Tim Cook wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Tim Cook wrote:
>>> IQ, or intelligence quotient, is determined by dividing a person's 
>>> mental age, as determined by standardized tests, by chronological age.
> 
>> People that believe in IQs are idiots too. lol
> 
> Why?  What about a basically statistical measure of relative mental age 
> is problematic?
> 
> -- 
> Tim Cook
> http://empyrean.freesitespace.net
The fact that it isn't a statistical measure of relative mental ages, so 
much as a statistical representation of how much one conforms to a 
specific set of social parameters and ideas, which have jack to do with 
*actually* being intelligent. I am sure Rosie O'Donald could pass a 
Mensa test, but I wouldn't trust her with almost anything that didn't 
involve knowing an endless mess of useless trivia. Until/unless someone 
finds a valid means to separate measures of mental development from the 
social memes and mores of the culture they are being tested in, its not 
a valid test of anything, other than general forms of conformity to 
arbitrary definitions of "intelligence". Yes, it can be, within a narrow 
set of definition. But, ironically, *my* definitions are probably 
nothing at all like the definitions used by the sort of people that Bush 
surrounded himself with. In fact, I am fairly sure it wouldn't be, since 
I have seen the sort he appointed when governor in Texas, the sort 
around him during his presidency, and the sort of people that *continue* 
to get elected in his home state, and there is nothing about these 
people that doesn't smell of ignorance, general disinterest in facts, 
mental incapacity to tell the difference between gibberish and facts, 
*or* a real lack of capacity to even *understand* most of the stuff that 
scientists, educators and even, in some cases, the general public, in 
most other parts of the country, recognize is just crazy ass stupid. 
There are a small number of states that are *known* for wacky, silly, 
absurd, ignorance, and making things up to support ideologies, often in 
direct face of facts that contradict *all* of their premises, in the 
last 5-10 years, Texas has risen from like 10th on that list to #1, and 
its a pretty short list to start with.

Put simply, nothing I saw of Bush, while in office, indicated to me 
someone who cared about facts that contradicted him, much cared about 
beliefs that differed from his, though he made the common mistake of 
equation having such to being "enough like me that it doesn't matter", 
while shoving everyone else into the "Well, they don't have any, even if 
they do have any.", camp, and he presumed, like all such black and 
whitists, that everyone with faith was on *his* side, by definition. And 
things just go down hill from there, starting with his conclusion that 
he didn't need actual science advice from scientists, but theologians, 
or people that where theologians first, and **very poor** scientists 
second, would be better, especially if they worked for some company he 
trusted. Oh, and of course, if you dared try to point out how dead wrong 
he was on *anything*, well.. your website would oddly be found not too 
long after, replacing birth control information with abstinence 
information, or you would just find yourself handed last pay check, and 
someone with more "proper" ideology, i.e., clueless nonsense views, 
would get appointed to replace you.

Until IQ tests can test for capacity to handle situations where the 
default suppositions of the test are actually invalid, and you are 
required to figure out what changed, so you can derive the *correct* 
answer, all such tests will ever test is if you meet some 'standard' 
which is based on the lowest common knowledge of that level of 
development, and that knowledge will be *entirely* arbitrary. Given that 
*many* people manage to successfully bluff their ways through degrees at 
major colleges, only to then go on an write books filled with logical 
fallacies, incorrect facts, unscientific thinking, pure sophistry, and 
even completely **wrong** analysis of data from their own field (and 
this includes insane things like Behe managing to get his own field of 
mathematics so wrong that if he where calculating the direction and 
speed of a bus it would be going the opposite direction, at the speed of 
light, by the time he got done doing the math wrong), its fairly obvious 
that possessing knowledge, an understanding of the social norms of 
society, and even enough intelligence to pass college tests, never mind 
IQ tests, means ***absolutely nothing***, when talking about whether or 
not the person in question can think themselves out of a wet paper bag, 
even if you granted them a pair of scissors, a flashlight, and an 
instruction book on "how to cut things".

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message