chairman bill wrote:Er, I thought I was the Prince of Darkness & therefore the soul-sucker. Then again, I might have mis-heard the last bit ...

Made of Stars wrote:

Mazille wrote:BUT, everyone has to assume that they are right in the first place and that the committee is only a formality anyway. That's how you elitists do that, right?

Don't underestimate the importance of formalising a formality though. Shall we take a vote? Can I get a second?

Made of Stars wrote:

Mazille wrote:Well, I honestly wouldn't have said no to some more beers with you, mate, but - alas - you were busy sucking souls.

Trudat. Tasty morsels they were too.

Made of Stars wrote:

Mazille wrote:You're welcome to come back any time, though. The next beer's on me.

I should be in Stockholm in September. That's near you, innit?

YanShen wrote:It's sometimes been stated that the top 10% of society, from an intellectual perspective, contribute virtually everything of value. If we want to be even more precise, we might argue that only the top few percent of the IQ distribution make any real scientific contributions to humanity. For instance, Geoffrey Miller has argued that an IQ of roughly 130 is generally the cut-off point required for being able to make original scientific contributions. If one assumes a normal distribution for IQ with a mean of 100 and a SD of 15, this corresponds roughly to the top 2.275% of society at large. The bottom line is quite clear. A few people are carrying the vast majority of society on their backs, allowing them to enjoy the accouterments of modern civilization.

And yet the left frequently despises what it labels as elitism. I struggle mightily to understand this sentiment. When a few people work hard and utilize their intellects, making vastly disproportionate contributions to humanity, shouldn't they be revered rather than scorned? Can someone explain where this source of anti-elitism comes from? Does anyone think that its vastly hypocritical for those on the left to criticize elitism on the one hand, but partake of the fruits of modern civilization on the other?

YanShen wrote:The Feynman number has often been asserted to be flawed. Steve Hsu argues that some tests have relatively low ceilings for math and verbal ability.

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/an ... inent.html

Feynman's 124: in this context one often hears of Feynman's modest grade school IQ score of 124. To understand this score we have to remember that typical IQ tests (e.g., administered to public school children) tend to have low ceilings. They are not of the kind that Roe used in her study. One can imagine that the ceiling on Feynman's exam was roughly 135 (say, 99th percentile). If Feynman received the highest score on the mathematical portion, and a modest score of 115 on the verbal, we can easily understand the resulting average of 124. However, it is well known that Feynman was extremely strong mathematically. He was asked on short notice to take the Putnam exam for MIT as a senior, and received the top score in the country that year! On Roe's test Feynman's math score would presumably have been > 190, with a correspondingly higher composite IQ.

Mazille wrote:

Made of Stars wrote:

Mazille wrote:BUT, everyone has to assume that they are right in the first place and that the committee is only a formality anyway. That's how you elitists do that, right?

Don't underestimate the importance of formalising a formality though. Shall we take a vote? Can I get a second?

I second the motion.

Doubtdispelled wrote:That's two secondings and two thirdings.

Who's going to go fourth.....

But quite honestly, if we can't even get the proposing and seconding right, what hope has this committee got?

alienpresence wrote:All human intellectual elites are hereby disbanded on account of being too dim. I would like to welcome my cat....if I knew where the blighter was.

YanShen wrote:Boy, I can tell that some people on this forum would rather bite off their own arms than concede that certain individuals contribute disproportionately to human civilization.

Mazille wrote:There you go:

YanShen wrote:Not really Mazille. If you examine what I wrote, I stated that first and foremost his arguments were reasonable, and that you'd expect that from someone intelligent. I never stated that he was first and foremost intelligent, and therefore his arguments were reasonable. You're imputing a causal link to my statement, where none exists.