[extropy-chat] it's all understandable, except

[Lee Corbin]

Pjmanney writes

> Please let me preface this to say that I happen to fall in the Gould/Postman
> camp that believes IQ is a bogus measure of intelligence.

Among psychometricians, those of Gould's opinions are a tiny minority.

Read Pinker's "The Blank Slate" for a completely unbiased analysis.
But read Jensen, or Richard Lynn, or several other books I could
recommend if you want the tables, charts, and rigorous stats.  I
especially recommend the reviews of Jensen's book "The g-Factor"
on Amazon, if you don't want to plow through the statistics yourself.

Read through the reviews over and over until they cease to shock you.

And the correlation with other abilities really isn't disputable any longer.

>  So whether IQ is going up or down (i.e. the Flynn effect) is largely irrelevent.
> To me, what is relevant is how the supposedly intelligent are applying their
> intelligence and are adapting to a changing world.  And as always, some
> people rise to the occasion and others don't, regardless of their supposed IQ
> scores or talents or the success or failure of their own parents...

Quite so.  But you really cannot get away from this truth:  people with IQs
less than 110 or 120 can very, very seldom handle any kind of cognitively
demanding work at all well.

> "The Outsiders," is considered a classic analysis into the world of ultra-high IQ.
> 
> http://www.prometheussociety.org/articles/Outsiders.html
> 
> In it, he describes the work of Lewis Terman, who demonstrated the behavioral
> thresholds between levels of tested intelligence and the sad fact that after certain
> IQ thresholds are past -- in the case of this work, an IQ of 170 -- the odds of
> "success" as defined as using one's IQ in your life/work that benefits both the
> person and/or society and brings self-satisfaction, are few.  Frankly, the number
> of ultra-high IQ people who burn out is amazing.  I witnessed a number myself.

First point:  IQs above 170 are so rare that nothing that is true about
them matters.  Second point:  is it really true (not that it matters, really)
that there is a *greater* chance of burnout if your IQ is above 170
than if it is above 150?    Failure to reach potential, and washing up
one way or another, happens in every statum.  That is, is the *probability*
really greater for stratospheric IQs?

> So maybe "School" wasn't the culprit.  Maybe these kids had other
> issues that led to their "failure to perform."

I suspect that that's mostly the case.

> And let's not forgot other psychological issues.  Substance abuse,
> depression, bi-polar, schizophrenia, etc.  I've know a few who fell
> off the supposed IQ ramp because of these.  And I'm sure those
> with more acute autistic spectrum disorders have a hard time, too.

Absolutely.

> I know the social aspects of primary and secondary school probably
> sucked for most of us.  Really smart people often don't function well
> with people who don't understand what we're talking about.

RIGHT YOU ARE!   This is a very important point. Dean Keith Simonton
in his book "Greatness" explains that it is seldom that people who are about
20 IQ points lower than you are can even understand you.  He uses this
idea very convincingly to explain why British PMs are smarter on average
than U.S. presidents.  The former need to impress other MPs, the latter
only to impress the average American voter.

Lee

> It is not a public (or private) school's job to create a functional,
> well-honed mind.  It is the job of the parents and the child.  Both
> have to want it.  If you have the mind and mental health to succeed,
> school only 'kills' if you let it.