs….if we had Strong AIs.
hai Mitch.
Sourmash
IQ? And what of it? I’m one of the smartest people I know, if not the smartest. Not bragging, it’s just true: I think faster and deeper than almost anyone I come into contact with. And despite the fact that most will say this statement is refuted by my first, my social intelligence is pretty good,as well. But SO EFFIN’ WHAT? I’m not worth more, either metaphysically or financially than anyone else. Sure my mind is supple and quick, and I can crack folks up regularly, but what of it? I have almost no vision, I have a hard time seeing the big picture, I don’t have an entrepreneurial bent. I was a ski bum and worked a series of dead end jobs for a lot longer than I should have, I was a high school teacher and then I got into disaster management. I like working hard with my hands and with people. None of these were “smart” choices. Again, it doesn’t make me better or worse. I work hard, I suffer fools more than gladly and I’ve wasted a big chunk of my life listening patiently to idiot cousins who spout the worst sort of Randian BS. And I score high marks on tests? I just don’t get it. What on EARTH does that PROVE?
Mary
@slag:
But Qi IS an acceptable word play in Scrabble!
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@David in NY:
That’s right up Andrew’s uh, alley.
Jado
Anyone who needs a non-Western example of genius might do well to look up my favorite underrated genius, Srivinasa Ramanujan
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan).
He’s also my argument for public education. How many of these kinds of people are languishing in poverty, with their PS #42 as their only channel to exercise their potential? We are wasting generations of genius arguing about charters and standardized tests.
Samara Morgan
@Jado: lol. my differential equations prof used to put a “Ramanujan finder” on every exam.
and charters and standardized tests are just the next step in farming american students for PROFIT! like college mortgages.
;)
4jkb4ia
Actually the processing of emotion in the brain is more complicated than I thought at first
slippy
I refuse to take an IQ test ever, because when I studied intelligence tests in sociology, I learned that much of what is being tested is not intelligence, but whether the test subject is appropriately socialized into his community/nation/class. For example, a WWI-era “intelligence” test included questions like “What are the first three books in the Bible.” I would have failed that test because I am an atheist and have no interest in the Bible.
I know I’m a smart guy because no matter what position they put me in here at work, I end up being the guy everyone depends on to figure shit out.
Also, I just want to re-express here my disgust for Andrew Sullivan and my continuing confusion as to why anyone bothers reading him. He is an arrogant, tiny-minded bigot and his character as revealed by his continuing racist obsession over this IQ thing is so repulsive to me that I would probably spit in his face if I ever met him. I mean, I can’t say it loud enough: fuck Andrew Sullivan. He is a piece of shit.
Samara Morgan
@Omnes Omnibus: not really.
i believe homo sapiens sapiens are all one tribe.
laws against human experimentation and human genocide/democide should be universal.
Scientists can police themselves with science, like the AMA or ABA for medicine and law. that is what happened with the book that shall not be named, right?
you moral scolds can just step on.
Samara Morgan
@slippy: dont express disgust– REFUTE HIM.
that is the Scientific Way.
WaterGirl
@Mnemosyne: Probably too late for you to see this, but…
She went through the whole diagnosis process two or three years ago, and they were certain she has it. She has always been a person who is always moving, and never sits down, but she really has lost her focus, which is why the sentence I highlighted resonated so much with me. Bipolar and depression don’t really fit her, though I have known a couple of other people that I think are bipolar but have never been diagnosed.
I have gotten her to pay more attention to her diet, and she now eats yogurt for breakfast every day now, at least, and cheese. Progress! But maybe I will encourage her to focus on protein even more. Thanks.
jl
@Samara Morgan: If other countries are pursuing the Bell Curve approach to ‘intelligence’ research, then they are wasting their time and money, and they will be the ones who fall behind.
BTW, you are typing near gibberish in your comments now and I’m not sure what some of your typing means.
FormerSwingVoter
Oh wow. There’s 200 comments here, and I’m not going to be able to read all of them. But still, a quick thought on IQ tests:
Doesn’t anyone realize that a test literally cannot test innate ability if you get better at it by practicing?
I think IQ tests are interesting, but the more you take, the better you end up doing. That’s not innate potential – that’s learned behavior.
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
It’s probably really, really too late for you to see this but the nutritional things that they’re really pushing right now are green tea, omega-3s and protein. Assuming she’s a not-even-fish vegetarian, her best bet for omega-3s is flaxseed oil. Also, depression is frequently comorbid with ADHD (because you just get so fucking FRUSTRATED with yourself) so it’s probably worth looking into. I was originally diagnosed with depression and it took quite a while to get that enough under control to find out that I also had this contributing factor of ADHD. The psychiatrist I was referred to prescribed Wellbutrin to me, which turns out to be one of the non-stimulants that can be helpful for ADHD.
I ended up subscribing to a magazine called ADDitude when my niece was selling them for her school and I’m really enjoying it. It’s a pretty even split between addressing adults with ADHD and parents of children with ADHD, so there’s been a lot of useful information for me in there.
Samara Morgan
@jl: jesusmaryandjoseph
DID I SAY BELL CURVE RESEARCH?
the chinese and japanese can study intelligence in their country, so they will prolly beat us at Strong AI and origin of consciousness.
like Dr. Watson SAID….the study of intelligence is socially contentious in the US and the UK.
i wunner why that is…..
Samara Morgan
I realize this this is a dead thread, but i would like to publish an example of scientists behaving badly, that will unpack the process for you, hopefully.
Andrew quoting Razib Khan, my once-upon-a-time-coblogger.
Yet while Razib welcomes the idea of between group racial differences, he is very resistant to the idea of differences between human populations of conservatives and liberals.
Does heritability of political orientation matter?
Razib is exactly the same as the people asking if IQ matters.
Thing is, both questions matter and we should be free to investigate.
But perhaps i shouldn’t say Scientists Behaving Badly…..i think this is more a problem with partisanship, because both Razib Khan and Andrew Sullivan are conservatives.
Perhaps Razib is just a conservative behaving badly– after all only 4% of american scientists are conservatives.
;)
Samara Morgan
watch this!
Does heritability of
political orientationIQ matter?see what i did there?
hahahaha
it all depends on whose ox is being gored.
Windhorse
@Samara
Jinnilyya, I have an honest question for you, and one I think speaks to the experience of many of the posters here: if political beliefs are heritable among populations, how did my brother and I end up so radically liberal when our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were so conservative – ultraconservative, even?
And in my case, at least, the answer can’t be that social mores are mobile relative to the era, as my parents were conservative even for their times and even when they were young. It’s not that they were liberal in their youth and conservative now. As a cop in the sixties my dad beat up and arrested dirty hippies and ultimately headed a regional narcotics task force while my mother was busy fighting the changes of Vatican II and protesting filth on TV.
It’s tempting to write of my experience as anecdotal were it not for the fact that so many of my liberal friends had similar ones. Conversely, I have a few (although not many) neoconservative friends who were raised by fairly liberal parents but now worship at the feet of Fox News.
Not trying to poke holes in your theory but interested in your take on this.
Samara Morgan
@Windhorse: i have had the same experience–im a hereditary conservative. My ancestors owned sweat shops where 12 year old girls worked 16 hour shifts, and their “summer home” is in the Gugenheim Foundation and gets toured.
I think of conservativism as a sort of initial condition– overcome by education and cognitive ability in our cases.
Razib is a fascinating outlier— something like 2% of atheists and 4% of scientists are conservative.
You know how genetics works, Windhorse– if you have the genetic substructure, and the right environment– bam! gene expression.
Razib and I both love hard scifi–but he can’t hear music at all–he is tone deaf.
Maybe he just can’t hear the siren song of liberalism….sweet music to us.
:)
Samara Morgan
@Windhorse:
my point STILL is–
we will never know the answer if we cant ask the question.
Windhorse
@Samara
I recall having a similar epipany during my college years…which was saying something, given that I’d strongly self-identified as a conservative during high school whilst casting about for some sort of identity. Ironically, I can thank the ultraconservative Catholic religious order I joined right out of school for my ideological metanoia; I was there only about five minutes when I observed both in argument and behavior the logical extension of my supposed conservative beliefs – moral and intellectual rigidity, elitism, callousness, even cruelty – when I realized I was not that thing (much to their chagrin).
In my case the conservative gestalt in which I was raised fell away when confronted by the ugly reality of its real-world outcomes, to wit: by placing allegiance to ideology over humanity it treats people like things. That’s wrong. People matter more than ideas or tradition or distinctions, no matter what modern-day Tories, flag-waving Birchers or sentimental Christianists would prefer to believe.
Was it education and/or cognitive ability that dashed the scales from my eyes? I suppose a little of both, but given my own experience I’ve often thought that the conservative posture arises out of various psychological fixations, along the lines of Erickson’s psychosocial stages, that unless unwound and transcended in a specific way will unconsciously inform a person’s psyche for life. And while these fixations (feelings of insecurity, fear of change, narcissism, xenophobia, tribalism, et al) may be and are overcome by education and cognitive ability (however those are defined), in a certain percentage cases there is an emotional component that must be addressed or the initial condition will persist and you get the classic well-educated and intelligent Nazi. Or the modern-day classic, the educated but moronic-to-fairly-intelligent Tea Partier who sees the whole world of non-whites as “Other.”
Put into its broadest context the issue probably has most to do with expansion of consciousness and the attendant increase of empathy that comes with an incremental increase in the awareness of “Tat Tvam Asi,” as there have been illiterate and relatively low-IQ yogis and holy men and dervishes who might broadly be called liberal. But of course, you know that. ;)
Samara Morgan
@Windhorse: well…..that was really good.
I agree with all of it.
But do you see how repulsive that particular thought train would be to both Razib and Sully? They think conservatism is the apogee, not the initial condition.
mystics!
like my First Shayyk, the Muhyiddin (scholar of scholars)…but he was definitely an uppertailer.
let me restate.
we will never know the answers if we cant ask the questions…but…maybe the questions should be asked with respect and empathy….
THE
Samara, I’d also argue that conservatism is context dependent.
For instance most US conservatives today would think of free-market orientations as being conservative. Yet in eighteenth century Europe, where mercantilism is still the dominant paradigm, there is nothing more revolutionary than free market thinking.
Wait long enough and everything progressive becomes conservative.
THE
Another example: in the new USSR, communism is ultra progressive and revolutionary.
But by the time the USSR falls, it is the old gerontocracy that is supporting it and every radical free-thinker is dreaming of individualism.
Samara Morgan
@THE:
that is why conservatism is the initial condition.
its always the othodoxy, because it worked AT LEAST ONCE.
liberals are heretics.
Windhorse
@Samara
Al-Arabi and Rumi were super geniuses, no question.
And this…
…is about as liberal a statement as one could make.
I’ve had the privilege of meeting some Shamans from South America, one from the Shuar tribe deep in the Amazon. Definitely not learned, and I don’t think they would score that well on a western IQ test but exceedingly wise and quite spiritual. Remarkable healers and gentle souls, among the most spiritual and open-hearted people I’ve ever met.
THE
Maybe I’d prefer radical vs. conservative.
THE
But this always gets me:
What is more super-ultra-conservative than clinging to tenth century philosophies and religions?
Surely if there is a problem today it is to understand the biological basis of subjectivity and “spiritual”?
i.e. The real spiritual progressives are the brain mappers and brain modellers.
Consider this TEDConference.
Samara Morgan
@Windhorse:
That is why proselytizing is evil– it denies the universal nature of the Real.
THE
But why a religion of love Samara?
Especially in the light of all we know about evolution.
Why is love more valid an emotion than hate?
Would nature have given us both love and hate, if they hadn’t both had survival value?
Surely the truth is that YOU have a aesthetic preference for love and you don’t want to consider the truth about nature’s reality.
You are like the feel-good theologians who look at the clouds and the mountains and the flowers and trees and you say, how beautiful is God’s creation.
But you don’t see that the tapeworm, and the leech, and the rotting childrens’ corpses from smallpox, are also part of nature’s order.
THE
I guess my path will never be your path Samara.
I don’t believe I can understand reality by denying half of it.
That’s why it is dualism itself that I reject.
Samara Morgan
@THE: you dont get the Sufi concept of love, which is rather complex.
after all, there are 77 words in arabic for love.
one of my favorite quotes from the Shayyka–
just in this quote, you can see two different kinds of eternity and 18000 worlds. Rabi’a was an uneducated woman and a former slave, yet she talks of multiple worlds in the 8th century. Galileo wasnt even born until 1564.
THE
Thank you for responding Samara. I understand what a problem the “Problem of Evil” (actually the problem of suffering) is for dualistic religions, particularly if you want to believe in an omnipotent, benign God.
The problem is that suffering is universal in living things in general, and in Man in particular. It is this awareness the universality of suffering and death, and the refusal to turn away from it, that is the real driving force behind the most passionate humanism. And also the most passionate atheism.
I could never love your God. If I ever found him I would want first and foremost, to put him on trial, for the crime of creating a universe of suffering and death.
But if you follow this line of thought you come to the point where you understand that nature is not really good or evil. It is indifferent. And as such, it transcends all dualities.
And it that transcendence-of-duality aspect of Nature that is the reason why Nature, as we conceive it today, is actually a higher ideal than God.
THE
In other words, Samara, our Nature is a platonic transcendence. A pure suchness and thatness.
This is not a well-formed concept in Western dualistic thought. Only the Eastern religions have explored it.
Yet it is also the reason IMHO for the utter superiority of (genuine) Eastern thought.
THE
Rabia was influenced by Greek philosophy Samara:
Anaximander Wikipedia
Samara Morgan
@THE: oh yeah? how did an eighth century illiterate slavegirl in Basra happen upon Greek philosophy? did someone translate that for her from greek to arabic?
its probably more like the macaque potato washing problem.
THE
You know that Basra was very close to Alexandria in Susiana and Alexander conquered Iraq in the 4th century BC
So the whole area was part of the Greek world.
I don’t know where she got it from.