TOT: Heritability of Intelligence

[Rod Speed]

No its not, most obviously with standing still.

The most obvious advantage is that it leaves the arms and hands to do much more complicated things.

That's not really true.

[Rod Speed]

Or ride a horse and kill game you are running down, or other humans on the ground or on another horse.

[JNugent]

I assume that by "woke" you mean "the left" (however else defined).

What is the left view on intelligence and its measurement?

My impression is that there is a great deal of denial about it and even a concerted series of attempts to undermine studies of IQ and those who undertake those studies.

Bound to be. Nurture can condition anyone to be less then they could / should be.

A lot of UK university students are not particularly intelligent (as compared to the norm). That stands to reason even more than it used to when one considers that nearly 50% of school leavers, give or take, now participate in HE. Given the shape of the bell curve, it isn't possible for 50% to be of high intelligence.

When I enrolled, I was in mild trepidation, fearing that life was going to be conducted at what felt like University Challenge level. My anxieties were groundless. It was more like "Take Your Pick".

Some immediate acquaintances habitually read The Sun and The Daily Mirror.

[JNugent]

I like that.

Using the adjective instead of the adverb always reminds me of Shakespeare.

[Fredxx]

I doubt you'd vote for the Greens or Lib Dems.

In fact it's not unreasonable to assume you don't generally vote at elections.

[Cursitor Doom]

What's the point?

[Rod Speed]

Its very bloody unlikely that someone who chose to get of his arse and get involved with UKIP and who chose to get off his arse and get involved in personally encourage individual in person by door knocking to vote for brexit wouldnt bother to vote.

[alan_m]

Isn't that more to with upbringing? No aspirations for themselves so impart that philosophy into your kids from day one. If no-one sees the potential in these kids during their formative years then they may turn out just like their parents for the rest of their lives.

[Rod Speed]

alan_m [e-mail]> wrote

Not all of them do. There have been examples of stupid parents producing smart kids.

Nope.

The smartest kids take no notice of the philosophy of their parents.

The smartest kids don't need anyone to see any potential in them.

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed [e-mail] wrote

No one saw any potential in Einstein, he didnt use words until he was

4 and didnt use sentences until he went to school and did fine anyway.

[charles]

Some 70 years ago, my MiL (a teacher) was living in Newmarket and was teaching some stable lads at home. A 12 year old came as a pupil, but was unable to read, so she started to teach him . The next day he apeareedc with an irate father. "I can't read, so neither should he . Just sit him in a corner with a comic and sign the form." He did not come back.

[The Natural Philosopher]

A study done in Apartheid S Africa, showed that black kids whose fathers had technology - for example cars - were far more likely to make useful factory workers, as the skills for using e.g.a spanner or a screwdriver were acquired by being round other people using them.

My overriding and politically very incorrect view was that S Africa at that time was like 18th Century UK. Thick rural peasants were coming off the land into the towns and the easiest thing for them to become was servants, where they learnt a huge amount about a very different way of life, and their children would become the new black middle class.

Meanwhile the menfolk were being absorbed into mining and so on to become a new urbanised working class.

Unfortunately the end of apartheid catapulted completely unsuitable people into power, essentially corrupt communists, and the place is now falling apart, like North Korea, Venezuela...

[alan_m]

Albeit in a "safe seat" that is a perfect description of a MP local to me. When first elected, and during the baby kissing stage of the election campaign he went around every local group meeting and gave a 5 minute speech why he should be elected and promised everything, especially on topics relevant to the group he was speaking to. Move on years and most people who have actually met him consider him to be a two faced opportunist with a fake public facing personality.

[Pamela]

One academic puts the intelligence of dogs at the level of 2 year old child, which means they wouldn't be able to take the sort of IQ test mentioned.

[alan_m]

Voting in a national election will not get rid of the incompetent petty bureaucrats in local government responsible for fixing potholes etc.

My local council, under both Conservative and Labour control, have tended to be rather good at fixing reported portholes in a timely manner.

Where friend of mine live there is a pothole reporting procedure. This will result in someone coming out 4 weeks later and marking the pothole with a paint circle. Weeks later a gang will come out but ONLY fix the marked potholes, ignoring any that have appeared feet away since the first pothole was reported.

I'll bet my local council spend less on this activity than the council where my friends live.

[charles]

In Surrey, the roadworks have been contracted out. A few years ago, I was at a meeting where the newly appointed chief accountant said she had worked out that contracting out roadworks was costing far more that doing it in-house. It wasn't surprising to discover she didn't stay in the job very long. Party policy was to contract out.

[alan_m]

Graffiti above a toilet paper dispenser in the bog "History degree, please take one" :)

I believe you can increase your IQ by first practising on many IQ tests before actually taking one. It's almost like a lot of "quiz experts" that appear on TV shows. Their only reading is books on facts and having a good memory.

I think you can be both but possibly not under some modern regimes.

Modern Islam, perhaps as portrayed in the media and as dictated in certain countries, seems to have stepped back 1000 years. At one time in the past Islamic scholars were at the forefront of the technology of the time, in mathematics, in science etc.

Having said that in the British Isles 1500 years ago - what ever did the Romans do for us. :)

[The Natural Philosopher]

You would be surprised what a national government can do by way of restricting the activities of local councils.

Mine is average. I am not sure who is responsible, Possibly suffolk country council for the rural roads, and Cambridge for the ones with the bigger potholes ..

...however that is not the point I wanted to make. It is to get a national shift in almost *consciousness* away from woke navel gazing towards solving immediate practical issues for which known solutions exist.

e.g. If immigrants arrive without paperwork or a letter from a British Embassy in another country they are *ipso facto* breaking UK immigration law, and need to be detained at his majesties pleasure & deprived of internet TV and cell phones until their legal status is established.

And similar for *illegal* protests, no matter how 'noble' the cause. In short the debate isn't about potholes, it is ultimately about whether the function of government is to be a socialistic theocracy, and dictate the moral status of its citizens, whilst taxing the f*ck out of them to hire buysybodies to tell them what to think, or whether it is in fact there to guard the freedom of its citizens, defend the realm and maintain law and order and national and local infrastructure.

I am tempted to buy some yellow spray cans. I am sure that the council on seeing an already sprayed pothole would simply shrug and move on

[Tim Streater]

That would be your county council then (unless you're in a unitary such as Brighton or Medway).

Isn't there everywhere? How else d'ye think the Highways Authority of your council gets to hear about them? And why are ye not bugging your county councillor about the potholes?

If it's Kent, that's prolly true due to the majority of its budget getting eaten up by social care.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed, and how many councillors were getting kickbacks from the contractors?

Up the road from me is a listed house. It was a pretty nice 17th century timber farmed and hand tiled vineyard country house.

It was bought by a financial guy from Islington, because his tart wanted to 'live in the country' . So he hired the people who know the right people to bribe, and they hired an architect to construct a narrative about an extension being of 'significant architectural interest' (and paid RIBA to give it an award) to allow the council to justify adding a monstrous flat roofed packing crate extension to it, and he filled the garden with fake Henry Moore sculptures, and the front drive ended up looking like Tescos car park, complete with low level lighting.

Money will allow you to drive a cart and horses through planning regulations and listed building restrictions.

But the last laugh was on us locals because his tart got bored with it and the best he could get for his £4,5 million investment was a million and a bit..

The new owners are locals, with horses, land rovers, dogs, and from farming backgrounds. They switched all the car park lights off. I saw her mowing the three acres of lawn the other day on her own lawn tractor. Proper person.