yeah, I know, it's been discussed so many times. People always ask: why is everyone so intelligent in Ender Saga? I recently wondered... I dont know if OSC is extremely intelligent, if he's some kind of a genius or something. Obviously he is very smart, or he wouldn't have been able to write such ingenious novels. But... his heroes are the most intelligent people possible. Peter in EG says that there are only several thousands people with brains like theirs... Several thousands, out of bllions (it's 22nd century)! Let alone fact that geniuses like them arent what we call... normal. Sane. How come OSC can describe a superbrain, 230 IQ genius, his thoughts, feelings, actions, without being like him? For example: Locke and Demosthenes. You must remember this chapter. They talk... maturely, yes. They are smart, very smart indeed. Like grown-ups, pretty much like... Mr Card. But how is their intelligence proved? Peter is reading difficult biological works. Valentine is better than most college professors. Yeah, I know, he had to create them. It must have been the smartest to be saving the world. But I, personally, am not persuaded. (if you know what I mean) (and please, do forgive me my poor English)
Posted by Edgehopper (Member # 1716) on :
Well, it is a series about highly intelligent people, it's not like all of his books are like that . In Homecoming, Issib and Shedemei are the only ones that I'd consider geniuses, and in Alvin Maker only maybe the historical characters like Taleswapper and Tecumseh and Verily Cooper hit that point.
As for how their intelligence is proven--Val and Peter got the world to take their writing seriously, to the point where Peter wrote a treaty that stopped a world war. OSC wrote somewhere in the research area that he wasn't going to ever write out The Hegemon or The Hive Queen, because he couldn't. I assume, for the same reason, that that's why we never find out what the Locke Proposal actually is or read more than snippets of Locke and Demosthenes articles.
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
Yeah, well, it'd be difficult to write something that prevented a world war, wouldnt it? I'm glad OSC didnt write them. though it would probably be something... extraordinary.
[ July 21, 2006, 03:18 AM: Message edited by: Szymon ]
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
My theory is it's very difficult to write a character who's smarter than you. How would the character have flashes of insight, and see the whole picture, if you yourself aren't capable of such insights?
Posted by A Rat Named Dog (Member # 699) on :
Because in a fictional story, you know exactly what is going on in the world, so you can grant your characters "flashes of insight", and lo and behold, they're always right Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Except when its more convenient to the plot for them to be wrong, as when Peter thought he could handle Achilles. Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
My mom would never tell me my I.Q. because she knew my sister would make relentless fun of me. That worked well...
P.S. Is writing someone with higher intelligence harder than writing someone with a different gender, race, or religion from you? Or a different personality type? This is suggesting something about Ayn Rand. If I can go off and think about the funny way to say it for a couple hours, then come back and edit my post so it looks instantaneous, then I would appear much more intelligent. I think that's mostly what Card does.
Posted by nick at noon (Member # 9591) on :
Actually I don't think OSC could make Ender such a genius but he had a great way of showing ender as a genius. He put Ender on a station with a few hundred of the worlds gratest geniuses (all the kids there were selected for a reason) and made them seem like idiots.
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
Yeah, well obviously describing what another gender feels might be difficult, but not as much as someone intelligent. And you know why- intelligence is a power, unlike gender. If it's a power you lack- then you dont understand things and then you cant describe them. Example: you can imagine how your friend feels, having a heartache, even though you;ve never had one (if you're lucky;). But you cannot imagine how Bertrand felt, formulating his postulate, or Albert Einstein with his relativism.
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
Incidentally, I've never checked my IQ actually, except from a single Internet IQ test in English. My ex-girlfriend is a psychologist and offered to test me with this most complex one... Wexler or sth. i didnt agree;) In this Internet one I got about 140 and was so happy (though aware that it wasn't much reliable) that didnt want to ruin my self confidence (which is poor, unfortunately). Nevertheless, not everyone must be smart, do they;)?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
It seems to me that OSC's characters aren't so much intelligent as wise. Certainly, they've got a reasonable amount of raw brainpower, but this is not the focus of the story - indeed, we are rarely given the detailed solution to the technical problems that we are told they solve.
It is their solution of moral dilemmas that forms the plotline. And this is perhaps somewhat easier to write without being wise oneself, because moral dilemmas are rarely original, so there is a lot of human experience to draw on. And, of course, such dilemmas are all the easier to solve for not being involved oneself.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
I guess the question is whether genii just think the same thoughts as normal people, only faster, or if they actually think different thoughts. Reminds me of a Partially Clips. One of these day's I'm going to find out Robert is, like, King of Men or something, and then I'll have to stop worshipping him.
Posted by Gwen (Member # 9551) on :
(This thinking is about the Shadow series, since that's what I've read last.)
Maybe it's not so surprising that so many of his characters (the sympathetic ones, anyway) are so smart...first, everyone in Battle School was tested for intelligence, so it's not so strange that everyone, say, in Ender's jeesh is really smart; and from being in Ender's jeesh they ended up in important positions in the world, because every country wanted their superintelligence and tactical/strategical thinking to be put to work making the country number one. So it makes sense that Alai, Shen, Hot Soup, Bean, Petra, and so on are both smart and important characters. Same with Virlomi, Suriyawong, and Nikolai and all the Battle School kids who weren't in Ender's jeesh...they still were smart, and ambitious, and useful to their respective countries.
Peter and Valentine and anyone else who ended up controlling policy via brainpower--that makes sense, too, that in a time when geniuses are important in the military aspects of forein policy, and when the world is in the kind of turmoil it's in in the books, that other geniuses would "rise to the top" so to speak. Ambitious people try to get to the top, only the intelligent make it (in the particular ways that our favorite characters did, anyway), so the main characters are ambitious, intelligent characters with a finger in every pie.
The only characters I can think of offhand who are central to what happens who are outright stupid are the government officials, who got there the typical bureaucratic way instead of by essay-writing or war-planning. And all they did was rise to their level of incompetence, and then let their aides do everything for them. And we're made not to like them, anyway, and all they do is put obstructions into the paths of the smart Battle School grads.
If the books were about something other than a world war, we could expect more "normal" characters, but the stories being what they are, extremely intelligent characters are selected for by the events. If they were stupid, or even of average intelligence, they wouldn't be main characters.
Posted by Mathematician (Member # 9586) on :
quote:Originally posted by pooka: I guess the question is whether genii just think the same thoughts as normal people, only faster, or if they actually think different thoughts. Reminds me of a Partially Clips. One of these day's I'm going to find out Robert is, like, King of Men or something, and then I'll have to stop worshipping him.
First, I think there are several levels/types of genius. Some kinds of genius are simply thinking the same thoughts as normal people, but faster. But there are some who just have thoughts. I don't know much detailed history (other than some mathematics History), but I can name a couple of mathematicians/physicists fitting this. I point out their young age simply to say that they were YOUNG when they reached their results. Before them, people had literally spent lifetimes working on these problems.
First is Galois, who revolutionized mathematics with a paper written when he was 18 (he died at the age of 21) on the non-solvability of certain types of equations. He single handedly created what is today an entire branch of mathematics.
Second, Godel (the o should have an umlat over it) revolutionized mathematics at the age of 24.
Finally, (a more recent example) Andrew Wiles solved Fermat's Last Theorem, something stated in the 1600's but which eluded proof until 1993.
I guess I'm not really saying one way or another whether or not this is an example of being incredibly fast, or thinking different. I'd lean towards the thinking different category, myself.
I realize that to most of the community here, the references I just made are meaningless. Sorry, math is all I know ;-)
[ July 21, 2006, 11:22 PM: Message edited by: Mathematician ]
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Welcome, Mathematician! That's a bold screen name! Have you ever heard of the medieval mathematican named Calculator?
Another great example of a very young genius revolutionizing math is when Karl Gauss provided the first proof of the Fundamental theorem of Algebra at age 22, as his doctoral thesis. Can you imagine being on his thesis commitee? The best mathematicians in the world had been banging their heads against that theorem for centuries.
I'm reminded of someone who worked with Alan Turing on the Enigma decoding project during WWII. Many of the best mathematicians from England and elsewhere gathered together to crack the Germans' codes. Anyway, this guy had to be very bright to be on the team, as was everyone else. But he said Turing thought in a fundamentally different way than any of them, and the project would have been in great difficulty without him.
I think the true, rare genius thinks qualitatively different than other very brilliant people, not just faster.
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
You know, one of the most intelligent people in EG was colonel Graff. If there's someone better than a super genius it's the one who manipulates the super genius.
Yeah. The problem is about thinking faster. That's at least what OSC describes. Perhaps a psychologist would tell us something different.
I just recalled. After Einstein died, he had his brain checked. It was abnormal, some parts of it closer to each other than they should. You know, Einstein had great problems with math as a child. But his abnormal brain aloowed him to see thing other people dont.
Posted by Mathematician (Member # 9586) on :
Using Einstein as an example, I DON'T think it's about thinking faster.
Perhaps with special relativity, he was just thinking faster. For a little bit of history on this... In the late 1870's, Maxwell put together a set of 4 equations (today known as Maxwell's Equations). Using them, it's relatively simply to see that light travels as a wave at the "speed of light". The problem as people saw it was this: In ALL of our experience, we've only ever given speeds with respect to something else. That is, all speeds are expressed as a relationship between two things. For example, car A is moving 20 mph faster than car B or Car A is moving 45 mph faster that the road, etc. The second example may seem kind of arbitrary, but when you think of this along with the fact that the Earth is moving around the sun, the sun is hurtling around the galaxy, etc, it becomes obvious that REALLY, all speeds are measured relatively.
So, back to light, the question is "Light moves at the speed of light, but with respect to what?" People before Einstein postulated lots of different possible answers. Einstein's huge breakthrough was to say "Everything". This is SO non-intuitive. I mean, if your in a car traveling 49 mph, and you throw a ball backwards at 50 mph, someone on the street will see the ball moving at 1 mph (very intuitive). If you're in a space ship moving 99.999% the speed of light and you shine a light backwards, a person on the "street" measures light moving...exactly the speed of light (not 0.0001% of the speed of light). I personally find this the second type of genius - not that Einsten thought faster, but that he thought different.
Even if special relatively was just "quick thought", I don't really see any possibility of arguing that for general relativity (I won't bore you with the details of that, but lets just say it's infinitely more non-intuitive and required much larger intellectual leaps).
I need to quit writing such techinal expositions ;-)
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
Point one, yes OSC is very intelligent. I read brief parts of his biography somewhere that talked about impressing teachers as a child, and things like that. However, I think it's obvious in other ways. I was considered an "astonishing" child for as long as I can remember, as a two-year-old I seemed to have grown ups laughing constantly when I'd talk to them, though I didn't understand why. I grew up in a small town, and there wasn't much competition. I was never a great student, but I was always considered the smartest kid in school. It never did me much good, no one really LIKED that. However, I started attending academic summer camps at 12, and left for an early college entrance program a few days after I turned 15. I quicly found out that I was almost down right stupid in alot of ways. I met people so much smarter than me that my head was spinning for a long time. However, when you live together, confined, for two years, you get to know most of the people around you very well. In a way, it was like a mini-battleschool, though we were a few years older. The most frustrating thing to all of us at the time, was the way we were being "trained", honed, taught, and treated. People would experiment on us, formulate about us, study us, and decide for us, but it seemed like they all were just missing something. There were a couple that got closer than others, a professor named Michael Sailor, for one, but usually it was a constant stream of misunderstood guesses. Either they expected us to merely be SMART children, or they expected us to be mini-adults, and neither was true. OSC created the most perfect picture of a society of genius children that I've ever seen. I read Ender's Game in a single night and almost gasped when I was through. Now obviously, he's not the smartest person in the world, but I think he's intelligent enough to make reasonable guesses. Since it's unrealistic to believe anyone on the level of Einstein regularly exists, I don't think anyone can very likely judge him as WRONG, particularly since by the time you get to genious that extreme, gifts often become very specialized, and it's unlikely someone capable of thinking the same thoughts as Einstein could ALSO create a literary work with the ability to draw the reader into such powerful character insights.
In a different direction, I must point out that when the key to power in a story IS intelligence, it would be very boring to read about a character who was not one of the best. People watch movies about superheros because they LIKE extraordinary ability, and I don't seem anyone thinking much about whether the creators of superman truly could picture what it was like in his mind when he was flying, and holding up a building...
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
I'm certain that most of us, Hatrackers, are above average. Not many people read books, you know, not such as EG. Obviously we hang around with people that are usually similar to us, but sometimes... sometimes you meet someone from the outside. Than you realise, that it aint bad. I have never done my homework till my sixth grade, when in Poland we graduate to primary high school, so called gimnasium. I was nevertheless one of the best in my school, of not best. Now I am in one of the best high schools in Poland without much learning. I am not proud of myself, because just like you, DDDaysh I know people much more intelligent than me.
Mathematician- that's what I wrote. He just saw things, I gave him as a example of the "smart one" not the "fast one". I once met a authistic guy, who could count things like 23^5 in about 20 sec. Imagine.
The whole thing with relativism comes to one thing- it is simply impossible that something can be faster than 300 000 km/sec. When two (1,2) spaceships move avay from each other in different directions, 200 000 km/sec each (relatively to for example Earth), than basing on "normal" theory of physics, thay would move 400 000 km'sec relatiely to each other. But they dont. They move 300 000 km/sec. The funny thing is, that if there was a third spaceship, moving paralely to for example 1, with a speed of 100 000 km/sec, their speed would be EQUAL reltively to the no.2 spaceship.
To sum up- relativism states that time is relative to place and speed. (I dont know if collocation relative TO is correct. Maybe Due to;)?)
Posted by Mathematician (Member # 9586) on :
quote:Originally posted by Szymon: The whole thing with relativism comes to one thing- it is simply impossible that something can be faster than 300 000 km/sec. When two (1,2) spaceships move avay from each other in different directions, 200 000 km/sec each (relatively to for example Earth), than basing on "normal" theory of physics, thay would move 400 000 km'sec relatiely to each other. But they dont. They move 300 000 km/sec. The funny thing is, that if there was a third spaceship, moving paralely to for example 1, with a speed of 100 000 km/sec, their speed would be EQUAL reltively to the no.2 spaceship.
That's not quite how it works, exactly, but you've got the right idea. Even if two spaceships are moving away from eachother, each at .999*speed of light (relative, say, to the earth), they still don't measure the others velocity as the speed of light.
Also, when you throw in the 3rd space ship (and assuming 2 and 3 are moving in the same direction), space ship 1 WOULDN'T meausure them going the same rate.
There's a formula for these things, and it's not (velocity 1 + velocity 2) or 300,000 km/s, whichever is smaller.
quote:
To sum up- relativism states that time is relative to place and speed. (I dont know if collocation relative TO is correct. Maybe Due to;)?)
Time is relative to place and speed, yes, but place is relatively to speed, lenght is relative to speed, speed is relative to speed. Relativity (not relativism, that's a moral philosophy ;-) ) screws with just about everything :-)
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mathematician: Time is relative to place and speed, yes, but place is relatively to speed, lenght is relative to speed, speed is relative to speed. Relativity (not relativism, that's a moral philosophy ;-) ) screws with just about everything :-)
So reality, like a meth head, is hooked on speed. That explains a lot. Just say no, Universe!
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Someone once opined that mathematicians are not capable of true earth-shattering genius after age 25. I wonder if that has to do with the conclusion of formation of the pre-frontal cortex. Well, anyway, it's probably just one of those romantic ideas. I think Wiles was quite a bit older, and Turing as well.
Posted by Mathematician (Member # 9586) on :
In fact, the Field's Medal (think of it as the mathematician's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, since there isn't a Nobel prize for mathematics) is given to mathematicians solely for work done prior to the age of 40.
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
BTW, there was a riddle some threads ago and I found something for us. You have probably heard of it, but hardly anyone finds leisure time to solve it (it took me about 25 minutes). If you have some, try. If you manage, you are in the group of 2% most intelligent people in the world. That's what albert Einstein claimed. For this is his riddle. Here goes: - Anglik mieszka w czerwonym domu. - Szwed ma psa. - Dunczyk pije herbate. - Zielony dom stoi z lewej strony bialego domu. - Wlasciciel zielonego domu pije kawe. - Osoba palaca Pall Mall ma ptaka. - Osoba w srodkowym domu pije mleko. - Wlasciciel zóltego domu pali Dunhill. - Norweg mieszka w pierwszym domu. - Palacz Malboro mieszka obok tego, co ma kota. - Wlasciciel konia mieszka obok palacza Dunhill. - Palacz Winfield pije piwo. - Norweg mieszka obok niebieskiego domu. - Niemiec pali Rothmanns. - Palacz Malboro ma sasiada, który pije wode.
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
Oh gee, wrong Ctrl+V, sorry. English might be easier
1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours. 2. In each house lives a person of different nationality 3. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.
THE QUESTION: WHO OWNS THE FISH?
HINTS
1. The Brit lives in a red house. 2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets. 3. The Dane drinks tea. 4. The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house. 5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee. 6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds. 7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill. 8. The man living in the centre house drinks milk. 9. The Norwegian lives in the first house. 10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats. 11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill. 12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer. 13. The German smokes Prince. 14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house. 15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water.
Posted by Gwen (Member # 9551) on :
Is "the first house" the one to the extreme left?
Posted by Mathematician (Member # 9586) on :
I end up getting the Norwegian, who lives in the first house (which is yellow) , and likes beer and Dunhill.
Though, it's entirely possible (likely?) that I made a mistake somewhere.
Is this correct?
Posted by Gwen (Member # 9551) on :
I think you're supposed to know the pet, drink preference, cigar brand preference, nationality, house color, and house order for each of the five men. I've not gotten very far with having to stop to do homework and everything, but I do know that the Norwegian does live in the yellow first house and smokes Dunhill cigars, if the first house is in fact the one to the extreme left. I don't know yet if he likes beer, but it's possible. Someday I'll finish it and get to know who owns Pet X (the one that's not a bird, cat, dog, or horse). Then again, the man who said that this logic puzzle puts you in the top two percent of the population intelligence-wise (have we come to a definition of intelligence, then?) is the idiot who claimed that it's impossible to go faster than the speed of light. *Everyone* knows that philotic physics, especially with the additions to the universe model (the Inside-Outside balloon model) as given by the eminent physicist Grego Ribeira (what's his full name? von Hesse, too?) conclusively proves that assertion ridiculous. Seriously, and he dared call himself a physicist!
Posted by JustAskIndiana (Member # 9268) on :
I got the German.
Edit: By the way, Andrew Wiles was not young when he solved Fermat's Last Theorem. It's actually one of the rare cases that a brilliant discovery didn't come from a mathematician in his 20's.
[ July 22, 2006, 09:36 PM: Message edited by: JustAskIndiana ]
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
[Spoiler] / / / / / I got the german. It took 8 minutes. But I'm going to refigure it and see if that's the necessary correct answer.
It's like some kind of pentary Sudoku. The second option, of red on the right, ran into a contradiction. That would have cost me, and my total time would have been 16 minutes. So that was a question of luck. Our you could say it took me 16 minutes to yield an answer I could put my money on./ / / / / / / [end spoiler]
P.S. This makes me feel better about the fact that for the 3rd time in a month, I have "hid" a toy or treat from my children and been unable to find it myself later, as soon as 24 hours after.
[ July 22, 2006, 09:50 PM: Message edited by: pooka ]
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
Doing it very slowly, not to make a mistake, it takes, as I said, about 20 minutes. The question is who got the fish, and I tell you've got the right nationality. Some time ago my friend, much more intelligent than me told me about it. I thought I'd try it and so I did. It is not difficult, because it isnt captious. I wondered why not every one, bah, hardly anyone can make it (if it's true). It's probably the matter af mind discipline, being able to risk (I made three guesses- cause in a certain moment you have to.) And thats all. Its not about intelligence, really.
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
And BTW... why names of the cigarettes are different in Polish and English vershions? I'm not a smoker, so the only cigarettes I knew were Pall Malls and Malboro. Polish- Rothmanns, Malboro, Dunhill, Pall Mall, Winfield. You've got Blends instead of Malboro, Prince instead of Rothmanns and Blue Master instead of Winfield. Why is that? Are some unknown to foreigners?
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
quote:Its not about intelligence, really.
Yeah, I'd say it's more a matter of attention. It's not like it takes imagination or questioning one's assumptions, other than the possible assumption that it's some kind of trick or out of one's league. I guess a combination of attention and risk tolerance is one kind of intelligence.
Posted by Pécuchet (Member # 9330) on :
quote: I'm certain that most of us, Hatrackers, are above average. Not many people read books, you know, not such as EG
I loved Ender's Game but it's not exactly Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" (for example).
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Yes, but the average American reads what? Two books a year? Five? The bar is set pretty low. People that would subject themselves to a tortuous philosophical treatise like "Pure Reason", OTOH, are way above average, at least on an intellectual masochism scale.
Posted by formic rising (Member # 9172) on :
german for sure. - 6 minutes.
Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
All the stories we think are worth telling are about people who are extraordinary in some way. Even literary novelists who write about "ordinary" people in fact give them extraordinary or exaggerated characteristics. If they were truly "regular" we would go to sleep rather than read on.
the Ender series is about people selected for intelligence, at least of certain types.
But I don't know that Treason or Alvin Maker or Homecoming are about geniuses. I don't think of them that way, anyway. Certainly the hero of Eye for Eye or the hero of Wyrms are extraordinary for reasons quite different from intelligence.
So I really don't think the core assertion on this thread is true. My characters are NOT all extraordinarily intelligent. But they ARE all extraordinary.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
I disagree that Alvin's not a genius. I submit his thought process when conceiving an atom as exhibit A.
I agree about the main characters in Treason and Homecoming.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Pff. Recycled Greek philosophy and elementary geometry.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
Yeah. For you and me.
Still a pretty impressive insight from a frontier boy.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Ok, fair enough.
Posted by Flaming Toad on a Stick (Member # 9302) on :
The problem is, Alvin could doodle and get inside the atom. (I like the word doodle) If he can see it clearly, he doesn't need geometry or philosophy.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
That's a good point. How much imagination does it take to imagine cellular structure if you can see it?
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
I think you two should both go reread that passage.
Posted by Dark as night (Member # 9577) on :
Szymon, I'm so glad you posted the riddle in Polish first. I was astonished to see how much I understood. By the way, I don't smoke either, but in Russia I also knew them as Marlboro and Rothmanns. Maybe it's just an Eastern European thing. Niemiec!
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
Mr Card, I am writting only about Ender Saga. (quoting myself is stupid but...) "People always ask: why is everyone so intelligent in Ender Saga? I recently wondered..."
But you are completely and absolutely right:) Books must be about sth extraordinary in order to be interesting, although I do not agree that it's the people who must be extraordinary. There are many books in which charachters are neither intelligent nor interesting in any other way. Situations- they can be strange and difficult. It wasnt my point to
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
It wasnt my point to say that it is wrong (to make everyone so intelligent), as you must have noticed.
Posted by ibadbrain (Member # 9701) on :
Well I think that OSC did a good job in creating intelligent characters... Maybe he didn't do a perfect job... But he did good. Um... I guess what I was gonna say is. I believe intelligence is for one a complex thing to explain. But I would say maybe being born with the right genes switched, some chance, and learning a lot when your young will make you smart. And having the right personality... If your not interested in something you won't necessarily be good at. Its a very complex thing to explain. There are a lot more variables to intelligence than just thinkin quick and being creative. Namely ambition, confidence, attention, luck, awareness etc... I am not a believer in everybody having the same capabilites, and that the smart ones work harder. I mean... Not to sound arrogant this is just some personal evidence... I mean. The first drawing I ever did at five years old was a really good realistic drawing... It did not look the drawing of a kid. I was born with the knowledge to draw, or I might have learned it from watchin my mom(learn a lot when your young)... I never drew before that, no scribbles and when I did it nobody was surprised. I think some people are born gifted... Maybe they were like that cuz they were just interested in things at an early age... Who knows.
Posted by Szymon (Member # 7103) on :
Yeah, ibadbrain, I'm quite sure that talents exist. It's the most beautiful thing in the world that we differ. Your example of drawing so good is perfect. It doesnt show you are intelligent (I dont say you aint) but that you're talented. I have never drawn anything nice in my entire life. When I was a little kid I drew wars, tanks with multiple cannons, bombers etc. Then I tried to draw some nature- trees, lakes and so on. Now everything I draw is a plan for someone how to get to my place. But, I belive, I have some other talents. I am said to understand people just when I meet them.
Posted by ibadbrain (Member # 9701) on :
Yes, no one is in the world is completely the same... I actually think talent and intelligence are one in the same unless it is like the talent to run faster and stuff like that. Intelligence is mental talent. But your abilities like I said before might be heavily influenced by your personality, your desires, etc... There might have been people with the same type of talents as Einstein in his time. He just had the drive to find the answer to his question. And like in Ender's Game Valentine wouldn't have the heart to fight the Buggers, while Peter was too cruel and wouldn't make the perfect commander, yet they apparently had the same intelligence as Ender... The perfect commander.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Grumble]](graemlins/grumble.gif)
![[Wave]](graemlins/wave.gif)
That's a bold screen name! Have you ever heard of the medieval mathematican named Calculator?![[Wink]](wink.gif)