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Not every measure follows a bell curve. The reason intelligence is seen as following a bell curve is at least partially that intelligence tests are designed wit

Not every measure follows a bell curve. The reason intelligence is seen as following a bell curve is at least partially that intelligence tests are designed with the assumption that it does - so every test that is accepted suggests that it's the case. Personally I think it's worthwhile to observe that what we call "intelligence" is also generally a self-driven and self-satisfying demonstration of socially-sourced measures of 'ability.' There are plenty of people who are in social situations who would not see any worldly gains from developing those skills because they are not in a situation where they would be allowed to gain from their application. Often, when someone figures out a clever way to get ahead, they are committing a crime and sensibly pretend they are not doing it (and couldn't do it if prompted). People in this situation might actually be 'dumb' - but they certainly have no incentive to demonstrate their 'smartness.' For a relatively small section of the population, merit really does come into account - but it's not a random sample and so it's very hard, in my view, to feel confident that we know much about 'intelligence' at all - much less that it has a bell curve distribution.

benreesman 4y ago
I think both you and Walter make good points, and both of your comments reflect ways that mine could have been better: notably by creating a false categorical arrow referencing a very I’ll-defined term (“very smart”) and a still imprecise but much better-defined term (“articulate”). I seem to have recklessly kicked off a red/blue/left/right thing, which was stupid of me. The much more interesting thing to me is the epistemological failure mode of conflating modern liberal-inflected, coastal-inflected literacy with any other capability, a conceptual error that is well on its way to becoming institutionalized and is perhaps one of a very small handful of fundamental, avoidable mistakes driving a relatively very high level of divisiveness in society. It’s more than a little meta that the fundamental conceptual error that you’ve highlighted (the siren song of the Central Limit Theorem: everything’s Gaussian until proven guilty) has caused more nation-level financial catastrophes than any other fallacy. I think there’s ultimately a very compelling case for optimism here that I myself couldn’t have articulated prior to reading your comment in the context of mine: there are known, demonstrable, identifiable, and changeable epistemological practices that are sending shit into a tailspin (and have before), and right in this comment thread there are two of the big ones plain as day: conflating high-status articulation with other forms of merit, and shoving phenomena into convenient but wrong probability distributions. Those are going to be tough habits to kick, but I see no fundamental reason why they can’t be.
WalterBright 4y ago
> to feel confident that we know much about 'intelligence' at all We both know smart people among our acquaintances. We can tell just by talking with them. Everything else about humans follows a bell curve, why should intelligence be any different?
- tester756 4y ago
  >We both know smart people among our acquaintances. We can tell just by talking with them. If your smart friend was moved to the other group of people would he still be smart? Probably yes, probably not. Smartness feels relative and contextual, but is this right approach to measure it? probably not

benreesman 4y ago

I think both you and Walter make good points, and both of your comments reflect ways that mine could have been better: notably by creating a false categorical arrow referencing a very I’ll-defined term (“very smart”) and a still imprecise but much better-defined term (“articulate”). I seem to have recklessly kicked off a red/blue/left/right thing, which was stupid of me. The much more interesting thing to me is the epistemological failure mode of conflating modern liberal-inflected, coastal-inflected literacy with any other capability, a conceptual error that is well on its way to becoming institutionalized and is perhaps one of a very small handful of fundamental, avoidable mistakes driving a relatively very high level of divisiveness in society. It’s more than a little meta that the fundamental conceptual error that you’ve highlighted (the siren song of the Central Limit Theorem: everything’s Gaussian until proven guilty) has caused more nation-level financial catastrophes than any other fallacy. I think there’s ultimately a very compelling case for optimism here that I myself couldn’t have articulated prior to reading your comment in the context of mine: there are known, demonstrable, identifiable, and changeable epistemological practices that are sending shit into a tailspin (and have before), and right in this comment thread there are two of the big ones plain as day: conflating high-status articulation with other forms of merit, and shoving phenomena into convenient but wrong probability distributions. Those are going to be tough habits to kick, but I see no fundamental reason why they can’t be.

WalterBright 4y ago

> to feel confident that we know much about 'intelligence' at all We both know smart people among our acquaintances. We can tell just by talking with them. Everything else about humans follows a bell curve, why should intelligence be any different?

tester756 4y ago
>We both know smart people among our acquaintances. We can tell just by talking with them. If your smart friend was moved to the other group of people would he still be smart? Probably yes, probably not. Smartness feels relative and contextual, but is this right approach to measure it? probably not