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ORIGINAL: Rule

Many high IQ people are perforce severely handicapped intellectually. A see-saw analogy in some way does apply here: when IQ goes up, perforce the other abilities of the concerned part of the mind go down steeply.

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ORIGINAL: samboct

"if the stockbroker and the bushman were both told that six months from now they'll be dumped in the middle of a forest to live for a year, my money is on the stockbroker to survive the ordeal, simply because his life has depended on being able to learn and make use of tools.  He could do consultations, research, and get the best minds availible to tell him where and how to hunt, what to eat, and how to survive.  The bushman may have survived in a primitive fashion his whole life, but always dependent upon his own society; his fellow hunters for example. "
 
Wow- do I not agree with this one.  Try reading "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond if you think that growing up in a primitive culture implies lack of intelligence.  Diamond's comment was that the natives of New Guinea were on average, some of the smartest people he'd ever met.  Our society doesn't kill off the dumb ones quickly the way a less technologically adept society does.
 
IQ tests have shown an increase in what the psychologists consider intelligence over the past century, but do you really think they're smart enough to figure out what intelligence is?  What those tests measure is a very small part of human intelligence- same with academic skills.  Hence I've met professors who were as dumb as a box of rocks, and some guys without a college degree who were plenty sharp.  Besides, there doesn't seem to be much of a correlation between brains and money earning ability, and money earning ability really gives you more choices in society about who and what you breed with.
 
Sam

quote:

ORIGINAL: Rule

 Many high IQ people are perforce severely handicapped intellectually. A see-saw analogy in some way does apply here: when IQ goes up, perforce the other abilities of the concerned part of the mind go down steeply.
 

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ORIGINAL: samboct

Oh, I don't know WC- I have great faith in the ability of humans to produce a better idiot.

Re the stockbroker-Learning to survive without technology is like dancing.  You can read about it all you want, but in a dance contest, my money's on the folks that do it all the time.  So in a jazz dance contest- would you bet on the square dancer or the stockbroker?

Survival skills are much more about learning what's trying to eat you- how to watch for it- learning what to eat- see what the other animals are eating- finding water- ditto- etc.  All of this is available in a survival handbook, and all of it is effectively bloody useless if you haven't done it.  I'd put the dumbest member of a tribe up against a stockbroker with an 8 figure income any day of the week.

Sam

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So in a jazz dance contest- would you bet on the square dancer or the stockbroker?

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ORIGINAL: samboct

I thought the original example was a stockbroker and a bushman dumped in the forest?

The bushman does use tools and does know how to do research- that's how he's stayed alive.  He's used to the tools found in a wild environment, whereas the stockbroker is used to the tools found in our technologically complex environment.  My money's still on the bushman.

Sam

Obviously, this wasn't going to be a real contest  

Sam, what I don't think you're willing to consider, is the bushman doesn't survive alone.  He grows up in an enviroment learning how to avoid being killed by other animals not just from cunning but through the safety in numbers.  A group of hunters go out daily; there's a reason that hunting 'solo' was a rite of passage; it's bloody dangerous.  Yank the bushman out of his community environment, and you not only deprive him of the support structure he has come to rely upon for that information, but indeed from half the survival skills that he never did learn; the tasks that the women performed.  Hand him a book on survival, and the only use he'll have for it might be to feed a fire; the only means he has for learning are observation (a slow and dangerous process in the wild) and emulation of people he trusts.  None of this suggests he is not intelligent; it only suggests that his intelligence comes in a very limited fashion.  The stock broker, on the other hand, has spent his entire life learning to adapt.  His success in his field is literally derived from his capacity to adapt.  With a year to prepare, he could drop ten grand into a four week survival course with some of the best minds in wilderness survival, to learn how to survive in the wild (or a years worth of jazz dancing classes from competition winning dancers; something I don't think the square-dancer is likely to have access to either.)  The point is that money, in this world, is power.  It's the power to acquire new skills as they become necessary; be it dancing with bears, or with leggy blondes.  Just because it's distasteful for us common-folk to acknowledge that stockbrokers (and other rich, powerful people) have power doesn't make it any less so.

Regards,

Stephan


_____________________________

Nosce Te Ipsum

"The blade itself incites to violence" - Homer

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(in reply to samboct)

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ORIGINAL: Rule

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ORIGINAL: philosophy

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ORIGINAL: Rule
Many high IQ people are perforce severely handicapped intellectually. A see-saw analogy in some way does apply here: when IQ goes up, perforce the other abilities of the concerned part of the mind go down steeply.

.......i'm not sure that human cerebral potential is a zero sum game.....

I am and that suffices for me.