6 ms·

The Outsiders

9 points by 10ren 17y ago

tokenadult 17y ago
A quick comment: An IQ score on any test above IQ 160 is not a validated score, and should be considered comparable to IQ scores in the usual range on current, carefully validated tests of 40 to 160. Moreover, the standard form of scoring IQ tests does not, and cannot, yield an IQ score with interval characteristics, as Terman and Merrill (1937, p. 25) recognized. "The expression of a test result in terms of age norms is simple and unambiguous, resting upon no statistical assumptions. A test so scaled does not pretend to measure intelligence as a linear distance is measured by the equal units of a foot-rule, but tells us merely that the ability of a given subject corresponds to the average ability of children of such and such an age. This was all that Binet claimed to accomplish, and one can well doubt whether the voluminous output of psychometric literature since his day has enabled us to accomplish more. We have accordingly chosen to retain this least pretentious of units for the estimation of mental level." The numbers yielded by an IQ test are not measures, but rather more like decathlon scores (Hunt 1997). Indeed, IQ scores analogize quite aptly to the arbitrary rating numbers assigned by college rating guides to different colleges and universities, even in how they differ from one brand of IQ test to another. The earliest mental tester, Galton, recognized that he had no "foot rule." Early on, he was frustrated by the lack of an "external standard of measurement" for what he was investigating, and resolved to report his results as a rank-ordering of subjects, without a "foot-rule" (Galton 1880). The best considered view is that IQ tests and other mental ability tests are not measures at all. Certainly they should not be analogized to rulers. An IQ score, despite the analogies appealed to by some authors, is not like a marking on a ruler related to an absolute scale but is on an ordinal scale (Mackintosh 1998, pp. 30-31). Alfred Binet warned against this error early on, writing, "This scale properly speaking does not permit the measure of the intelligence, [1] because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured, but are on the contrary, a classification, a hierarchy among diverse intelligences;" (Binet 1905, English translation 1916). See also http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/history.html http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/history.html for background on high-IQ societies and their founders. After edit: I can also provide a reference to specifically disagree with one statement in the submitted article. "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." But David Feldman (1984), in a specialized study of study subjects who scored above 180 on their IQ tests, noted: "Put into the context of the psychometric movement as a whole, it is clear that positive extreme of the IQ distribution is not as different from other IQ levels as might have been expected. . . . While 180 IQ suggests the ability to do academic work with relative ease, it does not signify a qualitatively different organization of mind. It also does not suggest the presence of ‘genius’ in its common-sense meaning, i.e. transcendent achievement in some field. For these kinds of phenomena, IQ seems at best a crude predictor. For anything more, we will have to look to traditions other than the psychometric and to variables other than IQ." REFERENCES Binet, Alfred. (1916). New methods for the diagnosis of the intellectual level of subnormals. In E. S. Kite (Trans.), The Development of Intelligence in Children. Vineland, NJ: Publications of the Training School at Vineland. (Originally published 1905 in L'Année Psychologique, 12, 191-244.) (Available on the Web at Classics in the History of Psychology site http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Binet/binet1.htm http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Binet/binet1.htm ). Feldman, David (1984). A Follow-up of Subjects Scoring above 180 IQ in Terman's Genetic Studies of Genius. Exceptional Children, 50, 6, 518-523. Galton, Francis (1880). Statistics of Mental Imagery. Mind, 5, 301-318. Received May 12, 2006 from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm Hunt, Earl (1997). The Concept and Utility of Intelligence. In Bernie Devlin, Stephen E. Fienberg, Daniel P. Resnick & Kathryn Roeder (Eds.). Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to the Bell Curve. New York: Springer-Verlag. Mackintosh, N. J. (1998). IQ and Human Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Terman, Lewis & Merrill, Maude (1937). Measuring Intelligence: A Guide to the Administration of the New Revised Stanford-Binet Tests of Intelligence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
ypavan 17y ago
Aptly summarized by Huxley's quote from the text: "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"
shadowaccount 17y ago
Heavily debated making this post, will not make it on my account due to courting accusations of showboating, but in all earnestness this article struck a chord with me in a major way. I ask here only because I respect this community and consider the inhabitants peers, and I genuinely want an answer. What can one do about it? I quite literally feel like an alien trapped on a planet full of people that alternately infuriate and bore me. Has anyone successfully addressed these issues before? I believe that my growing misanthropy and detachment does not serve my interests in the long run.
- tokenadult 17y ago
  I'll give your question a serious answer. Growing up, I knew I had a high IQ score (my parents actually lowballed in hinting what my IQ score was, but I found out the actual score in adult life from my schoolteacher who referred me for testing), and I read in a story by Philip K. Dick that high-IQ people feel social distance from most classmates, which became a self-fulfilling prophecy for me. But later in life I lived in east Asia as a student of the Chinese language, and I discovered that Confucian philosophers expected smart people to use their smarts to get along with everyone, summed up in the saying of Confucius, "三人行，必有我师焉" "Wherever there are three persons walking, my teacher is surely among them." I learned from my experience overseas that I could appreciate other people for their abilities, and expect to learn from most people of my acquaintance, whatever their IQ scores. Since then, I have been more socially comfortable with a wider variety of people, and have felt less isolated. I still devote a lot of my free time to activism on behalf of gifted learners, which provides me with a social circle of people who understand my personal background.
  - shadowaccount 17y ago
    I've already adopted a general philosophy of attempting to benefit from interpersonal interaction as much as possible, I try to figure out how a person works on their own level, including if I could assist them in any way, and if in doing so I may be setting up a mutually beneficial arrangement. In some cases, this works, but these cases are few and far between. It seems the majority of people, if one were to pursue this philosophy, ought to be left to oblivion. Entanglement with them will only result in encumberance rather than advantage, even if you were to attempt to selflessly better them without regard to the benefits to yourself, typically they would be incapable of making use of your assistance. What then is the purpose of humanity at large, those who fall outside the sphere of which can be of any advantage to you and are more valuable avoided than utilised?
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
Perhaps it's just me, but this article seemed a bit of the self-masturbatory side. Perhaps that is because of the venue it is presented in. I did find some useful information, however. And I think there is an important point here. But it also was a bit over-the-top. As an example of this nonsense, 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. Ludicrous malarkey.
Estragon 17y ago
None of these [High-IQ] 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. Another perfectly plausible explanation: you have to be a raging egotist to consider joining such a group.

9 points by 10ren 17y ago

A quick comment: An IQ score on any test above IQ 160 is not a validated score, and should be considered comparable to IQ scores in the usual range on current, carefully validated tests of 40 to 160. Moreover, the standard form of scoring IQ tests does not, and cannot, yield an IQ score with interval characteristics, as Terman and Merrill (1937, p. 25) recognized. "The expression of a test result in terms of age norms is simple and unambiguous, resting upon no statistical assumptions. A test so scaled does not pretend to measure intelligence as a linear distance is measured by the equal units of a foot-rule, but tells us merely that the ability of a given subject corresponds to the average ability of children of such and such an age. This was all that Binet claimed to accomplish, and one can well doubt whether the voluminous output of psychometric literature since his day has enabled us to accomplish more. We have accordingly chosen to retain this least pretentious of units for the estimation of mental level." The numbers yielded by an IQ test are not measures, but rather more like decathlon scores (Hunt 1997). Indeed, IQ scores analogize quite aptly to the arbitrary rating numbers assigned by college rating guides to different colleges and universities, even in how they differ from one brand of IQ test to another. The earliest mental tester, Galton, recognized that he had no "foot rule." Early on, he was frustrated by the lack of an "external standard of measurement" for what he was investigating, and resolved to report his results as a rank-ordering of subjects, without a "foot-rule" (Galton 1880). The best considered view is that IQ tests and other mental ability tests are not measures at all. Certainly they should not be analogized to rulers. An IQ score, despite the analogies appealed to by some authors, is not like a marking on a ruler related to an absolute scale but is on an ordinal scale (Mackintosh 1998, pp. 30-31). Alfred Binet warned against this error early on, writing, "This scale properly speaking does not permit the measure of the intelligence, [1] because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured, but are on the contrary, a classification, a hierarchy among diverse intelligences;" (Binet 1905, English translation 1916). See also http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/history.html http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/history.html for background on high-IQ societies and their founders. After edit: I can also provide a reference to specifically disagree with one statement in the submitted article. "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." But David Feldman (1984), in a specialized study of study subjects who scored above 180 on their IQ tests, noted: "Put into the context of the psychometric movement as a whole, it is clear that positive extreme of the IQ distribution is not as different from other IQ levels as might have been expected. . . . While 180 IQ suggests the ability to do academic work with relative ease, it does not signify a qualitatively different organization of mind. It also does not suggest the presence of ‘genius’ in its common-sense meaning, i.e. transcendent achievement in some field. For these kinds of phenomena, IQ seems at best a crude predictor. For anything more, we will have to look to traditions other than the psychometric and to variables other than IQ." REFERENCES Binet, Alfred. (1916). New methods for the diagnosis of the intellectual level of subnormals. In E. S. Kite (Trans.), The Development of Intelligence in Children. Vineland, NJ: Publications of the Training School at Vineland. (Originally published 1905 in L'Année Psychologique, 12, 191-244.) (Available on the Web at Classics in the History of Psychology site http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Binet/binet1.htm http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Binet/binet1.htm ). Feldman, David (1984). A Follow-up of Subjects Scoring above 180 IQ in Terman's Genetic Studies of Genius. Exceptional Children, 50, 6, 518-523. Galton, Francis (1880). Statistics of Mental Imagery. Mind, 5, 301-318. Received May 12, 2006 from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Galton/imagery.htm Hunt, Earl (1997). The Concept and Utility of Intelligence. In Bernie Devlin, Stephen E. Fienberg, Daniel P. Resnick & Kathryn Roeder (Eds.). Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to the Bell Curve. New York: Springer-Verlag. Mackintosh, N. J. (1998). IQ and Human Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Terman, Lewis & Merrill, Maude (1937). Measuring Intelligence: A Guide to the Administration of the New Revised Stanford-Binet Tests of Intelligence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

ypavan 17y ago

Aptly summarized by Huxley's quote from the text: "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"

shadowaccount 17y ago

Heavily debated making this post, will not make it on my account due to courting accusations of showboating, but in all earnestness this article struck a chord with me in a major way. I ask here only because I respect this community and consider the inhabitants peers, and I genuinely want an answer. What can one do about it? I quite literally feel like an alien trapped on a planet full of people that alternately infuriate and bore me. Has anyone successfully addressed these issues before? I believe that my growing misanthropy and detachment does not serve my interests in the long run.

tokenadult 17y ago
I'll give your question a serious answer. Growing up, I knew I had a high IQ score (my parents actually lowballed in hinting what my IQ score was, but I found out the actual score in adult life from my schoolteacher who referred me for testing), and I read in a story by Philip K. Dick that high-IQ people feel social distance from most classmates, which became a self-fulfilling prophecy for me. But later in life I lived in east Asia as a student of the Chinese language, and I discovered that Confucian philosophers expected smart people to use their smarts to get along with everyone, summed up in the saying of Confucius, "三人行，必有我师焉" "Wherever there are three persons walking, my teacher is surely among them." I learned from my experience overseas that I could appreciate other people for their abilities, and expect to learn from most people of my acquaintance, whatever their IQ scores. Since then, I have been more socially comfortable with a wider variety of people, and have felt less isolated. I still devote a lot of my free time to activism on behalf of gifted learners, which provides me with a social circle of people who understand my personal background.
- shadowaccount 17y ago
  I've already adopted a general philosophy of attempting to benefit from interpersonal interaction as much as possible, I try to figure out how a person works on their own level, including if I could assist them in any way, and if in doing so I may be setting up a mutually beneficial arrangement. In some cases, this works, but these cases are few and far between. It seems the majority of people, if one were to pursue this philosophy, ought to be left to oblivion. Entanglement with them will only result in encumberance rather than advantage, even if you were to attempt to selflessly better them without regard to the benefits to yourself, typically they would be incapable of making use of your assistance. What then is the purpose of humanity at large, those who fall outside the sphere of which can be of any advantage to you and are more valuable avoided than utilised?

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

Perhaps it's just me, but this article seemed a bit of the self-masturbatory side. Perhaps that is because of the venue it is presented in. I did find some useful information, however. And I think there is an important point here. But it also was a bit over-the-top. As an example of this nonsense, 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. Ludicrous malarkey.

Estragon 17y ago

None of these [High-IQ] 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. Another perfectly plausible explanation: you have to be a raging egotist to consider joining such a group.