The Outsiders(prometheussociety.org)
prometheussociety.org
The Outsiders
http://www.prometheussociety.org/articles/Outsiders.html
5 comments
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
If you seriously go through life with that much of a sense of superiority, it would be no surprise at all to be socially isolated. I don't think that way. Most people are important and useful to humanity at the individual level. My default is to treat all people as if they are, and that default assumption is generally born out in my interaction with people in many settings. I don't merely seek PERSONAL advantage in dealing with people, but the broader advantage of a better human society for all.
If you seriously go through life with that much of a sense of superiority, it would be no surprise at all to be socially isolated. I don't think that way. Most people are important and useful to humanity at the individual level. My default is to treat all people as if they are, and that default assumption is generally born out in my interaction with people in many settings. I don't merely seek PERSONAL advantage in dealing with people, but the broader advantage of a better human society for all.
Making the world a better place is promoting a personal advantage, so long as you're not dragged down too much in the process. My point is that by and large this is simply not the case.
I think if you believe it is then I'm wondering if your target population is truly representative of humanity at large or simply those who you interact with most commonly within some social sphere which you have found to be agreeable with you.
It isn't even that I feel superior, I simply feel utterly different, as I said, alien in the extreme. I believe this inhibits me when trying to understand why other people behave as they do because all I have to work off is a bunch of simulations of human behaviour in the past that I have observed / heard of.
I think if you believe it is then I'm wondering if your target population is truly representative of humanity at large or simply those who you interact with most commonly within some social sphere which you have found to be agreeable with you.
It isn't even that I feel superior, I simply feel utterly different, as I said, alien in the extreme. I believe this inhibits me when trying to understand why other people behave as they do because all I have to work off is a bunch of simulations of human behaviour in the past that I have observed / heard of.
The pattern that I am seeing here and after having meditated on this myself is this: My conclusions about humanity at large are mostly correct, but this ought not discourage me from interaction in general due to one critical point. There are many great people despite the mass being largely useless. Further, if one actually attempts to follow rational principles it would not be all that difficult to find these people and maximise one's interactions within this sphere.
Isn't that in fact exactly what I'm doing here? The first place I have ever actually felt mostly socially comfortable in my life?
All the examples of positive social experiences that I can think of I could logically have concluded would likely have ended up that way based on the guessed at characteristics of the groups in question, the trick to human interaction is not to optimise your communications for the mean, but to optimise your communications for the groups whom with which you wish to interact.
Thanks to those that responded.
Isn't that in fact exactly what I'm doing here? The first place I have ever actually felt mostly socially comfortable in my life?
All the examples of positive social experiences that I can think of I could logically have concluded would likely have ended up that way based on the guessed at characteristics of the groups in question, the trick to human interaction is not to optimise your communications for the mean, but to optimise your communications for the groups whom with which you wish to interact.
Thanks to those that responded.
I think you need to get out of your head. It's a bit masturbatory, this constant introspection and comparison. It feels good, but you shouldn't do it all the time.
If you truly can't find joy in the smell of spring, or exploring a strange city, or jumping out of an airplane, than you should seek some medical assistance. If you indeed do get joy from these things, than go enjoy them, and when you look to your left and your right, you'll find other people enjoying them also. You just connected with another person socially, even if he can't do differential equations in his head.
If you truly can't find joy in the smell of spring, or exploring a strange city, or jumping out of an airplane, than you should seek some medical assistance. If you indeed do get joy from these things, than go enjoy them, and when you look to your left and your right, you'll find other people enjoying them also. You just connected with another person socially, even if he can't do differential equations in his head.
He meant it the other way round, for you to learn from others, not that you should teach them.
Confucius was a famous teacher, but the quote is about how other people were his teachers. tokenadult then says of himself, that "[I] expect to learn from most people of my acquaintance, whatever their IQ scores".
You can learn from someone without becoming entangled in an intense relationship.
Don't try to see from "their level", but try to see from their point of view (as if they were the center of the world instead of you). In my experience, seeing another's point of view has been difficult to do, but it's always been rewarding. Everyone literally has a unique point of view (where their eyes are at any particular moment), so they can see things that I can't. And everyone's unique background, attitudes, experience and genetics also gives them a different point of view, figuratively. Even when someone is mistaken, it is revealing to me in what way they are mistaken. What are they seeing that I'm not? And, of course, mostly, they aren't mistaken.
Human beings have an instinctual need for community, to connect, to understand and be understood, and we aren't happy without it. I believe the benefits of sharing our unique perspectives is one of the reasons that we have that instinct: our aggregate perspective is greater than their sum.
You can learn from someone without becoming entangled in an intense relationship.
Don't try to see from "their level", but try to see from their point of view (as if they were the center of the world instead of you). In my experience, seeing another's point of view has been difficult to do, but it's always been rewarding. Everyone literally has a unique point of view (where their eyes are at any particular moment), so they can see things that I can't. And everyone's unique background, attitudes, experience and genetics also gives them a different point of view, figuratively. Even when someone is mistaken, it is revealing to me in what way they are mistaken. What are they seeing that I'm not? And, of course, mostly, they aren't mistaken.
Human beings have an instinctual need for community, to connect, to understand and be understood, and we aren't happy without it. I believe the benefits of sharing our unique perspectives is one of the reasons that we have that instinct: our aggregate perspective is greater than their sum.
Read the article again, especially about would-be leaders of mobs.
Here's the big difference: Instead of helping people to correct them, help people to propel them further on towards their own goals and their own potential.
Here's the big difference: Instead of helping people to correct them, help people to propel them further on towards their own goals and their own potential.
I think you misunderstand the nature of my idea of helping people or choosing to disengage with someone. Illustrative examples;
When dealing with a drug addict, I will not attempt to capitalise on who they are as a person by selling them more drugs, even if this would by definition "propel them further on towards their own goals, and by their subjective definition, their potential".
From my perspective, doing such a thing may potentially result in commercial advantages for me but I would think the action of exploiting this desire in the target human would be exploitative, so I would not do it. I believe that likely the best thing that I could do for such a person would be to avoid them entirely, as they are entangled in a local maximum from which they do not desire an escape.
I have never engaged with anyone with the view to trying to "better" them purely from my own perspective, I believe that such a thing would not be fair to the other party, especially when direct deception is involved indicating in which fashion I intend to benefit from my part in the transaction.
I am comfortable with not telling all of the truth all of the time, but I am utterly uncomfortable with any degree of fabrication. I want to either interact honestly or disengage entirely.
I'm comfortable with assisting people toward goals that I don't feel are utterly counterproductive to their development to a very obvious and damaging degree, even if those are goals that I would find quite neutral.
When dealing with a drug addict, I will not attempt to capitalise on who they are as a person by selling them more drugs, even if this would by definition "propel them further on towards their own goals, and by their subjective definition, their potential".
From my perspective, doing such a thing may potentially result in commercial advantages for me but I would think the action of exploiting this desire in the target human would be exploitative, so I would not do it. I believe that likely the best thing that I could do for such a person would be to avoid them entirely, as they are entangled in a local maximum from which they do not desire an escape.
I have never engaged with anyone with the view to trying to "better" them purely from my own perspective, I believe that such a thing would not be fair to the other party, especially when direct deception is involved indicating in which fashion I intend to benefit from my part in the transaction.
I am comfortable with not telling all of the truth all of the time, but I am utterly uncomfortable with any degree of fabrication. I want to either interact honestly or disengage entirely.
I'm comfortable with assisting people toward goals that I don't feel are utterly counterproductive to their development to a very obvious and damaging degree, even if those are goals that I would find quite neutral.
It's great you are aware your pattern is harming you. When I was very young I had similar feelings too.
That which you oppose you maintain. You are trapped by your misanthropy. The article makes this point.
You can only move forward by finding another path that is positive for both halves of the equation. You have to begin with empathy. I have a rule of life: my next set of friends are the people I dislike the most. It's amazing how much you can learn from other people that you would never have guessed. Negative feelings create blindness.
I don't understand all these people obsessed with IQ. Life has more to it that logic and rationality. Tell me how much IQ you need to appreciate a hot dog at the carnival on the first beautiful day of summer. Live beyond this single measure of you.
That which you oppose you maintain. You are trapped by your misanthropy. The article makes this point.
You can only move forward by finding another path that is positive for both halves of the equation. You have to begin with empathy. I have a rule of life: my next set of friends are the people I dislike the most. It's amazing how much you can learn from other people that you would never have guessed. Negative feelings create blindness.
I don't understand all these people obsessed with IQ. Life has more to it that logic and rationality. Tell me how much IQ you need to appreciate a hot dog at the carnival on the first beautiful day of summer. Live beyond this single measure of you.
This is exactly what I'm referring to, I simply don't connect with what you're trying to illustrate. I understand you're trying to draw a scenario that has some supposedly appealing emotional quality to it, but I'd just be thinking I'd rather be doing something useful than going to a carnival and I don't like hot weather.
This is not simply a case of a single example that would not hold up under a barrage of alternative options, simply put I want to learn, discover, build and create and passive experience holds little to no value to me.
This is not simply a case of a single example that would not hold up under a barrage of alternative options, simply put I want to learn, discover, build and create and passive experience holds little to no value to me.
Well folks like you aren't uncommon. I see someone posted sifter.org.
One thing to note. You have all these negative feelings to people but positive feelings to your work. I suggest you can kill your negative feelings if you realize all people enjoy something the same way you enjoy your work. We just all like different things.
In the way I don't understand why people enjoy experimental jazz but I can appreciate they must find something in it for them and thus I do not judge them, you can at least teach yourself to not look down on others for what measures of joy they take from life.
No sense polluting yourself with misanthropy. Instead be happy for them and happy you are clear what makes you happy.
One thing to note. You have all these negative feelings to people but positive feelings to your work. I suggest you can kill your negative feelings if you realize all people enjoy something the same way you enjoy your work. We just all like different things.
In the way I don't understand why people enjoy experimental jazz but I can appreciate they must find something in it for them and thus I do not judge them, you can at least teach yourself to not look down on others for what measures of joy they take from life.
No sense polluting yourself with misanthropy. Instead be happy for them and happy you are clear what makes you happy.
Heard of Sifter.org?
I hadn't, I had a brief look and my curiosity is aroused, are there archives of the list content?
No matter how brilliant one is are there are people out there who make one look like rather like a badly shaved monkey.
Obviously this is not true at the limit, but unless you happen to be Hawking posting incognito that consideration is probably not applicable to you.
If that doesn't provide an appropriate perspective then I suggest that you consider that in an infinite universe everything is essentially pointless and the small graduation between your brilliance and their interest in reality television is so small as to be immeasurable.
Obviously this is not true at the limit, but unless you happen to be Hawking posting incognito that consideration is probably not applicable to you.
If that doesn't provide an appropriate perspective then I suggest that you consider that in an infinite universe everything is essentially pointless and the small graduation between your brilliance and their interest in reality television is so small as to be immeasurable.
In the scales of which this article speaks, I am at the limits.
The conclusion you draw at the end would result in an embrace of nihilism in the instance that you assume that this is an unchanging fact or transhumanism in order to widen the gap and make it significant on a cosmological scale.
I'm wholeheartedly in favour of the second option, certainly. My humanity already feels more a shedding skin than a fitting glove, long ago I had wished I could move beyond it's constraints and push the limits of possibility.
The conclusion you draw at the end would result in an embrace of nihilism in the instance that you assume that this is an unchanging fact or transhumanism in order to widen the gap and make it significant on a cosmological scale.
I'm wholeheartedly in favour of the second option, certainly. My humanity already feels more a shedding skin than a fitting glove, long ago I had wished I could move beyond it's constraints and push the limits of possibility.
You sound like an indulged child, not a misunderstood genius.
I am at the 'upper bounds' as well, but I don't attempt to batter others over the head with my vocabulary and pride, and I've learned that I'm just as vulnerable, alone, and human as anyone else. Setting yourself apart on the basis of a standardized test is just sophomoric justification for misanthropy and depression.
I am at the 'upper bounds' as well, but I don't attempt to batter others over the head with my vocabulary and pride, and I've learned that I'm just as vulnerable, alone, and human as anyone else. Setting yourself apart on the basis of a standardized test is just sophomoric justification for misanthropy and depression.
That is expressly why I made this account, to avoid suggestions that this might be my motivation. I have nothing to gain here from grandstanding, nobody knows who I am and I neither gain nor lose karma from the exchange, it's simply an attempt to objectively engage with a potentially touchy subject which by nature practically begs to be painted as showboating.
The response I made was only as venomous as that made originally. I was annoyed by what was a generally helpful exchange being punctuated by what still appears to me to be little more than an attempt at justifying the poster's own disagreement by directly accusing me of mental illness.
The response I made was only as venomous as that made originally. I was annoyed by what was a generally helpful exchange being punctuated by what still appears to me to be little more than an attempt at justifying the poster's own disagreement by directly accusing me of mental illness.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Retaliation is actually a sign of maladjustment. Sure, it's also quite common. The original comment was unkindly short, but however it was meant, it was accurate. You've said yourself: "growing misanthropy and detachment". These are psychological problems. Not intellectually, but emotionally and socially. I don't know whether a particular psychologist would actually help, but I agree with your own assessment that they do "not serve my interests in the long run". In other words, you are quite clear that they are a problem.
Seeing a psychologist is one step towards doing something about it, that might help. Unfortunately, your misanthropy immediately gets in the way: you would have to at least entertain the notion that someone else does have insights that you don't. So, you're in a difficult situation because the nature of your problem prevents you from getting help with it.
But unless you take some kind of action (perhaps thinking of it as an experimental trial, or maybe finding an aspect or form of it that you are willing to entertain), things aren't going to improve. They'll get worse.
EDIT silly me, I meant to reply in the thread with the line "You lack the capacity to spell sheer, your attempt at philosophical hegemony is quaint. Go see an educator." Fortunately, you seem to have known what I meant anyway.
Retaliation is actually a sign of maladjustment. Sure, it's also quite common. The original comment was unkindly short, but however it was meant, it was accurate. You've said yourself: "growing misanthropy and detachment". These are psychological problems. Not intellectually, but emotionally and socially. I don't know whether a particular psychologist would actually help, but I agree with your own assessment that they do "not serve my interests in the long run". In other words, you are quite clear that they are a problem.
Seeing a psychologist is one step towards doing something about it, that might help. Unfortunately, your misanthropy immediately gets in the way: you would have to at least entertain the notion that someone else does have insights that you don't. So, you're in a difficult situation because the nature of your problem prevents you from getting help with it.
But unless you take some kind of action (perhaps thinking of it as an experimental trial, or maybe finding an aspect or form of it that you are willing to entertain), things aren't going to improve. They'll get worse.
EDIT silly me, I meant to reply in the thread with the line "You lack the capacity to spell sheer, your attempt at philosophical hegemony is quaint. Go see an educator." Fortunately, you seem to have known what I meant anyway.
I disagree that the original comment was by any stretch of the imagination an accurate diagnosis, and in fact I think the suggestion is absurd. I have studied psychological topics extensively, in fact realising that all other humans were not the same as I am was first accomplished by doing exactly that.
The idea that one could diagnose a psychological disorder simply by reading about a case where somebody finds their misanthropy / detachment growing with humanity at large is so absurd as to be completely unreasonable at face value.
That said, I did actually attempt to figure out more about the person making that accusation in the event that I had something to learn by it and instead of finding that to be the case just found a lot more data to back up my original reaction.
The action that I took was, I believe, actually quite useful, I am mostly glad of the ideas that this thread provoked and happy with my conclusions about the nature of human interaction based upon it.
I think that the point has passed beyond which further action makes any sense however, unless someone can see some obvious problem with the conclusions I've reached from the exchange.
To reiterate, these conclusions are that just because many humans may exist with which it would not make logical sense to pursue any kind of relationship, all humans as a whole are not within this category, If I wish to be less alienated or have my opinion of humanity degraded any further, I ought simply be more careful with whom I choose to engage.
The idea that one could diagnose a psychological disorder simply by reading about a case where somebody finds their misanthropy / detachment growing with humanity at large is so absurd as to be completely unreasonable at face value.
That said, I did actually attempt to figure out more about the person making that accusation in the event that I had something to learn by it and instead of finding that to be the case just found a lot more data to back up my original reaction.
The action that I took was, I believe, actually quite useful, I am mostly glad of the ideas that this thread provoked and happy with my conclusions about the nature of human interaction based upon it.
I think that the point has passed beyond which further action makes any sense however, unless someone can see some obvious problem with the conclusions I've reached from the exchange.
To reiterate, these conclusions are that just because many humans may exist with which it would not make logical sense to pursue any kind of relationship, all humans as a whole are not within this category, If I wish to be less alienated or have my opinion of humanity degraded any further, I ought simply be more careful with whom I choose to engage.
[deleted]
The article strikes a chord with me as well, although I'm probably not as much at the limits as you describe yourself. Your responses herein strike similar chords. Ignore the hecklers. So far as I can tell, your conclusions are correct.
The mass of humanity isn't up to your standards, being far more interested in 'having a good time' than 'doing something useful'. The problem is that this mass of humanity is practically the only tool you have to work with. How do you decide what's useful without considering how it will be used by other humans?
For me, the answer is something like 'produce tools that others can use to further their own goals'. Some of their goals I'll agree with, others will seem like a waste. Time will tell which are really which.
In the meantime, it's nice to meet others who share similar goals. Surround yourself with the best people you can find, according to whatever standards you establish. Be kind to those for whom you lack respect, but don't let them set your direction. Iterate rather than trying to figure it all out in advance --- better to die trying.
I'd be interested in knowing what your other account is, so I can follow your posts in the future: <[email protected]>.
The mass of humanity isn't up to your standards, being far more interested in 'having a good time' than 'doing something useful'. The problem is that this mass of humanity is practically the only tool you have to work with. How do you decide what's useful without considering how it will be used by other humans?
For me, the answer is something like 'produce tools that others can use to further their own goals'. Some of their goals I'll agree with, others will seem like a waste. Time will tell which are really which.
In the meantime, it's nice to meet others who share similar goals. Surround yourself with the best people you can find, according to whatever standards you establish. Be kind to those for whom you lack respect, but don't let them set your direction. Iterate rather than trying to figure it all out in advance --- better to die trying.
I'd be interested in knowing what your other account is, so I can follow your posts in the future: <[email protected]>.
You have psychological problems. Go see a psychologist.
You lack the capacity to spell sheer, your attempt at philosophical hegemony is quaint. Go see an educator.
Your demonstrated antisocial behavior validates the original poster's opinion.
Moreover, how is his opinion of your clear anti-social pretenses an attempt at 'hegemony' (specifically, the dominance of one state/region/political group over the other)? Is it because you feel that you are persecuted as an 'outsider' by the 'normals'? (This is also evidence of a psychological problem. If this is genuinely worrisome to you, you should see a shrink.)
Moreover, how is his opinion of your clear anti-social pretenses an attempt at 'hegemony' (specifically, the dominance of one state/region/political group over the other)? Is it because you feel that you are persecuted as an 'outsider' by the 'normals'? (This is also evidence of a psychological problem. If this is genuinely worrisome to you, you should see a shrink.)
His opinion as expressed alone here is not the basis of my comment, it irritated me as I believed it was oversimplifying and snarky, but any time I think such a thing I very carefully examine the content of what provokes it, so I read his blog for quite some time before posting the conclusions I shot back with.
He is constantly talking about argumentation, very prone to being unable to understand that other people may see things differently to him, and even makes extensive comment on the fact that he has no formal logical path from a prior assumption in the vast majority of cases for the conclusions he reaches, merely that "he knows they're right".
So, yes, that did strike me as an attempt at philosophical hegemony, and this particular interaction was just one more data point on that plot.
He is constantly talking about argumentation, very prone to being unable to understand that other people may see things differently to him, and even makes extensive comment on the fact that he has no formal logical path from a prior assumption in the vast majority of cases for the conclusions he reaches, merely that "he knows they're right".
So, yes, that did strike me as an attempt at philosophical hegemony, and this particular interaction was just one more data point on that plot.
I'm sorry you didn't like my blog (though I feel you're a bit uncharitable in your summary), and that you felt I was making some sort of attempt to foist my ideas on you. My moniker is actually derived from the greek word 'hegemonikon' which translates roughly to 'that which guides' - it was what the greeks believed was the guiding part of the mind or soul. But I digress.
I probably should have elaborated more to avoid the 'snarky' interpretation. As best I can tell from your comments, your intellect more or less prevented you from learning to socialize, and so now you handle most social interaction with gloves and forceps. This is the sort of thing that builds up over years and is probably rooted deep in childhood experiences, and can't be undone by simply reading a forum comment telling you to 'be more empathetic' or 'recognize the values of others'. Subconscious processes are stubborn and resistant to change. If you really want to change your outlook, I'd imagine you need a long period of careful deconstruction of what produced it, followed by building it back up out of the thought processes you already have (along with a few new tools). Since this seems to be more or less what it is that psychologists do, seeking one out could be helpful.
Just my 2 cents of course, so take it with a grain of salt - you weren't wrong when you told me to go see an educator :)
I don't share your particular circumstances, but I know social isolation all too well - I wish you the best.
I probably should have elaborated more to avoid the 'snarky' interpretation. As best I can tell from your comments, your intellect more or less prevented you from learning to socialize, and so now you handle most social interaction with gloves and forceps. This is the sort of thing that builds up over years and is probably rooted deep in childhood experiences, and can't be undone by simply reading a forum comment telling you to 'be more empathetic' or 'recognize the values of others'. Subconscious processes are stubborn and resistant to change. If you really want to change your outlook, I'd imagine you need a long period of careful deconstruction of what produced it, followed by building it back up out of the thought processes you already have (along with a few new tools). Since this seems to be more or less what it is that psychologists do, seeking one out could be helpful.
Just my 2 cents of course, so take it with a grain of salt - you weren't wrong when you told me to go see an educator :)
I don't share your particular circumstances, but I know social isolation all too well - I wish you the best.
Consider me thoroughly disarmed, and not just a little stunned.
I've been on HN for almost three years.
Do you have ANY idea how many "I'm smart and nobody-understands-me/I-dont-like-people/life-is-pointless" articles I've had to put up with?
Yawn.
Do you have ANY idea how many "I'm smart and nobody-understands-me/I-dont-like-people/life-is-pointless" articles I've had to put up with?
Yawn.
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.
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"
"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"
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.
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.
"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
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 ).
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
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.