On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 10:39 AM, <ghib...@gmail.com> wrote: > John. You have just mentioned I.Q. which is a specific kind of measure. > Would you be willing to clarify where you stand on the science behind I.Q.? >
I was using the term "IQ", perhaps sloppily, as a sort of shorthand, I certainly didn't mean to suggest it was the be all and end all. Indeed it would be remarkable if the most complex thing in the known universe, intelligence, could be measured with just one number; you need 2 numbers (a Vector) just to measure something as simple as the wind, one for speed and one for direction. I imagine that for a good measure of intelligence you'd need a Tensor, and a big one. Besides consisting of only one number another problem is that IQ tests are written by psychologists, I don't happen to believe that the very brightest members of our species tend to go into that profession and tests have difficulty measuring the intelligence of somebody smarter than the one who wrote the test. When the great physicist Richard Feynman was in high school he had an IQ test and all he got was a mediocre 125. The best definition of intelligence that I can think of is "the sort of thing that Richard Feynman did", therefore it is not Feynman but the authors of the test who should feel embarrassed by this. Meanwhile one of the highest ranked Mensa members alive today, with an IQ north of 200, works as a bouncer in a bar. The man with the highest IQ ever may have been a fellow by the name of William James Sidis (1898-1944). Sidis's IQ can only be approximately known even though he took many many IQ tests, the tests were just not up to the task, he was off the charts. Abraham Sterling, director of New York City's Aptitude Testing Institute said: "He easily had an IQ between 250 and 300, I have never heard of anybody with such an IQ. I would say that he was the most prodigious intellect of our entire generation". So what did this "prodigious intellect" accomplish in his 46 years? He wrote a book about streetcar transfers. That's about it. It seems that high IQ and genius are not quite synonymous. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
