*
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/clever-sillies-why-high-iq-lack-common.html
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/why-are-modern-scientists-so-dull.html
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/cancer-of-bureaucracy.html
*
Monday, 6 August 2012
My quantitative studies of revolutionary science
*
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/nobel-prize-trends-19472006.html
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/nflt-metric-for-revoutionary-science.html
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/revolutionary-biomedical-science.html
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/uk-scientists-down-shift-to-second-rate_04.html
*
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/nobel-prize-trends-19472006.html
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/nflt-metric-for-revoutionary-science.html
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2007/07/revolutionary-biomedical-science.html
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2008/01/uk-scientists-down-shift-to-second-rate_04.html
*
To sleep, to dream...
Friday, 31 December 2010
*
I have never been satisfied with the usual cultural and scientific views on sleeping and dreaming.
These see sleep and dream as both subordinate to awake life, and also as optional extras.
Behind current concepts is the idea that it would be better not to sleep at all, but if we must sleep then it should be as little as possible.
*
By contrast, I tend to think that sleep is, in a sense, primary - at least in its creative and generative role -
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2009/04/sleep-elaborationawake-pruning-seap.html
I think it possible that sleep (or equivalent but weaker states which occur during awakeness, daydreaming trances etc) produce most of our subjective 'experience' - which is then shaped and fitted to the world around us during awakeness.
*
Valuation of dreaming is split between a minority of people who regard dreams in a distorted and exaggerated way as the royal road to understanding neurosis (Freudians) or to understanding the prerequisites for personal growth (Jungians); and the large majority who see dreams as (merely) a kind of entertainment.
A few who trivialize dreaming regard them as a kind of home movie, which might be controlled and made more enjoyable - e.g. people interested in lucid dreaming.
And of course the highest value on dreams is placed by 'shamans' - in the broadest sense of the word - who regard dreams as a source of arcane knowledge; and in some societies these individuals are accorded high social status.
*
I am unconvinced by psychodynamic concepts of dreaming since most people do not remember their dreams most of the time - so it seems unlikely that dream recall is of the essence.
Like Tolkien, I believe that dreams can, by various mechanisms and routes - some psychological and others revelatory, be a source of knowledge otherwise unavailable to the awake mind; but I regard this as a rare gift (and one usable for evil as well as good).
What what about 'normal' people who certainly dream but cannot remember much about it: people like myself?
*
Dreaming certainly feels important to personal well-being (I regard this insight of Jung's as correct), and if so this means that dreaming does its work whether we recall dreams or not.
In a nutshell, I believe that dreams are important in giving 'depth' to our subjective experience.
Without dreaming I think that life would be a matter of 'what you see is what you get' - like watching soaps or the news on TV - a matter of emotional stimulation by this, then that, then something else.
With dreaming, our minds make connections and relate things to one another; so life has at least a semblance of being whole.
Of course, since we fill our minds with dross, our dreams don't have much to 'work on'; nonetheless they do what they can.
And, of course, since modernity regards sleeping and dreaming as a big waste of time, we don't sleep enough and do things which probably damage our dreams; and so get less good from this than we should (or could).
*
But, since most dreams are not remembered, how could we know any of this? How would we know if dreams were doing this kind of work?
Well, there are theoretical arguments such as I make in the co-authored paper linked above (which I think is one of the best - or at least cleverest - things I ever did in psychology - although naturally it has been completely ignored).
And there is introspection (what the German psychiatrists termed phenomenology), i.e. awareness of one's own psychological states - which ought to be regarded as a vital check on all psychology and psychiatry.
Introspection is an ability which varies quite widely between individuals, and can also be trained or suppressed - and bear in mind that introspective ability is quite different from the ability to write on the subject of inner states.
Jung was a hugely naturally-gifted introspector who developed this ability, Freud seemed to have no abilities at all in this domain - but Freud was a much better writer.
Among modern writers Tolkien was an introspector of genius and also a writer of genius - so is a primary source.
*
I conclude that if we introspect we know that sleep and dream are very important indeed.
At the very highest levels, ascetic Saints seem to reach a state in which sleep and awakeness merge and fuse; but at the lower levels the rest of us inhabit, sleeping and dreaming represent a vital alternation of human being - even though we can seldom recall or discuss explicitly and exactly what they are doing.
*
I have never been satisfied with the usual cultural and scientific views on sleeping and dreaming.
These see sleep and dream as both subordinate to awake life, and also as optional extras.
Behind current concepts is the idea that it would be better not to sleep at all, but if we must sleep then it should be as little as possible.
*
By contrast, I tend to think that sleep is, in a sense, primary - at least in its creative and generative role -
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2009/04/sleep-elaborationawake-pruning-seap.html
I think it possible that sleep (or equivalent but weaker states which occur during awakeness, daydreaming trances etc) produce most of our subjective 'experience' - which is then shaped and fitted to the world around us during awakeness.
*
Valuation of dreaming is split between a minority of people who regard dreams in a distorted and exaggerated way as the royal road to understanding neurosis (Freudians) or to understanding the prerequisites for personal growth (Jungians); and the large majority who see dreams as (merely) a kind of entertainment.
A few who trivialize dreaming regard them as a kind of home movie, which might be controlled and made more enjoyable - e.g. people interested in lucid dreaming.
And of course the highest value on dreams is placed by 'shamans' - in the broadest sense of the word - who regard dreams as a source of arcane knowledge; and in some societies these individuals are accorded high social status.
*
I am unconvinced by psychodynamic concepts of dreaming since most people do not remember their dreams most of the time - so it seems unlikely that dream recall is of the essence.
Like Tolkien, I believe that dreams can, by various mechanisms and routes - some psychological and others revelatory, be a source of knowledge otherwise unavailable to the awake mind; but I regard this as a rare gift (and one usable for evil as well as good).
What what about 'normal' people who certainly dream but cannot remember much about it: people like myself?
*
Dreaming certainly feels important to personal well-being (I regard this insight of Jung's as correct), and if so this means that dreaming does its work whether we recall dreams or not.
In a nutshell, I believe that dreams are important in giving 'depth' to our subjective experience.
Without dreaming I think that life would be a matter of 'what you see is what you get' - like watching soaps or the news on TV - a matter of emotional stimulation by this, then that, then something else.
With dreaming, our minds make connections and relate things to one another; so life has at least a semblance of being whole.
Of course, since we fill our minds with dross, our dreams don't have much to 'work on'; nonetheless they do what they can.
And, of course, since modernity regards sleeping and dreaming as a big waste of time, we don't sleep enough and do things which probably damage our dreams; and so get less good from this than we should (or could).
*
But, since most dreams are not remembered, how could we know any of this? How would we know if dreams were doing this kind of work?
Well, there are theoretical arguments such as I make in the co-authored paper linked above (which I think is one of the best - or at least cleverest - things I ever did in psychology - although naturally it has been completely ignored).
And there is introspection (what the German psychiatrists termed phenomenology), i.e. awareness of one's own psychological states - which ought to be regarded as a vital check on all psychology and psychiatry.
Introspection is an ability which varies quite widely between individuals, and can also be trained or suppressed - and bear in mind that introspective ability is quite different from the ability to write on the subject of inner states.
Jung was a hugely naturally-gifted introspector who developed this ability, Freud seemed to have no abilities at all in this domain - but Freud was a much better writer.
Among modern writers Tolkien was an introspector of genius and also a writer of genius - so is a primary source.
*
I conclude that if we introspect we know that sleep and dream are very important indeed.
At the very highest levels, ascetic Saints seem to reach a state in which sleep and awakeness merge and fuse; but at the lower levels the rest of us inhabit, sleeping and dreaming represent a vital alternation of human being - even though we can seldom recall or discuss explicitly and exactly what they are doing.
*
Essential reading for IQ scholars: Grady M Towers essay The Outsiders
Monday, 18 June 2012
I sometimes wonder how many of those interested in IQ have read this brilliant and important essay on the problems and disadvantages of those with ultra-high IQ (above about 150); written by a man himself with ultra-high IQ who experienced many of the phenomena which he describes.
I would guess that not many have read it, since it is credited with only 6 citations on Google Scholar.
P.S.: Grady M Towers worked in a menial job, as a night watchman, and was murdered on March 20, 2000 in the course of his duties.
Note: The Outsiders essay is written from an apparently atheist perspective, as is common among those with very high IQ (William Sidis was an early example of a public atheist).
This may account for the 'Nietzschian' views expressed towards the end and also in the quotation from Aldous Huxley - which play with the idea that "men of genius are the only true men"; and that 'normal' people are not really human in the way that the tiny minority of geniuses are fully human.
The argument is made on the basis that it is to geniuses which humanity owes its great achievement and material advancement.
I think that it is indeed substantially correct to assert that it is to geniuses which humanity owes its great achievement and material advancement.
But...
I suppose it depends what is meant by 'true' in 'only true men' - but for a Christian, genius is of secondary importance.
Genius is orthogonal to, independent of, salvation which certainly is not restricted to men of genius!
(Of course we cannot know for sure, but...) If anything, the statistical relationship between IQ and salvation would be inverse and negative rather than positive.
I would guess that not many have read it, since it is credited with only 6 citations on Google Scholar.
P.S.: Grady M Towers worked in a menial job, as a night watchman, and was murdered on March 20, 2000 in the course of his duties.
Note: The Outsiders essay is written from an apparently atheist perspective, as is common among those with very high IQ (William Sidis was an early example of a public atheist).
This may account for the 'Nietzschian' views expressed towards the end and also in the quotation from Aldous Huxley - which play with the idea that "men of genius are the only true men"; and that 'normal' people are not really human in the way that the tiny minority of geniuses are fully human.
The argument is made on the basis that it is to geniuses which humanity owes its great achievement and material advancement.
I think that it is indeed substantially correct to assert that it is to geniuses which humanity owes its great achievement and material advancement.
But...
I suppose it depends what is meant by 'true' in 'only true men' - but for a Christian, genius is of secondary importance.
Genius is orthogonal to, independent of, salvation which certainly is not restricted to men of genius!
(Of course we cannot know for sure, but...) If anything, the statistical relationship between IQ and salvation would be inverse and negative rather than positive.
***
The Outsiders©By Grady M. Towers(From The Prometheus Society's Journal, Gift of Fire Issue No. 22, April 1987. This article was re-issued in Issue 72, March 95.) His name was William James Sidis, and his IQ was estimated at between 250 and 300 [8, p. 283]. At eighteen months he could read The New York Times, at two he taught himself Latin, at three he learned Greek. By the time he was an adult he could speak more than forty languages and dialects. He gained entrance to Harvard at eleven, and gave a lecture on four-dimensional bodies to the Harvard Mathematical Club his first year. He graduated cum laude at sixteen, and became the youngest professor in history. He deduced the possibility of black holes more than twenty years before Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar published An Introduction to the Study of Stellar Structure. His life held possibilities for achievement that few people can imagine. Of all the prodigies for which there are records, his was probably the most powerful intellect of all. And yet it all came to nothing. He soon gave up his position as a professor, and for the rest of his life wandered from one menial job to another. His experiences as a child prodigy had proven so painful that he decided for the rest of his life to shun public exposure at all costs. Henceforth, he denied his gifts, refused to think about mathematics, and above all refused to perform as he had been made to do as a child. Instead, he devoted his intellect almost exclusively to the collection of streetcar transfers, and to the study of the history of his native Boston. He worked hard at becoming a normal human being, but never entirely succeeded. He found the concept of beauty, for example, to be completely incomprehensible, and the idea of sex repelled him. At fifteen he took a vow of celibacy, which he apparently kept for the remainder of his life, dying a virgin at the age of 46. He wore a vest summer and winter, and never learned to bathe regularly. A comment that Aldous Huxley once made about Sir Isaac Newton might equally have been said of Sidis. For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb [5, p. 2222].There was a time when all precocious children were thought to burn out the same way that Sidis did. The man most responsible for changing this belief was Lewis M. Terman. Between 1900 and 1920 he was able to carry out a study of about a hundred gifted children, and his observations convinced him that many of the traditional beliefs about the gifted were little more than superstitions. To confirm these observations, he obtained a grant from the Commonwealth Fund in 1922, and used it to sift a population of more than a quarter of a million children, selecting out all those with IQs above 140 for further study. That group has been monitored continuously ever since. Many of the previously held beliefs about the gifted did indeed turn out to be false. The gifted are not weak or sickly, and although the incidence of myopia is greater among them, they are generally thought to be better looking than their contemporaries: They are not nerds.
Nevertheless, in his rush to dispel the erroneous beliefs about the gifted, Terman sometimes made claims not supported by his own data. In fact, in some cases, the data suggests that exactly the opposite conclusion should have been drawn. Terman's own data shows that there is a definite connection between measured intelligence and mental and social maladjustment. The consequences of misinterpreting these data are so grave that it will pay to re-examine them in some detail. Terman's longitudinal research on the gifted included a constant assessment of mental health and social adjustment. Subjects were classified into three categories: satisfactory adjustment, some maladjustment, and serious maladjustment. Terman defined these categories in the following way. 1. Satisfactory. Subjects classified in this category were essentially normal; i.e., their "desires, emotions, and interests were compatible with the social standards and pressures" of their group. Everyone, of course, has adjustment problems of one kind or another. Satisfactory adjustment as here defined does not mean perfect contentment and complete absence of problems, but rather the ability to cope adequately with difficulties in the personal make-up or in the subject's environment. Worry and anxiety when warranted by the circumstances, or a tendency to be somewhat high strung or nervous--provided such a tendency did not constitute a definite personality problem--were allowed in this category. 2. Some maladjustment. Classified here were subjects with excessive feelings of inadequacy or inferiority, nervous fatigue, mild anxiety neurosis, and the like. The emotional conflicts, nervous tendencies and social maladjustments of these individuals, while they presented definite problems, were not beyond the ability of the individual to handle, and there was no marked interference with social or personal life or with achievement. Subjects whose behavior was noticeably odd or freakish, but without evidence of serious neurotic tendencies, were also classified in this category. 3. Serious maladjustment. a.) Classified as 3a were subjects who had shown marked symptoms of anxiety, mental depression, personality maladjustment, or psychopathic personality. This classification also includes subjects who had suffered a "nervous breakdown," provided the condition was not severe enough to constitute a psychosis. Subjects with a previous history of serious maladjustment or nervous breakdown (without psychosis) were included here even though their adjustment at the time of rating may have been entirely satisfactory. b.) Classified as 3b were those subjects who had at any time suffered a complete mental breakdown requiring hospitalization, whatever their condition at the time of rating. In the majority of cases the subjects were restored to reasonably good mental health after a brief period of hospital care [6, pp. 99-101]. In 1940, when the group was about 29 years of age, a large scale examination was carried out. Included in that examination was a high level test of verbal intelligence, designated at that time the Concept Mastery, but later re-named the Concept Mastery test form A. Terman found the following relationship between adjustment and verbal intelligence. (These are raw scores, not IQs.)
CMT-A [6, p. 115]
The data show three things. First, that there is a definite trend for the maladjusted to make higher scores on the Concept Mastery test. Second, that women show symptoms of maladjustment at lower scores than men. And third, that 21 percent of the men and 18 percent of the women showed at least some form of maladjustment. During 1950-52, when the group was approximately 41 years old, another examination was made using a new test, the Concept Mastery test form T. Test scores were again compared to assessments of adjustment. (CMT-T scores are not interchangeable with CMT-A scores. They have different means and standard deviations.)
CMT-T [7, p. 50]
Similar conclusions can be drawn from these data as well. Again, there is a definite trend shown for the maladjusted to make higher scores than the satisfactorily adjusted. Again, women show symptoms of maladjustment at lower scores than men. But the most alarming thing of all is that the percentage of maladjustment shown for both sexes rose in the 12 years since the previous examination. The percentage of men showing maladjustment having risen from 21 percent to 29 percent, and the figure for women having risen from 18 percent to 33 percent! Nearly double what it was before! How did Terman interpret these data? Terman states: Although severe mental maladjustment is in general somewhat more common among subjects who score high on the Concept Mastery test, many of the most successful men of the entire group also scored high on this test [7, p. 50].In other words, Terman deliberately tried to give the impression that the relationship between verbal intelligence and mental and social maladjustment was weak and unreliable. He did this by misdirection. He gave a truthful answer to an irrelevant question. Terman failed to realize that a small difference in means between two or more distributions can have a dramatic effect on the percentage of each group found at the tails of the distribution. The relevant questions should have been "what is the percentage of maladjustment found at different levels of ability, and does this show a trend?" Terman's data can be used to find answers to these questions. The method used to solve this problem is a relatively simple one but tedious in detail. (See appendix.) The results, however, are easy to understand. Using CMT-T scores for men as an illustration, and pooling the data for some maladjustment and serious maladjustment, the following percentages can be obtained. PERCENTAGE OF MEN SHOWING SOME OR SERIOUS MALADJUSTMENT AT SIX LEVELS OF ABILITY
By comparison, the Triple Nine Society averages 155.16 on the CMT-T, and the average score for Prometheus Society members is 169.95 [1, 2]. The implications are staggering, especially when it is realized that these percentages do not include women, who show more maladjustment at lower CMT-T scores than men do. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why super high IQ societies suffer so much from schisms and a tendency towards disintegration. In any event, one thing is certain. The currently accepted belief that verbal intelligence is unrelated to maladjustment is clearly a myth. Nevertheless, while Terman's data do provide a prima facie case for a connection between verbal intelligence and maladjustment, they fail to explain the causal mechanism involved. To obtain such insight requires close observation by a gifted observer. Fortunately, those insights are available to us in Leta S. Hollingworth's book, Children above 180 IQ. Hollingworth not only observed her subjects as children, she also continued to maintain some contact with them after they had reached maturity. So although her book is ostensibly about children, it is in fact laced throughout by her observations on exceptionally gifted adults as well. Before examining Hollingworth's findings, however, it is necessary to explain how childhood IQs are related to adult mental ability. As a child ages, his IQ tends to regress to the mean of the population of which he is a member. This is partly due to the imperfect reliability of the test, and partly due to the uneven rate of maturation. The earlier the IQ is obtained, and the higher the score, the more the IQ can be expected to regress by the time the child becomes an adult. So although Hollingworth's children were all selected to have IQs above 180, their adult status was not nearly so high. In fact, as adults, there's good reason to believe that their abilities averaged only slightly above that of the average Triple Nine member. Evidence for this conjecture comes from the Terman research data. Terman observed the following relationship between childhood IQs on the Stanford-Binet and adult status on the Concept Mastery test form T.
CONCEPT MASTERY SCORES ACCORDING TO CHILDHOOD STANFORD-BINET IQ [7, p. 58]
The average childhood IQ score for those with childhood IQs above 170 was 177.7 for men, and 177.6 for women. That's quite close to the 180 cutoff used by Leta Hollingworth in selecting her subjects. Note that Terman's subjects who scored above 170 IQ as children averaged 155.8 on the CMT-T at age 41, a score quite close to the 155.16 made by the average Triple Nine member. Such a close match makes it reasonable to generalize Hollingworth's findings to members of both the Triple Nine Society and the Prometheus Society. Hollingworth identified a number of adjustment problems caused by school acceleration. As this is rarely practiced in today's educational system, these are no longer problems and will not be discussed. There still remain, however, four adjustment problems that continue to perplex the gifted throughout their lives, two applying to all levels of giftedness, and two applying almost exclusively to the exceptionally gifted--i.e. those with childhood IQs above 170, or adult Concept Mastery test (T) scores above 155. One of the problems faced by all gifted persons is learning to focus their efforts for prolonged periods of time. Since so much comes easily to them, they may never acquire the self-discipline necessary to use their gifts to the fullest. Hollingworth describes how the habit begins. Where the gifted child drifts in the school unrecognized, working chronically below his capacity (even though young for his grade), he receives daily practice in habits of idleness and daydreaming. His abilities never receive the stimulus of genuine challenge, and the situation tends to form in him the expectation of an effortless existence [3, p. 258]. But if the "average" gifted child tends to acquire bad adjustment habits in the ordinary schoolroom, the exceptionally gifted have even more problems. Hollingworth continues: Children with IQs up to 150 get along in the ordinary course of school life quite well, achieving excellent marks without serious effort. But children above this mental status become almost intolerably bored with school work if kept in lockstep with unselected pupils of their own age. Children who rise above 170 IQ are liable to regard school with indifference or with positive dislike, for they find nothing in the work to absorb their interest. This condition of affairs, coupled with the supervision of unseeing and unsympathetic teachers, has sometimes led even to truancy on the part of gifted children [3, p. 258].A second adjustment problem faced by all gifted persons is due to their uncommon versatility. Hollingworth says: Another problem of development with reference to occupation grows out of the versatility of these children. So far from being one-sided in ability and interest, they are typically capable of so many different kinds of success that they may have difficulty in confining themselves to a reasonable number of enterprises. Some of them are lost to usefulness through spreading their available time and energy over such a wide array of projects that nothing can be finished or done perfectly. After all, time and space are limited for the gifted as for others, and the life-span is probably not much longer for them than for others. A choice must be made among the numerous possibilities, since modern life calls for specialization [3, p. 259]. A third problem faced by the gifted is learning to suffer fools gladly. Hollingworth notes: A lesson which many gifted persons never learn as long as they live is that human beings in general are inherently very different from themselves in thought, in action, in general intention, and in interests. Many a reformer has died at the hands of a mob which he was trying to improve in the belief that other human beings can and should enjoy what he enjoys. This is one of the most painful and difficult lessons that each gifted child must learn, if personal development is to proceed successfully. It is more necessary that this be learned than that any school subject be mastered. Failure to learn how to tolerate in a reasonable fashion the foolishness of others leads to bitterness, disillusionment, and misanthropy [3, p. 259]. The single greatest adjustment problem faced by the gifted, however, is their tendency to become isolated from the rest of humanity. This problem is especially acute among the exceptionally gifted. Hollingworth says: This tendency to become isolated is one of the most important factors to be considered in guiding the development of personality in highly intelligent children, but it does not become a serious problem except at the very extreme degrees of intelligence. The majority of children between 130 and 150 find fairly easy adjustment, because neighborhoods and schools are selective, so that like-minded children tend to be located in the same schools and districts. Furthermore, the gifted child, being large and strong for his age, is acceptable to playmates a year or two older. Great difficulty arises only when a young child is above 160 IQ. At the extremely high levels of 180 or 190 IQ, the problem of friendships is difficult indeed, and the younger the person the more difficult it is. The trouble decreases with age because as persons become adult, they naturally seek and find on their own initiative groups who are like-minded, such as learned societies [3, p. 264]. Hollingworth points out that the exceptionally gifted do not deliberately choose isolation, but are forced into it against their wills. These superior children are not unfriendly or ungregarious by nature. Typically they strive to play with others but their efforts are defeated by the difficulties of the case... Other children do not share their interests, their vocabulary, or their desire to organize activities. They try to reform their contemporaries but finally give up the struggle and play alone, since older children regard them as "babies," and adults seldom play during hours when children are awake. As a result, forms of solitary play develop, and these, becoming fixed as habits, may explain the fact that many highly intellectual adults are shy, ungregarious, and unmindful of human relationships, or even misanthropic and uncomfortable in ordinary social intercourse [3, p. 262]. But if the exceptionally gifted is isolated from his contemporaries, the gulf between him and the adult authorities in his life is even deeper. The very gifted child or adolescent, perceiving the illogical conduct of those in charge of his affairs, may turn rebellious against all authority and fall into a condition of negative suggestibility--a most unfortunate trend of personality, since the person is then unable to take a cooperative attitude toward authority. A person who is highly suggestible in a negative direction is as much in bondage to others around him as is the person who is positively suggestible. The social value of the person is seriously impaired in either case. The gifted are not likely to fall victims to positive suggestion but many of them develop negativism to a conspicuous degree [3, p 260]. Anyone reading the super high IQ journals is aware of the truth of this statement. Negative individuals abound in every high IQ society. Hollingworth distilled her observations into two ideas that are among the most important ever discovered for the understanding of gifted behavior. The first is the concept of an optimum adjustment range. She says: All things considered, the psychologist who has observed the development of gifted children over a long period of time from early childhood to maturity, evolves the idea that there is a certain restricted portion of the total range of intelligence which is most favorable to the development of successful and well-rounded personality in the world as it now exists. This limited range appears to be somewhere between 125 and 155 IQ. Children and adolescents in this area are enough more intelligent than the average to win the confidence of large numbers of their fellows, which brings about leadership, and to manage their own lives with superior efficiency. Moreover, there are enough of them to afford mutual esteem and understanding. But those of 170 IQ and beyond are too intelligent to be understood by the general run of persons with whom they make contact. They are too infrequent to find congenial companions. They have to contend with loneliness and personal isolation from their contemporaries throughout the period of their immaturity. To what extent these patterns become fixed, we cannot yet tell [3, p. 264].Hollingworth's second seminal idea is that of a "communication range." She does not state this explicitly, but it can be inferred from some of her comments on leadership. Observation shows that there is a direct ratio between the intelligence of the leader and that of the led. To be a leader of his contemporaries a child must be more intelligent but not too much more intelligent than those to be led... But generally speaking, a leadership pattern will not form--or it will break up--when a discrepancy of more than about 30 points of IQ comes to exist between leader and led [3, p. 287]. The implication is that there is a limit beyond which genuine communication between different levels of intelligence becomes impossible. To say that a child or an adult is intellectually isolated from his contemporaries is to say that everyone in his environment has an IQ at least 30 points different from his own. Knowing only a person's IQ, then, is not enough to tell how well he's likely to cope with his environment. Some knowledge of the intellectual level of his environment is also necessary. If the optimum range of intelligence lies between 125 and 155 IQ, as Hollingworth suggests, then it follows that 155 can be thought of as a threshold separating an optimum adjustment zone below it from a suboptimum range above it. Other psychologists have also noticed how this score tends to divide people into two naturally occurring categories. Among these is one of the doyens of psychometrics, David Wechsler. He comments: The topics of genius and degeneration are only special cases of the more general problem involved in the evaluation of human capacities, namely the quantitative versus qualitative. There are those who insist that all differences are qualitative, and those who with equal conviction maintain that they are exclusively quantitative. The true answer is that they are both. General intelligence, for example, is undoubtedly quantitative in the sense that it consists of varying amounts of the same basic stuff (e.g., mental energy) which can be expressed by continuous numerical measures like intelligence Quotients or Mental-Age scores, and these are as real as any physical measurements are. But it is equally certain that our description of the difference between a genius and an average person by a statement to the effect that he has an IQ greater by this or that amount, does not describe the difference between them as completely or in the same way as when we say that a mile is much longer than an inch. The genius (as regards intellectual ability) not only has an IQ of say 50 points more than the average person, but in virtue of this difference acquires seemingly new aspects (potentialities) or characteristics. These seemingly new aspects or characteristics, in their totality, are what go to make up the "qualitative" difference between them [9, p. 134]. Wechsler is saying quite plainly that those with IQs above 150 are different in kind from those below that level. He is saying that they are a different kind of mind, a different kind of human being. This subjective impression of a difference in kind also appears to be fairly common among members of the super high IQ societies themselves. When Prometheus and Triple Nine members were asked if they perceived a categorical difference between those above this level and others, most said that they did, although they also said that they were reluctant to call the difference genius. When asked what it should be called, they produced a number of suggestions, sometimes esoteric, sometimes witty, and often remarkably vulgar. But one term was suggested independently again and again. Many thought that the most appropriate term for people like themselves was Outsider. The feeling of estrangement, or at least detachment, from society at large is not merely subjective illusion. Society is not geared to deal effectively with the exceptionally gifted adult because almost nothing objective is known about him. It is a commonplace observation that no psychometric instrument can be validly used to evaluate a person unless others like him were included in the test's norming sample. Yet those with IQs above 150 are so rare that few if any were ever included in the norming sample of any of the most commonly used tests, tests like the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory, the Kuder Vocational Preference Record, the MMPI and so on. As a consequence, objective self-knowledge for the exceptionally gifted is nearly impossible to obtain. What he most needs to know is not how he differs from ordinary people--he is acutely aware of that--but how he is both like and unlike those of his own kind. The most commonly used tests can't provide that knowledge, so he is forced to find out in more roundabout ways. It is his attempts to find answers to these questions that may explain the emergence of the super high IQ societies. Where else can he find peers against which to measure himself? There appear to be three sorts of childhoods and three sorts of adult social adaptations made by the gifted. The first of these may be called the committed strategy. These individuals were born into upper middle class families, with gifted and well educated parents, and often with gifted siblings. They sometimes even had famous relatives. They attended prestigious colleges, became doctors, lawyers, professors, or joined some other prestigious occupation, and have friends with similar histories. They are the optimally adjusted. They are also the ones most likely to disbelieve that the exceptionally gifted can have serious adjustment problems. The second kind of social adaptation may be called the marginal strategy. These individuals were typically born into a lower socio-economic class, without gifted parents, gifted siblings, or gifted friends. Often they did not go to college at all, but instead went right to work immediately after high school, or even before. And although they may superficially appear to have made a good adjustment to their work and friends, neither work nor friends can completely engage their attention. They hunger for more intellectual challenge and more real companionship than their social environment can supply. So they resort to leading a double life. They compartmentalize their life into a public sphere and a private sphere. In public they go through the motions of fulfilling their social roles, whatever they are, but in private they pursue goals of their own. They are often omnivorous readers, and sometimes unusually expert amateurs in specialized subjects. The double life strategy might even be called the genius ploy, as many geniuses in history have worked at menial tasks in order to free themselves for more important work. Socrates, you will remember was a stone mason, Spinoza was a lens grinder, and even Jesus was a carpenter. The exceptionally gifted adult who works as a parking lot attendant while creating new mathematics has adopted an honored way of life and deserves respect for his courage, not criticism for failing to live up to his abilities. Those conformists who adopt the committed strategy may be pillars of their community and make the world go around, but historically, those with truly original minds have more often adopted the double life tactic. They are ones among the gifted who are most likely to make the world go forward. And finally there are the dropouts. These sometimes bizarre individuals were often born into families in which one or more of the parents were not only exceptionally gifted, but exceptionally maladjusted themselves. This is the worst possible social environment that a gifted child can be thrust into. His parents, often driven by egocentric ambitions of their own, may use him to gratify their own needs for accomplishment. He is, to all intents and purposes, not a living human being to them, but a performing animal, or even an experiment. That is what happened to Sidis, and may be the explanation for all those gifted who "burn out" as he did. (Readers familiar with the Terman study will recognize the committed strategy and the marginal strategy as roughly similar to the adjustment patterns of Terman's A and C groups.) If the exceptionally gifted adult with an IQ of 150, or 160, or 170 has problems in adapting to his world, what must it have been like for William James Sidis, whose IQ was 250 or more? Aldous Huxley once wrote: Perhaps men of genius are the only true men. In all the history of the race there have been only a few thousand real men. And the rest of us--what are we? Teachable animals. Without the help of the real man, we should have found out almost nothing at all. Almost all the ideas with which we are familiar could never have occurred to minds like ours. Plant the seeds there and they will grow; but our minds could never spontaneously have generated them [4, p. 2242].And so we see that the explanation for the Sidis tragedy is simple. Sidis was a feral child; a true man born into a world filled with animals--a world filled with us. Some of those reading this paper may find the portrait painted here to be completely incredible. Their own experiences were nothing at all like those described, nor were those of most of their gifted friends. But the point of this article is not that there's some special hazard in having an exceptional IQ: There's not. The point is that the danger lies in having an exceptional IQ in an environment completely lacking in intellectual peers. It's the isolation that does the damage, not the IQ itself. It is the belief of this author that the super high IQ societies were created primarily by those who have adopted the marginal strategy, and by rights ought to be aimed at fulfilling the needs of this subdivision of the exceptionally gifted. It's obvious from reading the journals that those who have followed the committed strategy rarely participate in society affairs, rarely write for the various journals, and indeed have little need to belong to such a group. They have far more productive outlets for their talents. It's the exceptionally gifted adult who feels stifled that stands most in need of a high IQ society. The tragedy is that none of the super high IQ societies created thus far have been able to meet those needs, and the reason for this is simple. None of these groups is willing to acknowledge or come to terms with the fact that much of their membership belong to the psychological walking wounded. This alone is enough to explain the constant schisms that develop, the frequent vendettas, and the mediocre level of their publications. But those are not immutable facts; they can be changed. And the first step in doing so is to see ourselves as we are. |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Is scientific progress a result of genius, elite, or mass effect?
Friday, 9 July 2010
Scientific progress is talked about in three main ways, depending on the numbers/ proportion of the population involved in generating this progress:
1. Genius - 10s to 100s of people per generation – a fraction of 1 percent of the population.
Science is the product of a relatively small number of geniuses - without whom there would be no significant progress.
Therefore an age of scientific progress can be boiled down to the activity of tens or hundreds of geniuses; and the history of science is a list of great men.
2. Elite - 1000s to 10,000s of people per generation – a few percent of the population
Science is the product of an elite of highly educated and trained people, usually found in a relatively small number of elite and research-orientated institutions, linked in an intensely intercommunicating network. Without this elite, and these elite institutions, there would be no significant progress.
The history of science is a history of institutions.
3. Mass - 100,000s to millions of people per generation – a large percent of the population, most ideally.
Science is the product of a 'critical mass' of scientifically orientated and educated people spread across a nation or culture; and whose attitudes and various skills add or synergize to generate scientific progress. If society is not sufficiently 'scientific' in this sense, then there will not be significant progress.
The history of science is a history of gradual transformation of populations - mainly by educational reform.
***
A (common) twist on this is the idea that humans have vast untapped potential - and that this potential might somehow be activated - e.g. by the right kind of education; leading to an elite of geniuses, or a mass-elite, or something...
Perhaps the mainstream idea nowadays is a mushy kind of belief/ aspiration that science is essentially elite but that the elite can be expanded indefinitely by education and increased professionalization.
Another variant is that scientific progress began as based on genius, then became elite-driven, and nowadays is a mass ('democratic') movement: however, this is merely a non-historical description of what has actually happened (more or less) - underpinned by the assumption that scientific progress has indeed been maintained.
But I do not accept that assumption of continued progress (given the vastly increased level and pervasiveness of hype and dishonesty in science).
Certainly there seem to be historical examples of scientific progress without need for a prior scientific mass of the population, or even a pre-existing elite gathered in elite institutions.
***
Of course, nowadays there are no geniuses in science, so admitting that genius is necessary to significant scientific progress entails admitting that we are not making progress.
Nonetheless, my reading of the history of science is that a sufficient supply of genius is necessary to significant scientific progress (although history has not always recorded the identities of the presumed geniuses) – at any rate, science has often made significant progress without elites in the modern sense, and elites often fail to make progress.
1. Genius - 10s to 100s of people per generation – a fraction of 1 percent of the population.
Science is the product of a relatively small number of geniuses - without whom there would be no significant progress.
Therefore an age of scientific progress can be boiled down to the activity of tens or hundreds of geniuses; and the history of science is a list of great men.
2. Elite - 1000s to 10,000s of people per generation – a few percent of the population
Science is the product of an elite of highly educated and trained people, usually found in a relatively small number of elite and research-orientated institutions, linked in an intensely intercommunicating network. Without this elite, and these elite institutions, there would be no significant progress.
The history of science is a history of institutions.
3. Mass - 100,000s to millions of people per generation – a large percent of the population, most ideally.
Science is the product of a 'critical mass' of scientifically orientated and educated people spread across a nation or culture; and whose attitudes and various skills add or synergize to generate scientific progress. If society is not sufficiently 'scientific' in this sense, then there will not be significant progress.
The history of science is a history of gradual transformation of populations - mainly by educational reform.
***
A (common) twist on this is the idea that humans have vast untapped potential - and that this potential might somehow be activated - e.g. by the right kind of education; leading to an elite of geniuses, or a mass-elite, or something...
Perhaps the mainstream idea nowadays is a mushy kind of belief/ aspiration that science is essentially elite but that the elite can be expanded indefinitely by education and increased professionalization.
Another variant is that scientific progress began as based on genius, then became elite-driven, and nowadays is a mass ('democratic') movement: however, this is merely a non-historical description of what has actually happened (more or less) - underpinned by the assumption that scientific progress has indeed been maintained.
But I do not accept that assumption of continued progress (given the vastly increased level and pervasiveness of hype and dishonesty in science).
Certainly there seem to be historical examples of scientific progress without need for a prior scientific mass of the population, or even a pre-existing elite gathered in elite institutions.
***
Of course, nowadays there are no geniuses in science, so admitting that genius is necessary to significant scientific progress entails admitting that we are not making progress.
Nonetheless, my reading of the history of science is that a sufficient supply of genius is necessary to significant scientific progress (although history has not always recorded the identities of the presumed geniuses) – at any rate, science has often made significant progress without elites in the modern sense, and elites often fail to make progress.
*
Creative genius in Tolkien - the pride of Feanor
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
*
Being himself a creative genius of a high order, Tolkien felt a temptation of pride which was perhaps greater than for most.
In his depiction of the elf Feanor - he showed how pride can destroy everything which the greatest creative genius can achieve, and more.
*
Feanor was by far the most gifted among the gifted race of elves: as a scholar he invented the written script, as a craftsman he created many wonders but especially the Silmarils: three indestructible jewels of beauty unequalled by any products of human art, in which the light of the Two Trees was captured.
Gandalf said that, above all else in the world, he would wish to see the incomparable hand and mind of Feanor at work at the height of his powers.
Even the greatest of 'the gods' (except for 'the One' creator God - Eru) - the premier Archangel Melkor (later re-named Morgoth, by Feanor) could not match Feanor's creative genius, and coveted the Silmarils above all.
*
Yet Feanor's pride, his possessiveness concerning his own creations, was such that it led to many disasters for the elves: failure to restore the light of the Two Trees (after Morgoth had them destroyed), mass disloyalty, dishonesty and disobedience among the Noldor elves for generations, slaughter of the Teleri and destruction of their wonderful ships, betrayal and death of Noldor kindred, fruitless wars in Middle Earth with huge suffering and death for many centuries, exile from the care of the Valar - most of the major tragedies of the Silmarillion stories.
And all stemming back to the pride of Feanor.
*
Tolkien depicted the same process at many levels, from Melkor himself, to the first and primary Fall of Man into the worship of Morgoth (unpublished in his life but described in the History of Middle Earth Volume X), to the second Fall of the men of Numenor (who developed the most powerful technological civilization ever in Middle Earth), to individual examples such as Sauron and Saruman (minor gods or angelic figures), to Boromir and Denethor.
In Tolkien's world, as in ours, prideful creative genius often leads first to astonishing achievements of power - else there would be no temptation - then to ruin and loss.
For Tolkien, there is no creative achievement so great that it cannot be undone and reversed by pride.
*
And yet - we live, now, in a society which esteems and promotes pride - indeed depends upon pride for its very sustenance.
Of all the many moral inversions of political correctness - this is the most serious, the most damaging, the most damning.
*
Being himself a creative genius of a high order, Tolkien felt a temptation of pride which was perhaps greater than for most.
In his depiction of the elf Feanor - he showed how pride can destroy everything which the greatest creative genius can achieve, and more.
*
Feanor was by far the most gifted among the gifted race of elves: as a scholar he invented the written script, as a craftsman he created many wonders but especially the Silmarils: three indestructible jewels of beauty unequalled by any products of human art, in which the light of the Two Trees was captured.
Gandalf said that, above all else in the world, he would wish to see the incomparable hand and mind of Feanor at work at the height of his powers.
Even the greatest of 'the gods' (except for 'the One' creator God - Eru) - the premier Archangel Melkor (later re-named Morgoth, by Feanor) could not match Feanor's creative genius, and coveted the Silmarils above all.
*
Yet Feanor's pride, his possessiveness concerning his own creations, was such that it led to many disasters for the elves: failure to restore the light of the Two Trees (after Morgoth had them destroyed), mass disloyalty, dishonesty and disobedience among the Noldor elves for generations, slaughter of the Teleri and destruction of their wonderful ships, betrayal and death of Noldor kindred, fruitless wars in Middle Earth with huge suffering and death for many centuries, exile from the care of the Valar - most of the major tragedies of the Silmarillion stories.
And all stemming back to the pride of Feanor.
*
Tolkien depicted the same process at many levels, from Melkor himself, to the first and primary Fall of Man into the worship of Morgoth (unpublished in his life but described in the History of Middle Earth Volume X), to the second Fall of the men of Numenor (who developed the most powerful technological civilization ever in Middle Earth), to individual examples such as Sauron and Saruman (minor gods or angelic figures), to Boromir and Denethor.
In Tolkien's world, as in ours, prideful creative genius often leads first to astonishing achievements of power - else there would be no temptation - then to ruin and loss.
For Tolkien, there is no creative achievement so great that it cannot be undone and reversed by pride.
*
And yet - we live, now, in a society which esteems and promotes pride - indeed depends upon pride for its very sustenance.
Of all the many moral inversions of political correctness - this is the most serious, the most damaging, the most damning.
*
The sub-genius one percent of creative intellectuals
Tuesday, 10 July 2012
*
I made the order-of-magnitude estimate that England used to have about 1: 10,000 potenital geniuses (and about a tenth of these fulfilled their potential).
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/how-many-geniuses-does-it-take-to-make.html
This number is very approximate, but seems about right.
Let's assume so.
*
My next conjecture is that behind each of these one-in-ten-thousand potential geniuses were about a hundred creative sub-geniuses - who could make useful innovations in small ways.
So that, in a highly selective institution like one of the old grammar schools or universities, which took only the top few percent of males, there would be as much as 1: 100 potential creative sub-geniuses - and an even higher percentage among their teachers.
*
The characteristics of sub-geniuses are the same as full genius only less so: they are intelligent, but maybe only in the top ten percent rather than one percent; they have the creative type personality moderately high in Psychoticism (associative thinking, autonomy), but maybe sub-optimally - too conscientious or too lazy, too sociable or too psychopathically-selfish.
*
These creative sub-geniuses are only to some smallish extent the understanders and spreaders of full genius - because that role can be accomplished by un-creative people (and societies).
But they mostly make quantitative improvements in their specialized activities.
Whatever job they do, whether it is woodwork, medicine, engineering, science, visual art, musical performance, teaching - the creative sub-genius will be pressing towards different and better ways of doing it.
*
Of course, more often than not, different will turn out to be worse rather than better - nonetheless it is from this group that innovations come or not at all.
Most people will follow a routine as they first learned it, repeating it perhaps several times a day, but never trying to understand and improve it, nor to streamline it.
Only about one in a hundred people will notice (or try to discover) possible ways in which things can be improved. And of course, they may be prevented from trying out the improvement, or their results may be ignored.
But at a frequency of 1:100 - and higher in more skilled and selective areas - sub-geniuses had a considerable social impact. They were, in fact, the 'local' geniuses, the only genius-type people that most people ever encountered.
*
Nowadays (due to decline in intelligence) their frequency has declined by at least an order of magnitude, and furthermore they are actively selected-against - such that they are invisible, ignorable, powerless and diluted-out.
This is another significant factor in the decline of innovation and capability in The West.
*
I made the order-of-magnitude estimate that England used to have about 1: 10,000 potenital geniuses (and about a tenth of these fulfilled their potential).
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/how-many-geniuses-does-it-take-to-make.html
This number is very approximate, but seems about right.
Let's assume so.
*
My next conjecture is that behind each of these one-in-ten-thousand potential geniuses were about a hundred creative sub-geniuses - who could make useful innovations in small ways.
So that, in a highly selective institution like one of the old grammar schools or universities, which took only the top few percent of males, there would be as much as 1: 100 potential creative sub-geniuses - and an even higher percentage among their teachers.
*
The characteristics of sub-geniuses are the same as full genius only less so: they are intelligent, but maybe only in the top ten percent rather than one percent; they have the creative type personality moderately high in Psychoticism (associative thinking, autonomy), but maybe sub-optimally - too conscientious or too lazy, too sociable or too psychopathically-selfish.
*
These creative sub-geniuses are only to some smallish extent the understanders and spreaders of full genius - because that role can be accomplished by un-creative people (and societies).
But they mostly make quantitative improvements in their specialized activities.
Whatever job they do, whether it is woodwork, medicine, engineering, science, visual art, musical performance, teaching - the creative sub-genius will be pressing towards different and better ways of doing it.
*
Of course, more often than not, different will turn out to be worse rather than better - nonetheless it is from this group that innovations come or not at all.
Most people will follow a routine as they first learned it, repeating it perhaps several times a day, but never trying to understand and improve it, nor to streamline it.
Only about one in a hundred people will notice (or try to discover) possible ways in which things can be improved. And of course, they may be prevented from trying out the improvement, or their results may be ignored.
But at a frequency of 1:100 - and higher in more skilled and selective areas - sub-geniuses had a considerable social impact. They were, in fact, the 'local' geniuses, the only genius-type people that most people ever encountered.
*
Nowadays (due to decline in intelligence) their frequency has declined by at least an order of magnitude, and furthermore they are actively selected-against - such that they are invisible, ignorable, powerless and diluted-out.
This is another significant factor in the decline of innovation and capability in The West.
*
Why is genius so rare?
Thursday, 14 June 2012
*
If you are interested in creative genius, I would recommend two books:
Genius by HJ Eysenck, 1995
Human Accomplishment by Charles Murray 2003
*
Eysenck's is about the psychological basis of genius, Murray's more about the socio-political basis.
*
But why is genius so rare, even in places where there are a high concentration of geniuses - as there were here in England in the past few hundred years?
1. Genius requires very high intelligence - in a country with a high average IQ like England, this means in the top ten percent (above 120) and considerably higher for some subjects (e.g. mathematical subjects). But often geniuses are at intelligence levels of about the top one in ten thousand. Some societies have much lower average IQ than England.
2. Perseverance, self-motivation to pick-out and work in one area without need for external encouragement, autonomous indifference to the evaluations of others, ability to go it alone.
3. Creativity. This is Eysenck's big contribution.
Creativity is associated with a style of thinking that is relatively loose in its associations, inclusive in its linking of disparate elements - a style of thinking akin to that of dreaming sleep, psychotic illness, and intoxication.
Creativity is not positively associated with intelligence - or if so at a very modest level. Some societies with high average IQ have low creativity, and vice versa. European societies had (in the past) high average IQ and also reasonably high creativity.
However, creativity is moderately associated with mental illness, psychopathy and addiction - and also with impulsiveness and 'fecklessness' - with a lack of perseverance.
This means that most creative people, and most very intelligent creative people, lack the self-discipline and perseverance to attain the highest and accomplish great things.
*
Creativity is, in a nutshell, a bit crazy - and most crazy people are too disorganized to do much. But geniuses require to be a bit crazy, yet also do prolonged focused work - and this is a reason why there are so few of them.
*
So - high intelligence is very rare (and some societies have too low an average intelligence to generate more than a tiny proportion of very intelligent people).
Within this tiny group of highly intelligent people, on top of all this, to get the coincidence of a creative way of thinking with a sufficiently persevering personality type is very rare.
And among this small percentage of a small percentage, there are the workings of sheer luck, there is the higher than normal risk of (self) sabotage by mental illness and addiction, there are the problems of a higher than usual probability of an abrasive or antisocial personality - and (as Murray identifies) the likelihood that for a person to aim very high requires a belief in transcendental values (the beautiful, the truth, virtue) - and that some societies (such as our own) lack this belief.
*
Put all these together and it is clear why in all societies genius is rare; and why genius is completely absent from most societies.
*
Further reading:
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/why-are-modern-scientists-so-dull.html
*
If you are interested in creative genius, I would recommend two books:
Genius by HJ Eysenck, 1995
Human Accomplishment by Charles Murray 2003
*
Eysenck's is about the psychological basis of genius, Murray's more about the socio-political basis.
*
But why is genius so rare, even in places where there are a high concentration of geniuses - as there were here in England in the past few hundred years?
1. Genius requires very high intelligence - in a country with a high average IQ like England, this means in the top ten percent (above 120) and considerably higher for some subjects (e.g. mathematical subjects). But often geniuses are at intelligence levels of about the top one in ten thousand. Some societies have much lower average IQ than England.
2. Perseverance, self-motivation to pick-out and work in one area without need for external encouragement, autonomous indifference to the evaluations of others, ability to go it alone.
3. Creativity. This is Eysenck's big contribution.
Creativity is associated with a style of thinking that is relatively loose in its associations, inclusive in its linking of disparate elements - a style of thinking akin to that of dreaming sleep, psychotic illness, and intoxication.
Creativity is not positively associated with intelligence - or if so at a very modest level. Some societies with high average IQ have low creativity, and vice versa. European societies had (in the past) high average IQ and also reasonably high creativity.
However, creativity is moderately associated with mental illness, psychopathy and addiction - and also with impulsiveness and 'fecklessness' - with a lack of perseverance.
This means that most creative people, and most very intelligent creative people, lack the self-discipline and perseverance to attain the highest and accomplish great things.
*
Creativity is, in a nutshell, a bit crazy - and most crazy people are too disorganized to do much. But geniuses require to be a bit crazy, yet also do prolonged focused work - and this is a reason why there are so few of them.
*
So - high intelligence is very rare (and some societies have too low an average intelligence to generate more than a tiny proportion of very intelligent people).
Within this tiny group of highly intelligent people, on top of all this, to get the coincidence of a creative way of thinking with a sufficiently persevering personality type is very rare.
And among this small percentage of a small percentage, there are the workings of sheer luck, there is the higher than normal risk of (self) sabotage by mental illness and addiction, there are the problems of a higher than usual probability of an abrasive or antisocial personality - and (as Murray identifies) the likelihood that for a person to aim very high requires a belief in transcendental values (the beautiful, the truth, virtue) - and that some societies (such as our own) lack this belief.
*
Put all these together and it is clear why in all societies genius is rare; and why genius is completely absent from most societies.
*
Further reading:
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/why-are-modern-scientists-so-dull.html
*
The invisibility of genius
Sunday, 1 July 2012
*
The reason for my interest in genius is that modern (post-industrial revolution) society depended (past tense) on creative genius to generate the regular and frequent breakthroughs in key areas that sustain increasing efficiency (productivity).
Yet our culture has seldom been keen to acknowledge its dependence on a small proportion of individuals - mostly very smart creative men with difficult personalities and often significant psychopathologies.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/how-many-geniuses-does-it-take-to-make.html
*
It is likely that almost all significant attainment comes from (crucially depends upon) individuals (not on groups, not on institutions) - but the fact may be disguised because the products of creative genius can so easily be exploited by others: indeed that is their very value.
The breakthroughs made by a matter of some hundreds of men genetically-originating in Western and Central Europe over the past several centuries have affected every person in the whole world.
*
The exploitation may be so rapid that the name and even the existence of the genius has often been lost to history, or never known.
While it may take a one in ten thousand persons to make a breakthrough; the ability to recognize and use the breakthrough may be much commoner - one in a hundred, even one in ten...
The most striking example is the Romans - whose extraordinary attainments in engineering and administration made theirs one of the great Empires - yet the persons who actually made these breakthroughs are not known, so people have assumed that the Romans had no geniuses, but were simply 'well organized'.
On the contrary, the huge buildings, aqueducts, central heating, roads, military structures etc. were a product of specific individual geniuses whose names are lost or were never known.
*
This has happened a lot in medicine, where there are only a handful of named geniuses (Pasteur, Harvey, Koch, Fleming etc.). The breakthroughs were so swiftly caught-up and exploited that the names of the geniuses were never known or lost.
For example AIDS as a syndrome or cluster of features representing a new disease was discovered by largely unknown clinicians, and am not sure who made the breakthrough - perhaps Michael Gottleib. Discovering the syndrome was the creative act, but the concept was instantly taken up by Big Science who scooped all the cash and credit and prizes for what was a scientifically-trivial act of identifying the responsible micro-organism.
I have seen this thing happen in small ways and big ways throughout medicine: big breakthroughs which benefit (or at least affect) vast numbers of people are not attached to the identities of creative individuals who made the breakthroughs - from Viagra, apparently discovered by an un-named Welsh general practitioner, to the cure for dandruff
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/ketoconazole-shampoo-totally-effective.html
*
The lack of rewards, especially financial success, of the actual person who made the creative making major breakthroughs is well documented - and probably inevitable.
But lack of reward or fame did not seem to stop the breakthroughs in the past.
The kind of 'high-Psychoticism' creative genius who makes breakthroughs simply does it, or tries to do it, since motivation comes from within - and precisely not as a consequence of incentives such as money and the approval of others.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/creativity-and-eysencks-psychoticism.html
He typically cares little for the opinions of others, and works on something which he finds fascinating unless he is actually prevented from doing so.
*
However, the lack of encouragement and recognition of individual genius does open up the possibility, indeed the likelihood, that the importance of creative genius is denied, and that creative genius is actively suppressed in favour of some other model of attainment.
I think this must be what happened to cause the extraordinarily rapid collapse of genius in Britain (similar things happened elsewhere) from the mid-1960s.
No doubt part of this was the 'dysgenic' decline in average and peak intelligence due to the collapse in fertility of the most intelligent people, which had been building-up since around 1800;
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/convincing-objective-and-direct.html
but the collapse in creative genius in Britain from say 1965-1990 was almost complete, too rapid for a genetic explanation - and almost certainly due to that complex of social explanations revealed in the collapse of Christianity and the absolute domination of society by Leftist and progressive ideas.
Medical Hypotheses: UK scientists down-shift to second rate research
*
The type of men who would have made breakthroughs were actively and more-and-more efficiently excluded from being in a position to do so - by regulations and laws and the media and a hundred other channels.
And since men these amounted to only about a hundredth of a percent of the population - nobody noticed what was going on.
As Steve Moxon described in The Woman Racket, there are evolutionary biological reasons why humans tend to despise men perceived as 'failures' - so once men have been made failures then nobody cares about them either as individuals or a class, indeed low status men become objects of active dislike and are more likely to be exterminated than assisted.
Nobody knows nor cares what happens to those few hundred very intelligent and highly creative (but awkward and impulsive) men which presumably languish, ineffective, near the bottom of modern society - the same kind of people who (some of them) used to change the world.
http://www.cpsimoes.net/artigos/outsiders.html
*
The significance of this phenomenon of the collapse of creative genius is extraordinary; since it means the end of modernity.
As a society, we (probably) retain sufficient ability to recognize and exploit breakthroughs - but it is a fact that there just aren't enough breakthroughs to keep the system going.
If modernity depends on efficiency outrunning population growth, then modernity has ended - some time ago.
Nothing will be done about this, because it would involve a recognition impossible to the Leftist elite: that everything that materially distinguishes modernity depends on the hundredth of a percent of intelligent, creative, selfish, awkward, semi-crazy men (mostly having their genetic origin in Western and Central Europe).
Indeed, it is probably impossible to organize a society on this basis; and it was almost certainly just luck and neglect that, for a while, passively allowed creative genius to make modernity.
*
The reason for my interest in genius is that modern (post-industrial revolution) society depended (past tense) on creative genius to generate the regular and frequent breakthroughs in key areas that sustain increasing efficiency (productivity).
Yet our culture has seldom been keen to acknowledge its dependence on a small proportion of individuals - mostly very smart creative men with difficult personalities and often significant psychopathologies.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/how-many-geniuses-does-it-take-to-make.html
*
It is likely that almost all significant attainment comes from (crucially depends upon) individuals (not on groups, not on institutions) - but the fact may be disguised because the products of creative genius can so easily be exploited by others: indeed that is their very value.
The breakthroughs made by a matter of some hundreds of men genetically-originating in Western and Central Europe over the past several centuries have affected every person in the whole world.
*
The exploitation may be so rapid that the name and even the existence of the genius has often been lost to history, or never known.
While it may take a one in ten thousand persons to make a breakthrough; the ability to recognize and use the breakthrough may be much commoner - one in a hundred, even one in ten...
The most striking example is the Romans - whose extraordinary attainments in engineering and administration made theirs one of the great Empires - yet the persons who actually made these breakthroughs are not known, so people have assumed that the Romans had no geniuses, but were simply 'well organized'.
On the contrary, the huge buildings, aqueducts, central heating, roads, military structures etc. were a product of specific individual geniuses whose names are lost or were never known.
*
This has happened a lot in medicine, where there are only a handful of named geniuses (Pasteur, Harvey, Koch, Fleming etc.). The breakthroughs were so swiftly caught-up and exploited that the names of the geniuses were never known or lost.
For example AIDS as a syndrome or cluster of features representing a new disease was discovered by largely unknown clinicians, and am not sure who made the breakthrough - perhaps Michael Gottleib. Discovering the syndrome was the creative act, but the concept was instantly taken up by Big Science who scooped all the cash and credit and prizes for what was a scientifically-trivial act of identifying the responsible micro-organism.
I have seen this thing happen in small ways and big ways throughout medicine: big breakthroughs which benefit (or at least affect) vast numbers of people are not attached to the identities of creative individuals who made the breakthroughs - from Viagra, apparently discovered by an un-named Welsh general practitioner, to the cure for dandruff
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/ketoconazole-shampoo-totally-effective.html
*
The lack of rewards, especially financial success, of the actual person who made the creative making major breakthroughs is well documented - and probably inevitable.
But lack of reward or fame did not seem to stop the breakthroughs in the past.
The kind of 'high-Psychoticism' creative genius who makes breakthroughs simply does it, or tries to do it, since motivation comes from within - and precisely not as a consequence of incentives such as money and the approval of others.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/creativity-and-eysencks-psychoticism.html
He typically cares little for the opinions of others, and works on something which he finds fascinating unless he is actually prevented from doing so.
*
However, the lack of encouragement and recognition of individual genius does open up the possibility, indeed the likelihood, that the importance of creative genius is denied, and that creative genius is actively suppressed in favour of some other model of attainment.
I think this must be what happened to cause the extraordinarily rapid collapse of genius in Britain (similar things happened elsewhere) from the mid-1960s.
No doubt part of this was the 'dysgenic' decline in average and peak intelligence due to the collapse in fertility of the most intelligent people, which had been building-up since around 1800;
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/convincing-objective-and-direct.html
but the collapse in creative genius in Britain from say 1965-1990 was almost complete, too rapid for a genetic explanation - and almost certainly due to that complex of social explanations revealed in the collapse of Christianity and the absolute domination of society by Leftist and progressive ideas.
Medical Hypotheses: UK scientists down-shift to second rate research
*
The type of men who would have made breakthroughs were actively and more-and-more efficiently excluded from being in a position to do so - by regulations and laws and the media and a hundred other channels.
And since men these amounted to only about a hundredth of a percent of the population - nobody noticed what was going on.
As Steve Moxon described in The Woman Racket, there are evolutionary biological reasons why humans tend to despise men perceived as 'failures' - so once men have been made failures then nobody cares about them either as individuals or a class, indeed low status men become objects of active dislike and are more likely to be exterminated than assisted.
Nobody knows nor cares what happens to those few hundred very intelligent and highly creative (but awkward and impulsive) men which presumably languish, ineffective, near the bottom of modern society - the same kind of people who (some of them) used to change the world.
http://www.cpsimoes.net/artigos/outsiders.html
*
The significance of this phenomenon of the collapse of creative genius is extraordinary; since it means the end of modernity.
As a society, we (probably) retain sufficient ability to recognize and exploit breakthroughs - but it is a fact that there just aren't enough breakthroughs to keep the system going.
If modernity depends on efficiency outrunning population growth, then modernity has ended - some time ago.
Nothing will be done about this, because it would involve a recognition impossible to the Leftist elite: that everything that materially distinguishes modernity depends on the hundredth of a percent of intelligent, creative, selfish, awkward, semi-crazy men (mostly having their genetic origin in Western and Central Europe).
Indeed, it is probably impossible to organize a society on this basis; and it was almost certainly just luck and neglect that, for a while, passively allowed creative genius to make modernity.
*
The potential-genius is intrinsically psychologically unbalanced
*
Monday, 30 July 2012
*
Most potential geniuses do not become 'recognized' geniuses - in fact, nowadays approximately none of them do.
And the reason is that - as a type - the potential genius is psychologically... unbalanced.
I use 'unbalanced' to refer to a range of abnormalities - because there is not one type of genius.
*
A potential genius must be highly intelligent, and creative - and it is this matter of creativity which introduces the imbalance.
I am here assuming that potential genius (P-G) is a way of thinking (which sometimes, in some societies, leads to things like supreme artistic attainment and scientific/ technological breakthroughs) and I am trying to examine this in detachment.
I am assuming that P-G is a qualitatively-different way of thinking which enables its possessors to do things which those who lack this way of thinking cannot do.
*
Studies of people with very high IQ find that many of them are more 'successful' than average in terms of health, life expectancy, wealth and status and indeed most things (except for fertility).
But among very high IQ people, there are the 'normal' ones who are apparently socially well-adjusted and 'successful', and there are those 'maladjusted' who Grady M Towers termed 'The Outsiders'.
It is an interesting observation that P-Gs are more akin to the Outsiders than they are to the mass of 'successful' high IQ types.
*
So - most very high IQ people are docile, conscientious, friendly, socially-adjusted types (typical graduates of modern highly selective colleges, typical high status professionals in elite jobs) and consequently utterly lacking even the slightest spark of creativity. Their minds run fast and smooth along pre-determined paths towards acceptable goals.
These intelligent-uncreatives have, of course, re-defined creativity in terms of what they themselves can do - which is to make (or assert) socially-acceptable novelty (generated by standard procedures such as random permutation, pick and mix recombination, inversion etc).
But when intelligent-uncreatives encounter real creativity, they are actively hostile - they sense its alien-ness, its uncanny abnormality, its intrinsic unpredictability and uncontrollability - which accounts for the fact that P-Gs are now excluded from elite discourse with unprecedented efficiency - and that virtually no potential geniuses become recognized geniuses.
*
As IQ rises, so the variation between cognitive abilities increases - i.e. the correlation between the sub-tests of IQ decreases - so that extreme ability tends to be relatively more specific than moderate ability.
In sum, extremely-intelligent people are less often all-rounders than those of moderate intelligence.
*
Intelligent un-creatives are, I think, those relatively-few all-rounders among high IQ people: those high-IQ individuals with balanced abilities - including a pro-social (compliant, docile) personality .
Whereas P-Gs have a significant element of unbalance, such that extreme abilities in one or more domains are not balanced by extreme abilities in other domains.
Therefore, in potential geniuses extreme high abilities are not held in check but are instead given free-rein.
*
This means that potential geniuses are all, more or less, unbalanced - at least by the standards of most people; and this unbalance can come out in terms of (more or less severe) psychotic symptoms (such as a tendency to hallucination, delusion, loose associations of thought, trance states), or psychopathy (selfishness, emotional coldness), or an impulsive and willful personality, or prone-ness to intoxication (as a cognitive self-manipulation), or extremely narrow interests, or a refusal or an inability to do what is required or expected...
*
There is no single pattern of unbalance - but I think it probable that all genuine P-Gs (and all true recognized geniuses) are qualitatively different from the norm as an intrinsic consequence of being unbalanced (unbalanced abilities being necessary to that creativity which makes them a recognized or potential genius).
They are all significantly oddballs in some way or another - eccentrics, mavericks, irritating, unreasonable, nutters, nasties... not team-players.
Recognized geniuses come from potential geniuses which come from those with specialized high abilities that are significantly un-checked and unbalanced; and such people are troublesome to have around, predict and control.
At any rate, the current ruling elite have implicitly decided to exclude such people from organized power - so while modern society has some potential geniuses, we have no actually recognized geniuses.
*
Most potential geniuses do not become 'recognized' geniuses - in fact, nowadays approximately none of them do.
And the reason is that - as a type - the potential genius is psychologically... unbalanced.
I use 'unbalanced' to refer to a range of abnormalities - because there is not one type of genius.
*
A potential genius must be highly intelligent, and creative - and it is this matter of creativity which introduces the imbalance.
I am here assuming that potential genius (P-G) is a way of thinking (which sometimes, in some societies, leads to things like supreme artistic attainment and scientific/ technological breakthroughs) and I am trying to examine this in detachment.
I am assuming that P-G is a qualitatively-different way of thinking which enables its possessors to do things which those who lack this way of thinking cannot do.
*
Studies of people with very high IQ find that many of them are more 'successful' than average in terms of health, life expectancy, wealth and status and indeed most things (except for fertility).
But among very high IQ people, there are the 'normal' ones who are apparently socially well-adjusted and 'successful', and there are those 'maladjusted' who Grady M Towers termed 'The Outsiders'.
It is an interesting observation that P-Gs are more akin to the Outsiders than they are to the mass of 'successful' high IQ types.
*
So - most very high IQ people are docile, conscientious, friendly, socially-adjusted types (typical graduates of modern highly selective colleges, typical high status professionals in elite jobs) and consequently utterly lacking even the slightest spark of creativity. Their minds run fast and smooth along pre-determined paths towards acceptable goals.
These intelligent-uncreatives have, of course, re-defined creativity in terms of what they themselves can do - which is to make (or assert) socially-acceptable novelty (generated by standard procedures such as random permutation, pick and mix recombination, inversion etc).
But when intelligent-uncreatives encounter real creativity, they are actively hostile - they sense its alien-ness, its uncanny abnormality, its intrinsic unpredictability and uncontrollability - which accounts for the fact that P-Gs are now excluded from elite discourse with unprecedented efficiency - and that virtually no potential geniuses become recognized geniuses.
*
As IQ rises, so the variation between cognitive abilities increases - i.e. the correlation between the sub-tests of IQ decreases - so that extreme ability tends to be relatively more specific than moderate ability.
In sum, extremely-intelligent people are less often all-rounders than those of moderate intelligence.
*
Intelligent un-creatives are, I think, those relatively-few all-rounders among high IQ people: those high-IQ individuals with balanced abilities - including a pro-social (compliant, docile) personality .
Whereas P-Gs have a significant element of unbalance, such that extreme abilities in one or more domains are not balanced by extreme abilities in other domains.
Therefore, in potential geniuses extreme high abilities are not held in check but are instead given free-rein.
*
This means that potential geniuses are all, more or less, unbalanced - at least by the standards of most people; and this unbalance can come out in terms of (more or less severe) psychotic symptoms (such as a tendency to hallucination, delusion, loose associations of thought, trance states), or psychopathy (selfishness, emotional coldness), or an impulsive and willful personality, or prone-ness to intoxication (as a cognitive self-manipulation), or extremely narrow interests, or a refusal or an inability to do what is required or expected...
*
There is no single pattern of unbalance - but I think it probable that all genuine P-Gs (and all true recognized geniuses) are qualitatively different from the norm as an intrinsic consequence of being unbalanced (unbalanced abilities being necessary to that creativity which makes them a recognized or potential genius).
They are all significantly oddballs in some way or another - eccentrics, mavericks, irritating, unreasonable, nutters, nasties... not team-players.
Recognized geniuses come from potential geniuses which come from those with specialized high abilities that are significantly un-checked and unbalanced; and such people are troublesome to have around, predict and control.
At any rate, the current ruling elite have implicitly decided to exclude such people from organized power - so while modern society has some potential geniuses, we have no actually recognized geniuses.
*
Why are scientists so dull?
*
Friday, 7 November 2008
Bruce G Charlton
Oxford Magazine - 2008; 281: 7-8.
The short answer is: because the selection and training process ruthlessly weeds-out any interesting people
Scientists are, as a group, dull and getting-duller. Duller both in term of less intelligent and more boring. And the science they produce is increasingly dull – although its tediousness is often concealed by shamelessly dishonest hype and spin.
This dullness is not accidental but a product of the fact that scientists are not even trying to do interesting research, funders are not prepared to fund interesting research (because it has a high risk of failing to deliver) and most journals are not keen to publish interesting research (because it is more likely to be wrong).
The premier scientific and medical journals have almost abandoned science reporting in favour of political advocacy or politically-correct moralizing. I hear that Nature has plans to recognize reality and rename itself Journal of the Theology of Climate Change; the British Medical Journal is to become Newsletter of the National Health Service Bureaucracy and the Lancet will soon be Acta AntiWar Propagandica…
No, I’m kidding, but it is almost believable.
Why are scientists duller than journalists?
The point is the editors and journalists running even the premier journals – those having the pick of modern science – themselves find science too dull to bother writing about. And they are too often correct.
The science journalists are themselves a clue. We need to ask why the smart and interesting people who nowadays run the premier science journals (and the many similarly-talented folk who work in the media generally, including bloggers) are functioning as pundits instead of doing science themselves.
The answer is obvious enough: being a modern scientist is too dull. In particular the requirement for around ten to fifteen years of postgraduate training before even having a shot at doing some independent research of one’s own choosing (but more likely with the prospect of functioning as a cog in somebody else’s research machine) is enough to deter almost anyone with a spark of vitality or self-respect.
And the whole process and texture of doing science has slowed-up. Read the memoirs of scientists up to the middle 1960s – doing science was nimble, fast-moving. Many experiments could be set-up and done in days. For the individuals concerned there was a palpable sense of progress, a crackling excitement.
Now there is an always-expanding need for advanced planning, committee permissions, and logistical organization; combined with a proliferation of mindless and damaging bureaucracy. The timescale of scientific action and discourse has gone up from days and weeks to months and years.
What a contrast with journalism! Where is equivalent hourly and daily stimulus of journalism in the life of a scientist? The kind of person attracted to modern science is (I presume) somebody who likes long term project management especially form-filling; and can persevere through difficulties without wavering in determination or changing tack (especially not deviating to explore unexpected leads or insights).
The filtering-out of intelligence and creativity
The kind of individual who can plough through endless years of coursework, a PhD, and cycles of postdoctoral training; and can stay out of trouble with their peers until they – eventually - get a long-term or tenured position; is on average going to be characterized by personality attributes of conscientiousness and agreeableness. The modern scientist who has passed these tests of character is not likely to be the kind of awkward, abrasive and somewhat wildly-creative personality which characterized many of the greatest scientists of the past.
Nor are the modern scientists likely to be as intelligent as in the old days, because IQ and the personality trait of conscientiousness are only slightly (or some people suggest inversely!) correlated. This means that that greatly increasing the demand for perseverance in a training program will inevitably tend to depress the IQ of successful trainees.
Having adding 5-10 years to science training over the past 40 years, means that those who now survive to apply for permanent positions are indeed more conscientious than scientists of yore. But since the most intelligent people are not always the most conscientious, this enhancement in perseverance has been achieved at the serious cost of filtering-out some of the highest IQ scientists. When appointing independent scientists in the fourth decade of their life, we are scraping the barrel for attributes of high intelligence (and creativity).
We can only conclude that science is dull mainly because its requirements for long-term plodding perseverance and social inoffensiveness have the effect of ruthlessly weeding-out too many smart and interesting people.
The smart and interesting people instead gravitate to fast-moving fields like journalism (or finance, or management, or entrepreneurship of many types) where they get hourly or daily stimulus, and have a chance of following their own inclinations and making their mark before reaching their mid forties.
Since people who nowadays eventually emerge from the lengthening pipeline of scientific training are quite different from the scientists of 50 years ago, they naturally tend to move science further in the direction which created their own success. So that modern scientific leader often elevate the requirements for very long periods of tedious make-work, and judge scientists mainly by their capacity for steady and reliable production.
Needed: more clever crazies
At the same time, high level journalism in science and medicine is full of very high IQ people who are virtuosically able to manipulate words and concepts (and, sometimes, numbers); but who often lack the common sense of a new-born kitten and indeed frequently propagate world views which are near-psychotic in their detachment from social reality.
These clever crazies should be working as scientists, not journalists! Science is the activity that really benefits from this kind of brilliant unorthodoxy, puts it to use in generating, critiqueing and testing new ideas, and passes it through the evaluative social mechanisms of science which tend to filter-out the mistaken craziness and leave-behind the correct-craziness.
Instead, these idiots-savants are going into journalism after graduating from the best universities; where they infuse their naïve and lunatic perspectives into the realms of public policy discourse.
On the whole, I believe that these brilliant fools usually do a lot more social harm than good as journalists - but either way, their personal contributions are invariably ephemeral. They have sacrificed long-term creative and constructive satisfaction for short-term stimulation and mischief-making. It is hard to blame them for making this choice – but this situation is neither optimal for the individuals nor for society at large.
What should be done? How can science be reformed and re-structured to enable the kind of people who now work in journalism and punditry to become the kind of people who work as scientists?
Can science again become a career that attracts and rewards the most intelligent and most creative individuals (even, or especially, when they are serious oddballs).
One thing is for sure, the answer is not going to come from within science.
Oxford Magazine - 2008; 281: 7-8.
The short answer is: because the selection and training process ruthlessly weeds-out any interesting people
Scientists are, as a group, dull and getting-duller. Duller both in term of less intelligent and more boring. And the science they produce is increasingly dull – although its tediousness is often concealed by shamelessly dishonest hype and spin.
This dullness is not accidental but a product of the fact that scientists are not even trying to do interesting research, funders are not prepared to fund interesting research (because it has a high risk of failing to deliver) and most journals are not keen to publish interesting research (because it is more likely to be wrong).
The premier scientific and medical journals have almost abandoned science reporting in favour of political advocacy or politically-correct moralizing. I hear that Nature has plans to recognize reality and rename itself Journal of the Theology of Climate Change; the British Medical Journal is to become Newsletter of the National Health Service Bureaucracy and the Lancet will soon be Acta AntiWar Propagandica…
No, I’m kidding, but it is almost believable.
Why are scientists duller than journalists?
The point is the editors and journalists running even the premier journals – those having the pick of modern science – themselves find science too dull to bother writing about. And they are too often correct.
The science journalists are themselves a clue. We need to ask why the smart and interesting people who nowadays run the premier science journals (and the many similarly-talented folk who work in the media generally, including bloggers) are functioning as pundits instead of doing science themselves.
The answer is obvious enough: being a modern scientist is too dull. In particular the requirement for around ten to fifteen years of postgraduate training before even having a shot at doing some independent research of one’s own choosing (but more likely with the prospect of functioning as a cog in somebody else’s research machine) is enough to deter almost anyone with a spark of vitality or self-respect.
And the whole process and texture of doing science has slowed-up. Read the memoirs of scientists up to the middle 1960s – doing science was nimble, fast-moving. Many experiments could be set-up and done in days. For the individuals concerned there was a palpable sense of progress, a crackling excitement.
Now there is an always-expanding need for advanced planning, committee permissions, and logistical organization; combined with a proliferation of mindless and damaging bureaucracy. The timescale of scientific action and discourse has gone up from days and weeks to months and years.
What a contrast with journalism! Where is equivalent hourly and daily stimulus of journalism in the life of a scientist? The kind of person attracted to modern science is (I presume) somebody who likes long term project management especially form-filling; and can persevere through difficulties without wavering in determination or changing tack (especially not deviating to explore unexpected leads or insights).
The filtering-out of intelligence and creativity
The kind of individual who can plough through endless years of coursework, a PhD, and cycles of postdoctoral training; and can stay out of trouble with their peers until they – eventually - get a long-term or tenured position; is on average going to be characterized by personality attributes of conscientiousness and agreeableness. The modern scientist who has passed these tests of character is not likely to be the kind of awkward, abrasive and somewhat wildly-creative personality which characterized many of the greatest scientists of the past.
Nor are the modern scientists likely to be as intelligent as in the old days, because IQ and the personality trait of conscientiousness are only slightly (or some people suggest inversely!) correlated. This means that that greatly increasing the demand for perseverance in a training program will inevitably tend to depress the IQ of successful trainees.
Having adding 5-10 years to science training over the past 40 years, means that those who now survive to apply for permanent positions are indeed more conscientious than scientists of yore. But since the most intelligent people are not always the most conscientious, this enhancement in perseverance has been achieved at the serious cost of filtering-out some of the highest IQ scientists. When appointing independent scientists in the fourth decade of their life, we are scraping the barrel for attributes of high intelligence (and creativity).
We can only conclude that science is dull mainly because its requirements for long-term plodding perseverance and social inoffensiveness have the effect of ruthlessly weeding-out too many smart and interesting people.
The smart and interesting people instead gravitate to fast-moving fields like journalism (or finance, or management, or entrepreneurship of many types) where they get hourly or daily stimulus, and have a chance of following their own inclinations and making their mark before reaching their mid forties.
Since people who nowadays eventually emerge from the lengthening pipeline of scientific training are quite different from the scientists of 50 years ago, they naturally tend to move science further in the direction which created their own success. So that modern scientific leader often elevate the requirements for very long periods of tedious make-work, and judge scientists mainly by their capacity for steady and reliable production.
Needed: more clever crazies
At the same time, high level journalism in science and medicine is full of very high IQ people who are virtuosically able to manipulate words and concepts (and, sometimes, numbers); but who often lack the common sense of a new-born kitten and indeed frequently propagate world views which are near-psychotic in their detachment from social reality.
These clever crazies should be working as scientists, not journalists! Science is the activity that really benefits from this kind of brilliant unorthodoxy, puts it to use in generating, critiqueing and testing new ideas, and passes it through the evaluative social mechanisms of science which tend to filter-out the mistaken craziness and leave-behind the correct-craziness.
Instead, these idiots-savants are going into journalism after graduating from the best universities; where they infuse their naïve and lunatic perspectives into the realms of public policy discourse.
On the whole, I believe that these brilliant fools usually do a lot more social harm than good as journalists - but either way, their personal contributions are invariably ephemeral. They have sacrificed long-term creative and constructive satisfaction for short-term stimulation and mischief-making. It is hard to blame them for making this choice – but this situation is neither optimal for the individuals nor for society at large.
What should be done? How can science be reformed and re-structured to enable the kind of people who now work in journalism and punditry to become the kind of people who work as scientists?
Can science again become a career that attracts and rewards the most intelligent and most creative individuals (even, or especially, when they are serious oddballs).
One thing is for sure, the answer is not going to come from within science.
*
The high IQ 'sweet spots'
*
Monday, 23 July 2012
*
Human societies with very high mortality during childhood an early adulthood over many generations will be (relatively) low IQ societies - because reproductive success is mostly a matter of rapid development, early sexual maturity, and high fertility (number of childbirths) hence smaller and simpler brains.
Reproductive success is mostly a matter of fertility, sheer numbers of babies, to compensate for the high chance that each will be killed before completing reproduction.
*
Societies with high mortality during childhood and also during early adult life may well favour rapid increase in general intelligence over the space of relatively few generations, insofar as higher intelligence reduces mortality rates.
Fertility will be (and needs to be) significantly above two babies per woman on average, but beyond this number, fertility is almost irrelevant because reproductive success comes from lowering mortality.
*
Societies (such as the whole modern world) which have low mortality rates in childhood and early adulthood (low by human historical standards) will become (relatively) low IQ societies if they are secular - due to lower fertility among those with higher IQ -
- but this will not necessarily happen if/when societies/ groups (which must be coincident) are orthodox, traditionally religious (perhaps monotheistic).
*
So there is one high IQ sweet spot for sure (high mortality through into early adult life with universal above-replacement fertility) and one possible sweet spot (low mortality but fertility differentially higher in higher IQ).
*
Human societies with very high mortality during childhood an early adulthood over many generations will be (relatively) low IQ societies - because reproductive success is mostly a matter of rapid development, early sexual maturity, and high fertility (number of childbirths) hence smaller and simpler brains.
Reproductive success is mostly a matter of fertility, sheer numbers of babies, to compensate for the high chance that each will be killed before completing reproduction.
*
Societies with high mortality during childhood and also during early adult life may well favour rapid increase in general intelligence over the space of relatively few generations, insofar as higher intelligence reduces mortality rates.
Fertility will be (and needs to be) significantly above two babies per woman on average, but beyond this number, fertility is almost irrelevant because reproductive success comes from lowering mortality.
*
Societies (such as the whole modern world) which have low mortality rates in childhood and early adulthood (low by human historical standards) will become (relatively) low IQ societies if they are secular - due to lower fertility among those with higher IQ -
- but this will not necessarily happen if/when societies/ groups (which must be coincident) are orthodox, traditionally religious (perhaps monotheistic).
*
So there is one high IQ sweet spot for sure (high mortality through into early adult life with universal above-replacement fertility) and one possible sweet spot (low mortality but fertility differentially higher in higher IQ).
*
Social class IQ differences and university access
*
Thursday, 22 May 2008
Social class differences in IQ: implications for the government’s ‘fair access’ political agenda
A feature for the Times Higher Education - 23 May 2008
Also at: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/Journals/THE/THE/22_May_2008/attachments/Times%20Higher%20IQ%20Social%20Class.doc
Bruce G Charlton
Since ‘the Laura Spence Affair’ in 2000, the UK government has spent a great deal of time and effort in asserting that universities, especially Oxford and Cambridge, are unfairly excluding people from low social class backgrounds and privileging those from higher social classes. Evidence to support the allegation of systematic unfairness has never been presented, nevertheless the accusation has been used to fuel a populist ‘class war’ agenda.
Yet in all this debate a simple and vital fact has been missed: higher social classes have a significantly higher average IQ than lower social classes.
The exact size of the measured IQ difference varies according to the precision of definitions of social class – but in all studies I have seen, the measured social class IQ difference is substantial and of significance and relevance to the issue of university admissions.
The existence of substantial class differences in average IQ seems to be uncontroversial and widely accepted for many decades among those who have studied the scientific literature. And IQ is highly predictive of a wide range of positive outcomes in terms of educational duration and attainment, attained income levels, and social status (see Deary – Intelligence, 2001).
This means that in a meritocratic university admissions system there will be a greater proportion of higher class students than lower class students admitted to university.
What is less widely understood is that – on simple mathematical grounds – it is inevitable that the differential between upper and lower classes admitted to university will become greater the more selective is the university.
***
There have been numerous studies of IQ according to occupational social class, stretching back over many decades. In the UK, average IQ is 100 and the standard deviation is 15 with a normal distribution curve.
Social class is not an absolute measure, and the size of differences between social classes in biological variables (such as health or life expectancy) varies according to how socio-economic status is defined (eg. by job, income or education) and also by how precisely defined is the socio-economic status (for example, the number of categories of class, and the exactness of the measurement method – so that years of education or annual salary will generate bigger differentials than cruder measures such as job allocation, postcode deprivation ratings or state versus private education).
In general, the more precise the definition of social class, the larger will be the measured social class differences in IQ and other biological variables.
Typically, the average IQ of the highest occupational Social Class (SC) - mainly professional and senior managerial workers such as professors, doctors and bank managers - is 115 or more when social class is measured precisely, and about 110 when social class is measured less precisely (eg. mixing-in lower status groups such as teachers and middle managers).
By comparison, the average IQ of the lowest social class of unskilled workers is about 90 when measured precisely, or about 95 when measured less precisely (eg. mixing-in higher social classes such as foremen and supervisors or jobs requiring some significant formal qualification or training).
The non-symmetrical distribution of high and low social class around the average of 100 is probably due to the fact that some of the highest IQ people can be found doing unskilled jobs (such as catering or labouring) but the lowest IQ people are very unlikely to be found doing selective-education-type professional jobs (such as medicine, architecture, science or law).
In round numbers, there are differences of nearly two standard deviations (or 25 IQ points) between the highest and lowest occupational social classes when class is measured precisely; and about one standard deviation (or 15 IQ points) difference when SC is measured less precisely.
I will use these measured social class IQ differences of either one or nearly two standard deviations to give upper and lower bounds to estimates of the differential or ratio of upper and lower social classes we would expect to see at universities of varying degrees of selectivity.
We can assume that there are three types of universities of differing selectivity roughly corresponding to some post-1992 ex-polytechnic universities; some of the pre-1992 Redbrick or Plateglass universities (eg. the less selective members of the Russell Group and 1994 Group), and Oxbridge.
The ‘ex-poly’ university has a threshold minimum IQ of 100 for admissions (ie. the top half of the age cohort of 18 year olds in the population – given that about half the UK population now attend a higher education institution), the ‘Redbrick’ university has a minimum IQ of 115 (ie. the top 16 percent of the age cohort); while ‘Oxbridge’ is assumed to have a minimum IQ of about 130 (ie. the top 2 percent of the age cohort).
***
Table 1: Precise measurement of Social Class (SC) – Approx proportion of 18 year old students eligible for admission to three universities of differing minimum IQ selectivity
Ex-poly - IQ 100; Redbrick - IQ 115; Oxbridge IQ 130
Highest SC– av. IQ 115: 84 percent; 50 percent; 16 percent
Lowest SC– av. IQ 90: 25 percent; 5 percent; ½ percent
Expected SC diff: 3.3 fold; 10 fold; 32 fold
Table 2: Imprecise measurement of Social Class (SC) – Approx proportion of 18 year old students eligible for admission to three universities of differing minimum IQ selectivity
Ex-Poly - IQ 100; Redbrick - IQ 115; Oxbridge - IQ 130
Highest SC –av. IQ 110: 75 percent; 37 percent; 9 percent
Lowest SC –av. IQ 95: 37 percent; 9 percent; 1 percent
Expected SC diff: 2 fold; 4 fold; 9 fold
***
When social class is measured precisely, it can be seen that the expected Highest SC to Lowest SC differential would probably be expected to increase from about three-fold (when the percentages at university are compared with the proportions in the national population) in relatively unselective universities to more than thirty-fold at highly selective universities.
In other words, if this social class IQ difference is accurate, the average child from the highest social class is approximately thirty times more likely to qualify for admission to a highly selective university than the average child from the lowest social class.
When using a more conservative assumption of just one standard deviation in average IQ between upper (IQ 110) and lower (IQ 95) social classes there will be significant differentials between Highest and Lowest social classes, increasing from two-fold at the ‘ex-poly’ through four-fold at the ‘Redbrick’ university to ninefold at ‘Oxbridge’.
Naturally, this simple analysis is based on several assumptions, each of which could be challenged and adjusted; and further factors could be introduced. However, the take-home-message is simple. When admissions are assumed to be absolutely meritocratic, social class IQ differences of plausible magnitude lead to highly significant effects on the social class ratios of students at university when compared with the general population.
Furthermore, the social class differentials inevitably become highly amplified at the most selective universities such as Oxbridge.
Indeed, it can be predicted that around half of a random selection of kids whose parents are among the IQ 130 ‘cognitive elite’ (eg. with both parents and all grandparents successful in professions requiring high levels of highly selective education) would probably be eligible for admission to the most-selective universities or the most selective professional courses such as medicine, law and veterinary medicine; but only about one in two hundred of kids from the lowest social stratum would be eligible for admission on meritocratic grounds.
In other words, with a fully-meritocratic admissions policy we should expect to see a differential in favour of the highest social classes relative to the lowest social classes at all universities, and this differential would become very large at a highly-selective university such as Oxford or Cambridge.
The highly unequal class distributions seen in elite universities compared to the general population are unlikely to be due to prejudice or corruption in the admissions process. On the contrary, the observed pattern is a natural outcome of meritocracy. Indeed, anything other than very unequal outcomes would need to be a consequence of non-merit-based selection methods.
Selected references for social class and IQ:
Argyle, M. The psychology of social class. London: Routledge, 1994. (Page 153 contains tabulated summaries of several studies with social class I IQs estimated from 115-132 and lowest social classes IQ from 94-97).
C.L. Hart et al. Scottish Mental Health Survey 1932 linked to the Midspan Studies: a prospective investigation of childhood intelligence and future health. Public Health. 2003; 117: 187-195. (Social class 1 IQ 115, Social class V IQ 90; Deprivation category 1 – IQ 110, deprivation category 7 – IQ 92).
Nettle D. 2003. Intelligence and class mobility in the British population. British Journal of Psychology. 94: 551-561. (Estimates approx one standard deviation between lowest and highest social classes).
Validity of IQ – See Deary IJ. Intelligence – A very short introduction. Oxford University Press 2001.
Note - It is very likely that IQ is _mostly_ hereditary (I would favour the upper bound of the estimates of heredity, with a correlation of around 0.8), but because IQ is not _fully_ hereditary there is a 'regression towards the mean' such that the children of high IQ parents will average lower IQ than their parents (and vice versa). But the degree to which this regression happens will vary according to the genetic population from which the people are drawn - so that high IQ individuals from a high IQ population will exhibit less regression towards the mean, because the ancestral population mean IQ is higher. Because reproduction in modern societies is 'assortative' with respect to IQ (i.e. people tend to have children with other people of similar IQ), and because this assortative mating has been going on for several generations, the expected regression towards the mean will be different according to specific ancestry. Due to this complexity, I have omitted any discussion of regression to the mean IQ from parents to children in the above journalistic article which had a non-scientific target audience.
A feature for the Times Higher Education - 23 May 2008
Also at: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/Journals/THE/THE/22_May_2008/attachments/Times%20Higher%20IQ%20Social%20Class.doc
Bruce G Charlton
Since ‘the Laura Spence Affair’ in 2000, the UK government has spent a great deal of time and effort in asserting that universities, especially Oxford and Cambridge, are unfairly excluding people from low social class backgrounds and privileging those from higher social classes. Evidence to support the allegation of systematic unfairness has never been presented, nevertheless the accusation has been used to fuel a populist ‘class war’ agenda.
Yet in all this debate a simple and vital fact has been missed: higher social classes have a significantly higher average IQ than lower social classes.
The exact size of the measured IQ difference varies according to the precision of definitions of social class – but in all studies I have seen, the measured social class IQ difference is substantial and of significance and relevance to the issue of university admissions.
The existence of substantial class differences in average IQ seems to be uncontroversial and widely accepted for many decades among those who have studied the scientific literature. And IQ is highly predictive of a wide range of positive outcomes in terms of educational duration and attainment, attained income levels, and social status (see Deary – Intelligence, 2001).
This means that in a meritocratic university admissions system there will be a greater proportion of higher class students than lower class students admitted to university.
What is less widely understood is that – on simple mathematical grounds – it is inevitable that the differential between upper and lower classes admitted to university will become greater the more selective is the university.
***
There have been numerous studies of IQ according to occupational social class, stretching back over many decades. In the UK, average IQ is 100 and the standard deviation is 15 with a normal distribution curve.
Social class is not an absolute measure, and the size of differences between social classes in biological variables (such as health or life expectancy) varies according to how socio-economic status is defined (eg. by job, income or education) and also by how precisely defined is the socio-economic status (for example, the number of categories of class, and the exactness of the measurement method – so that years of education or annual salary will generate bigger differentials than cruder measures such as job allocation, postcode deprivation ratings or state versus private education).
In general, the more precise the definition of social class, the larger will be the measured social class differences in IQ and other biological variables.
Typically, the average IQ of the highest occupational Social Class (SC) - mainly professional and senior managerial workers such as professors, doctors and bank managers - is 115 or more when social class is measured precisely, and about 110 when social class is measured less precisely (eg. mixing-in lower status groups such as teachers and middle managers).
By comparison, the average IQ of the lowest social class of unskilled workers is about 90 when measured precisely, or about 95 when measured less precisely (eg. mixing-in higher social classes such as foremen and supervisors or jobs requiring some significant formal qualification or training).
The non-symmetrical distribution of high and low social class around the average of 100 is probably due to the fact that some of the highest IQ people can be found doing unskilled jobs (such as catering or labouring) but the lowest IQ people are very unlikely to be found doing selective-education-type professional jobs (such as medicine, architecture, science or law).
In round numbers, there are differences of nearly two standard deviations (or 25 IQ points) between the highest and lowest occupational social classes when class is measured precisely; and about one standard deviation (or 15 IQ points) difference when SC is measured less precisely.
I will use these measured social class IQ differences of either one or nearly two standard deviations to give upper and lower bounds to estimates of the differential or ratio of upper and lower social classes we would expect to see at universities of varying degrees of selectivity.
We can assume that there are three types of universities of differing selectivity roughly corresponding to some post-1992 ex-polytechnic universities; some of the pre-1992 Redbrick or Plateglass universities (eg. the less selective members of the Russell Group and 1994 Group), and Oxbridge.
The ‘ex-poly’ university has a threshold minimum IQ of 100 for admissions (ie. the top half of the age cohort of 18 year olds in the population – given that about half the UK population now attend a higher education institution), the ‘Redbrick’ university has a minimum IQ of 115 (ie. the top 16 percent of the age cohort); while ‘Oxbridge’ is assumed to have a minimum IQ of about 130 (ie. the top 2 percent of the age cohort).
***
Table 1: Precise measurement of Social Class (SC) – Approx proportion of 18 year old students eligible for admission to three universities of differing minimum IQ selectivity
Ex-poly - IQ 100; Redbrick - IQ 115; Oxbridge IQ 130
Highest SC– av. IQ 115: 84 percent; 50 percent; 16 percent
Lowest SC– av. IQ 90: 25 percent; 5 percent; ½ percent
Expected SC diff: 3.3 fold; 10 fold; 32 fold
Table 2: Imprecise measurement of Social Class (SC) – Approx proportion of 18 year old students eligible for admission to three universities of differing minimum IQ selectivity
Ex-Poly - IQ 100; Redbrick - IQ 115; Oxbridge - IQ 130
Highest SC –av. IQ 110: 75 percent; 37 percent; 9 percent
Lowest SC –av. IQ 95: 37 percent; 9 percent; 1 percent
Expected SC diff: 2 fold; 4 fold; 9 fold
***
When social class is measured precisely, it can be seen that the expected Highest SC to Lowest SC differential would probably be expected to increase from about three-fold (when the percentages at university are compared with the proportions in the national population) in relatively unselective universities to more than thirty-fold at highly selective universities.
In other words, if this social class IQ difference is accurate, the average child from the highest social class is approximately thirty times more likely to qualify for admission to a highly selective university than the average child from the lowest social class.
When using a more conservative assumption of just one standard deviation in average IQ between upper (IQ 110) and lower (IQ 95) social classes there will be significant differentials between Highest and Lowest social classes, increasing from two-fold at the ‘ex-poly’ through four-fold at the ‘Redbrick’ university to ninefold at ‘Oxbridge’.
Naturally, this simple analysis is based on several assumptions, each of which could be challenged and adjusted; and further factors could be introduced. However, the take-home-message is simple. When admissions are assumed to be absolutely meritocratic, social class IQ differences of plausible magnitude lead to highly significant effects on the social class ratios of students at university when compared with the general population.
Furthermore, the social class differentials inevitably become highly amplified at the most selective universities such as Oxbridge.
Indeed, it can be predicted that around half of a random selection of kids whose parents are among the IQ 130 ‘cognitive elite’ (eg. with both parents and all grandparents successful in professions requiring high levels of highly selective education) would probably be eligible for admission to the most-selective universities or the most selective professional courses such as medicine, law and veterinary medicine; but only about one in two hundred of kids from the lowest social stratum would be eligible for admission on meritocratic grounds.
In other words, with a fully-meritocratic admissions policy we should expect to see a differential in favour of the highest social classes relative to the lowest social classes at all universities, and this differential would become very large at a highly-selective university such as Oxford or Cambridge.
The highly unequal class distributions seen in elite universities compared to the general population are unlikely to be due to prejudice or corruption in the admissions process. On the contrary, the observed pattern is a natural outcome of meritocracy. Indeed, anything other than very unequal outcomes would need to be a consequence of non-merit-based selection methods.
Selected references for social class and IQ:
Argyle, M. The psychology of social class. London: Routledge, 1994. (Page 153 contains tabulated summaries of several studies with social class I IQs estimated from 115-132 and lowest social classes IQ from 94-97).
C.L. Hart et al. Scottish Mental Health Survey 1932 linked to the Midspan Studies: a prospective investigation of childhood intelligence and future health. Public Health. 2003; 117: 187-195. (Social class 1 IQ 115, Social class V IQ 90; Deprivation category 1 – IQ 110, deprivation category 7 – IQ 92).
Nettle D. 2003. Intelligence and class mobility in the British population. British Journal of Psychology. 94: 551-561. (Estimates approx one standard deviation between lowest and highest social classes).
Validity of IQ – See Deary IJ. Intelligence – A very short introduction. Oxford University Press 2001.
Note - It is very likely that IQ is _mostly_ hereditary (I would favour the upper bound of the estimates of heredity, with a correlation of around 0.8), but because IQ is not _fully_ hereditary there is a 'regression towards the mean' such that the children of high IQ parents will average lower IQ than their parents (and vice versa). But the degree to which this regression happens will vary according to the genetic population from which the people are drawn - so that high IQ individuals from a high IQ population will exhibit less regression towards the mean, because the ancestral population mean IQ is higher. Because reproduction in modern societies is 'assortative' with respect to IQ (i.e. people tend to have children with other people of similar IQ), and because this assortative mating has been going on for several generations, the expected regression towards the mean will be different according to specific ancestry. Due to this complexity, I have omitted any discussion of regression to the mean IQ from parents to children in the above journalistic article which had a non-scientific target audience.
*
PC is the cause of the elite education bubble
Thursday, 14 April 2011
*
Why are the most selective schools and universities so highly valued?
After all, if you control for intelligence and personality, differences between schools and colleges make approximately zero difference to 'hard' life outcomes such as jobs and salaries
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2009/07/replacing-education-with-psychometrics.html
So, as we realize that elite education nowadays makes no real difference, people are ever-more hysterical about its importance.
The reason for the elite education bubble, regular readers will not be surprised to hear, comes down to political correctness.
*
Of course, what content you learn does make a difference - but a big feature of the education bubble is that people are all-but-indifferent to educational content: what is important is going to the prestigious schools and colleges - simply attending elite educational institutions, as a warm body...
(And of course, it must be officially attending the institution: since 'merely' getting the benefit of teaching - as an elective student or or 'auditing' courses - does not count. This relies on elite institutions as proving a reliable 'screen' for admissions - but implicitly acknowledges that, aside from this, they are not superior.)
(Yet we know for sure that admission to elite institutions are not a reliable screen - since they all deploy affirmative action, and also admit women and men in equal proportions - or an excess of women, both of which mean they cannot be picking the highest aptitude students.)
*
Well, it doesn't make sense until you remember what intellectuals 'know' when (as they almost all are) in thrall to political correctness.
1. PC Intellectuals know (correctly) that there are big differences in average success between the graduates of different educational institutions - they know (correctly) that the children in their PC Intellectual social circles almost-all get into elite educational institutions and move onto elite jobs.
So they seek an explanation...
2. PC Intellectuals 'know' (falsely) that all humans are equal in ability when they are conceived, because they 'know' that intelligence and personality (and other factors that influence success) are equally distributed between sexes, social classes, and races.
3. PC Intellectuals also 'know' that the intelligence and personality are NOT hereditary (or, at least, not to any significant extent) - these are 'known' to be shaped by childhood experience.
4. PC Intellectuals therefore 'know' that intrinsically everybody can do anything - unless prevented from doing so by their environment.
5. PC Intellectuals therefore 'know' that the huge differences in adult success 'must' be caused (substantially) by educational differences.
6. Therefore, PC Intellectuals 'know' that if they can 'get their kids into' the most successful schools and colleges, their children will have the best chance of success. Therefore elite education is perceived as an investment. It may cost a lot of time, money and effort, but all this will be worth it in the long term.
*
Hence the hysteria around access to elite education, and the rapidly inflating prices.
All a consequence of politically correct 'knowledge'.
*
Why are the most selective schools and universities so highly valued?
After all, if you control for intelligence and personality, differences between schools and colleges make approximately zero difference to 'hard' life outcomes such as jobs and salaries
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2009/07/replacing-education-with-psychometrics.html
So, as we realize that elite education nowadays makes no real difference, people are ever-more hysterical about its importance.
The reason for the elite education bubble, regular readers will not be surprised to hear, comes down to political correctness.
*
Of course, what content you learn does make a difference - but a big feature of the education bubble is that people are all-but-indifferent to educational content: what is important is going to the prestigious schools and colleges - simply attending elite educational institutions, as a warm body...
(And of course, it must be officially attending the institution: since 'merely' getting the benefit of teaching - as an elective student or or 'auditing' courses - does not count. This relies on elite institutions as proving a reliable 'screen' for admissions - but implicitly acknowledges that, aside from this, they are not superior.)
(Yet we know for sure that admission to elite institutions are not a reliable screen - since they all deploy affirmative action, and also admit women and men in equal proportions - or an excess of women, both of which mean they cannot be picking the highest aptitude students.)
*
Well, it doesn't make sense until you remember what intellectuals 'know' when (as they almost all are) in thrall to political correctness.
1. PC Intellectuals know (correctly) that there are big differences in average success between the graduates of different educational institutions - they know (correctly) that the children in their PC Intellectual social circles almost-all get into elite educational institutions and move onto elite jobs.
So they seek an explanation...
2. PC Intellectuals 'know' (falsely) that all humans are equal in ability when they are conceived, because they 'know' that intelligence and personality (and other factors that influence success) are equally distributed between sexes, social classes, and races.
3. PC Intellectuals also 'know' that the intelligence and personality are NOT hereditary (or, at least, not to any significant extent) - these are 'known' to be shaped by childhood experience.
4. PC Intellectuals therefore 'know' that intrinsically everybody can do anything - unless prevented from doing so by their environment.
5. PC Intellectuals therefore 'know' that the huge differences in adult success 'must' be caused (substantially) by educational differences.
6. Therefore, PC Intellectuals 'know' that if they can 'get their kids into' the most successful schools and colleges, their children will have the best chance of success. Therefore elite education is perceived as an investment. It may cost a lot of time, money and effort, but all this will be worth it in the long term.
*
Hence the hysteria around access to elite education, and the rapidly inflating prices.
All a consequence of politically correct 'knowledge'.
*
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