On 16/01/14 02:50, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 1/15/2014 4:15 PM, Warp wrote:
>> Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>>>> And someone please explain to me, what IQ is?
>>>>
>>>> IQ is a quantification of your intelligence in comparison to the
>>>> average
>>>> person of your age.
>>
>>> It is therefore fundamentally dependant on whatever the designer
>>> considers to be the "average person".
>>
>> I don't think the idea is to define the "average person". The idea
>> is to measure tons of people and just take the average, and scale
>> the results so that the average gets 100 points.
>>
> If it worked like that.. The problem is that you get two things
> happening: 1. Tests based on the assumption that every human being has
> equal conditions, and thus learns to think about all problems in
> equivalent ways, and 2. Some yokel deciding that, having come up with a
> test, it never has to be recalibrated. A good example would be something
> like handling money. Would someone in the UK, prior to the Euro, be
> "smarter" than someone in the US? I mean, after all, there where like 40
> different kinds of money, some of them sounding more like weight/liquid
> measures, being with like.. 1/8th of some higher denomination, and
> stuff, and people *used* all the bloody things, while, the US currency
> was all metric. Then, you could ask the same question the other way, is
> it more clever to deal with inches, feet, yards, etc., or the metric
> system? More to the point, someone with the wrong way of thinking is
> going to go, "WTF is this?!", no matter which category they are in, when
> dealing with the ones where there are fractional coinage. Personally.. I
> think the UK went metric because it was a huge burden on the state to
> place both their economists *and* engineers in rubber rooms, instead of
> just one set, but... lol
> 
> This is BTW what I meant about "tricks" before. If you don't know how to
> think about a problem, you either can't solve it, or take far longer to
> do so, or you solve it wrong. But, think in terms of like.. memory.
> Memory mnemonics are used all the time by "experts" on memorizing lists
> and things. As a child, almost everyone probably went through a stage of
> sing songing objects, and attaching other things to them, which is
> exactly how that "trick" works, but then... how many parents, when their
> kids are in the middle of doing that say, "Stop that, you are being
> silly.", and, perhaps derail a natural tendency to learn such a method
> of memorizing complex sets? In math, the "experts" use short cuts. Some
> of them they come up with on their own, others they may pick up from
> other sources, but.. they may not retain either, without the proper
> conditions.
> 
> By the same token, you can "learn" how to solve puzzles, by learning ho
> to think about them, including the ones that get stuffed on IQ tests,
> and that includes the stuff Mensa uses (I know, I have seen them, and
> wasn't impressed). When I was eight, these things might have been
> interesting, though, only because they where better than going back to
> the classroom, and listening to someone drone on about how to now
> multiply 4x, instead of 3x, while most of the class had their brains
> dripping out of their ears. Now.. I just don't have the patience for
> them, and some of them "require" skills that I never cultivated, because
> I didn't need them (which results in my taking longer at them than the
> ones I find mind numbingly simple).
> 
> And, since I don't really plan to make more replies here, this is *one*
> reason why being in it doesn't impress me. The other reason is that, my
> experience to date, with people willing to mention being in it, have
> tended to do so in the context of wanting people to go, "Wow!", so that
> they then question their own certainty about a subject, or more easily
> believe the guy claiming it, when, in point of fact, in their case, its
> intended to shield some howler of an opinion, or claim, or hypothesis,
> they have about something, which they either don't actually understand,
> or have completely misunderstood.
> 
> So.. I apologize for calling the whole thing a social club for the stuck
> up and self obsessed. Its not like I have had a huge opportunity to
> meet, or talk to, the ones that where not.

Oh dear, Patrick. You seem to have become obsessed with justifying your
original comment by descending to the level of the bullies.
If you had read my original post post properly, you would have noticed
my comment about joining Thick As A Brick.

Secondly, stop using lol as a comment - it's juvenile.

Finally, read your responses at least twice before posting. It stops you
from offending people who have been on the group longer than you.

John
-- 
Protect the Earth
It was not given to you by your parents
You hold it in trust for your children

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