Intelligent/Well-educated.

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Marilyn vos Savant, in her recent column, said that it is possible to educate a person beyond his or her intelligence. (for the definition of intelligence here I am using the standard dictionary). She went on to say that that the negative consequences of this phenomenon, though happening in all types of jobs, are more pronounced in politics than in other specialized fields (such as science, math, engineering, etc.); “Negative consequences” being that the bad or erroneous practical decisions made by the experts and leaders affect the lives of the people.

[What seems to be insinuated in this statement is the effect of (public) mass education in which, practically everyone, at least in the western world, are given the opportunity and are conditioned to believe that anyone can be a mathematician, doctor, scientist, engineer, lawmaker, president of the country regardless of the limits of their intellectual capacity.]

Do you agree with the above outlook, or is it naive to think this way in this day and age where speedy dissemination of information seems to have replaced experts’ autonomy in decision-making? Considering that knowledge is public, shared by experts from different fields, overarching across different specializations allowing, therefore, for deliberations and critical analysis to be shared as well, is it still meaningful to speak in terms of an “intelligent expert”? Or are we okay just having “well-educated, well-informed experts”?

Perhaps, a clear example is the president of the U.S. It is sometimes said that this position is really only symbolic, not having real decision-making power. Experts from the natural sciences to sociology to international affairs have been part of the payroll to provide information and expert’s opinion to presidential decision-making. So much so that it seems any political decisions coming from the executive branch (presidential office) are really not the result of President [insert name of your favorite president]'s deliberating and using his intellectual capacity to the fullest, hence not entirely his decision.

I am having a hard time articulating other implications of this idea, or even illuminating the main problem with it. If you can think of anything else please post.

[Mod: If this doesn’t look like it belongs in philosophy, feel free to move it.]

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I think Marilyn means that some jobs require a mental agility that no amount of preparation can insure. A doctor whose memorized a bunch of things but is ultimately stupid will eventually run into trouble when he has to crunch complex intuitive variables and pioneer a new approach. (Since all patients are different at the granular level, doctors need to be able to think on their feet, aka, be smart.) Some people’s capacity to get a degree or memorize data might outpace their ability to think well enough to actually perform the job in the real world. That rings true. But I wouldn’t call it intelligence. I’d call it talent at a certain job. Intelligence is too loaded a term. Education should demand field testing, as it does for most doctors and astronauts. It is true that research scientists and politicians are less field tested and this could be dangerous. But as you pointed out, presidents are puppets, and bush is very talented at being that and only that in my opinion.

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It’s not just “agility” or speed that’s important either. Understanding what you’ve been told is I think the biggest part of what she’s saying. Some people just accept whatever their teachers tell them and replay their teachers’ opinions for whoever asks. They are like walking tape recorders having gained no understanding of the material they have recorded. The moment a situation comes up for which the tape recorder has no response, it is befuddled and makes bad decisions.

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I agree Aporia. So then in essence they were never truly educated to begin with, since education should include understanding. Which makes Marilyn’s point a bit vague. But to her point, assuming they DO have understanding still wouldn’t help them in a crisis. The dictionary def. of intelligence probably says something like mental speed, accuracy and awareness. It is about Mhz, plain and simple. And in times of high crisis, you just need to be whip smart in addition to being prepared and “educated.” Or another exampl…ever see a martial arts class? There’s a fifty year old mom named Myrna who’s a black belt. Good for her. She knows the drill. But, hey, I wouldn’t want her bouncing at my roadhouse. Marilyn’s right again. (Duh.)

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What is being talked about fits the classical use to the term “moron” and is one of the reasons that IQ testing was developed. The idea was to exclude people that were dull normal from getting into important jobs. The concept was that they might look normal but have a dangerously short-sighted mentality.

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Or we’re talking about normal people making their way into abnormally important, demanding positions. We all agree being a pro-basketball player is about more than just education (of the sport) alone. It takes abnornal agility. Why should being a doctor or president be any different?

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I believe one implication is that the often unmentioned assumption that the quality derived in any task is objectified (at least in theory). A better term would be, standardized.

The belief that any person X can be trained to do task Y and do it well stems from the idea of human beings as plastic, malleable creatures that can be molded to fit the task. Tasks themselves then must be quantifiable in an entirely objective way (or attempted so). What is removed from this is the subjective, human experience ( at least in terms of goals and methods) is unimportant when compared to a desired result.

In the phrase “anybody can be the president” is the glaring contention of what, exactly, a President is. Thus not only does it standardize, it then lowers the standard it contains.

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Hi Arndt:

Nice to see you again.

The problem is that the definition of what intelligence is, and how it is measured, has not been addressed. Marilyn, who at one time had the highest score on an IQ test (over 200), is probably, as you assumed, using the standard measure. However, other than the fact that it is repeatable, it does not seem to measure much.

Probably the highest correlation of intelligence to “real life” is the correlation to success in education. There the IQ has approximately a .5 correlation which is the square root of the actual number which means that only 25% of the time is the number meaningful.

If I recall correctly, there was a Nobel Laureate in Physics with a measured IQ of 100.
On the other side, I have personally measured the intelligences of about a dozen people, that I judged to be bright, using the Wonderlick cognitive test. The highest score, which was well into the top 1%, belonged to a 2nd cousin of mine who can be dumb as a rock.

A much more reasonable approach was provided by Howard Gardner of Harvard which talks about multiple intelligences. However, measures in these areas are also unreliable.

One final comment is that, as I understand it though I do not have a reliable reference, IQ does not correlate well to leadership.

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“Probably the highest correlation of intelligence to “real life” is the correlation to success in education.”

Right and this goes back to the idea that IQ tests are a measure of socialization and culturally accepted forms of information.

My experience with the tests and their content indicate that to be true.

If you think about it the old “moron” prevention system is alive and well in the form of IQ testing.

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i flatly agree adlerian.

it is for sure possible to educate someone above what they can intelligently use.

it is unfortunate that it is then possible for these people to accede in positions based solely on their education (which is easily measurable) and then have a potentially very harmfull sub-par performance. it happens most in those fields where intelligence is most difficult to ascertain, and in those fields where performance is most difficult to ascertain. hence, it happens in politics alot more than in other professional fields

the concept that “anyone can be anything if they try hard enough” is utter bullshit. leave it to the liberals (a la psyque)

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I don’t know why people are always knocking iqs. I can’t help but assume it’s people who wish their iq was higher. For those of you who know me it may come as no surprise that I actually took one of these infamous tests, for real. A real standardized, proctored one, not a free internet one. The test seemed to me to be measuring basic abilities that were non-cultural. Fit these shapes together, discern the odd man out, add up these numbers, recognize patterns, etc. And they were timed so speed was an issue. In fact, looking back, speed might be the biggest issue since none of the questions seemed monumentally hard. (To me anyway.) One thing I notice is that I’ve been educated below my iq level and it makes me bad at many things. I was a horrible waiter because I couldn’t simplify…I noticed too much detail and needed too many qualifiers and sub-instructions to be able to function. Sometimes I think Bush has an advantage by being able to see things in very unnuanced ways. In fact, if you approach medicine and politics like a blind computer might, only looking at specific statistical determiners for success/failure, you would actually improve positive outcomes. Almost every study on the subject supports this, as scary as it sounds. Smart can be a dumb, and dumb smart.

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Yes, having spent a lot of time in academia myself, I have seen it countless times. In school one can be a scholar and read and learn beyond what is necessary or one can just do what is assigned. I recall being at odds with a few teachers as I actually knew more about the subject than they and wrote a paper that couldn’t be understood by them.

That leads me to believe that the often fifth or sixth hand information that a lot of liberal arts people get via never having read the source material is more conducive to success than actually taking the scholarly route. I have heard many professors say that the more knowledgeable a person is the more difficulty they will have on tests.

I recall taking my comprehensive exams at school and finding several questions that did not present the correct answer. However, when you looked at the text books the information corresponded to the test question. Then, when you looked at the source material it did not.

Anyway, education has gone from something designed for intellectuals into a business. People want to get their “degree” as opposed to the knowledge that degree is supposed to represent. Of course, focusing on the degree and not the knowledge is a sign of that “moron” that we were all warned about.

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Gamer,

Trust me (not really) the IQ test is made up of many questions that have to do with culturally and socioeconomically gained information.

My favorite, and personally heartbreaking, question is when you ask kids in the inner city “what is lumber,” and they have no fucking clue. I NEVER had any kid get the question right. There’s also what do you do if you find a wallet in a store and why is it good to have a free press.

I hate to ask these questions because they require that the person have exposure to the concept first and then have had the ability to fully understand it. If you never saw lumber, are raised by poor people or criminals, go to a crappy school, and live with people that never watch the news or buy a paper then you are screwed in this area of the test.

So, many IQ tests do not test native, or inherent, intelligence of the person. That means to me that the tests gauge one’s level of awareness about what is relevant in current cultural levels. I think that they should be called Socialization Tests or Cultural Information Tests.

All that having been said, I have a very high IQ! I’m not sure what that amounts to.

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No, trust me. I took the damn thing. There were no questions on this test about lumber or free press. Not even close. They were number series completion, ability to move shapes around in your head, math speed, logic. Almost no question required cultural knowledge to the degree you mention.
The playing field was level, assuming you know enough language to understand the question. Sure some tests are cultural biased, but there are plenty of culture-fair tests out there.

My point is that when people say iq doesn’t mean anything, they are full of shit. It doesn’t mean everything, especially in terms of actually doing something with your life, but it means plenty in regard to how quickly your mind operates. When they say iq means nothing, what they should instead be saying is that mental speed and acuity mean nothing. And they’d be wrong.

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Ok, now trust me. The tests that you took require a certain amount of practice or exposure to be good at them. A person that plays video games might be better at the shape manipulation that you mentioned. Also, a person that has had some art training might be even better.

There is a subtest in the standard kind of IQ test called Block Design that I am like lighting at. That is because I know how to draw. It would be a long explanation but that knowledge really helps.

All of this stuff is an old debate in psychology.

Anyway, it sounds like the test that you took is atypical and not the kind professionally administered, or was it?

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The other side of the coin is education for the sake of knowledge alone. Not applicable knowledge and not a spade to dig with, just pure learning.

Why do we insist on evaluating everything according to its utility?

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I took a two hour, 6-part, professionally administered test. I think you can improve your iq test performance slightly by being exposed to art or math, or even music…but in this sense I think you’re actually improving the way your brain works.

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I think that the information world is fast outgrowing the storage and handling capacity of the human brain, and the amount of time it takes to sufficiently educate a person to even the ‘simply’ expert level is becoming prohibitive… Let alone for that person to carry on learning/experimenting and produce original data, of a nature applicative and relavent on a multi-discipline level, rather than just to the people in his field

Think of only a century or so ago, then it was possible for your gentleman scientist of leisure to be reasonably confident that after some serious reading - he would ‘know’ absolutely everything the human race had so far discovered.

These days it is hard enough for a good scientist to keep up with all the research being done on his particular tip of the twig of the branch of the trunk of the tree he has chosen to study in. If you get my drift.

What I mean to say is that perhaps education needs to be modified. With the improved storage capacity and retrieval systems of the net - it is almost no longer necessary to fill someone’s memory with chunks of detailed information in specific fields. Only to teach them how to find it, and then to manipulate it, compare it, link it, use it. No longer a case of ‘I know’ but of ‘I know a man who does’.

I think that perhaps many new and fundamentally ground-breaking ideas are not coming about because more and more scientists and other thinkers are inceasingly isolated from one another, from simple lack of time and energy to keep up with the minute details of advances in other none-related fields. eg: Perhaps scientist/engineer A is working on a new propulsion system, and has hit an insurmountable hitch through a lack of a particular material, with xyz properties. Perhaps Scientist/dentist B has recently discovered a way to cement artificially grown/made enamel/tungston amalgums into a matrix of buckytubes to produce perfect replacement teeth - which also by accident have properties xyz… But because the two disciplines are wildly different, and isolated from eachother, the dentist’s new material and the engineers lack, never get put together.

Perhaps there should be a new discipline - information-connectivity studies. A discipline that takes the vast stores of available information flying around willy-nilly, and tries to put the whole jigsaw together. Shuffle what is here, to help produce what is not here yet.

Anyway - Dat’s all I gotta say on d’business at hand.

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intelligence can also be based on memory.

for instance someone with a good memory can memorize all that they are given, pass the exam of such and such, but still have NO ability to BRING together what they know and go beyond what they know. that to me is intelligence. not the ability to regurgitate what they have learned. but the ability to reach a higher understanding. this is where new ideas/concepts come from. sometimes wrong, sometimes right and sometimes some portion inbetween, wrong and right.

in the end, a deeper “INSIGHT”. of such and such.

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Hi to all:

I thought I might provide some statistical data regarding IQ tests and performance in different areas. Maybe you can draw your own conclusions about these facts.

ProfessionCognitive Percentile
Attorneys88%
Research Analyst87%
Teachers, Chemists85%
Engineers, Executives85%
Auditor81%
Purchasing Agent68%
Registered Nurse*****63%

Unfortunately, I do not have the coefficients of correlation that match these occupations. The following are based on the information that I have available.

ProfessionCoefficients of CorrelationActual percentage
Bank Tellers**************.3210.24%
Store Managers*******************.4318.49%
Supervisors**********************.4217.64%
Industrial Engineers.4116.81%
Operating Room Personnel**********.53**28.09%

You are free to draw your own conclusions, but my conclusion is that IQ’s are ineffective for measuring success at any particular profession. Additionally, I do not believe that IQ’s are a good measure of intelligence. Frankly, I thought that Gardner’s books were well accepted on this topic.

But maybe Gamer is right, and Gardner, Stephen Gould, and others challenging the very old conventional thoughts on this matter are just fools trying to compensate for their own intellectual inadequacy.

Maybe people with high IQ’s have some self serving opinions on this matter. No - that can not be possible.

I would agree with the TheAdlerian that very low IQ’s probably should be excluded from some professions.