The IQ Wars
“To the I.Q. fundamentalist, two things are beyond dispute: first, that I.Q. tests measure some hard and identifiable trait that predicts the quality of our thinking; and, second, that this trait is stable—that is, it is determined by our genes and largely impervious to environmental influences.
“This is what James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, meant when he told an English newspaper recently that he was “inherently gloomy†about the prospects for Africa. From the perspective of an I.Q. fundamentalist, the fact that Africans score lower than Europeans on I.Q. tests suggests an ineradicable cognitive disability. In the controversy that followed, Watson was defended by the journalist William Saletan, in a three-part series for the online magazine Slate. Drawing heavily on the work of J. Philippe Rushton—a psychologist who specializes in comparing the circumference of what he calls the Negroid brain with the length of the Negroid penis—Saletan took the fundamentalist position to its logical conclusion. . .”
From the New Yorker: Malcolm Gladwell’s review of James Flynn’s What Is Intelligence?
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
December 19th, 2007 at 13:48
IQ tests are nothing more than crude approximations of a person’s intelligence. Who is really to say that one person is more intelligent than the other? These tests measure a general set of knowledge which is always culturally biased- even in the spatial and mathematical areas. You may know all the answers at Jeopardy but you still have to bring your car to those ignorant car mechanics when it breaks down. In this case, he is more intelligent than you in dealing with these kinds of problems. Always remember that IQ questions are just created by people. No matter how much they try to make it objective, it will still be inevitably biased. We know so little about how the brain works to make a sweeping generalization based on a number. Read “The Mismeasure of Man” by Stephen Jay Gould.
December 21st, 2007 at 14:06
“You may know all the answers at Jeopardy but you still have to bring your car to those ignorant car mechanics when it breaks down.”
Uuhhh…not exactly a good analogy since a.) good memory is not the only component of intellligence and b.) a highly intelligent person will be able to learn the skill given the opportunity but the average car mechanic can’t write a dissertation.
December 21st, 2007 at 18:10
b.) a highly intelligent person will be able to learn the skill given the opportunity but the average car mechanic can’t write a dissertation.
Yes but a highly intelligent car mechanic can since a highly intelligent person will be able to learn the skill given the opportunity.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
December 21st, 2007 at 20:20
a) I never suggested that memory is the only component of intelligence… but I see your point. However, Jeopardy contestants are often perceived (and probably do score high on IQ tests) as having a high intelligence- thus the analogy.
b) On the second point, it is rather unfair to compare it with the dissertation writing skills of the car mechanic. Given the opportunity- which is good education, who knows what’s possible? I’m not talking about diplomas here either. It’s just the classic nature vs. nurture sort of thing. I prefer to go with the latter since the concept of “intelligence” is highly debatable, in my opinion. If they renamed it “Education Quotient”, I would have no quarrel with it.
December 22nd, 2007 at 05:33
[EDIT. Jessica, please post this reply instead of my previous one. Thanks!]
Cummon, writing a dissertation is not a “skill†that just about anyone can be taught to do! And that is why I put the qualification of “average”, not “highly intelligent”. Although it is amusing to imagine the romantic idea that there is a Will Hunting among the millions of car mechanics (or janitors), who holds the potential of synthesizing the Unified Field Theory, what is the likelihood that a person of such intelligence (or even not of such lofty potentials but high just the same) just aspired and settled for such a tedious job? He’d be restless and bored to death! At the very least, you would see him going up the ranks very quickly and pretty soon managing and, perhaps, owning the shop/s himself and taking on bigger challenges. (Before you even think about it, I’m not suggesting that a PhD holder, in keeping with my previous contention, couldn’t be interested in taking up fixing cars as a hobby.)
Of course it would be utterly stupid to subject a formally uneducated person, who will surely score low, to the tests and that is why they are standardized according to age and education level; you would have to have two persons on a level playing field to have a fair comparison, wouldn’t you?
Yes, there are no perfect tests that can accurately measure the complete breadth of human intelligence – and to that end they are highly inadequate but, if properly done, no less predictive of the overall picture IMO inasmuch as properly done scientific surveys & polls are about society – but my main objection was to the a priori premise on which you predicated your analogy: that the stereotypes you presented do not hold implications beyond their face value — which are that the successful Jeopardy contestant does not only possess great memory and, as you said, ability to score highly on IQ tests BUT is also, as his capability to correctly answer the eclectic contest questions suggests, naturally inquisitive enough to read & learn as much as he can without any provocation (Can anybody be truly “nurtured/educated†or forced to acquire information of such gargantuan proportions?) and, as his resume would undoubtedly show, accomplished in life apart from winning the contest in the exact way that the supposedly “highly intelligent” mechanic would certainly have been.
On a related anecdote, as Jessica could attest (she also attended Pisay), my experience at the extremely selective Philippine Science High School –students of which have IQ levels far above that of the national average and here, possibly, the evidence is more scientific than anecdotal as their selection process is clearly scientific — of having schoolmates from decidedly disparate socio-economic levels (Some were so poor, they had to send part of their already measly stipends to their families back home; they would have been doing that self-same car mechanic or an even less challenging job at that point had they not been intelligent.) and cultural backgrounds renders your assertions rather suspect and, appropriately enough, academic.
December 24th, 2007 at 03:25
‘Cummon, writing a dissertation is not a “skill†that just about anyone can be taught to do!’
Why the hell not? What is it about “dissertations” that is different from playing the violin, learning to write, coding a software applicaton, directing a movie, playing basketball, or performing diagnostic tests on car engines? These are things that we all learn through experience and training. If you work hard enough, you’ll achieve some sort of expertise on any of these fields.
By the way, I hated “Good Will Hunting.” I thought that it was totally contrived and simplistic… or maybe it was just Matt Damon. Anyway, you missed my point again by implying that I said someone from a car mechanic background could lurk a supergenious character like Will Hunting. That’s highly unlikely…. although I saw an Errol Morris documentary (First Person) about a man who had an IQ of 200+ which is one of the highest ever recorded, work as a bouncer in a club. On his interview, he seemed perfectly contented with his life. The Will Hunting character himself is, I think inspired by a guy named William James Sidis, who is a total failure. He spent the rest of his life collecting streetcar transfer tickets. His IQ is totally off the charts and would probably make Marilyn Vos Savant look like a retard. Curiously, his father believed that geniuses are created, not born. It reminded me of the Polgar sisters, recently featured in the “My Brilliant Brain” National Geographic Special. Their father cultivated in them an early love of chess and the results speak for themselves.
On the other hand, someone as brilliant as Richard Feynman could only achieve an IQ score of 125. Very unimpressive for someone of his caliber. Madonna’s IQ score is at least 140, some accounts say as high as a 160. But I don’t believe she can write a dissertation either, just a wild hunch. Fenyman, could at least play a mean set of bongo drums. If Feynman is not a genius, then who is? Certainly not J.D. Salinger, whom I think scored 95. I must be a cretin for adoring him.
I think there’s more to intelligence than just tests. There is this case of twins with savant syndrome- both of them can almost instantaneously compute whether a number is prime or not. Incredible! I recall another autistic savant who can play a piano piece instantaneously on just one hearing. Even Mozart could not do that… These evidences does seem to point out that we in fact, possess an innate intelligence indepedent of culture and learning. Maybe. Neuroscience may help uncover some of these mysteries in the future.
On the Pisay note. I’m sorry to say, but it reeks of elitism. First, you made Pisay sound like something from the “Glass Bead Game.” In this academy, we only have the best of the best… no wait, I think that was from Top Gun. Psychologically, it could get into your head like, “Hey, I got in here, therefore I must really be smart.” Next thing you know, he’s reading string theory in 11 spacetime dimensions.
Second, while commending your classmates in the lower-end of the socio-economic strata for getting into Pisay- you still condemn where they come from. Your message is clear. If you are an auto mechanic or construction worker, you must be dumb. Otherwise intelligent people go for work that is more challenging like- becoming a manager, lawyer, or a…. politician. Enough said…
December 24th, 2007 at 19:57
It’s funny how the title of this topic has turned out to be sort of prophetic and literal. Anyway…
[“Cummon, writing a dissertation is not a “skill†that just about anyone can be taught to do!’
Why the hell not? What is it about “dissertations†that is different from playing the violin, learning to write, coding a software applicaton, directing a movie, playing basketball, or performing diagnostic tests on car engines? These are things that we all learn through experience and training. If you work hard enough, you’ll achieve some sort of expertise on any of these fields.]
>>>>> You don’t understand what a “dissertation†is at all. You keep making it sound like it’s a “skill†when my whole point was to illustrate that it’s not: it’s a completely creative activity that requires great imagination & critical thinking beyond mere learning, practice and repetition, which your examples clearly are not (except for “directing a movie†– great directors have made their own films that could be considered dissertations; and no, I don’t mean Carlo J. Caparas, who probably should have been a camera operator or remained a komiks illustrator). A dissertation is a proposal for a profound, sui generis idea that has never been thought of before or at least a rebuttal of or presentation of a different view/angle on a previously presented highly regarded idea. It isn’t as easy as you seem to think it is. Anybody who can write a coherent paragraph can probably write a book (well, not really) but not everybody (really) can be a Philip Roth, Goethe, Confucius, Sartre or Bohr.
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[By the way, I hated “Good Will Hunting.†I thought that it was totally contrived and simplistic… or maybe it was just Matt Damon. Anyway, you missed my point again by implying that I said someone from a car mechanic background could lurk a supergenious (SIC) character like Will Hunting. That’s highly unlikely…. although I saw an Errol Morris documentary (First Person) about a man who had an IQ of 200+ which is one of the highest ever recorded, work as a bouncer in a club. On his interview, he seemed perfectly contented with his life. The Will Hunting character himself is, I think inspired by a guy named William James Sidis, who is a total failure. He spent the rest of his life collecting streetcar transfer tickets. His IQ is totally off the charts and would probably make Marilyn Vos Savant look like a retard. Curiously, his father believed that geniuses are created, not born. It reminded me of the Polgar sisters, recently featured in the “My Brilliant Brain†National Geographic Special. Their father cultivated in them an early love of chess and the results speak for themselves.
On the other hand, someone as brilliant as Richard Feynman could only achieve an IQ score of 125. Very unimpressive for someone of his caliber. Madonna’s IQ score is at least 140, some accounts say as high as a 160. But I don’t believe she can write a dissertation either, just a wild hunch. Fenyman, could at least play a mean set of bongo drums. If Feynman is not a genius, then who is? Certainly not J.D. Salinger, whom I think scored 95. I must be a cretin for adoring him.
I think there’s more to intelligence than just tests. There is this case of twins with savant syndrome- both of them can almost instantaneously compute whether a number is prime or not. Incredible! I recall another autistic savant who can play a piano piece instantaneously on just one hearing. Even Mozart could not do that…]
>>>>> You are the one who keeps missing the point. (BTW, my first paragraph in the previous reply was directed more to Jeg’s reply but it does support my whole argument against yours as well.) I was merely exaggerating with the Will Hunting example to stress my point but you still have to convince me that even a person less intelligent than that but still smart wouldn’t have been most likely bored with a repetitious job. There’s a lot of implications that you keep not considering with your assertions. You claim that it is unlikely and yet you keep on bringing up freak examples that are anecdotal at best. Are being good at chess, Jeopardy and determining prime numbers truly the only enterprise of the intelligent? Is it really all that simple?
It’s something that I should have discussed earlier but my contention about intelligent people usually aiming for and being successful at the “big stuff†is contingent upon the absence of other complications that mess up life in general like mental illnesses (e.g. Dysthymia, Major Depression, addiction problems – and there is increasing evidence that the last one is just as hard-wired in the brain as IQ and other conditions are), personality disorders, psycho-social dysfunctions, major physical or psychological trauma/accident, socio-cultural pressures, simple bad luck and many others, or just plain old personal preference. Absent those factors (or the ability to overcome or even use them, which would be a mark of even greater greatness) and present high EQ (emotional quotient) and the intelligent usually succeeds on achieving his goals.
I never claimed that the IQ tests are adequate and, in fact, that is the opposite of what I clearly stated about what I agree with you on. I, too, believe nurture/environment can account for a lot but you’re giving it too much credit than it deserves. I personally believe Intelligence = IQ + EQ + various other undetermined factors. (125 is considered superior and is well within the 98-99 percentile according to the IQ bell curve so Feynman’s score is nothing to laugh about. Plus, his success could be attributed to factors other than IQ, which I expressly stated is merely predictive of a major aspect of intellect, not the summum bonum of it. There are also other factors to Einstein’s genius such as innate rebelliousness that Walter Isaacson discussed in his lovely portrait of the nutty professor. They needed much more than their IQs to have made those achievements. I’m also distrustful of comparing data that did not come from the same controlled testing. We’re not even sure those scores came from using the same set of valid test using exactly the same correct methods.) Having said that, the validity of the tests is totally debatable but just because we cannot test something properly doesn’t mean it isn’t true. There ARE gradations in intelligence and it’s as incontrovertible as it is self-evident. I see dumb people everywhere and there are limits to what education can do! If you don’t see it, it’s either you live in a fantasy world where everybody fares identically to the same challenges or you’re pushing your own personal wishful thinking or you’re just trying to save face to defend your position.
Furthermore, my contention is further supported by studies that investigated identical twins (they share the same nuclear DNA, as I hope you know) that were separated at birth and subjected to vastly different environmental and social milieus. Nearly all of them were found to not only having had the same educational attainment, pursued careers in the same field (if not downright the same job), achieved the same socio-economic status, had roughly the same personal issues, married the same kind of spouses even, etc. (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/w/wright-twins.html?_r=1&oref=slogin )
Also, among the many inconsistencies of your argument is regarding Madonna (I thought you said everybody can write a dissertation and yet having an IQ of 140 couldn’t? Ano ba talaga?!). I don’t believe she needs to write a formal dissertation (even though I believe she can, if those reports are true; BTW, I think you’re mistaking her for Sharon Stone, the one who has actually been formally tested as having that IQ, as she discussed on Oprah) because she already has done something akin to it in her field. Although I am not a fan of what she does in general, I have to concede that there is nobody else who has mastered the art of manipulation and provocation for one’s own benefit better than she has; not to mention that, with each album or image change, there is a thesis about something. I’m not saying that much of what she does is truly original as much as she is just brilliant in the audacity and prescience of her employment and deployment of talented producers and stuff already done by other less famous people (i.e. Electronica, Bjork, etc.) and the ability to make it look like it’s something fresh that pushes the envelope; all of which, in the process, enable her to stay relevant long after her contemporaries and most of the ones who followed have disappeared. If you ask me, she should be given an honorary doctorate.
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[These evidences does (SIC) seem to point out that we in fact, possess an innate intelligence indepedent of culture and learning. Maybe. Neuroscience may help uncover some of these mysteries in the future.]
>>>>> I’m sorry but this is, for lack of a better term, simply stupid. This is going beyond merely attributing more credit to “nurture†than it deserves. I can take a 90-nature/10-nurture or even a 50-50, but you think it’s 100% nurture?! I take this to mean you think everybody (anybody from the magbabalut to the President, from the yayas to professors) has absolutely the same potential of becoming an Einstein or a Bertrand Russell with just the same amount & kind of education? Where are all those people then?! (Haven’t you considered that most, if not all, of history’s greats are practically autodidacts?) It’s almost as absurd as saying everybody is male until Neuroscience proves it wrong. You don’t even need to formally study it; it’s so self-evident everywhere! But since you’re also behind on Neuroscience, numerous studies are presenting increasing evidence that many of our proclivities are hard-wired in the brain. If the IQ issue gnaws at you this much, how much more would it depress you that the tendency for obesity, substance abuse, homosexuality, violence, psychopathy, religiosity or even (gasp!) craving for chocolates ( http://www.education.designrx.net/PatientPortal/MyPractice.aspx?UAID=%7B444D7190-22FD-4D44-9537-8B400D7FA593%7D&TabID=%7BX%7D&ArticleID=609092 ) as being something people are born with and have a hard time battling their whole lives (not that I’d hate having the last affliction)?
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[On the Pisay note. I’m sorry to say, but it reeks of elitism. First, you made Pisay sound like something from the “Glass Bead Game.†In this academy, we only have the best of the best… no wait, I think that was from Top Gun. Psychologically, it could get into your head like, “Hey, I got in here, therefore I must really be smart.†Next thing you know, he’s reading string theory in 11 spacetime dimensions.
Second, while commending your classmates in the lower-end of the socio-economic strata for getting into Pisay- you still condemn where they come from. Your message is clear. If you are an auto mechanic or construction worker, you must be dumb. Otherwise intelligent people go for work that is more challenging like- becoming a manager, lawyer, or a…. politician. Enough said…]
>>>>> Is that really an argument? LOL. This is exactly what Christopher Hitchens was laughing about when he deplored how people either go to the ad hominem or plain old whining when push comes to shove. Sorry, but that is just what that sounded like: childish, bitter whining.
Before you push more of your prejudices, let me explain to you the selection process of the so-called “eliteâ€, totally public and free school that is Pisay. It’s not as if we just decided to assemble and declare ourselves “the elite†out of nowhere. They gather up the graduating students of elementary schools all over the country, without any other consideration than their being in the top 10% of their class, and then proceed to test them in verbal & abstract reasoning and basic mathematics that all kids at that level should be adept at. Those who make the cut are then subjected to another round of testing with high school and even college level Math and Science. I don’t know how it is now but in my batch, out of some 20,000 who participated in the first round, only the top 240 were finally admitted as the freshmen class; a great proportion of which (including moi) came from poor, provincial schools; most of whom (and I can certainly speak, in retrospect, from my own experience) were subjected to below average education (as most public schools in the Phils. are) that cannot account for how they got in so you can probably see our pride in being able to do so in spite of the fact. I don’t see a fairer and more democratic & scientific sampling/selection methodology producing better, non-anecdotal evidence.
I don’t see anything wrong with being “dumb” either, in the greater scheme or things. Your main problem, it seems, is conflating your own prejudices (that you yourself seem to be unaware of) — about seeing car mechanics as being “lowly†as opposed to a “becoming a manager, lawyer, or a…. politician†as being “elite†— with your IQ assertions and then projecting them to those who are merely stating a simple truth unadorned by value judgment: the latter kind of job is OBVIOUSLY and simply more complicated and requires more intellect than developing a skill for finding something wrong in a car and fixing it, which is nothing more than understanding how an internal combustion engine works and learning from repeated experience what could go wrong with it – that is on a completely different, lower level from that of the dissertation of conceiving and inventing it. Both kinds are equally useful to society (imagine a world where everybody wanted to become a lawyer; or where nobody is good at Math; or nobody wanted to make furniture or clean the bathrooms). I simply see it as the usefulness of the principle of (bio)diversity inherent in Darwin’s great dissertation: the more different individuals are –- simple, complex, skill-oriented, introspective thinker, physically strong, mentally strong, fair or dark skinned, etc.; the more options for natural selection and the better for the general survival of the group and life in general. And there are only so many positions for CEOs and millions more to do the “dirty job”. Nothing wrong with that at all; it’s simply reality.
December 28th, 2007 at 13:33
Okay, hold on while I stretch my typing fingers…
Everything that we do is a skill… from brushing one’s teeth to the deepest intellectual activity you could think of. Your definition of a dissertation is that “it’s a completely creative activity that requires great imagination & critical thinking beyond mere learning, practice and repetition, which your examples clearly are not.†Let me check my examples:
Playing the violin – not only does require lots of practice…. You seem to have no idea how much research and imagination is required to perform and interpret musical pieces. Any classical music student will eventually know how important this is.
Learning to write – sure… writing is not a creative activity, nor it requires critical thinking… maybe we can just refer to it as “typing.â€
Coding a software application – programming software applications is as much a creative process as anything. In addition, code (the logic part) could become so complex that it takes a whole team to write it. Even then, Windows still crashes frequently. Clearly, you don’t know much about computers.
Playing basketball – As we can see it best with Michael Jordan, Julius Erving, or Magic Johnson- basketball is more than just a robotic drill that you perform without creativity and imagination.
Directing a movie – This is the only one you have acknowledged as a legitimate example- but for the wrong reason. Ok, Carlo J. Caparas is not exactly Orson Welles here- but he’s still being creative, in his own way. Films from Luis Bunuel, Vittorio de Sica, or Kurosawa could indeed be called a work of art or even a “dissertation,†but a Caparas film is, in its own way, still a work of art. Take note however, that art means different things to different people. I’m no fan of Lito Camo either (to put it mildly), but the songs he writes is an indirect expression of the society and culture that he lives in. That for me is enough to call it art. Blasphemy, you may say? Not so much if you really think about it.
Is it not possible to write a crappy dissertation that does not exhibit any of the qualities that you’ve mentioned but would still be enough make you graduate? The majority of thesis’ being submitted are just rehashes of old and existing ideas anyway. Very rarely are they truly original. The sad reality is that students write dissertations because it is a requirement… nothing more. However, you make it appear that all dissertations are paradigm-shifting works of profound importance.
“Are being good at chess, Jeopardy and determining prime numbers truly the only enterprise of the intelligent? Is it really all that simple?â€
I don’t think it is… which IS the point of all my previous comments… if you really have been following it. But your formula of Intelligence = IQ + EQ + unknown quantity is oversimplifying it a step further. First, emotional intelligence or EQ is by no means a unanimously accepted idea. It almost seems to me that its real motive is to sell all those self-help books. EQ sounds very marketable, but until more scientific research is done on intelligence, EQ tests should have the same validity as a lie-detector test. I’m not saying that EQ is totally bogus- it has some valid points. The problem is that it is trying to measure something which is hard to quantify.
Back to your formula.
For the “various other undetermined factors†part, maybe we can put in “dissertation†instead. How does that sound?
My posts are directed at IQ tests, which are considered widely as the standard measure of intelligence. It is not directed towards your own definition, which you continually expand to suit your arguments. There is more to intelligence than these tests supposedly measures. It does not measure creativity and originality, for example. You can call it EQ, if you like. Whatever it is, your whole life experience will be the most important factor in determining your success. The IQ test was after all, originally created just to separate children with mental deficiencies- not as the de facto standard for intelligence.
One danger in putting a lot of faith into these tests is that people could use it for the purpose of discrimination. In the past, skull sizes were measured to “scientifically†determine intelligence. The Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele conducted extensive research on twins to support the idea of Aryan racial superiority. Twin research is nothing new. Recently, we have Charles Murray in his book “The Bell Curve,†which maintains that the reason for blacks being underachievers is due to their low IQ. James Watson, one of the subjects of this blog, was excommunicated by a lot of his colleagues because he took the same view. There should be no place for these racially-motivated ideas in this day and age. The film GATTACA, which I hope you’ve seen, echoes some of my fears regarding this view.
“There ARE gradations in intelligence and it’s as incontrovertible as it is self-evident. I see dumb people everywhere and there are limits to what education can do! If you don’t see it, it’s either you live in a fantasy world where everybody fares identically to the same challenges or you’re pushing your own personal wishful thinking or you’re just trying to save face to defend your position.â€
Okay, so if we both believe that there is more to intelligence that IQ tests, what do I make of your statement above? Maybe that is the difference between you and me. You only see dumb people while I just see people. Sure I call some of them stupid, just like the next guy. But frankly, who am I to judge? Stupidity is usually the term that we use to describe someone who disagrees with our own views and principles. In other words, people who are different from us. It’s no wonder that the whole world appears stupid. The view that I have is that these “self-evident†gradations in intelligence we see all around is “mostly†caused by cultural differences, not because of some hard-wired IQ score. Take note of the word “mostly,†which you might again misquote as “100% nurture.†I’ll get back to that later.
There are gradations in intelligence only in relation to your own. That is why I thought assuming a car mechanic can never learn how to write a dissertation is unfair. Think of it like relativity, wherein each point in space can only be determined in relation to another. There is no up and down, left or right- only these points of reference.
“I’m sorry but this is, for lack of a better term, simply stupid. This is going beyond merely attributing more credit to “nurture†than it deserves. I can take a 90-nature/10-nurture or even a 50-50, but you think it’s 100% nurture?!â€
Hello Mcfly, are you there? You quoted my statement, “we in fact, possess an innate intelligence independent of culture and learning.†That very specifically said that there is there is indeed a genetic component in intelligence. Did you even read the sentence or did you just saw it as an opportunity to insert the “sic†in?
I never said it is 100% nurture. That would be ludicrous. I only said I was only leaning more towards the nurture idea. You and I are not in the position to say whether it is 90-10 or 50-50. This is not a class debate wherein everything is painted in black and white.
“I take this to mean you think everybody (anybody from the magbabalut to the President, from the yayas to professors) has absolutely the same potential of becoming an Einstein or a Bertrand Russell with just the same amount & kind of education? Where are all those people then?!â€
The magbabalut or the yaya could probably not become the next Einstein since their lives have already been set in another direction. But replace the “magbabalut†with “child,†then it takes on a whole new meaning. It is not a bad idea to instill in the minds of children that they all have the potential to become an Albert Einstein, or a Bertrand Russell. Of course, the reality is that only a few of them will become one. But the world will be a much better place if they all aspired to it. Seeing all these balut vendors, one cannot help but think that under different circumstances, they would have become much, much more than they presently are. They might have even written “dissertations†which brings me to…
“Also, among the many inconsistencies of your argument is regarding Madonna (I thought you said everybody can write a dissertation and yet having an IQ of 140 couldn’t? Ano ba talaga?!)â€
First of all, I know the difference between Madonna and Sharon Stone. One of them sings, right? Anyway, Madonna probably can’t write a dissertation for the same reason as a car mechanic can’t. What they do for a living is not preparing them to write dissertations. Madonna’s IQ score is irrelevant in this case. You are attaching too much importance on the IQ part, in spite of all your EQ talk.
Regarding Madonna’s accomplishments, if you think Madonna should be given an honorary doctorate, then the same goes for Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Elvis, Beyonce, Mariah Carey, and to anyone who has sold over a million albums.
‘I don’t see anything wrong with being “dumb†either, in the greater scheme or things. Your main problem, it seems, is conflating your own prejudices (that you yourself seem to be unaware of) — about seeing car mechanics as being “lowly†as opposed to a “becoming a manager, lawyer, or a…. politician†as being elite’
Here is another example of your reversal tactics. The thread of this discussion was started when you said that a car mechanic can never write a dissertation. Then you assert that you are just making a statement of fact, nothing more. Then you claim that I am the one who was prejudices because I “compared†the car mechanic to a lawyer or a politician, even if that sentence’s point is to show the discrimination. It is your own obvious prejudices that compelled me to respond to your reply in the first place. The last paragraph of your response deals with social Darwinism. Regrettably, it has been used to justify some of the worst atrocities of our time. But that is another topic for discussion.
Regarding Philippine Science, I want to congratulate you for getting accepted. Judging by the nature of your responses, it seems like a fairly recent event.
High-five, Christopher Hitchens and Happy New Year to you, Dr. Feelgood! Hope you feel better!
January 1st, 2008 at 22:07
[EDITED. Sorry, the previous post didn’t come out right, Please post this instead.]
“DISGRACEâ€
Perhaps, it’s better to focus my serious attention on the ultimate source of these ideas. Curiosity led me to the evaluation of Gould’s arguments by Bernard Davis, PhD, former head of the Harvard Center for Human Genetics and, alas, here we see what happens when a book that dares to propose a provocative a stance as this is subjected to the appropriate scholarly evaluation that it deserves. Substance, instead of form, is scrutinized; the abject injustice of advancing political propaganda under the guise of “objective science†is incisively betrayed for what it really is: bad science and bad argumentation.
It is amusing that a critique of the book written two decades ago, when we knew substantially less about what we know now about neuroscience, psychology, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, etc., was able to capture essentially the same things that were obvious to me at the outset and are definite no-nos in scientific research: “prejudiceâ€, “biasâ€, “ignorance/ignoring of essential scientific evidenceâ€, “selective historyâ€, “value judgmentsâ€, etc., etc. I post here the most salient parts that say exactly what I would possibly say were I to do the evaluation myself, but I encourage the intellectually curious to read the whole article that brilliantly exposes how a purported “scientist†advocates bad science. Disgraceful. [Source: http://www.cpsimoes.net/artigos/art_davis.html ]
“Neo-Lysenkoism, IQ and the Press”
by Bernard D. Davis
At the time the following paper was published, Bernard D. Davis was Adele Lehman Professor of Bacterial Physiology at Harvard Medical School, where he formerly headed the Center for Human Genetics.
Davis, Bernard D. (1983). Neo-Lysenkoism, IQ, and the press. The Public Interest, 74, 41-59.
…While the nonscientific reviews of The Mismeasure of Man were almost uniformly laudatory, the reviews in the scientific journals were almost all highly critical. In Science, a widely read American publication that covers all the sciences, the book was reviewed by Franz Samelson, a psychologist at Kansas State University. He concludes that as a history of science the book has a number of problems. For example, he notes, Gould claims that Army intelligence tests led to the Immigration Restriction Act of 1925; in fact, no psychologist testified before Congress, and the three reports of the House Committee on Immigration do not mention intelligence tests at all. On another point, Gould’s discussion of the “fallacy of reification”–the grouping of different abilities, such as verbal reasoning and spatial reasoning, into one measure of intelligence– “remains blurred, since Gould’s emphasis seems to shift about. Exactly what does he object to? [Gould] never tells us directly what his own proper, unreified conception of intelligence is.” Finally, Gould fails to acknowledge that ability testing is “a sizable industry in the real world and a smaller one in academia.” And all Gould’s incisive thrusts at finagling and fallacies seem to be almost irrelevant. … Whatever intellectual victories over the [mostly dead] testers Gould’s eminently readable book achieves … the real action seems to be elsewhere.”
In Nature, a distinguished British journal of general science, Steve Blinkhom, writing from the Neuropsychology Laboratory at Stanford University, is blunt: “With a glittering prose style and as honestly held a set of prejudices as you could hope to meet in a day’s crusading, S.J. Gould presents his attempt at identifying the fatal flaw in the theory and measurement of intelligence. Of course everyone knows there must be a fatal flaw, but so far reports of its discovery have been consistently premature.” More specifically, “the substantive discussion of the theory of intelligence stops at the stage it was in more than a quarter of a century ago.” Gould “has nothing to say which is both accurate and at issue when it comes to substantive or methodological points.” Finally, many of his assertions “have the routine flavor of Radio Moscow news broadcasts when there really is no crisis to shout about. You have to admire the skill in presentation, but what a waste of talent.”
Science 82, a journal designed for the general public, chose as its reviewer Candace Pert, a biochemist at the National Institute of Mental Health, who has been researching the application of molecular biology and cell biology to the study of the brain. “Gould’s history of pseudoscientific racism in measuring human intelligence,” she writes, “does not, despite his claims, negate the sociobiological notion that differences in human genetic composition can produce differences in brain proteins, resulting in differences in behavior and personality.” In her view, “if modem neuroscience reveals biochemical differences that account for human variability, we must deal with this important knowledge; … ignoring differences because they could become abuses will not make them go away.”
The most extensive scientific analysis of Gould’s book appeared in Contemporary Education Review. Arthur R. Jensen, of the Institute for Human Learning at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzes Gould’s technical arguments in great detail and reaches sharply critical conclusions. He also discusses recent research demonstrating a high correlation of IQ with speed of information processing, as measured by simple reaction-time techniques. These findings encourage a hope that a merger with neurobiology may soon make studies of intelligence much more penetrating and less controversial…
Gould’s selective history
It is important for the general public to understand why scientists close to the field have reacted so negatively to The Mismeasure of Man. The strength of science in analyzing reality comes from its strict separation of facts from values, of observations from expectations. Measurements of intelligence, and of its hereditary and environmental origins, are part of natural science–even though one must go beyond science, bringing in judgments of value, in order to probe the social implications of the results. Hence any purported scientific exposition of these topics must be as dispassionate and objective as possible about the facts, whatever the social views the author favors. These are precious standards, whose corruption we must resist. Unfortunately, throughout Gould’s book they are not met.
The early chapters describe in detail some extremely naive nineteenth-century attempts to measure intelligence in terms of brain size or body shape. These are fossils from the history of mental testing, and their excavation would ordinarily bore most readers. Gould, however, uses them skillfully, both to give the impression of a thorough scholarly analysis and to arouse indignation at such evil uses of science. Unfortunately, the advocacy and the emotional appeal betray the scholarship. In the early stages of any science, naive ideas, often reflecting the prejudice of the time, are inevitable. Gould infers that this legacy will persist; but history demonstrates that the advance of science depends on continually discarding false hypotheses and preconceptions. Gould further arouses the reader’s indignation by describing the ill-informed and prejudiced views of Paul Broca and Louis Agassiz on racial differences. But at a time when slavery was legal, and long before the science of genetics revolutionized our understanding of the nature of race, it is hardly surprising that these views were held by leading scientists–and even, as Gould notes, by such enlightened social critics as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. To remind us of these roots in the history of racism is instructive–but to imply a similar prejudice in today’s investigators of intelligence is unfair….
What is “biological determinism”?
Gould’s own degree of bias is unusual in a work by a scientist. What is the source of this passion? Not mental testing itself, he makes it clear. Rather, his arguments against this testing are merely weapons for attacking the real enemy: what he calls “biological determinism.”
As Gould correctly points out, early investigators who tried to measure intelligence were indeed determinists: They had the illusion that they were directly measuring a capacity determined by the genes. But while he continues to tar investigators of behavioral genetics with this brush, in fact they are now all interactionists. For while genetics necessarily began with the simplest relationships, in which a single gene determines a trait (such as the color of Mendel’s peas, or a human blood type), the science eventually moved on to the quantitatively varying (metric) physical or behavioral traits, which socially are much more interesting. These were found to depend on multiple genes, and also on their cumulative interactions with the environment. This concept is now precisely formulated as the concept of heritability: a measure of what fraction of the total variance in a trait, in a particular population, is due to genetic differences between individuals–the other fraction coming from environmental influences.
Since Gould would prefer to combat the straw man of naive, “pure” determinism, he fails to note that the science of genetics has altogether replaced this concept with interactionism. But since he is too familiar with biology to deny this conceptual shift, he appropriates it for his own ideological argument: “The difference between strict hereditarians and their opponents is not, as some caricatures suggest, the belief that a child’s performance is all inborn or all a function of environment and learning. I doubt that the most committed antihereditarians have ever denied the existence of innate variation among children.” Curiously, “hereditarians” (Gould’s misnomer for interactionists) are not credited with a similar appreciation of both factors. Instead, they are neatly skewered by being called “strict.”
What, then, is the quarrel about? According to Gould, “the differences [between the camps] are more a matter of social policy and educational practice. Hereditarians view their measures of intelligence as measures of permanent inborn limits. Children, so labeled, should be sorted, trained according to their inheritance and channeled into professions appropriate for their biology.” But good investigators, such as Binet, did not want mental testing to become a theory of limits. For them, Gould argues, “Mental testing becomes a theory for enhancing potential through proper education [emphasis added].”3
This is a deliberate effort to blur the issue. With one hand Gould concedes innate differences, and with the other he takes them away. If the two camps really differ mostly about social policy and not about the importance of hereditary factors, why does he struggle so to deny the latter? Similarly, whether the hereditary component is large or small, is it not a fact that individuals differ widely in their phenotypic, developed ability to absorb various kinds of education and to perform various kinds of jobs? Yet the book has not one word about the possible value of mental tests for educational and vocational placement or for comparing educational programs. (However, consistent with Gould’s admiration for Binet’s circumscribed aim, he does note the value of mental tests in guiding the therapy of his own child.) Finally, in describing the incredibly crude use of the Army’s “Alpha” tests in 1917, Gould ignores the current use of sophisticated tests to help the armed forces select candidates for expensive training programs.
It is sad that Gould, preoccupied with the destructive social consequences of earlier biological misconceptions, is convinced that any modem studies on human behavioral genetics must have similar consequences. For to the contrary, modern evolutionary biology has had an opposite effect–by providing a powerful argument against racism. In the past, a widely-accepted justification for race discrimination stemmed from a Platonic doctrine that prevailed for over two millennia: the belief that we can best understand groups of entities (including species and races) in typological (essentialist) terms, i.e., characterizing all the individuals in a group in terms of a hypothetical ideal type or essence, and dismissing differences from the ideal as trivial. Today, however, population genetics has shown that all species are genetically diverse, and that the differences are not trivial but rather are the source of evolution. With this shift from an essentialist to a populationist view, the genetic differences between races (except for some superficial physical traits) are now seen to be statistical rather than essentially uniform. And since the statistical distributions overlap extensively from one group to another, one cannot infer an individuals potential from his race.
If the pre-genetic, typological misconceptions still prevailed, the modern revolt against race discrimination would surely have encountered much greater resistance, and it might even have been impossible. Unfortunately, biology has received little credit for this major social contribution, and none at all from Stephen Jay Gould….
The “deep fallacies” of reification and factoring
Gould’s argument on reification purports to get at the philosophical foundation of the field. He claims that general intelligence, defined as the factor common to different cognitive abilities, is merely a mathematical abstraction; hence if we consider it a measurable attribute we are reifying it, falsely converting an abstraction into an “entity” or a “thing”–variously referred to as “a hard, quantifiable thing,” “a quantifiable fundamental particle,” “a thing in the most direct, material sense.” Here he has dug himself a deep hole. If this implication of localization is a fallacy for general intelligence, why is it not also a fallacy for specialized forms of intelligence, which Gould professes to accept? Going even further, he seems to abandon materialism altogether: “Once intelligence becomes an entity, standard procedures of science virtually dictate that a location and physical substrate be sought for it. Since the brain is the seat of mentality, intelligence must reside there.” But we must ask what reasonable scientific alternative there is. A Cartesian dualism, in which mental processes exist apart from a material base?
Indeed, this whole argument is fantastic. The scientist does not measure “material things”: He measures properties (such as length or mass), sometimes of a single “thing” (however defined), and sometimes of an organized collection of things, such as a machine, a biological organ, or an organism. In a particularly complex collection, the brain, some properties (i.e., specific functions) have been traced to narrowly-localized regions (such as the sensory or motor nuclei connected to particular parts of the body). Others, however, depend on connections between widely-separated regions. Accordingly, the reality of generalized intelligence–or equally, of any specialized cognitive ability–does not require a “quantifiable fundamental particle.” Like information transfer in a telephone network or in a computer, cognition would be much the same whether the cells involved are grouped together in one region of the brain or are connected by fibers running between dispersed locations.
It is astonishing that a scientist with Gould’s credentials, and with ready access to colleagues in the relevant fields, would present such a phony “discovery” as the fallacy of reification, and on the basis of truly antiquated views of neurobiology. He writes that the existence of general intelligence could have been proved correct “if biochemists had ever found Spearman’s cerebral energy.” This phrase refers to a particularly thin speculation, in the 1920s, about the physical basis for differences in IQ. But neurobiologists today simply do not deal in such vague concepts. Instead, they measure variation in the richness of cells, and connections, and neurotransmitter molecules in different areas of the brain….
Objectivity in science
The main source of confusion here is that the word “science” is used with three different meanings, in different contexts: science as a set of activities, as a methodology, and as a body of knowledge. The activities of a scientist certainly depend heavily on non-objective factors. These include the resources and the incentives that a society provides for pursuing particular projects, and also the personal choice of problems, hypotheses, and experimental design. The methodology of science is much more objective, but it is also influenced by fashions in the scientific community. The body of scientific knowledge, however, is a very different matter. Its observations and conclusions, after having been sufficiently verified and built upon, correspond to reality more objectively and reliably than any other form of knowledge achieved by man. To be sure, attachment to a cherished hypothesis may lead a scientist into error. Moreover, at the cutting edge of a science, contradictory results and interpretations are common. But the mistakes are eventually discarded, through a finely honed system of communal criticisms and verification. Thus Broca’s name has been immortalized by its assignment to a structure in the brain that be recognized, whereas his premature efforts to correlate gross structural variations with intelligence have left no residue in the body of scientific knowledge.
Accordingly, however much the findings in some areas of science may be relevant to our social judgments, they are obtained by a method designed to separate objective analysis of nature from subjective value judgments. Long experience has shown that when these findings are well-verified, they have an exceedingly high probability of being universal, cumulative, and value-free. Gould, however, treats the history of science like political history, with which his readers are more familiar: a history in which human motives and errors from the past will inevitably recur. He thus skillfully promotes a doubt that the biological roots of human behavior can ever be explored scientifically.
Politicizing and publicizing science
A left-wing group called “Science for the People,” of which Gould is a member, has been particularly active in campaigning against such studies. Instead of focusing, in the earlier tradition of radical groups, on defects in our political and economic system that demand radical change, this group has aimed at politicizing science, attacking in particular any aspect of genetics that may have social implications. Their targets have included genetic engineering, research on the effects of an XYY set of chromosomes, sociobiology, and efforts to measure the heritability of intelligence. Several years ago Gould co-signed their intemperate attack on E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.5 Now, in The Mismeasure of Man, he has extended the attack to cognitive psychology and educational testing, because they may reveal genetic differences.
Gould has spelled out explicitly his ideological commitment, and also its influence on his science. As we shall see, his main scientific contribution has been the claim that evolution has occurred mainly through revolutionary jumps, rather than by small steps. Both in a “Dialectics Workshop”6 and in a scientific paper7 he supports this claim with a citation from Marx: “Darwin’s gradualism was part of the cultural context, not of nature.” He adds that “alternate [sic] conceptions of change have respectable pedigrees in philosophy. Hegel’s dialectical laws, translated into a materialist context … are explicitly punctuational, as befits a theory of revolutionary transformation in human society.” And, “it may also not be irrelevant to our personal preferences [about evolutionary mechanisms] that one of us learned his Marxism, literally at his Daddy’s knee.” To most scientists (other than those tethered to a party line) such a claim of support from (or for) Hegel is silly, and such an insertion of an ideological preference, whether from the left or the right, is a corruption of science.
These quotations may help us to understand why The Mismeasure of Man ends up as a sophisticated piece of political propaganda, rather than as a balanced scientific analysis. Gould is entitled, of course, to whatever political views he wishes. But the reader is also entitled to be aware of his agenda….
Neo-Lysenkoism
In The Mismeasure of Man Gould fails to live up to the trust engendered by his credentials. His historical account is highly selective; he asserts the non-objectivity of science so that he can test for scientific truth, flagrantly, by the standards of his own social and political convictions; and by linking his critique to the quest for fairness and justice, he exploits the generous instincts of his readers. Moreover, while he is admired as a clear writer, in the sense of effective communication, he is not clear in the deeper sense of analyzing ideas sharply and with logical rigor, as we have a right to expect of a disciplined scientist.
It has been uncomfortable to dissect a colleague’s book and his background so critically. But I have felt obliged to do so because Gould’s public influence, well-earned for his popular writing on less political questions, is being put to mischievous political use in this book. Moreover, its success undermines the ideal of objectivity in scientific expositions, and also reflects a chronic problem of literary publications. My task has been all the more unpleasant because I do not doubt Gould’s sincerity in seeking a more just and generous world, and I thoroughly share his conviction that racism remains one of the greatest obstacles.
Unfortunately, the approach that Gould has used to combat racism has serious defects. Instead of recognizing the value of eliminating bias, his answer is to press for equal and opposite bias, in a virtuous direction–not recognizing the irony and the danger of thus subordinating science to fashions of the day. Moreover, as a student of evolution he might have been expected to build on a profound insight of modem genetics and evolutionary biology: that the human species, and each race within it, possesses a wide range of genetic diversity. But instead of emphasizing the importance of recognizing that diversity, Gould remains locked in combat with a prescientific typological view of heredity, and this position leads him to oppose studies of behavioral genetics altogether. As the reviewer for Nature stated, The Mismeasure of Man is “a book which exemplifies its own thesis. It is a masterpiece of propaganda, researched in the service of a point of view rather than written from a fund of knowledge.”
In effect, we see here Lysenkoism risen again: an effort to outlaw a field of science because it conflicts with a political dogma. To be sure, the new version is more limited in scope, and it does not use the punitive powers of a totalitarian state, as Trofim Lysenko did in the Soviet Union to suppress all of genetics between 1935 and 1965. But that is not necessary in our system: A chilling atmosphere is quite sufficient to prevent funding agencies, investigators, and graduate students from exploring a taboo area. And such Neo- Lysenkoist politicization of science, from both the left and the right, is likely to grow, as biology increasingly affects our lives– probing the secrets of our genes and our brain, reshaping our image of our origins and our nature, and adding new dimensions to our understanding of social behavior. When ideologically committed scientists try to suppress this knowledge they jeopardize a great deal, for without the ideal of objectivity science loses its strength.
Because this feature of science is such a precious asset, the crucial lesson to be drawn from the case of Stephen Jay Gould is the danger of propagating political views under the guise of science. Moreover, this end was furthered, wittingly or not, by the many reviewers whose evaluations were virtually projective tests of their political convictions. For these reviews reflected enormous relief: A voice of scientific authority now assures us that biological diversity does not set serious limits to the goal of equality, and so we will not have to wrestle with the painful problem of refining what we mean by equality.
In scientific journals editors take pains to seek reviewers who can bring true expertise to the evaluation of a book. It is all the more important for editors of literary publications to do likewise, for when a book speaks with scientific authority on a controversial social issue, the innocent lay reader particularly needs protection from propaganda. Science can make a great contribution toward solving our social problems by helping us to base our policies and judgments upon reality, rather than upon wish or conjecture. Because this influence is so powerful it is essential for such contributions to be judged critically, by the standards of science.
January 2nd, 2008 at 03:45
“I See Dumb People”
Okay, let me THINK while you stretch your fingers in preparation for the prodigious typing skills that I acknowledge you DO have. On second thought, this is gonna be more play than think.
Bleh..all you did was to nitpick on the peripherals and give more of the same circular arguments, without, once again, disproving any of my original contentions. But since that’s the only thing you can do, let me indulge your fetish…
[Everything that we do is a skill… from brushing one’s teeth to the deepest intellectual activity you could think of. Your definition of a dissertation is that “it’s a completely creative activity that requires great imagination & critical thinking beyond mere learning, practice and repetition, which your examples clearly are not.†Let me check my examples:
Playing the violin – not only does require lots of practice…. You seem to have no idea how much research and imagination is required to perform and interpret musical pieces. Any classical music student will eventually know how important this is.]
 And where, pray tell, could this “imagination†come from? Did your momma teach you your “imagination� I wonder where Perlman and Licad “researched†their creative imaginations. This has got take the plaque for the most ridiculous among the many ridiculous things you’ve already said.
[Learning to write – sure… writing is not a creative activity, nor it requires critical thinking… maybe we can just refer to it as “typing.â€]
 Ah…yes? Di ba nga it’s not dissertation.
[Coding a software application – programming software applications is as much a creative process as anything. In addition, code (the logic part) could become so complex that it takes a whole team to write it. Even then, Windows still crashes frequently. Clearly, you don’t know much about computers.
Playing basketball – As we can see it best with Michael Jordan, Julius Erving, or Magic Johnson- basketball is more than just a robotic drill that you perform without creativity and imagination.]
 Ok, I missed those as I was busy on the LARGER POINT I was making while you are here reiterating your lack of logic. Sige…Mac, Jordan’s basketball and Jessica’s beloved Federer’s tennis could be beautiful art/dissertation. But that still begs the same questions. So why aren’t there more Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in the world or Michael-Jordan-like talents given the obsession with and practice many of our countrymen devote to basketball? Are you trying to prove your point, or mine?
[Directing a movie – This is the only one you have acknowledged as a legitimate example- but for the wrong reason. Ok, Carlo J. Caparas is not exactly Orson Welles here- but he’s still being creative, in his own way. Films from Luis Bunuel, Vittorio de Sica, or Kurosawa could indeed be called a work of art or even a “dissertation,†but a Caparas film is, in its own way, still a work of art. Take note however, that art means different things to different people. I’m no fan of Lito Camo either (to put it mildly), but the songs he writes is an indirect expression of the society and culture that he lives in. That for me is enough to call it art. Blasphemy, you may say? Not so much if you really think about it.]
 If you’re going by the general, layman’s definition of “art†then by all means call Caparas, et al. “artists†for all I care. I wonder by which worldview would you then consider the works of Kurosawa, et al. art while maintaining the former assertion. What made you make the distinction to group those people together? What makes one better than the other? Do you even know what CONSISTENCY means? Don’t you see that you’re practically admitting the gradations; you just don’t like to explicitly say it to save face or maybe because of the lack of facility to explain it?
 If you want to truly impress me, try to address all my points that you conveniently ignored, instead of these insignificant things. I clearly demonstrated the essential difference between “skill†and “dissertation†in tthe last paragraph of my previous post.
[Is it not possible to write a crappy dissertation that does not exhibit any of the qualities that you’ve mentioned but would still be enough make you graduate? The majority of thesis’ being submitted are just rehashes of old and existing ideas anyway. Very rarely are they truly original. The sad reality is that students write dissertations because it is a requirement… nothing more. However, you make it appear that all dissertations are paradigm-shifting works of profound importance.]
 And that precisely is why there ARE gradations in intelligence even for those who write dissertations. Is that so hard to get? There really aren’t many people at the extremes of the bell curve so that’s not surprising.
[“Are being good at chess, Jeopardy and determining prime numbers truly the only enterprise of the intelligent? Is it really all that simple?â€
I don’t think it is… which IS the point of all my previous comments… if you really have been following it. But your formula of Intelligence = IQ + EQ + unknown quantity is oversimplifying it a step further. First, emotional intelligence or EQ is by no means a unanimously accepted idea. It almost seems to me that its real motive is to sell all those self-help books. EQ sounds very marketable, but until more scientific research is done on intelligence, EQ tests should have the same validity as a lie-detector test. I’m not saying that EQ is totally bogus- it has some valid points. The problem is that it is trying to measure something which is hard to quantify.
My posts are directed at IQ tests, which are considered widely as the standard measure of intelligence. It is not directed towards your own definition, which you continually expand to suit your arguments. There is more to intelligence than these tests supposedly measures. It does not measure creativity and originality, for example. You can call it EQ, if you like.]
 For the Nth time, I am saying I AGREE, I AGREE, I AGREE. Yes, the validity of the tests (and the formulas) are debatable. But the possible invalidity of the tests does NOT disprove the existence of the gradations. It’s like saying Osteoporosis did not occur before the advent of Bone densitometry scans; or no hot and cold before the advent of the thermometer. Di mo ba talaga maintindihan yon? Which school did you attend? I wonder how your teachers were able to explain how all of the students, given that they were given the same kind and amount of lessons, did EQUALLY great (or bad, in your case, kidding) in their tests?
[One danger in putting a lot of faith into these tests is that people could use it for the purpose of discrimination. In the past, skull sizes were measured to “scientifically†determine intelligence. The Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele conducted extensive research on twins to support the idea of Aryan racial superiority. Twin research is nothing new. Recently, we have Charles Murray in his book “The Bell Curve,†which maintains that the reason for blacks being underachievers is due to their low IQ. James Watson, one of the subjects of this blog, was excommunicated by a lot of his colleagues because he took the same view. There should be no place for these racially-motivated ideas in this day and age. The film GATTACA, which I hope you’ve seen, echoes some of my fears regarding this view.]
 This is, maybe, the only valid portion of your reply but it’s more of the same VALUE JUDGMENTS that are beside the point. More on that later since, as I had suspected, you’re just reiterating Gould’s political propaganda that, however valid, is not the domain of pure science.
[“I’m sorry but this is, for lack of a better term, simply stupid. This is going beyond merely attributing more credit to “nurture†than it deserves. I can take a 90-nature/10-nurture or even a 50-50, but you think it’s 100% nurture?!â€
Hello Mcfly, are you there? You quoted my statement, “we in fact, possess an innate intelligence independent of culture and learning.†That very specifically said that there is there is indeed a genetic component in intelligence. Did you even read the sentence or did you just saw it as an opportunity to insert the “sic†in?
I never said it is 100% nurture. That would be ludicrous. I only said I was only leaning more towards the nurture idea. You and I are not in the position to say whether it is 90-10 or 50-50. This is not a class debate wherein everything is painted in black and white.]
 Hello, do you read? Let me put here the complete quote again because you conveniently omitted the important words:
“These evidences does (SIC) seem to point out that we in fact, possess an innate intelligence indepedent (more SIC for you) of culture and learning. Maybe. Neuroscience may help uncover some of these mysteries in the future.â€
What do the words MAYBE and MAY mean? What does waiting for Neuroscience to prove it mean? You don’t believe there is any form of innate intelligence! Yet. Because wala pa raw proof. It’s obvious you don’t have any background in Pediatrics and Neurology or even basic college Psychology and high school Biology or, hell, even basic common sense and observation. Look at babies and toddlers and tell me they don’t have NATURAL INSTINCTS that do not have to be taught before they do them on their own. I AM in a position to believe there is at least 1% innate intelligence, but that is greatly understating the matter.
So okay, enough of the nitpicking…you’re acknowledging it’s not 100% nurture. Your first plus point.
And what the hell about all the research I cited?! Do you read?
[The magbabalut or the yaya could probably not become the next Einstein since their lives have already been set in another direction. But replace the “magbabalut†with “child,†then it takes on a whole new meaning. It is not a bad idea to instill in the minds of children that they all have the potential to become an Albert Einstein, or a Bertrand Russell. Of course, the reality is that only a few of them will become one.]
 So what made you realize this “reality†that, even with exactly the same environmental/educational conditions as Einstein’s, not all of them will be so? Akala ko ba equal tayong lahat? Ano baaaaaa?
[But the world will be a much better place if they all aspired to it. Seeing all these balut vendors, one cannot help but think that under different circumstances, they would have become much, much more than they presently are. They might have even written “dissertations†which brings me to…]
 How noble. And I agree. So why does the balut vendor who, according to you, has just as much potential as Einstein, not get bored with his job and use his logical/mathematical acumen to do something else that will provide for him and his family an easier life? Do you see humans as instinctive fatalists? Why do you keep evading the issue? Let me answer na lang, you don’t know what you are talking about.
[Anyway, Madonna probably can’t write a dissertation for the same reason as a car mechanic can’t. What they do for a living is not preparing them to write dissertations. Madonna’s IQ score is irrelevant in this case.]
 And why wouldn’t Madonna, given the same opportunity in a university that your hypothetical mechanic is given, not be able to write a dissertation even with her supposed high IQ? I was putting them in the same situation. Do you really know what CONSISTENCY means? You obviously haven’t participated in a controlled scientific study in your life or even read any journal article or even understood the implications of the experiments you did in high school Chemistry to be this ignorant of even basic concepts of research. Here I was talking of anecdotal vs. scientific evidence, twin studies, methodology and sampling and you don’t even understand consistency. Geeeez.
[Regarding Madonna’s accomplishments, if you think Madonna should be given an honorary doctorate, then the same goes for Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Elvis, Beyonce, Mariah Carey, and to anyone who has sold over a million albums.]
 Jus ko po!!! Did you even understand an iota of everything I discussed about why she merits a doctorate? Di ba nga ang dami sa mga Hollywood stars ang merong honorary doctorates? Don’t you know? Eh now you know. BTW, Madonna is about to be inducted into the Rock and Roll of Fame, her own field’s “doctorateâ€, next year.
All I was saying regarding Sharon Stone is that Madonna’s supposed high IQ has never been elevated above rumourville while Sharon confirmed on TV that she was tested so and was sent to a special high school/college hybrid program on her senior year at HS. The media and word-of-mouth do tend to mix these things up when they’re unconfirmed…is all I was saying. Don’t get all sensitive; you’re not THAT dumb.
[Here is another example of your reversal tactics. The thread of this discussion was started when you said that a car mechanic can never write a dissertation. Then you assert that you are just making a statement of fact, nothing more. Then you claim that I am the one who was prejudices because I “compared†the car mechanic to a lawyer or a politician, even if that sentence’s point is to show the discrimination. It is your own obvious prejudices that compelled me to respond to your reply in the first place.]
 Who introduced the words “lowly†and “elite†and even “dumb†into the discussion? It was you who first made the distinction to begin with in your very first post, which made me point out that, by being unaware of the numerous important implications in your stupid analogy, you didn’t know what you were also implying about your own prejudices by doing so. I have never denied that I have prejudices. Who doesn’t have one? But I don’t use them where they can be obtrusive such as in discussions like this. As I don’t use prejudice here, I AM being judgmental based on scientifically verified evidence; all of which you conveniently ignored to make it seem like your a priori assumptions still hold water.
 And please stop pretending that you can lecture me on “Social Darwinism†when you don’t even have any idea about the scientific method. If all you can do is convince yourself that you at least know something by naming it, you really, really do not impress me at all.
[Regarding Philippine Science, I want to congratulate you for getting accepted. Judging by the nature of your responses, it seems like a fairly recent event.
High-five, Christopher Hitchens and Happy New Year to you, Dr. Feelgood! Hope you feel better!]
 Ah..aheheheh..More pathetic whinery. Does arguing so clumsily (in both form & substance) and the fact that, in the end , all you can really do is make corny, cheap shots like those make you truly happy?
I’m really sorry that I did not write anything that could be considered intelligent this time around as I was so disappointed to have been given this dumb reply. What was there to properly reply to? I only ended up repeating what I already said. In my previous posts, I took pains to respond with something cogent, thinking I was discussing with another intelligent person only to realize that I overestimated and, instead, got impaled with more reiteration of already discredited answers and evasion of the truly important points that I made, which STILL stand uncontested regardless of the drivel spouted. Could you please challenge me?! Please, these are not arguments. God, I’m so irritated I’m almost tempted to help you rebut myself. What a bore; it was all I could do to amuse myself.
P.S. Just out of curiosity, what field are you in? Please don’t tell me you’re in the Natural or even Social Sciences. And Catch22, don’t take this personally. I’m just a naturally sutil/naughty guy. You’re obviously not dumb, just far from being as intelligent as moi. (Wink) Happy New Year, indeed! =)
January 5th, 2008 at 02:00
Well, I have to agree with you there- there’s nothing intelligent in your last post. Not much sense to reply point by point since I don’t want to repeat myself any more than you do. It will just disintegrate into something like a shouting match.
If we both agree that IQ tests can be unreliable at times, then what the hell are we arguing about? Is it dissertations, art, or Madonna? Perhaps it is the “gradations†thing- which I may have given you the wrong impression. Let me be clear this time. I DO SEE these gradations of intelligence everywhere. I did not categorically state this before since the answer should be obvious to anyone. But the real question is how did these variations arise? Is it mostly due to the hereditary factors which IQ tests supposedly measures, or environmental ones? Okay, I’ll stop here before it gets redundant.
However, I will give a reaction to the Bernard Davis article which was posted AFTER my last reply as soon as I catch up with some work. Just to satisfy your curiosity though, my work is in IT. How about you?