The Outsiders

http://www.prometheussociety.org/articles/Outsiders.html

by 10ren • 17 years ago

9 33 17 years ago

tokenadult3• 17 years ago

A quick comment: An IQ score on any test above IQ 160 is not a validated score, and should be considered comparable to IQ scores in the usual range on current, carefully validated tests of 40 to 160. Moreover, the standard form of scoring IQ tests does not, and cannot, yield an IQ score with interval characteristics, as Terman and Merrill (1937, p. 25) recognized.

"The expression of a test result in terms of age norms is simple and unambiguous, resting upon no statistical assumptions. A test so scaled does not pretend to measure intelligence as a linear distance is measured by the equal units of a foot-rule, but tells us merely that the ability of a given subject corresponds to the average ability of children of such and such an age. This was all that Binet claimed to accomplish, and one can well doubt whether the voluminous output of psychometric literature since his day has enabled us to accomplish more. We have accordingly chosen to retain this least pretentious of units for the estimation of mental level."

The numbers yielded by an IQ test are not measures, but rather more like decathlon scores (Hunt 1997). Indeed, IQ scores analogize quite aptly to the arbitrary rating numbers assigned by college rating guides to different colleges and universities, even in how they differ from one brand of IQ test to another.

The earliest mental tester, Galton, recognized that he had no "foot rule." Early on, he was frustrated by the lack of an "external standard of measurement" for what he was investigating, and resolved to report his results as a rank-ordering of subjects, without a "foot-rule" (Galton 1880). The best considered view is that IQ tests and other mental ability tests are not measures at all. Certainly they should not be analogized to rulers. An IQ score, despite the analogies appealed to by some authors, is not like a marking on a ruler related to an absolute scale but is on an ordinal scale (Mackintosh 1998, pp. 30-31). Alfred Binet warned against this error early on, writing, "This scale properly speaking does not permit the measure of the intelligence, [1] because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured, but are on the contrary, a classification, a hierarchy among diverse intelligences;" (Binet 1905, English translation 1916).

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.

ypavan• 17 years ago

Aptly summarized by Huxley's quote from the text:

"Perhaps men of genius are the only true men. In all the history of the race there have been only a few thousand real men. And the rest of us--what are we? Teachable animals. Without the help of the real man, we should have found out almost nothing at all. Almost all the ideas with which we are familiar could never have occurred to minds like ours. Plant the seeds there and they will grow; but our minds could never spontaneously have generated them"

shadowaccount13• 17 years ago

Heavily debated making this post, will not make it on my account due to courting accusations of showboating, but in all earnestness this article struck a chord with me in a major way.

I ask here only because I respect this community and consider the inhabitants peers, and I genuinely want an answer. What can one do about it? I quite literally feel like an alien trapped on a planet full of people that alternately infuriate and bore me.

Has anyone successfully addressed these issues before? I believe that my growing misanthropy and detachment does not serve my interests in the long run.

tokenadult3• 17 years ago

I'll give your question a serious answer. Growing up, I knew I had a high IQ score (my parents actually lowballed in hinting what my IQ score was, but I found out the actual score in adult life from my schoolteacher who referred me for testing), and I read in a story by Philip K. Dick that high-IQ people feel social distance from most classmates, which became a self-fulfilling prophecy for me. But later in life I lived in east Asia as a student of the Chinese language, and I discovered that Confucian philosophers expected smart people to use their smarts to get along with everyone, summed up in the saying of Confucius, "三人行，必有我师焉" "Wherever there are three persons walking, my teacher is surely among them." I learned from my experience overseas that I could appreciate other people for their abilities, and expect to learn from most people of my acquaintance, whatever their IQ scores. Since then, I have been more socially comfortable with a wider variety of people, and have felt less isolated. I still devote a lot of my free time to activism on behalf of gifted learners, which provides me with a social circle of people who understand my personal background.

shadowaccount13• 17 years ago

I've already adopted a general philosophy of attempting to benefit from interpersonal interaction as much as possible, I try to figure out how a person works on their own level, including if I could assist them in any way, and if in doing so I may be setting up a mutually beneficial arrangement. In some cases, this works, but these cases are few and far between.

It seems the majority of people, if one were to pursue this philosophy, ought to be left to oblivion. Entanglement with them will only result in encumberance rather than advantage, even if you were to attempt to selflessly better them without regard to the benefits to yourself, typically they would be incapable of making use of your assistance.

What then is the purpose of humanity at large, those who fall outside the sphere of which can be of any advantage to you and are more valuable avoided than utilised?

sunir3• 17 years ago

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.

shadowaccount13• 17 years ago

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.

notauser• 17 years ago

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.

shadowaccount13• 17 years ago

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.

hegemonicon2• 17 years ago

You have psychological problems. Go see a psychologist.

shadowaccount13• 17 years ago

You lack the capacity to spell sheer, your attempt at philosophical hegemony is quaint. Go see an educator.

DanielBMarkham2• 17 years ago

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.

nkurz• 17 years ago

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: <nate@verse.com>.

DanielBMarkham2• 17 years ago

Perhaps it's just me, but this article seemed a bit of the self-masturbatory side. Perhaps that is because of the venue it is presented in.

I did find some useful information, however. And I think there is an important point here. But it also was a bit over-the-top. As an example of this nonsense, Perhaps men of genius are the only true men. In all the history of the race there have been only a few thousand real men. And the rest of us--what are we? Teachable animals. Without the help of the real man, we should have found out almost nothing at all.

Ludicrous malarkey.

Estragon• 17 years ago

  None of these [High-IQ] groups is willing to acknowledge 
  or come to terms with the fact that much of their 
  membership belong to the psychological walking wounded. 
  This alone is enough to explain the constant schisms that 
  develop, the frequent vendettas, and the mediocre level of 
  their publications.

Another perfectly plausible explanation: you have to be a raging egotist to consider joining such a group.

The Outsiders

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