Is it just me?

[jstevewhite]

Ed -

Well, it's worth pointing out that to be a good power forward you need all of those other qualities AND actual height. The point was that there are essentially insurmountable deficits of all types, but we're only willing to admit those deficits when they are NOT intellect.

I absolutely realize there are people who lacked opportunity, and no, I am not suggesting that one should judge them harshly. I'm only pointing out that intellect is denigrated and devalued regularly in a way no other quality is done. In this forum there have been many examples offered of people who don't fit the demographic (more in a moment) as though these anecdotal expressions invalidate any expression of intellect as a valuable asset. Even if I agreed that all of those people are "smart", they're still outliers on the statistical curve of "smart people". We know how "smart people" group up. IQ is directly correlated to things like self-reported happiness, self reported success, longevity of relationships, criminal participation, religious affiliation, political views, etc.

The discussion here seems to be centered around the value of human beings. I'm not talking about generic value of a human being, only comparative intellect and my irritation that people feel the need to apologize for it and expect me to do the same. Certainly a philanthropist has great value to society regardless of his or her IQ. That fact is orthogonal to this particular discussion.

People don't look at weightlifters and say, "Well, he's very strong, but that doesn't really matter. Weaker people are just as good at weightlifting." Or look at the weight on the barbell he's pushing and say dismissively "That's only a number. It doesn't mean he's good at weightlifting."

Definitions of smart - Generally, "Smart" is a much broader term than "Intelligent", IMO. No, I don't think someone that's "smart" will make systematically bad life choices, by definition. They might have a high IQ, but that's still not 'smart'.

About "Smart enough" - I'm not sure I agree. Just like height and strength, "smart" is something that's limited. Sure, you can become "smarter" by exercising, but there are physical limits for every person. But comparative intellect is what made me bring this up, not really absolutes. Research supports the idea that intellect tends to impart the ability to conceptualize and manipulate thoughts about complexity, and that there are very real limits to these abilities, just like there are for strength, size, stamina, etc.

I'm not trying to put anyone down at all. I'm just tired of people acting like I should just acknowledge offhand that intellect doesn't matter, when it's one of the things that matter to me quite a bit. People say, "You're only where you are because you are lucky." While this is true, it's no more true of me than them, but I'm expected to act as though if they had gotten my breaks they'd be where I am. Which might be true of someone who never had the opportunity to study computers, but its CERTAINLY not true of my colleagues, if you see what I mean.

Whew, this thread is really cruisin'. If I step on anyone's toes, please consider it inadvertent.

[jstevewhite]

Celeste -
"Anyhow, I'm thankful that the world is filled with people of varying intellects and talents, flaws and all. Otherwise, what a dull place this world will be."

Hey, I don't disagree one little bit. I'm not suggesting that we should gas anyone with an IQ of less than 100. I'm just saying that I shouldn't have to apologize for being smart any more than a football player should have to apologize for being big, or a model for being pretty. And there's the bit about not wanting to have to sit around for hours talking about Nascar and who someone's boss is sleeping with. That's not stereotyping, it's personal experience.

Over the years I've made several career moves based on my understanding of the industry. They were considered, intentional, and well thought out, but everyone expects me to chalk my success up to luck rather than thought or planning. People tell me "I could have done what you've done if I had wanted to." In some cases it's true, but in several I know it's not. If you cannot wrap your head around factoring a quadratic equation, you're probably not cut out to be a mathematician, and if you absolutely cannot grasp binary math, you're probably not going to be a systems engineer, period. Or not a good one, anyway.

So again, I'm not talking about the value of a human being or the value of a human life. I'm just saying that maybe our society would be better off if we respected thoughtfulness and intellect the same way we do the ability to hit a baseball, throw a right cross, or make a fortune on Wall Street.

[Celeste Stewart]

As one who's risen to the top in just about every job I've tackled, I can appreciate what you're saying. My successes haven't been luck (other than having been born with a decent head on my shoulders) and I'm sure yours haven't been either. For anyone to imply that luck was the deciding factor would certainly be insulting. However, for me at least, success has been a mix of intelligence, talent, drive, commitment, and a willingness to learn.

I also think it's ridiculous that athletes and sitcom stars earn obscene amounts of money for their "contributions." My personal hero? Dr. Jonas Salk. I actually met him at a BioTech banquet in La Jolla about 15 years ago and he was gracious and personable. At the same time, I also met Junior Seau - a nice enough guy and a hometown "hero" but as far as contributions to the world, football sacks simply can't compare to eradicating polio.

All afternoon I've been wondering why I'm playing the Devil's advocate here. After all, what do I care how anyone defines themselves? Whether they want to be thought of as intellectual, sexy, athletic, charismatic, compassionate, etc... shouldn't bug me in the least. Then it struck me.

As a writer who tries to create multidimensional characters in my stories, I'm seeing this discussion from an interesting perspective. We can define ourselves all we want but in reality, everyone else we come in contact with defines us as they see us. Try as we might, we can't completely define ourselves. I suppose that's why I'm pointing out incongruities and human values; I'm looking for the multidimensional person, not the IQ score.

[jstevewhite]

So I read back through the whole thread to figure out how "Is it just me, or is it slow around here?" became a lengthy discussion on the merits of human intellect vs other human characteristics... it was instructive.

Celeste -

Of course you're right; it would be foolish to define oneself in such a two-dimensional manner. If not foolish, then boring. But we all have a trait or short set of traits that stand out when people meet us. If I have to choose between "overweight", "balding", "middle aged", and "intelligent", you can guess which one *I* am going to opt for! The thread just got crosswise of a favorite rant of mine - the fact that America doesn't value intelligence anymore - not in adults, anyway. And just one hundred years ago, we did. The marketing engine took over, though, and alert and curious intellect is anathema to marketing. Since we now live in a "Marketocracy" or "Advertocracy", intelligent people are destined to be persona non grata.

[Ed]

Celeste hit upon a point that I feel is significant. Those making contributions to society vs. those who do not. While I agree with J. Steve that intelligence and intellect *do* matter (perhaps it's a value more than anything else), if you're only using it to hide more sweat shops in Saipan or to make profits from war, then you really aren't deserving of any respect at all. On the flip side, I heard about a retiree in the general area who uses his spare time finding homes for stray pets. It doesn't matter how much education he has, or even how smart he is - he's doing a service that may inconvenience him a great deal. Some bystanders (who don't do anything that may cause inconvenience) may say he is "stupid," but really . . . does it matter?

Personally, I don't think "book smarts" equals intelligence. But books - the right books - can help a person develop by seeing the world through different perspectives, whether those perspectives be through the eyes of characters in various situations or through the writing of an author with something of substance to say.

Part of being intelligent is being able to make decisions for yourself and opinions of your own - being able to take the information given you and process it to come to a conclusion. Just because you can recite Pi to the 100th place or identify every country on a world map doesn't mean you can form opinions - or have the courage to.

Well, I don't know about how this phenomenon expresses itself in sports, but I do know that it can really do damage to someone to say, "You can't." People who believe it are stunted. People who don't have to constantly prove it to themselves and their detractors that yes they can. How exhausting. After all, I was always told I couldn't make any money writing. A part of me still can't believe that I actually do. Incredible how that works.

I think we're all talking about something that hasn't actually been assigned a word in English. Or it has, and we're using the wrong word. We agree that intelligence can't be narrowly defined, and that everyone will view others through their own lenses (however far-sighed or near-sighted those may be). ?

[jstevewhite]

Ed -

Absolutely. Nothing occurs in a vacuum, right? I suspect that a baseball player's swing would get fewer accolades if he used it to bash someone's head in as opposed to knocking the ball out of the park. I'm not advocating baseless adulation. I'm just saying that it should be ok to think that you have achieved something of importance not because of luck, but because of intelligence and hard work. (hard work is a component of nearly everything worthwhile, right?)

And I agree with your assertion about "book smarts" - which I've never classed as intellect, anyway. Learning only proves you are educable. Having a good memory isn't a substitute for critical analysis. Information has value to those who would use it, regardless of the source, I think.

I understand what you're saying about the "You can't" effect, but there has to be balance. We've recently discovered that the drive to instill self esteem in children artificially has created an enormous increase in those diagnosed with pathological narcissistic disorder. We've also discovered that overall, scores drop when we tell children they're all smart and good at everything. Where do you draw the line? I'm not saying we should necessarily tell a kid that he or she shouldn't even try to be a physicist because that child can't grasp algebra, but we should certainly make it absolutely clear that the path to physics passes through the gate of algebra.

Do we really believe that literally anyone can be a/an (insert intellectually challenging career here)?

[Ed]

Ooh, interesting points - do you have a link/source for that study?

Of course I don't believe that, but part of being smart is knowing where your limits lie and learning to accept them if you can't break them down.

[jstevewhite]

Yeah, I'll see if I can dig up a link to the research. I think I found the paper via a scienceblogs post.

I wanted to add that one of the big reasons I feel America needs to correct its view of intellect is because of the minds we're missing out on because being smart isn't "cool". I bet thousands of children with real intellectual potential become factory workers because their boyfriend or girlfriend thought being smart was too geeky. I put this up there with things like the fact that we'll sentence someone to 20 years without parole for getting caught three times with a joint, but sentence someone who killed another human being by shooting them in the head 12 years with parole after seven.

Just wanted to illustrate that my concern for social views are more important to me than any particular personal irritation.

[Ed]

I agree with that. But I'm not sure you're very smart if you can't make the decision on your own.

Alternatively, we have people who come from families that value only jobs that are considered prestigious. Some of those people don't really want to be doctors or don't have the capacity to be doctors. And yet, they go get the training and we depend upon them for health advice and remedies.

So - while being smart isn't cool, being poor isn't cool either. Having money and showing it off (in the most obvious, homogenous ways) is the priority.

[jstevewhite]

Ed, if I hadn't been a teenage boy once, I'd agree with you about making up your own mind. The frontal lobes - impulse control and judgement - don't fully develop until late - around 20 years old, I seem to recall. As a kid who was dead set on becoming a physicist from sixth grade until my senior year, I can tell you that from the perspective of a seventeen year old, girls can loom MUCH larger in your psyche than any pre-existing dreams.

I think you nailed the zeitgeist of UMC America, and other economic environs, to a lesser extent. When I was young, I became a commercial photographer, and made a decent living for several years, but my father (the mainframe computer repairman) kept telling me I had to quit dreaming and get a real job - despite the fact that I was paying the bills with a little left over. When I moved into computers ( a long story ) and they started paying me too much to go back, I became his pride and joy, even though to start out I was making considerably less than I was as a photographer. I suspect that, had I remained a photographer, I'd be making some significant fraction of what I'm making now as a systems engineer - successful by most people's standards, but probably not what my dad "thought I was capable of".

People's self reported happiness is highly and directly correlated with whether or not they feel that what they do is important. I think that's why people who work in factories generally report very low levels of happiness, while those who volunteer for charitable work tend to report high levels of happiness. Yet we persist in believing that "$$$ == ".

You know that around the turn of the century (not the last one, the one before) our industrial leaders were giving commencement speeches to the Ivy League schools that educated their scions that included the stated concept that America needed to convince the populace that owning things would bring them happiness. The drive towards American Materialism was a marketing ploy designed to jump start our expansive, insanely profitable consumer economy, and plays into certain psychological/physiological truths that make it almost impossible for most people to even see that they're trapped.

[CRDonovan]

Darn, I missed this whole thread but I'm going to add a few things way after the fact.

As to education? I'm in the field and I see student's abilities first hand - at the high school level. The No Child Left Behind act has been a disaster for an educational system that already had major problems. The educational system (in U.S) has been dumbed down, no doubt about it. The proof can be in text books that are selected by school systems. One of the things I do is work as a math tutor, and my district recently sent me a selection of Algebra II/Trig texts that were recently chosen for the high school. Apparently educational publishing companies believe 17 year old math students need plenty of pictures, big colorful fonts, and lots of visual stimulation for kids to attend to the topic. I handed them back and continue to use my 25 year old duct taped texts.

I'm going to don my tin foil gear here, and say this dumbing down of education is no accident. The foundation of a working democracy is a good public school system, a free press, and our democratic election process.

Between the school system, which is failing to educate our young people, and what is available on television, we have what some aptly described as "the stupidization" of America: an increasingly uneducated populace. Combine that with a media owned and directed by big Corporations , and elections that are increasingly questionable, if not outright fraudulent, and you have democracy derailed.

So, what we have is a culture that has become nothing but a consumer society. Easy credit means everyone has their home entertainment system, and plenty of debt to keep them in harness. No actual information is coming from that entertainment system so most people have no idea what is actually going on in the rest of the world. But, they are seeing all the latest products and planning their next trip to the mall.

And because people aren't aware what is going on in the rest of the world, they remain blissfully unaware that their government, and their country, has been for all purposes taken over by corporations who are raking in profits, while the rest of us go broke, while war is being waged in our names, while prisoners are tortured, and while the environment is destroyed.

[jstevewhite]

A couple of posts vanished in the conversion. Oh, well... The information about narcissistic symptoms comes from Jean Twenge, PHD's book "Generation Me", which I have only scanned, not read (yet). However, it's not "pathological", as I previously stated. The self-esteem study you inquired about , Ed, was at http://www.csom.umn.edu/Assets/71496.pdf (where they discuss instances where increasing self esteem artificially had a negative impact on academic scores). My statements on happiness came from readings of many studies about happiness; I think most are available at The Journal of Happiness Studies (no joke! :) ) http://www.springerlink.com/content/1389-4978

C. R. Donovan - absolutely. I would only say that the foundation of a working democracy is an informed populace, a free press, and elections.

I had replied with a rant about the way the Straussian political viewpoints have hijacked American politics since Nixon, but it vanished in the forum upgrade. Regardless, if you haven't already, look up Strauss, Neocons, Rumsfeld/cheney/wolfowitz, and Plan for a New American Century. It's some scary stuff.

[CRDonovan]

JStevewhite: unfortunately, I'm familiar with PNAC. Not so much with Strauss - I'll check him out, thanks.

[RFHarris]

js:
"Those who trade freedom for security deserve neither" Benjamin Franklin.

This new America is far too Orwellian for my blood.