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

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Nov 6, 2006, at 10:19 PM, Lee Corbin wrote:
> 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.


Here's a serious question then with respect to this hypothesis:  is  
there evidence that the average US President was more intelligent  
prior to 1913, and if so what kind of average discrepancy are we  
talking about?  And does it account for basic differences in the  
process that determines who gets to be an MP and who gets to be a  
Congressman that bias the selection of the two populations a PM or  
President had to interact with?


J. Andrew Rogers