My. How time flies.
Gendanken,
At any rate, this means that from now on you reserve the right to print all my posts and wipe ass with it.
You're mean.
Ever wipe your ass with printer paper? Especially printer paper that has been printed on?
Ring around the bunghole. And a chafed bunghole, at that.
But, what would I expect from a functional retard?
And that was my point- all it took was one conversation with said co-worker to figure she was, quite simply, a popular idiot.
She has a loud voice, never stutters and if ever grows self conscious you'd never know it, looks you straight in the face without wavering, doesn't giggle needlessly and could literally keep a straight face pulling out the phrase "No, there are no animals native to America" straight from her asshole.
Most likely a misunderstanding on her part.
Either having to do with the native horses and megafauna being wiped out or perhaps having to do with animal migrations during the land bridge times.
Either way, pretty laughable.
You did, I assume, throw this in her face?
3,9,and 13.
All odd numbers.
(If I'm wrong, eat me)
Wrong.
And you already know the real answer, but I'll repeat it for anyone else who might be interested.
The line connecting all the dots is the desire to connect the dots despite the possibility of a lack of any true connection.
It was a jibe at IceAgeCivilization who is a well known crackpot and numerologist.
I imagine him at home watching static on the television and deciphering the secret messages sent from the ancients through the electromagnetic flotsam and jetsam. Eddy's in the space-time continuum and whatnot.
I never said confidence was "key", more like a gimmick
Semantics.
By 'key' I simply meant that, as you say, it was a gimmick. A way to get the hooks into the people being communicated to.
Confidence is key, because people love confidence.
Even if feigned.
and how is neither the intelligence to see the frame of a house in a pile of wood and the conviction to actually build it not required to 'get things done'?
True.
But, there is a difference in being confident in one's own abilities and selling that confidence to a consumer.
The confident builder can build a home because he knows how and he knows he knows how. But, before he can build a home, he must convince a homeowner that he is able to. This is where a salesman comes in. And the salesman exudes a completely different form of confidence. And intelligence, for that matter.
Yes?
That said, and to close on this Most Interesting Topic, we can barely explain the infrastructure of memory or the complexities of one's brain processing language , yet we have standardized tests quantifying "Intelligence" as one single number assuming a generalized, representative role of how billions of human brains function.
Not only that, but we don't even have a practical definition of intelligence.
Definitions are always absent in the cognitive sciences. This is a huge problem for any discussion at present.
Perhaps soon understanding will increase. Breakthroughs come every day. But we have so far to go.
Fraggle,
None of the Mensa members I've known have even admitted to being in the society until they were sure they were in the company of a person who could join if he wanted. They don't talk about it among the "commoners."
Ah. But that doesn't negate the sense of distiction 'within themselves' that I spoke of.
See, there's this issue.
You, yourself, have spoken of how once upon a time smart people were looked at with respect and intelligence was actually a desirable trait. The country was moving towards a technologically advanced society and the brain trust was needed in order to pull this off.
But, somewhere down the line, the general public turned away from this respect of intelligence.
(As an aside, I believe that this diversion occurred due to a backlash from overselling the American Dream. Children were brainwashed into believing that they were all special. All unique. All equal. That if they only tried hard enough, that each of them could have everything he ever wanted. And not only could he have it through hard work, but that it was his by
right. But, many, if not most, were not able to live up to this standard. They were not able to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. And those that failed held the the success of others against them. Thus, a movement intended to encourage children to succeed, actually achieved exactly the opposite. And thus we can see how egalitarianism drags people down rather than elevating them....)
Anyway.
Let's say that the majority of Mensa types are a bit socially inadequate. Is this a safe assumption? Sure, it's not a died in the wool truth, but I think it stands strong enough for the discussion at hand. The fault for this social inadequacy could be many, but possible the largest factor at play is the ostracization that takes place due to the eqalitarian backlash I spoke of.
So.
These people have lived their lives on the edges.
They have the ability to succeed where their classmates can only fail. (And thus their classmates force them to fail in the areas where majority rule dominates. Specifically the social arena.)
They have learned through dark and hard years to retract from these people. To defend themselves through various mechanisms.
They surely have acquired an instinct for not lording their intelligence over them in a direct and forthright manner. This is sure to cause a violent backlash.
Thus, they do not brag about being in Mensa, about being smart, to the 'commoners'. This would only cause more social backlash and would negate the purpose. On the contrary, when dealing with the 'commoners', they use whatever tricks they may have acquired to downplay their intelligence so as to fit in as much as possible. (At the least, to vanish in their sight.)
To achieve a sense of validation from their intelligence, they can't go to the commoners. They must go to others like themselves.
Others who have suffered the pangs of social angst among the brutes of the world.
Mensa.
The geniuses glorify each other behind closed doors where 'they' can't see.
And they carry this validation with them, secretly inside, when they venture forth once more into the world of the cretins.
Truth is I can't entirely blame some of them. Life is hard at times and people deal with it in various ways. Some ways appeal to some more than others. But, in the end, it's not moral judgement that matters but, rather, results.
Being in a Mensa meeting where members like Luke and Moz and Sammy D would dominate the conversation, well that's the reason I don't go to those meetings.
Interesting.
The socially dominant of the socially subordinate.
And don't these socially dominant subordinates dominate oh so masterfully and vociferously amongst their subordinate allies?
Now, picture them in a diner face to face with Sal the truck driver who has just cut in line.
Clearly people with IQs 135 and above do not marry people with IQs 135 and above in great numbers.
I seem to recall research somewhere that shows that when intelligent people breed, often the result is children of lesser intelligence.
I think he has to be stupid because so many of the things he does are stupid.
True.
But, this goes against what you were saying about communication and going more into behavior.
Of course, communication is a behavior, but it is a special kind of behavior. One in which lies can be sold. Confidence men selling ketchup popsicles to eskimoes.
I agree that so many of Bush's mistakes in the war speak volumes of his character. Maybe not so much his intelligence, however. Often, the intelligent overanalyze a situation and can't see the reality of the situation for the simulation which they've constructed within their mental processes. This is a true human flaw.
The mistakes that Bush et al have made are heinous and reprehensible. And just so blatantly obvious.
And yet, the intelligent can also make mistakes.
No.
The sign of intelligence would be in recovering from mistakes, yes?
And Bush seems to show that he is too stubborn and proud to do so.
But, again, is this a sign of lack of intelligence? Or simply of overbearing hubris?
As I said, his NPR interview was surprisingly cogent.
Make sure your kid has broadband, and send him to SciForums.
Of course, you should realize that the discussions here are somewhat... edgy. Not that that's a bad thing, but many parents wouldn't want their kids hanging out in a barroom brawl... Hmm. More like a bar in a looney bin in a brain trust. In the hopelessly incorrigable ward.
Xerxes,
It was a joke. Don't read too much into the smilies.
Normally I don't. And it seemed out of character. But the rolleyes confused me. It is one of the smilies that is invariably used to indicate disdain. Without the rolleyes I would have taken it for a joke without a moment's hesitation. With it, I still did, but was somewhat tentative in my appraisal.
Roman,
There's a surprisingly strong nerd movement in America. While they may be maligned by ther contemporaries, they stick together.
Yes.
But they only have prestige within their own clique.
Now. What would happen if the top nerd should happen to be wooed by the head cheerleader? Would he draw her into the nerd movement? Or would she pull him into the popular movement?
The center of gravity is where the power lies.
Tyler N,
Someone gives me a math problem and about half way through I take a left turn and start thinking about the problem itself rather then the solution, and then it leads me to some other interesting thoughts, and sooner or later I realize that I ought to get back to the problem. If there was no outside pressure, I wouldn't get back to it for a good amount of time, since my thoughts are so much more interesting then the math problem.Anyways, I don't really know how this applies to what I was just saying, but to continue this tangent (isn't it interesting how so many of our common words are derived from mathematics?), how would you measure that?
I call it Gestaltian Ballet.
Sometimes I'm Olga with a club foot.
Sometimes I'm Tatiana with magic shoes.
I've also seen it called an associative daisy chain. Or maybe it was cartwheel. I wish I could find that quote.
It is a wonderful thing, but also one to be wary of lest you end up as a numerologist.
Associative flights of fancy must be tempered with objective testing of some sort before they can cease to be fantasy and become useful.
Wheat from the chaff.
Ladyhawk,
Ok, so what works? My son at about 10yrs old had an IQ test (demanded by the local school), his iq then was about 130, he had resoning and verbal skills of an 18+ yr old. How do I keep him interested in mundane math when he wants to learn algebra? I teach both kids to think, ask questions, and understand stuff rather than spew out memorized data, but how do I keep them interested?
Yikes.
That's a huge thread all on its own.
Don't just presume that because we've been through gifted programs and are able to point out certain flaws (as well as good parts) of the program that we can actually construct a better system....
That would be too... useful.
Muaha!
I would say that one thing to steer away from is too much dependence upon games.
Games can be wonderful in many ways. And they serve as introduction to many concepts, but in my class the game ended up becoming the whole thing. We were taught to play games. This was because they were trying to make learning fun. But, it can't always be fun. Especially not in a frvolous manner.
Basically, give him access to as wide a variety of reference material as possible and his own inner mechanisms will allow you (if you are observant) to recognize which are compatible with his mind (both in interest and in level.) Beware of preconceptions.
And, above all, don't fall prey to thinking that he already knows. I find it almost hilarious how many things were never explained to me because it was presumed I already knew them.
, but it is never as bad when applied to a group as oppossed to an individual.