posted
Forgive me if I'm ignorant on all this... It's been a while since I took one, but I don't recall any reading involved in the IQ test I took a long time ago. If there's no reading, how can it inpact dyslexics?
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Nighthawk, most I.Q. tests focus heavily on visual patterns, which also cause problems for dyslexic people, sometimes more so than a reading-based test would.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
"The goal here is not universal agreement." The goal here, and elsewhere is universal agreement upon universal truth. I see it as my responsibility to defend my thesis as vigorously as possible, and the responsibility of others to defend their theses with equal vigour, until the time comes when some truth is found in the synthesis, and then we begin again, debating which truth was found from the same data. While we shall doubtless never reach either universal agreement or universal truth, those are very much our goals. I am not, by nature a relativist in the strictest since of the term. Two opposed doctrines cannot both be totally true in any situation, although they can be equally true and equally false.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
People should rely much less on IQ testing because your intelligence should not need to be crushed or affirmed by a little three (or two) digit number.
quote:The goal here, and elsewhere, is universal agreement upon universal truth... those are very much our goals.
But today there is no day or night Today there is no dark or light. Today there is no black or white, Only shades of gray.
posted
Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end of the way. -Tormer's Lay, in the Left Hand of Darkness by Urusula LeGuin.
Posts: 283 | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
"Today there is no black or white, Only shades of gray."
How did grey come about?
Truth, I am certain is constant. However, I am equaly certain that there is an absolute truth for each situation, rather than one absolute truth. These truths form a a whole but still remain quite diverse. Which is just one of the reasons truth is so hard to find, much less understand.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
1. When I quote fake British sixties bands, it probably means I'm not expecting a deep philosophical reply. 2. Since you gave one, I feel obligated to give one in reply
I am of the opinion that truths, such as they are, are few, far between, and impossible to track down.
To me, the world isn't just grey, it's like grey-on-grey-on-grey-on-grey. Each supposedly simple rule is followable only to a certain point, where you discover there's another layer underneath, and another layer underneath that- and so on. It's like one of those Escher prints, only infinitely more complicated, layer upon layer, inverted, reversed, reflected and spiralling away forever. Staircases and walls going in all different directions.
In this world of mine, the further you get down into the way the world works, the more likely to are track down a truth. You get so many greys lying on top of one another that you find a tiny little nugget of truth tucked into a corner on the underside of one of upsidedown, back-to-front Escher staircase.
To me, all but this pinpoint nugget- if that- of the world is only shades of grey.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote: To me, the world isn't just grey, it's like grey-on-grey-on-grey-on-grey. Each supposedly simple rule is followable only to a certain point, where you discover there's another layer underneath, and another layer underneath that- and so on. It's like one of those Escher prints, only infinitely more complicated, layer upon layer, inverted, reversed, reflected and spiralling away forever. Staircases and walls going in all different directions.
Douptless. If truth were easy to find, would we have not already found it? Much exists which we do not understand perfectly and are nowwhere near being able to understand perfectly. But we can move closer. Even as we move away from truth, we move closer as we provide, by example, an illustration of what truth is not.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Hm. You appear to be sliding past what I'm trying to say.
I guess to put it into a ridiculously simple metaphor, I'm more interested in the haystack than the needle. I think so many people are searching for the needle that they're tossing the haystack aside.
quote:Originally posted by Pelegius: Nighthawk, most I.Q. tests focus heavily on visual patterns, which also cause problems for dyslexic people, sometimes more so than a reading-based test would.
Well, you know, IQ tests are designed to measure, among other things, skill at figuring out visual patterns. Now I'm not saying this is the be-all and end-all of intelligence, but if dyslexics do poorly at it, this does not in itself indicate a problem with the test; it indicates an area in which dyslexics do poorly.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
But I.Q. tests are usually interpreted as though they are meant to measure, you know, intelligence, rather than skill at particular things like figuring out visual patterns. So someone who is not (let's call it) "visually intelligent" (where "intelligent" means something like "skillful") might be treated appropriately by those who actually understand the test, but by everyone else they might be seen as unintelligent. I've explained to people that "J" on a Myers-Briggs personality indicator doesn't mean that the person is judgmental, any more than a "P" indicates that that person is especially perceptive (can perceive things others cannot). People take I.Q. to mean intelligence, and when part of the test is heavy on things that someone has a physical inability to do it doesn't mean that the person is stupid.
Posts: 283 | Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think the idea that intelligence can be accurately measured, at least as of now, is faulty. I.Q. tests are actually pretty good at dividing people into rough categories of average, bellow average and above average intelligence, but not at making measurements much more precise than that. And, barring incidents of autism, it is generally possible to determine the rough intelligence of somebody by just talking to them about a variety of subjects. Neither "system," if the later one even deserves that title, is anywhere near perfect. Obsessions over the I.Q.s of Goethe or Einstein or George W. Bush strike me as absurd. What matters is that Goethe did many very intelligent thinks, Einstein did a few brilliant things (but also made a good number of fairly egregious mistakes, such as distrusting particle physics and even plate tectonics) and that George W. Bush has done, and especially said, many things which be considered sub-optimal in a world leader.
Of course, intelligence is not the only factor that creates meaningful contribution. The most intelligent postwar President was probably Jimmy Carter, certainly the most intelligent living former President, and yet it would be almost impossible to argue that he was a success as President, although the inability of the U.S. to function under a President both so intelligent and so moral may say as much about the U.S. and human nature as it does about Mr. Carter.
It is, however, all too common to undervalue the importance of intelligence, a trend which is especially common now and especially so in the U.S. as compared to the rest of the developed world. The greatest of leaders have been brilliant men: Cæsar, the great writer, orator and tactician; Charlamange a semiliterate who none the less had an inherent understanding of strategy and surrounded himself with the greatest thinkers of western Europe; Churchill, the self-educated writer and thinker whose oratory won him both a Nobel Prize and long-lasting remembrance, also dabbled in applied engineering and did more than dabble in painting.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:It is, however, all too common to undervalue the importance of intelligence, a trend which is especially common now and especially so in the U.S. as compared to the rest of the developed world.
I think we tend to overemphasize intelligence and undervalue character.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
"I think we tend to overemphasize intelligence and undervalue character."
I think we underemphasize both in favor a strange combination of charisma and comfortable mediocrity. The later is especially true, looking at George W. Bush, Jonathan Howard and Jacques Chirac, none of whom has charisma. M. Chirac is undeniably extremely intelligent and is not particularly depraved by political standards, yet cannot be said to be anything other than mediocre, largely because of his extremely apparent cynicism. Mr. Howard is a confusing man whose motives and intelligence I will not attempt to judge, but cannot be said to be anything above mediocre, although he may well prove to be less than mediocre. Mr. Bush desperately want character, but actually appears to lack strength of will. This may seem surprising in a President often thought willful, but his politics as both governor of Texas and President of the United States seem to owe much more to his chief aids than to him (the Bob Bullock-dominated Governor Bush was nothing like the President Bush dominated by neo-cons and Conservative Christians.)
Mr. Bush's top advisors are almost all very intelligent, there are no Dan Quyales in his cabinet, but, with the exception of the enigmatic Dr. Rice, who appears to actually think she is saving the world, they all lack character.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't know pH. You can kind of tell by their ability to pick up what you're saying and make sense of it, respond intelligently, and ask good questions. Even if they've never heard of what you choose to talk about before, the conversation can be telling.
Posts: 1412 | Registered: Oct 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
