Science Daily, April 27, 2009
People with higher measures of cognitive ability are more likely to make good choices in several different types of economic decisions, according to a new study with researchers from the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities and Morris campuses.
The study, set to be published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, was conducted with 1,000 trainee truck drivers at Schneider National, Inc., an American motor carrier employing 20,000. The researchers measured the trainees’ cognitive skills and asked them to make choices in several economic experiments, and then followed them on the job.
People with better cognitive skills, in particular higher IQ, were more willing to take calculated risks and to save their money and made more consistent choices. They were also more likely to be cooperative in a strategic situation, and exhibited higher “social awareness” in that they more accurately forecasted others’ behavior.
The researchers also tracked how trainees persevered on their new job. The company paid for the training of those who stayed a year, but those who left early owed thousands in training costs. The study found that those with the highest level of cognitive ability stayed at twice the rate of those with the lowest.
The finding that individual characteristics that improve economic success—patience, risk taking and effective social behavior—all cluster together and are linked through cognitive skill, which could have implications for policy making and education.
“These results could shed light on the causes of differential economic success among individuals and among nations,” said University of Minnesota-Twin Cities economist Aldo Rustichini, a co-author whose theoretical work on cognitive skills is used in the paper.
“It also suggests that the benefit from early childhood education programs not only affects cognitive skills, but extends to more effective economic decision-making,” said study co-author Stephen Burks, the University of Minnesota-Morris economist who organized the project that gathered the data.
[Editor’s Note: “Cognitive skills affect economic preferences, strategic behavior, and job attachment,” by Stephen V. Burks, Jeffrey P. Carpenterb, Lorenz Goettec and Aldo Rustichinid, can be read on-line or downloaded as a PDF file here.
Original article
(Posted on May 18, 2009)
Stephen V. Burks [a,1], Jeffrey P. Carpenter [b], Lorenz Goette [c] and Aldo Rustichini [d,e], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 12, 2009
Author Affiliations
[a] Division of Social Sciences, University of Minnesota, 600 East 4th Street, Morris, MN 56267-2134;
[b] Department of Economics, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT 05753;
[c] Department of Economics, University of Geneva, 40 Boulevard du Pont d’Arve, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland;
[d] Department of Economics, University of Minnesota, 1925 Fourth Street South, 4-101 Hanson Hall, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0462; and
[e] Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EB, United Kingdom
Edited by Avinash K. Dixit, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and approved March 17, 2009 (received for review December 7, 2008)
Economic analysis has so far said little about how an individual’s cognitive skills (CS) are related to the individual’s economic preferences in different choice domains, such as risk taking or saving, and how preferences in different domains are related to each other. Using a sample of 1,000 trainee truckers we report three findings. First, there is a strong and significant relationship between an individual’s CS and preferences. Individuals with better CS are more patient, in both short- and long-run. Better CS are also associated with a greater willingness to take calculated risks. Second, CS predict social awareness and choices in a sequential Prisoner’s Dilemma game. Subjects with better CS more accurately forecast others’ behavior and differentiate their behavior as a second mover more strongly depending on the first-mover’s choice. Third, CS, and in particular, the ability to plan, strongly predict perseverance on the job in a setting with a substantial financial penalty for early exit. Consistent with CS being a common factor in all of these preferences and behaviors, we find a strong pattern of correlation among them. These results, taken together with the theoretical explanation we offer for the relationships we find, suggest that higher CS systematically affect preferences and choices in ways that favor economic success.
Footnotes
[1] To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: svburks@morris.umn.edu
Author contributions: S.V.B., J.P.C., L.G., and A.R. designed research; S.V.B. performed research; S.V.B., J.P.C., L.G., and A.R. analyzed data; and S.V.B., J.P.C., L.G., and A.R. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Original article
Comments
I can think of a number of high IQ, well educated White people who have recently lost their jobs to Asians in California. I expect they will be forced to make less wise economic choices in their futures since their regular income has disappeared.
While this study may have some basis in truth. The fact is that some of us get far too preoccupied with IQ’s. It has been my experience that for every person I have met with an IQ who was mentally stable and socially functional I have met two other people who lack commonsense, people skills and are virtually cranks and social misfits.
While there is nothing wrong with studying IQs at some level, we should nto get too invested in treating them as gospel.
These findings are truly astonishing and entirely counter-intuitive. Who would have suspected that there is actually a correlation between intelligence and good economic decisions and even overall success?
Certainly not our legislatures, which have worked tirelessly to stamp out racism, sexisim, smartism, successism, and equal opportunityism in America.
In fact, the suggestion that intelligence and success are somehow related is so absurd on its face that those proselytizing
It doesn’t take an Albert Einstein to figure out this one. How many moron millionaires do you know ? Most people are brain dead and can’t see beyond their noses. Most can’t extrapolate the consequences of their actions five minutes into the future. If it feels good, do it. When they suffer the consequences they want the government to bail them out.
“It also suggests that the benefit from early childhood education programs not only affects cognitive skills, but extends to more effective economic decision-making,” said study co-author Stephen Burks, the University of Minnesota-Morris economist who organized the project that gathered the data.
But IQ is almost entirely genetic and almost totally unmalleable. This is the old discredited canard about head start, except that head start is given to kids at the time in their lives when black children are ahead of white children in mental development.
While I do agree that higher IQ people on average make more responsible choices, I still know pleny of very intelligent people who are heavily in debt and live beyond their means. Money and things can be very intoxicating, regardless of intelligence.
“People with better cognitive skills, in particular higher IQ, were more willing to take calculated risks and to save their money and made more consistent choices. They were also more likely to be cooperative in a strategic situation, and exhibited higher ‘social awareness’ in that they more accurately forecasted others’ behavior.”
And the big surprise here, as usual with social “science” studies, is not the “results” obtained, which describe strong relationships between the obvious; what is really surprising here, is the notion that the discernibly evident has been “proven.” That is, as is “reported” in the above article by “Science Daily.” To their credit, the authors of the second article, “Abstract: Cognitive Skills Affect Economic Preferences, Strategic Behavior, and Job Attachment,” were careful to only report that significant relationships were found between the variables in question.
The more interesting question however (at least for our purposes here at AR) is to consider how the racial aspects of these “relationships,” might be extrapolated from the data presented? Within that framework, another question does also come into play; this being, would the researchers and all others concerned have been so honest with the relationships of IQ and economic preferences, if the that issue was in play here?
Here at the AR website, we are pretty comfortable acknowledging that it is very likely that nonwhites (blacks and Hispanics, in particular) were probably overrepresented in the low IQ and poor economic preferences group. That tends to be a rather reliable constant of such studies as this one, with the predictable lower socioeconomic and educational outcomes being unsurprising. With that said, with all of that considered, how might all of this data be reinterpreted if the racial aspect were injected into this study?
That is easy to answer: it would all be chalked up to wholly untested and totally unquantifiable factors such as, “white privilege” or “pervasive discrimination.”
Of course, this would likely be cast into the terms of “proof” by all parties considered, be they researchers or reporters.
As always, God help us all!
How much did it cost the taxpayers for the Federal Government to do this study? $20M, $80M or $100M?
The Cognitive skills and IQ of some of the bankers who gave loans to the high risk minorities must be questioned.
These people began with the idea that all races are equal. Their mission is to find the secret cause of the inequality. They think they are Louis Pasture and they will find the cause and cure for minority lower intelligence. Stephen Burks knows it’s out there.
“‘It also suggests that the benefit from early childhood education programs not only affects cognitive skills, but extends to more effective economic decision-making,’ said study co-author Stephen Burks, the University of Minnesota-Morris economist who organized the project that gathered the data.”
Where did Burks get that idea? No where does it say anything about early childhood education programs. We know that these programs are worthless as any gain in IQ is soon lost. The 1985 study that did track Head Start showed that there was an immediate benefit but that was lost after two years.
What the Burks’ project does do is reaffirm common sense; that smart people don’t do dumb things generally. That is why they are richer. The only thing that bothers me is, if I’m so smart, why ain’t I rich?
The Cognitive skills and IQ of some of the bankers who gave loans to the high risk minorities must be questioned.
Posted by loudmouth 57 at 10:24 PM on May 18
Or the govt that forced and gave incentives to the bankers to do so…
Unfortunately, regarding Gary above, I have a genius IQ but have consistently been described as “one of those totally out to lunch genius types.” While it’s true that I microanlyze my own and others’ behavior most of the time, I still cannot say anymore that I am a great social actor. So I am not so sure that our intense social analysis and brains helps us all that much in social endeavors, where probably the less you think the better. I’ve met quite a few high IQ types who are Einstein-like eccentrics. In fact, it’s pretty common for them to have their heads in the clouds.
One problem I have is that I have a hard time controlling my thoughts. It’s like I have way too much going on upstairs all the time. To be honest, people really don’t appreciate it too much, and I often get told that I’m not listening.
Roundabout way of saying the social skills of high IQ types are probably exaggerated.
I am not so sure about the risks stuff. Most dumb people I know love to take stupid risks with their money, and are typically the worse off for it. Most high IQ types are really cautious and conservative to the point of paranoia with their money.
That said, I think there is something to this. I live around a bunch of what I consider to be idiots, and they are broke almost 365 24-7. I probably make less than most of these clowns, but because I have some sense, I almost always have some money on me, no matter how late in the month, so everyone is always hitting me up for “loans.” I keep telling them to budget their money but they act like they are incapable.
Dumber people are simply unable to resist the obvious temptations that most of us are tempted by, so they tend to become financial disaster cases. Intelligent low income folks that I know, by contrast, sacrifice and live boring lives, but they still have money at the end of the month and never have their hands out.
“How many moron millionaires do you know”
Just take a walk through Hollywood!!!
The Cognitive skills and IQ of some of the bankers who gave loans to the high risk minorities must be questioned.
Considering the strong arm tactics we have seen recently being used by the government, perhaps we should wonder what sort of an “offer they couldn’t refuse” was made to the banking officers. We know of one CEO already removed by the FED.
Some people are definitely way too ocuppied with scores on IQ tests. I have argued many times here that scores on IQ tests are completely irrelevant to the issue of the mass racial replacement of theb majority Native Born White American population. Why would the case for a nationial origins immigration policy that discriminates against Mexicans be significantly weaker if a year from now Mexicans are discovered through IQ testing to have an IQ of 200-every single one of them? The case for discriminating against Mexicans in immigration policy would still be as strong as ever.
It would not be very difficult to use scores on IQ tests to justify the race-replacment of Native Born White Amerians by asians. The fundamental issue is the race-replacement of Native Born White Americans by high fertility post-1965 non-whites. This is the only issue we should be debating-discusing with immigration enthusiasts. It makes things such much more simple.
The econmetric models and theories of high IQ academic economists are the cause of the curent economic meltdown. So much for a high score on an IQ test.
Asians who score high on an IQ tests are just as much of a threat to Native Born White Amerians as mexicans and central americans.
I have noticed that several commenters have said that this study is flawed because they know smart people who have made bad economic decisions. That is like liberals saying that they know a smart black person so all IQ studies must be flawed.
Well Land O’ Goshen! Who’d a thunk it? Surely this is the first time in Human History that anyone has discovered that smart people tend to do better economically.
“Could shed light on the causes of differential economic success among individuals and among nations.” Surely no one has ever published a book with this idea as its central premise (if they did, I imagine the title might be something like IQ AND THE WEALTH OF NATIONS). And notice that this discovery is considered to possibly have “implications for policy making and education”.
My guess it that the powers that be will see it necessary to shape policy and education to ‘level the playing field’, by penalizing the intelligent, preferring the unintelligent, and, quite possibly, diluting, genetically swamping, and even EXTERMINATING all intelligent people who are not members of the ruling elite. Oh, wait! Our benevolent rulers have begun to implement those measures, already.
While this study may have some basis in truth. The fact is that some of us get far too preoccupied with IQ’s. It has been my experience that for every person I have met with an IQ who was mentally stable and socially functional I have met two other people who lack commonsense, people skills and are virtually cranks and social misfits.
While there is nothing wrong with studying IQs at some level, we should nto get too invested in treating them as gospel.
I agree that the IQ-fetishism rampant in race-realist circles is repugnant and, well, unintelligent.
That said, your observations are anecdotal and thus inherently weak evidence.
“Asians who score high on an IQ tests are just as much of a threat to Native Born White Amerians as mexicans and central americans.”
To Robert Lindsay, regarding:
“One problem I have is that I have a hard time controlling my thoughts. It’s like I have way too much going on upstairs all the time. To be honest, people really don’t appreciate it too much, and I often get told that I’m not listening.”
Well, that might be one explanation as to why you remain a committed Marxist, who just can’t understand why the influx of nonwhites into California (be they legal or illegal) has destroyed your quality of life there. Or for that matter, why you once wrote a: long, rambling, and totally uncorroborated article, pretentiously asserting that the United States was never a majority white country until the 1800s.
Comrade Lindsay, your ongoing mental summersaults and pirouettes regarding such topics, continues to be both amusing and disturbing!
Anonymous at may 19th
In their different kind of way post-1965 LEGAL asian immigrants have inflicted enormous violence on Native Born White Americans.
They are responsible for the ongoing destruction of who knows how many centuries of Native Born White Engineering experience…and …the destruction of who knows how many centuries of Native Born White Engineering,scientific and medical talent that will will never be developed and cultivated. They are responsible for transforming Native Born White America into a low skilled low tech society…the type of societies that are easily conquered and disposed of. What the asians in America are doing in America right now is potentially genocidal.
Invasions should be repelled before a beachhead is established. The LEGAL immigrant asians have established a beachhead and gone over the bluffs to own over 150 members of the US congress. The LEGAL immigrant asian and its “American” born geneline has the great potential to inflict an even greater scale of damage on Native Born White Americans than they have already inflicted.
By the way, your comments express a great insensitivity to the thousands of Native Born White American families that already have been severely harmed since 1972 by LEGAL asian immigration. There is no acceptable level of LEGAL IMMIGRANT asian induced damage of Native Born White American families.
When the LEGAL IMMIGRANTS move in and flood a White school system with their geneline, property taxes go through the roof up as high as fifteen thousand a year. Many Native Born White American families are than faced with the option of fleeing their communities or losing their home in a tax lien sale to a legal immigrant asian who is buyng the home as a second home for his son so the son can start an asian geneline in America….this at a time when there is a growing population of young Native Born White Males who do not and will not earn enough money to habe their own wife and family. The LEGAL IMMIGRANT asians you are fond of are waging a vicious race war against Native Born White Americans..particularly young Native Born White Males. This is in the realm of genocide also.
If I may add some comments to those of Frere Jean PM:
Monsieur Lindsay—-I am a member of Mensa, based on my IQ.
The cure for wandering mind syndrome is to do physical work. It can be manual, skilled labor, or artistic labor (like Michaelangelo, who was most assuredly an exhausted man at the end of each artistic day).
The communist Chinese got it right—intellectuals need to be doing manual labor; in their case, in the rice-fields.
Doing manual labor connects you to your physical, mammalian self. You learn what is real. You discard that which has no consequence, such as: “What if Thor fought Conan?” or “What if Nietszche debated Socrates?” Instead you focus on: “What is the cure for an aching back?” and “Will I be able to perform adequately with my wife tonight (I’m pretty tired), after she fixes me a good dinner?”
Western man has forgotten how to be a mammal; in many cases he is a fake mammal.
Why White people, of high IQ, eschew physical work is beyond me. Why they avoid having multiple offspring (I have three) is beyond me.
What else is there? WHAT ELSE IS THERE—besides working on that which is your own, improving it, making it better, and reproducing the mixed genetics of your one true love and yourself?
As the saga of South Africa shows, when we get other races to do our phyical work for us, that is the start of the end.
I love work!
J’aime travailler!
I’ll believe this when my rich white friends stop handing their children over for up to 55 hours a week to nannies of color. Sorry, but nearly every rich white family has got one and their influences shapes the child.
John PM: Marx never said the way to make revolution was for the oppressed of the 3rd world to cop out on their duties to transform their own societies and instead, “make revolution” by invading the 1st world! The oppressed of all countries must find their own way to liberation within their own borders. The Western Left is quite perverse. They think Whites are evil and practice something called Third Worldism. Marx and even Engels were both what would be called White Supremacists nowadays. That was the normal way for Whites to be back then.
I’m an ethnocentric White man and an anti-racist race realist. I know that sounds weird, but in the near future you will see more Whites like me.
Higher-IQ folks also blow their money on organic food, fancy hipster stuff, books they’ll never read on pseudointellectual rubbish, and dumb ‘alternative therapies’. Dim folks make bad economic choices, but plenty of smart ones obviously do as well.
“It doesn’t take an Albert Einstein to figure out this one. How many moron millionaires do you know ? Most people are brain dead and can’t see beyond their noses. Most can’t extrapolate the consequences of their actions five minutes into the future. If it feels good, do it. When they suffer the consequences they want the government to bail them out.”
Posted by N. J. MOE at 6:36 PM on May 18
I have known a good number of millionaires in my time. Mostly as patients. I lived in the North Bay region of San Francisco for decades and met many of them. The one thing they had in common was not necessarily intelligence or what we might call a well informed person. They were all uniformly devoid of an appreciation of ethics and had “a lot of nerve.” They all were church going types, sure that their god sanctioned all their rationalizations around business and life. Every one of them was divorced, remarried and having an affair. Their kids were spoiled and almost completely without parental guidance. It was much the same in more conservative regions as the Sacramento Valley and Orange County in So Cal.
The core difference that I have noticed is the ground that different people have to act in. Legalities aside, it takes “a lot of nerve” perhaps more - to be a successful drug lord or even a drug dealer. It appears to me that just as cops and criminals play the same game on opposite sides, intelligence is required for success in crime. Is it any surprise that just as the “legal” capitalist world collapsed recently and we continue daily with news of yet another bad actor in the financial world, that we also have greedy drug lords who have grown too confident and now have more legal force aiming at them? The White Collar criminals even had the advantage of the assumption that they were reputable, honest individuals and entities.
This is all just human nature at work; Greed and lust for power, etc. But the lack of ethics and the use of intelligence seems to be fairly comparable among the legal and illegal occupations in the world where the most money is to be made the quickest.
I think I agree that there are limits to the application of IQ measurements in life’s realities.
Robert Lindsay has finally wrote something that I agree with.
If I am not mistaken,labor leader and full-blown socialist Samuel Gompers supported the Chinese Exclusion Act. You should read his testimony before the US Congress.
To Comrade Lindsay, regarding:
“John PM: Marx never said the way to make revolution was for the oppressed of the 3rd world to cop out on their duties to transform their own societies and instead, ‘make revolution’ by invading the 1st world! The oppressed of all countries must find their own way to liberation within their own borders. The Western Left is quite perverse. They think Whites are evil and practice something called Third Worldism.”
As was expected, your “rebuttal” to my critique of your original post is both prevaricating and more than a little meandering. You defend Marx, but because it isn’t convenient for you here to do so (much like your current situation, in your “enriched” home state,) you underhandedly lambaste multiculturalism. You refuse to admit that you once celebrated (which you have admitted in the past many times here at AR and on your blog,) what might be called “controlled” diversity or “selective” liberationist immigration policies for nonwhites into the USA. The only reason that you have reevaluated your Marxist-multicultural “dialectic,” is because it has hit you where it hurts; that being, where you live and work, and not somebody else, who you can lookdown your sanctimoniously scarlet nose at.
Indeed, as you note:
“Marx and even Engels were both what would be called White Supremacists nowadays. That was the normal way for Whites to be back then.”
But you are not, not a bit, and you pride yourself on that point; moreover, you hang onto totally absurd concepts as facts, such as that the USA was never majority white until the 1880s, when not even the Reds in the “mainstream” media would be comfortable making such a wretchedly asinine pronouncement. However, you will make such self-serving descriptions of yourself as: “I’m an ethnocentric White man and an anti-racist race realist” here and now, because you would still like to win some misguided converts to your filthy Red ideology and cause.
Admit it Comrade Lindsay, you look down on true race-realists and white nationalists as a group, simply because we have the guts and brains to, at the very least, unapologetically want to survive your kinds’ perverted Red version of “social-evolutionary progress.”
John PM!
Most everyone here is familiar with a standard distribution, or “bell” curve, particularly as it applies to intelligence. All other human qualities are also distributed the same way. Virtue, however you choose to define or measure it, is not shared equally among individuals. Just as half the people are dumber than average, so are half the people less honest, less self-disciplined, or less caring than average. There’s no reason to assume that these character traits, whether caused by nature or nurture, are related to intelligence. For many of these people who are above average in intelligence and below average in character, their brains are simply a means to steal more, waste more, or hurt more. I don’t think it’s necessarily true that highly intelligent people are more likely to be thieves, fools, or traitors, just that when they are, they stand out.
J’ aime Travailler is on to something. Too many really smart kids are allowed to live in imaginary worlds, the classroom and the computer. Parents will tell them Your job is school. No chores, no part time jobs, and no injuries from contact with unforgiving physical reality, except perhaps in a soccer league with more adult supervision than a church social. They are as well insulated from reality as their parent’s money can make them. They think Blacks are cool, and that life should be easy. They are children for life. Even universities, founts of leftist folly, have recognized this. They have to create what are essentially academic resorts to attract the spoiled brats whose parents’ money keep the bills paid, and they’ve come up with these “What a hard life I’ve had” application essays to try to find students who won’t cry when they get a B on a paper.
Higher-IQ folks also blow their money on organic food, fancy hipster stuff, books they’ll never read
That may be true of high I.Q. people with no racial awareness, I assure you sir, I spend my money on survival things, weapons, ammo, model airplanes, my family, tools (will be needed for self sufficiency) 10k and bigger generators sets (state or Mil auction) the usual monthly expenses to maintain my current home and collect TRADEABLE things!! Thank you very much.
John PM: You are right that previously I was a hypocrite. I never even cared about illegals 3 years ago and was in favor of mass amnesty for all 12 million of them. This is because I always lived in all-White towns and never had to deal with them. Now that I live in the Diversity I have changed my mind.
I am indeed a pro-White anti-racist race realist. You don’t have to believe me. Come on over to the site and ask the commenters. They’ll all agree with me. It’s somewhat sui generis at the moment, but I am already starting to see some pro-White anti-racist Whites, mostly young males. Their politics is confused, but it’s a good trend. They are reacting to all of the White-bashing and White-hatred in society by defending themselves.
I propose a pro-White analogue to organizations like the NAACP, the Urban League, NC on La Raza, MALDEF, LULA, etc. These are good anti-racist organizations that do not engage in racist hatred of the other, nor do they promote ethnic supremacism. They just defend their own against discrimination, hate crimes and hate propaganda.
Lamentably, I am not keen on most White nationalists, even though I know some of them. The truth is that almost all WN’s are racists, however much they insist they are not. As an anti-racist, obviously I cannot support this. Indeed I am not a White Supremacist. Supremacism is as wrong as narcissism.
I don’t try to convert anyone to Communism. And anyway, even if I were, this would be the last place I would try to do so.
I now acknowledge that the US was probably a majority-White country from Day One of its formation, but I’m not so sure about my own state of California. This place has been a multicultural stew from the very start.
I continue to support non-White immigration to the US, of course, just not in such large numbers. And I want it more restrictive. Anyone of any race can be an American.
“By the way, your comments express a great insensitivity to the thousands of Native Born White American families that already have been severely harmed since 1972 by LEGAL asian immigration. There is no acceptable level of LEGAL IMMIGRANT asian induced damage of Native Born White American families.
When the LEGAL IMMIGRANTS move in and flood a White school system with their geneline, property taxes go through the roof up as high as fifteen thousand a year. Many Native Born White American families are than faced with the option of fleeing their communities or losing their home in a tax lien sale to a legal immigrant asian who is buyng the home as a second home for his son so the son can start an asian geneline in America….this at a time when there is a growing population of young Native Born White Males who do not and will not earn enough money to habe their own wife and family. The LEGAL IMMIGRANT asians you are fond of are waging a vicious race war against Native Born White Americans..particularly young Native Born White Males. This is in the realm of genocide also.”
Posted by Jupiter at 7:26 PM on May 19
I totally agree with you Jupiter. The non Whites have us in a classic military pincer movement. Asians on the left, hispanics and blacks on the right and our own White race traitors behind us.
Robert Lindsay,
Stephen Hawking stated “people who boast about their IQs are losers.” He is absolutely correct.
IQ does correlate with achievement, but is not in itself achievement, or even talent. It is especially useful in predicting the achievement level of large numbers of people, ie group differences, but has less use when it comes to individual outcomes.
Saying IQ implies genius is as stupid as saying a great ability at arm-wrestling makes you the equal of a great footballer, or any other sort of sportsman (after-all, I’m sure a positive correlation would exist between arm-wrestling and sporting prowess).
So having an IQ higher than Einstein’s does not make you a genius, anymore than beating Muhammad Ali in an arm wrestling contest make you a great sportsman.
Geniuses are recognized as such on account of their achievements. And for those who have achieved a lot, IQ becomes a moot point.
Genius IQ = 140+
That’s well known in intelligence testing circles.
You have to realize that that word means one thing in intelligence testing circles and quite another thing in the way that people casually bandy it about, “He’s a genius.” To psychometricians, it’s just a way of describing a number. Don’t get all caught up in semantic games.
What I think is really interesting is that in Blacks, females are 7-8X more likely to have a genius IQ (described above) than males. What kind of sense does that make?
John Liu
Excellent post. On the Science channel over a year ago, there was an interesting show. It was a show about what would happen if an altrnative IQ test was given. People with very different backgrouunds were chosen. Several of them were chosen for there extremely high IQ scores that well over 130-people such as MITs Llyod-related to Bertrand Russel-a expert on quantum computation and quantum computers, a hedge fund manager with an IQ of 160,a world renown classcial piano prodigy with an exttremly high IQ, a english artists who and math cripple who dropped out of school at 14 years of age, a black playwright, a russian female classical piano player. The were giving a series of cognitive tasks that required skill and ingenuity. The results were fascinating and could not be predicted based upon traditional IQ test score. Professor Seth Llyod, the high IQ hedge fund manager and the young male classical piano player came away with the view that traditional IQ tests were basically worthless and a joke.
The female english artists-school drop out came closets to solving the most difficult challenge. If she had had more confidence in herself she would have completely solved the problem. She completetly blew away the MIT professor of Quantum Physics.
To Comrade Lindsay, regarding your post at 11:18 PM on May 20:
When I posted my original comments directed at you, I never suspected that you would literally give an actual 7 paragraph treatise, that would prove my point about you engaging in mental summersaults and pirouettes regarding the topic of multiculturalism. I must ask the question, are you really serious about this:
“ I propose a pro-White analogue to organizations like the NAACP, the Urban League, NC on La Raza, MALDEF, LULA, etc. These are good anti-racist organizations that do not engage in racist hatred of the other, nor do they promote ethnic supremacism. They just defend their own against discrimination, hate crimes and hate propaganda.”
If so, what planet have you been living on for the last 55 or so years?
For example, you do understand that the National Council of La Raza, would like to see the entire American Southwest (including California) annexed to Mexico in what they call a “reconquista?” You also understand, that the NACCP encourages affirmative action and demands “reparations” for slavery; along with, I must add, being fully open to allowing the invasion from Mexico and the Third World in general to continue? Is this really what the Red abyss that you call your “high IQ” mind, considers to only be “anti-racist” or defending “their own against discrimination, hate crimes and hate propaganda?”
If so, you really have not changed at all; you are still the maniacal Marxist troll, that originally saw fit to come here in 2007. Moreover, you claim our side has younger members in “political confusion,” when you make this type of multicultural mishmash statement, in your conclusion: “I continue to support non-White immigration to the US, of course, just not in such large numbers. And I want it more restrictive. Anyone of any race can be an American.”
You further observed in your opening salvo to me that: “You are right that previously I was a hypocrite…”
I am afraid Comrade Lindsay, that I remain right on that hypocrisy score of yours and your deeply ingrained Red idiot factor score as well, considering all of the above in toto,
John PM!
“He’s a genius.” To psychometricians, it’s just a way of describing a number. Don’t get all caught up in semantic games.
Yes, quite right Robert Lindsay. But you are not a psychometrician. So let’s be honest. To you it is a way of asserting to the world that you are a ‘genius’ in the everyday understanding of the word.
If not, why not let your statements, your writings, speak for themselves?
Instead boasting about your IQ is just a way of trying to say ‘listen to me, my views deserve a hearing more than those of other people - because of my genius (claimed) IQ.’.
Or is it simply to add lustre to whatever meagre accomplishments you have, and in the end, to yourself at least, even if you talk rubbish and are out-debated it does not matter because you have a high IQ?
But that would be as absurd as basketball team A not caring that they lose on the court to team B because their average height happens to be greater than team B, or Yao Ming claiming he is a greater basketballer than Michael Jordan on account of him being a foot and half taller than Michael Jordan, or Tommy Hearns happy with his performance against Marvin Hagler - because his reach his greater than that of Hagler’s. And who would deny that height in basketball and reach in boxing do correlate positively with ability in their respective fields?
In the end it is the team which outscores the opponent, the boxer who wins in the ring, who deserves the kudos - not necessarily the tallest team, or the boxer with longer arms.
So inventor of the transistor William Shockley (IQ 129) or physicist Luis Alvarez (IQ
Strange how a ‘genius’ like yourself fails to see that boasting of your own purported ‘genius’ IQ, is in fact just a crude and vulgar way of attention seeking and asserting intellectually superiority. But it is too transparent, and in the end betrays a lack of, well, intelligence.
It’s quite strange. Americans get to toot their own horns, fish for compliments, brag, whatever you call it, and as long as it is done tastefully, no one minds. If it’s about money, fame or power, the horrors that ensue include women rushing to your bedside and appearances on the cover of major newsmagazines. Maybe you ever get your own TV show. “The Apprentice” comes to mind. But alas! Let one irreverent soul let slip the facts of his mental endowment and the whole of US society erupts. Jealousy? Surely it is not. Repugnance at the boastful? Hardly, since those boasting of prowess or endowment in athletics, sexual conquests, bank accounts, possessions, positions attained or power wielded are tolerated and frankly rewarded.
But the hatestorm that rains down on one who dares to commit the transgression of repeating the scientific fact of his IQ score needs an umbrella to fend it off. There can only be one reason why American society reacts so violently to an innocent revelation of the material fact of one’s IQ, as relevant to one’s physical being, one would think, as one’s heart rate, blood pressure, height or weight.
That is the ferocious and dead ignorant hatred of the intellectual that gallops across the cowboy landscape of Perennial Frontier America. To be an American is to be a dummy, or at least to act like one. Look at George Bush. We’ve always hated intellectuals, and we always will. Check out de Tocqueville or Hofstadter. In 127 years, the Idiot Adulation didn’t budge an inch. Some things never change.
Robert Lindsay, again you completely miss the point.
If someone boasts of his Nobel prize, or being a great writer, or a great physicist, or an economist or whatever - that is fine. Because achievement in these fields is a form of intellectual achievement.
But IQ does not. Boasting about IQ is just boasting about something that sometimes correlates with intellectual achievement. So that is nothign really to boast about. Saying high IQ = great intellectual is as stupid as saying height = great basketballer.
Robert Lindsay, have the posters who criticized you for boasting of your IQ also expressed admiration for those who boast of their athletic ability, number of sexual encounters, wealth or position? Is it not possible that people dislike your vanity rather than your intelligence? You’re hardly the only smart poster here, so why should you be singled out for your mental endowment?
Robert Lindsay, who are you, and why is everybody picking on you?
Bob, as a member of Mensa, whose IQ is 141, I would urge you to apply your tremendous IQ to practical matters.
Practical matters include not only, How can I fix this pipe so it won’t leak, but more importantly—-How can I help the White race to get out of the cloud of despair currently enveloping it?
The Mensans I know have not accomplished very much (which is probably why Mensa was brought into being, in the first place).
God bless them—maybe they did not have the opportunity. Or maybe their parents wanted to drink beer and watch TV instead of encouraging their children.
Most of them just want to be left alone.
But, like you, they have the potential. But potential, unrealized, is a tragic thing… NO, let me rephrase that—A person with potential, who does not try to realize it, is a tragic thing.
But the struggle, the struggle is worth it. Even if no one sees, or even cares. Even if the potential of that struggle is not realized.
In the final moments of my life, I know that I am going to ask myself: Did I burn myself out, did I give it my all? Even if no one saw, or heard, or even cared?
So far the answer is Yes. I have poured myself out—in my work, in my art. For my family, for my people.
Robert, I hope you do the same.
To J’aime Travailler,
You asked why so many here are “picking on” Comrade Lindsey?
Here is a link to his 2008 blog topics, listed below:
http://www.blogtoplist.com/rss/white-nationalism.html
My personal favorite is this one:
Stupid White Nationalist Tricks
2008-04-20 12:39:00
The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here. Updated April 23:If you have a pet White Nationalist, you can actually teach him to do some silly tricks for you. Just ask him to open up his mouth and he will start saying silly things, just like that. He probably can’t help it.I was over at American Renaissance the other day hanging out and trolling, and now and then venting spleen on illegal aliens. I am getting tired of these White racist websites, and I do not think it is healthy to go to them very often if you’re not a White racist. It seems like it’s not good for your soul, and it seems like after a while, the sites start turning you racist yourself. YMMV.Anyway, there was a thread about high dropout rates at various US urban school districts. The highest rates seemed to coincide the having a high percentage of Blacks in the district and being back east. Indianapolis, Cleveland and …
By: Robert Lindsay
That is why Comrade Lindsay is treated so unceremoniously cold here, he has asked for it. I understand you are new here Mr. Travailler, thus you would not be aware of this Marxist’s ongoing heinous subterfuges and prevarications when he is posting here.
But what would you expect? After all, Reds are all the same.
All the best to you Mr. Travailler,
That is why Comrade Lindsay is treated so unceremoniously cold here, he has asked for it…ou would not be aware of this Marxist’s ongoing heinous subterfuges and prevarications
Your reasons, not mine. He is obviously a man full of his own self-importance - but his rantings are no more silly than the majority of posts here, with the exception of those of yours truly.
Robert Lindsay, who are you, and why is everybody picking on you?
Let us ask Voltaire:
“The impact of a true genius can always be verified by the fact that all the mediocrities gang up against him”
As is well attested in this very forum, right John PM? You do know who Voltaire is, right John?
John PM, I don’t like your movement at all. But the White nationalists are nevertheless saying important things. How we Whites should be proud and how we should fight back against the incessant hate propaganda, the many crimes and the frequent discrimination against our people.
73% of US Whites say they are proud to be White and that White culture ought to be preserved. Your movement does not speak to these people - our people - at all. Almost universally, they dismiss you as fringe crazies.
Where is the pro-White movement that speaks for the 73%?
“The impact of a true genius can always be verified by the fact that all the mediocrities gang up against him”
1)Misquoted
2)By Swift, not Voltaire
Comrade Lindsay,
Voltaire once noted:
“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”
Just wondering, how long did you know Voltaire and when did you become his enemy?
“He is obviously a man full of his own self-importance - but his rantings are no more silly than the majority of posts here, with the exception of those of yours truly.”
Comrade Liu,
I am utterly awed by your humility!
*KRONOS*
Robert Lindsay:
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” Carl Sagan
“He is obviously a man full of his own self-importance - but his rantings are no more silly than the majority of posts here, with the exception of those of yours truly.”
Comrade Liu,
I am utterly awed by your humility, as I am sure Comrade Lindsay is as well! As I asked him above, I will repeat to you: Just wondering, how long did you know Voltaire and when did you become his enemy?
*KRONOS*
Voltaire once noted:
“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”
just wondering, how long did you know Voltaire and when did you become his enemy?
John PM: Voltaire implies that his enemies are ridiculous. It does not follow that all who are ridiculous are necessarily his enemies. In fact his statement does not preclude the possibility that there are those ridiculous who could well be his friends.
So irrespective of whether I am ridiculous or not ridiculous - it has no bearing whatsoever on whether I am an enemy or friend or stranger to Voltaire.
Regards,
