Infinity is a fact of life; hard to experiment with in a lab, or even on a digital computer, I agree, but that doesn't mean it's not real.
Intelligence is, after all, also something that only exists in your mind. Like mathematics, it doesn't need to conform to common sense Newtonian physical rules, any more than quantum phenomena do.
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Infinity is a fact of life; hard to experiment with in a lab, or even on a digital computer, I agree, but that doesn't mean it's not real.
Intelligence is, after all, also something that only exists in your mind. Like mathematics, it doesn't need to conform to common sense Newtonian physical rules, any more than quantum phenomena do.
Neuroscience shows that what you see as "reality" is actually a model constructed in your mind using sensory input extended by calculations of probability and a lot of estimation - very like mathematics. That's good enough to keep you fed & breathing, usually, which is what it was designed for. External reality looks very different to creatures with different senses - who's to say who's right?
The concept of infinity does often come into play when linear reductionist logic reaches its limits and that is indeed when an apparently satisfactory theory sometimes fails.
"Too stupid to breed" is the kind of thing eugenicists (and racists) say in private, using polite circumlocutions in public. We need to bring that thinking out into the light of day to deal with it.
I won't argue with you about infinity. I am as certain that you are dead wrong as I am about absolutely anything. Factors that can significantly affect the outcome of an intelligence test can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand (exhaustion, illness, head trauma, hypoglycemia ...) and all of them would likely lead to rescheduling the test. Factors that would affect the outcome by more than a point or two are probably in single digits. Your position on this is frankly absurd.
I asked you last time this came up what is your beef with intelligence testing and in a shocking turn of events, you didn't answer. Your position is so extreme as to deserve mockery but we don't do that here. Much, anyway.
But when you compare IQ testing to eugenics you cross a line. And no we don't need to bring that garbage out into the light of day; several of my great-grandparents died at Treblinka so I am not seeing the humor in your hyperbole.
Funny you should mention quantum mechanics, it was the infinity of what we call the Ultraviolet Catastrophe that led Planck to quantization and then to QM.
You don't know what you're talking about. Intelligence is reliably measurable.
I'm sorry, had I remembered who you were, I would not have replied to your comments.
Why would I need to explain separately why someone who thinks intelligence is not measurable "has a beef with intelligence tests" ? Isn't that obvious? I think they're fraudulent, damaging & unfair.
The reliability of repeated IQ tests has been the subject of much research, and is probably best described as "undecided", except among companies whose income relies on selling tests.
I am sorry to hear that your family suffered in the camps. I am astonished that someone with your background supports such a tainted methodology so enthusiastically.
If you check back through history and look at who was involved in the development of IQ testing, you will find that most of the early work was done specifically to facilitate the implementation of eugenics programs, both in terms of forced sterilisation of "unsuitable" parents in the US and the "elimination" of "inferior" people in Germany, starting with "subnormal" and disabled people and only moving on to the race-based selection of victims at a later stage. Even the terminology is appalling.
A great deal of the initial work was done purely with the intention of identifying people with learning disabilities, and most of the statistical validation for individuals was done with people with low scores. The validation work for people in the "normal" range was largely population based rather than done with individuals, and this (as has been discussed elsewhere in this discussion) is largely self-referential.
For supporting references I suggest you start with the recent book "Control" by Dr Adam Rutherford which offers a reasonably non-academic overview.
"most of the early work was done specifically to facilitate the implementation of eugenics programs, both in terms of forced sterilisation of "unsuitable" parents in the US and the "elimination" of "inferior ...." blah blah blah
When you are using a psychological test to determine which people will succeed and which fail, the fact that it was originally developed as part of a seriously unethical program and began from seriously unsafe assumptions should give you pause, surely? Particularly when the racial asymetry in the results mirrors so closely the intentions of its original designers?
When I was at uni, there were students from Masai and Yoruba backgrounds on my course. They found it astonishing that most European students found some topics (including subjects like the effects of infinity, and that there were some spaces that were not measurable) so difficult. Their cultural background (which you described elsewhere as more focused on "storytelling than logic") enabled them to understand, while we were floundering.
What you see as "logic" and "obviously the right answer" depends very much on your previous experience. Our disagreement over IQ tests is an example of this playing out. You may wish to pretend that I am being stupid, but I obtained very high scores on, for example, the IBM aptitude test, which I took at their request while working for a company that they supported. I chose not to work for them though, despite getting a very good offer: I had no wish to be surrounded by people who thought that that test was a good way to select a staff team. By your standards, probably a stupid decision - but equally, by your standards, I'm proved to be very intelligent...
No, I turned it down because of WHICH test they used, and what that said about who they wanted to employ & how their employees were expected to conform to approved patterns of thought.
The performance of IBM in the years between then & now speaks volumes about why that was a deeply flawed selection strategy.
As to intelligence, we'd better leave it there. We're going round in circles because we disagree about what we mean by intelligence - you think turning down a high paid job because it wouldn't offer the self-development you want is silly, and I think it's the intelligent thing to do... Which comes down to whether intelligence is the ability to avoid unnecessary problems, or only the ability to solve them when they arise...
Infinity is a fact of life; hard to experiment with in a lab, or even on a digital computer, I agree, but that doesn't mean it's not real.
Intelligence is, after all, also something that only exists in your mind. Like mathematics, it doesn't need to conform to common sense Newtonian physical rules, any more than quantum phenomena do.
Neuroscience shows that what you see as "reality" is actually a model constructed in your mind using sensory input extended by calculations of probability and a lot of estimation - very like mathematics. That's good enough to keep you fed & breathing, usually, which is what it was designed for. External reality looks very different to creatures with different senses - who's to say who's right?
The concept of infinity does often come into play when linear reductionist logic reaches its limits and that is indeed when an apparently satisfactory theory sometimes fails.
"Too stupid to breed" is the kind of thing eugenicists (and racists) say in private, using polite circumlocutions in public. We need to bring that thinking out into the light of day to deal with it.
I won't argue with you about infinity. I am as certain that you are dead wrong as I am about absolutely anything. Factors that can significantly affect the outcome of an intelligence test can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand (exhaustion, illness, head trauma, hypoglycemia ...) and all of them would likely lead to rescheduling the test. Factors that would affect the outcome by more than a point or two are probably in single digits. Your position on this is frankly absurd.
I asked you last time this came up what is your beef with intelligence testing and in a shocking turn of events, you didn't answer. Your position is so extreme as to deserve mockery but we don't do that here. Much, anyway.
But when you compare IQ testing to eugenics you cross a line. And no we don't need to bring that garbage out into the light of day; several of my great-grandparents died at Treblinka so I am not seeing the humor in your hyperbole.
Funny you should mention quantum mechanics, it was the infinity of what we call the Ultraviolet Catastrophe that led Planck to quantization and then to QM.
You don't know what you're talking about. Intelligence is reliably measurable.
I'm sorry, had I remembered who you were, I would not have replied to your comments.
Why would I need to explain separately why someone who thinks intelligence is not measurable "has a beef with intelligence tests" ? Isn't that obvious? I think they're fraudulent, damaging & unfair.
The reliability of repeated IQ tests has been the subject of much research, and is probably best described as "undecided", except among companies whose income relies on selling tests.
I am sorry to hear that your family suffered in the camps. I am astonished that someone with your background supports such a tainted methodology so enthusiastically.
If you check back through history and look at who was involved in the development of IQ testing, you will find that most of the early work was done specifically to facilitate the implementation of eugenics programs, both in terms of forced sterilisation of "unsuitable" parents in the US and the "elimination" of "inferior" people in Germany, starting with "subnormal" and disabled people and only moving on to the race-based selection of victims at a later stage. Even the terminology is appalling.
A great deal of the initial work was done purely with the intention of identifying people with learning disabilities, and most of the statistical validation for individuals was done with people with low scores. The validation work for people in the "normal" range was largely population based rather than done with individuals, and this (as has been discussed elsewhere in this discussion) is largely self-referential.
For supporting references I suggest you start with the recent book "Control" by Dr Adam Rutherford which offers a reasonably non-academic overview.
"most of the early work was done specifically to facilitate the implementation of eugenics programs, both in terms of forced sterilisation of "unsuitable" parents in the US and the "elimination" of "inferior ...." blah blah blah
Is that what we use it for now?
When you are using a psychological test to determine which people will succeed and which fail, the fact that it was originally developed as part of a seriously unethical program and began from seriously unsafe assumptions should give you pause, surely? Particularly when the racial asymetry in the results mirrors so closely the intentions of its original designers?
When I was at uni, there were students from Masai and Yoruba backgrounds on my course. They found it astonishing that most European students found some topics (including subjects like the effects of infinity, and that there were some spaces that were not measurable) so difficult. Their cultural background (which you described elsewhere as more focused on "storytelling than logic") enabled them to understand, while we were floundering.
What you see as "logic" and "obviously the right answer" depends very much on your previous experience. Our disagreement over IQ tests is an example of this playing out. You may wish to pretend that I am being stupid, but I obtained very high scores on, for example, the IBM aptitude test, which I took at their request while working for a company that they supported. I chose not to work for them though, despite getting a very good offer: I had no wish to be surrounded by people who thought that that test was a good way to select a staff team. By your standards, probably a stupid decision - but equally, by your standards, I'm proved to be very intelligent...
So you turned down a high-paying job because they used a qualifying test. I rest my case.
I never said you were stupid but your tossing around infinity in this case is not the argument of a well-informed person.
Infinity is dangerous to mathematicians; many who studied it went mad. But it has nothing whatever to do with intelligence testing.
No, I turned it down because of WHICH test they used, and what that said about who they wanted to employ & how their employees were expected to conform to approved patterns of thought.
The performance of IBM in the years between then & now speaks volumes about why that was a deeply flawed selection strategy.
As to intelligence, we'd better leave it there. We're going round in circles because we disagree about what we mean by intelligence - you think turning down a high paid job because it wouldn't offer the self-development you want is silly, and I think it's the intelligent thing to do... Which comes down to whether intelligence is the ability to avoid unnecessary problems, or only the ability to solve them when they arise...