charles cure said:
how are those two statements not, in essence, the same thing? you're saying oh well you cant have an accurate statistic of whether smarter people believe or dont because you cant determine who has more intelligence in any meaningful way. come on. just because someone disputes the validity of the average IQ test doesnt make it an obsolete measure. and it doesnt mean that you have to use that either, there are other more comprehensive tests out there i believe.
Eh, you're right. They're pretty much the same thing. My words betrayed me, for that was not my meaning. You'll have to forgive me, I wrote that at 5-6 this morning, without having yet been to sleep. I still haven't slept, so don't be surprised if my logic is still somewhat dodgy. Despite the obvious discredit to my argument, I will rephrase it to be "it's terribly difficult to guage intelligence."
Also, it isn't just "someone" who disputes the accuracy of IQ tests, most psychologists reconize its lacking in comprehensive intelligence testing. I'd find a few web links to show this, but I'm too lazy. I'd ask you to trust me, but as a scientist, you're prone to doubt. So, proceed with your rebuttle.
charles cure said:
technically, using any scientific or empirical approach, all you can ever do is measure particular modes of thought, so each test on its own is imperfect, and apparently that means you cant rely on any of them to guage intelligence if you follow your line of reasoning.
Yes, you can use them to guage intelligence, but particular aspects of it only. Thus, in combination, you're likely to get the best possible measurement. My point is merely that the poles are biased in the regard that they're drawing upon a particular field of intelligence.
charles cure said:
actually, intelligence is exactly what i said it was. the definition of the word intelligence proves my point, as it is defined by Merriam-Websters New World Dictionary to mean:
1.ability to learn and understand or deal with new or trying situations. 2. mental acuteness. 3. information, news. 4. an agency engaged in obtaining information esp. concerning an enemy or possible enemy.
Again, my reasoning was a bit dodgy, or perhaps my wording was. I take for granted that everyone has equal capacity to learn. What I do not believe, though, is that everyone makes use of that capacity, or knows how to make use of it, mostly because self-doubt often begins to take place in childhood, which slows or blocks the learning process. The capacity is there, but the process is stunted. Other things also come into play to stunt particular ways of learning. Thus, I don't see intelligence as having the capacity to learn, but making use of that capacity. This is where you need to look back at the definition: to learn AND understand OR deal with new or trying situations. A person may not necessarily be able to understand a new or trying situation, but such people may learn to deal with such situations. By the definition you supplied, one need not necessarily have particularly strong logic abilities, but may still be considered intelligent. Furthermore, understanding needn't necessarily be classed as logical knowledge of. A person can have a firm grasp of a situation without knowing the logistics of it.
charles cure said:
as you can see, a crucial part of that definition is "the ability to deal with new or trying situations" that is why children who cannot learn what is presented to them in a school setting are considered to be at least partially unintelligent, because they cannot adapt to learn or understand concepts delivered to them in anything but one or two specific ways. that need for a particularly conducive setting in order to foster their ability to learn is what culls them from the crop of otherwise intelligent people. your point is useless, because you are trying to say that all subjects require equal intelligence to understand, and in addition to that you are saying everyone absent mental retardation basically has the same capacity for learning. untrue. there are at least a dozen psychological, developmental, environmental, and experiential factors that effect a persons cognitive ability, and in many cases these may have as large of an effect as would a physiological disorder such as cerebal palsy or autism. guages of intelligence do not focus on subjects such as the arts and literature because "correct" answers to questions about them are subjective and open to a wide range of interpretations. this cannot be said however, for the outcome of a mathematical equation or physics experiment. these subjects are focused on and used as the guage because there is a strict limit to the range of correct answers yet a far wider range of creative approaches that can be used to obtain the correct result. that is a satisfactory way to measure the ability to learn and understand or respond to new and trying situations. the arts do not enter into it in as meaningful a way because their subject matter is mostly not fact based and is almost always subject to personal taste.
Eh... No, I'm not saying equal intelligence is needed to learn every subject.
I recognize the fact that intellect is stunted due to many different factors.
Sciences explore creative methods, arts explore creative results. Both explore creativity. This is one of the most important aspects of intelligence.
charles cure said:
i bet if you did a study, you would find some high school drop outs that could tell you a lot of facts about their favorite sports teams because they are repeating information that is constantly bombarding them all the time if sports is the focus of their interests. this is nothing more than memory and the ability to recall facts that have been told to you over and over. retarded people can do that. i think you would find a significant drop in the understanding of the actual inner workings of the sports world as it relates to business practices were you to ask these same people. i guarantee each would have his or her own version of what they believe it to be like, but few would understand why these things take place or the consequences of the decisions made behind the scenes on any larger scale. and furthermore, were you to attempt to foster in these people, similar knowledge in a different subject area, they may not prove to be as efficient at learning something else because their disinterest in the subject would preclude it. intelligence is not the ability to learn one thing and recite it. intelligent people have the ability to learn and understand a wide range of concepts and information that is delivered to them in a variety or different ways and situations. your argument here is weak at best.
Logic operates by making use of memorized methods. The person who does understand the deep inner workings of the business side of sports does so, not necessarily because he's more intelligent, but because he's been taught how the system works. He knows the way it works because it's part of his memory. If the high-school drop-out is taught how the system works, it doesn't make him more intelligent, it merely creates a new set of ideas within his own mind which are then stored in his memory and called upon whenever he perceives situations in the sport that operate upon those learned principles. Learning is merely the process of connecting more than one idea to create a new one. The reason many people have difficulty learning concepts in school isn't because they can't connect the two ideas, but because they misrepresent the ideas conveyed, so often what takes place is the teacher is saying one thing, and the student is thinking something else. TEACHING is all about communication, and if that communication isn't clear, then the ideas and concepts don't connect. Scholastic advancement is too often not a good measure of intelligence.
charles cure said:
wrong. it is the absolute core of intelligence. without the ability to learn you cannot know, without the ability to know you cannot judge, interpret, extrapolate, expand or expound on any concept, no matter how abstract or concrete. you need to go back to the drawing board and rethink this.
Well, this is debatable. I'd say without the capacity for conditioning, you couldn't know. However, if you're talking about mental learning, then I'd say you've got it backwards, that it is without the capacity to know, you cannot learn. Thusly, everything else that follows from that you are also incorrect on.
charles cure said:
nobody said that guaging intellignece was relegated to only measuring one hemispherical function or another, many of the functions of the brain involve one hemisphere acting in conjunction with the other. there are not specific mental reasoning abilities that are strictly confined to each side because complex thought and understanding usually involve a combination of functions from both sides.
from
http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/dominance/index.htm
Even though both hemispheres of the brain have independent functions, an individual benefits from the integration of the processing of information performed by each side. The hemisphere best suited to perform the processing will process information; this allows an individual greater understanding and learning potential of the situation that initiated the brain processing information.
This is true, I suppose it was presumptuous of me to say that those statistics were based on IQ tests solely. Though, those statistics probably don't even say what they're based on. Eh... anyway...
. I do however see a cool opportunity. MW suggested 'hey lets all get together'. I think thats great... and if we could would we drink beer and party? Of course. After we've gel-ed a little bit we could go through some thought exercises. Some ideas could be: