Tim Cook wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> 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".
> 
> IQ tests do include sections such as repeating ever-lengthening strings 
> of numbers which is pretty unrelated to conforming to social norms and 
> measures nothing but short-term memory capacity, a bit like playing 
> Simon.  And sections with pattern-based problem-solving with no 
> additional data.  At some point, *all* definitions are arbitrary, and if 
> (assuming that "if", there) the measures of mental development are used 
> entirely within the culture of which the subject is a member, why does 
> it need to be separated?
> 
> -- 
> Tim Cook
> http://empyrean.freesitespace.net
Yeah. Seen those. I almost always consistently fail at them. lol Problem 
with those is that they are the *same* issue. If you know the *correct* 
solutions, fine, you use them, and its simple. If you don't, then your 
smart, thinking, mind, tries to work out the solution, and even can't 
figure it out, since you don't hit on the one *correct* method, or you 
come up with some solution that seems to work, but is actually *wrong*. 
Such tests are not capable of deciphering *why*, or *how* you concluded 
that you had a valid solution, so can't accurately determine if it was 
because you a)failed to guess the right one, b) didn't learn to see that 
*common* solution, for that common problem, or c) over thought the 
problem. All it can say is, "you got it, or you failed to get it". That 
is, less than worthless. Least favorite is some twit telling me, "Oh, 
well, that is just the Fibonacci sequence... Well, great, if I used the 
it for anything, I might remember what that was. But, a) I don't, and b) 
someone that has no clue what the sequence looks like in the first place 
isn't stupid, they just don't know what the sequence is, so can't figure 
it out.

But, yeah. To some extent you are correct. The problem is, imho, the 
*valid* parts of that test shouldn't be all that useful for anyone over 
the age of 9, and even then, it doesn't say why the person isn't 
advanced to that point, whether or not its innate, or fixable, nor 
whether they will, by age 11, manage to overcome the gap, and render the 
test worthless, if you see what I mean. And, most importantly, none of 
it tells you if they can really think things through critically enough 
that they won't be basing their policies are 45 on their daily 
horoscope, visits to a guru, or conversations with an imaginary friend, 
or that they will actually understand even the "general" concepts of 
most things well enough to not end up believing the exact opposite of 
what the evidence points to, instead of respecting the opinions of 
people that have made it their life's work to have a bloody clue what 
they are talking about.

-- 
void main () {

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

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