Smartest man in the world in favor

[SohlTofang]

Of "intellistocracy", A world in which people with high intelligence rule with a dictator like reign. Democracy is no more and Eugenics is openly practiced.

[Tome89]

Sounds ironically stupid.

[poxpower]

I like the part where he talks about brain size relating to intelligence.
He goes "well centipedes have small brains and they're pretty stupid" then names a couple increasingly larger animals finally stopping with man.
Well why aren't whales rocketing to the moon right now on their time-traveling jetpacks?
Haha. NOT SO SMART IS HE?

anyway he sounds like a college freshman.

[aviewaskewed]

I'm curious how he was determined to be "the smartest man in the world". I mean, Eugenics is proven to be a flawed, insane theory. Brain size has all but been dismissed as correlative to intelligence right? Yeah...this sounds more to me like maybe "the smartest man in the world of the 1800s" or some such to me :)

[Warforger]

At 11/12/10 02:14 PM, aviewaskewed wrote: I'm curious how he was determined to be "the smartest man in the world". I mean, Eugenics is proven to be a flawed, insane theory. Brain size has all but been dismissed as correlative to intelligence right? Yeah...this sounds more to me like maybe "the smartest man in the world of the 1800s" or some such to me :)

I"m pretty sure its measured by IQ tests and the amount of tricks he can do, like count cards in a game of poker.

[poxpower]

At 11/12/10 02:14 PM, aviewaskewed wrote: I'm curious how he was determined to be "the smartest man in the world".

IQ tests

Eugenics is proven to be a flawed, insane theory.

By who?

[QuantumPenguin]

IQ tests simply don't work, no form of standardised testing is capable of accurately ordering people by their intelligence.

I didn't watch the video, but if "intellistocracy" is just "deffering to people who are smarter than you in the field of interest", then yes, absolutely unreservationally, YES. I'm absolutely for that, no question. Being somebody who is relatively advanced in my field (mathematics), it makes me ill when people significantly less adept make wild unfounded claims.

You can liken this to the recent threads concerning the cocaine vs alcohol findings. Even when the facts are staring people in the face they still make retard comments like "lol ofc that isn't true because alcohol is legal and cocaine isn't HAHA". People like this simply don't have the capacity for scientific analysis. I have complete faith in Professor David Nutt not only because he's a genius, but because he isn't financially motivated and so has absolutely no reason to lie, and while I have a decent understanding of chemical processes, he far far outstrips me and I would defer to his brilliant mind every single time.

I guess my point is, "deffering to people who are smarter than you in the field of interest"-ocracy can still only work if there exists no profit motive. It's basically just scientific socialism.

The problem still remains that while people are still basing "intelligence" on standardised testing then the idea is more open to corruption than even our existing political systems. The IQ test was supposed to be the ultimate pinnacle of standardised testing, and it's an abysmal failure to this date. Fix this problem and maybe you could debate the idea a bit more, believe me nobody would love to see this implemented more than me, but as of right now it's completely ridiculous.

[Chris-V2]

Big brains = smart, guys!

I mean just look at Dinosaurs. They were so clever they buried their remains deep underground to test our beleif in god whilst never existing at the same time!

There is no means of quantifying intelligence. Doing well in an IQ test only determines how good you are at taking IQ tests and any testing mechanism you care to name implies you'd be interested in finding out yourself and that you would answer sincerely.

[Warforger]

At 11/12/10 03:40 PM, Chris-V2 wrote: Big brains = smart, guys!

I mean just look at Dinosaurs. They were so clever they buried their remains deep underground to test our beleif in god whilst never existing at the same time!

There is no means of quantifying intelligence. Doing well in an IQ test only determines how good you are at taking IQ tests and any testing mechanism you care to name implies you'd be interested in finding out yourself and that you would answer sincerely.

Dinosaurs didn't have big brains though, didn't the T-Rex's head have a brain the size of a pea?

[Chris-V2]

This is true, but brain-body ratios always vary.

Also, was a really disparaging remark towards his genetic puritanical ideals. He reveals a lack of understanding in numerous areas, including evolutions and genetics - any humans DNA is changing in a real time basis from several factors - Symbiogenesis for instance. The process of selection is probably one of the smaller parts, Eugenics was never going to work.

He also never tried to fight the system to capitalize on his intelligence. Tough titty to anyone who claims to be smart and not be able to get on. Once you understand a problem completely (and he seems to think he does) solving it becomes easy.

[SolInvictus]

At 11/12/10 04:33 PM, Warforger wrote: Dinosaurs didn't have big brains though, didn't the T-Rex's head have a brain the size of a pea?

i think large nuts (lol) to small fruit are more representative.
there is a relation between size intelligence, but its ratio to body size (me has more brain by pound than stoopid whale!)... and its not particularly indicative of intelligence in humans.

i think i had read something about women having both smaller brains and brain/weight ratios yet scoring higher than men on some test... [which i can't name or give more details about :( ]

[Korriken]

Given that I've worked with animals that are more intelligent than some humans I've been forced to work with tells me that intelligence varies wildly, even with being of similar brain sizes.

there's more to intelligence that people seem to want to understand. I know a guy who is piss poor at most "academic" fields but makes some of the best food i've ever tasted. is he an idiot? not when he's in the kitchen. in the kitchen he's a genius.

what most people refer to "intelligence" they only mean the academics, many of which aren't really THAT smart. yeah, they got through college and whatever, but put anyone in a situation where they're not using the couple of skills they picked up in college and they're going to look like bumbling idiots.

[orangebomb]

So in other words, The smart people are fit to rule, whereas the idiots of this world are second class citizens or worse.

Hmm, what does that remind me of? *cough* Nazi Germany. *cough*

People seem to forget that intelligence applies to more than just academics, like if they were skilled in playing hockey or they were master chefs, you don't want to get rid of those guys, now do you? That kind of rule can {and will} result in failure, because there are too many idiots out there, and the philosophy is simply too narrow and shallow for it to ever work.

[poxpower]

At 11/12/10 07:33 PM, Korriken wrote: Given that I've worked with animals that are more intelligent than some humans

Haha now I"m wondering "is he joking?hmmmm".

Anyway I love how we all make assumptions and get on his case based on a clearly badly cut and edited interview of him where he didn't get to explain any of his ideas in any detail.

Though I will say that if he really hates being a bounce that much, it can't be that hard for a man like him to find something else. For fuck's sake, get a bank loan and go to med school or something, it's not like you'll flunk.

Maybe he just feels like everyone will be against him and try to hold hm back. BAH

[Gario]

I love Intelligence threads, where people toss around all sorts of misguided information and claiming that 'something just can't be possible', when it's actually been scientifically proven to be true.

At 11/12/10 02:14 PM, aviewaskewed wrote:

:I mean, Eugenics is proven to be a flawed, insane theory.

Sure is, unless your goal was to isolate the smart people so that dumb people didn't exist anymore, thus shifting the bell curve in favor of the smart people (which was his goal, in that part of the discussion) - then it's perfect. That's not most people's goal, though.

:Brain size has all but been dismissed as correlative to intelligence right? Yeah...this sounds more to me like maybe "the smartest man in the world of the 1800s" or some such to me :)

Brain size is actually shown to be correlated with intelligence. Perhaps that particular article isn't perfectly satisfying, but there have been other studies and tests to show that it's true. How he came to the conclusion was very stupid, though - to break his process in two, look at the brain of a blue whale and tell me that it's smarter than a human. Yeah, it doesn't work, people.

At 11/12/10 02:44 PM, QuantumPenguin wrote: IQ tests simply don't work, no form of standardised testing is capable of accurately ordering people by their intelligence.

Isn't this a cyclic statement? What is 'intelligence' to you?

Let me do everyone a favor and define it, as it's normally attributed in the field of Intelligence theory. 'Intelligence' is synonymous to 'Liquid intelligence' - it's entirely dependent on how fast someone learns something. An intelligent person can learn something much quicker than an average person, given all other things remain constant. IQ tests actually maps that quite accurately.

The problem still remains that while people are still basing "intelligence" on standardised testing then the idea is more open to corruption than even our existing political systems. The IQ test was supposed to be the ultimate pinnacle of standardised testing, and it's an abysmal failure to this date. Fix this problem and maybe you could debate the idea a bit more, believe me nobody would love to see this implemented more than me, but as of right now it's completely ridiculous.

I personally attribute 'Intelligence' to the G-factor, which a standardized IQ test can get fairly accurately. You should check out what a 'g-factor' is - it's pretty interesting.

At 11/12/10 03:40 PM, Chris-V2 wrote: There is no means of quantifying intelligence. Doing well in an IQ test only determines how good you are at taking IQ tests and any testing mechanism you care to name implies you'd be interested in finding out yourself and that you would answer sincerely.

Well spoken from someone who doesn't understand the field (don't feel bad - not many people do). The IQ of a person is actually correlated with nearly everything about the person, from the symmetry of his/her body (which is a strong factor in attractiveness) to how well that person can learn a second language to how quickly the person can learn to repair a car. The IQ determines a whole lot about the person, whether you believe it or not.

:He also never tried to fight the system to capitalize on his intelligence. Tough titty to anyone who claims to be smart and not be able to get on. Once you understand a problem completely (and he seems to think he does) solving it becomes easy.

Now that's something I agree with 100% in here. The smart guy is being a pretentious idiot by shunning school and such because it treated him bad earlier in his life. Instead of bitching about it he should really just do something about it, instead.

A quick note on something he said that no one seems to have caught, yet. Has anyone thought about the bell curve that he's talking about? If you want to know what it is, exactly, the mean is 100 IQ, the standard deviation is 15 and it's a natural curve. In short, this means that democracy is mostly run by people who are under 115 IQ (which isn't that great, people), and by most I mean over 80%. Wuite frankly, I've already come to the same conclusion that democracy is doomed to fail, for this very reason. But whatever - it's not a view I share that often. It's just relevant to the thread, so why not throw that in?

[LordZeebmork]

Chris Langan is a crackpot. Intelligence doesn't do all that much to defend against cognitive bias. And that IQ test is... They're using vocabulary? Really? People still do that? His background doesn't seem that impressive either; I could read before the age of 2 and I started studying number theory when I was 6 or 7. Big fucking deal.

I once knew a guy who claimed to have an IQ of 180. Crazy-ass forklift driver whose parents were supposedly in the brewing industry. Turned out he had just taken a test in some magazine somewhere, which it sounds like this guy did also.

At 11/12/10 03:40 PM, Chris-V2 wrote: There is no means of quantifying intelligence. Doing well in an IQ test only determines how good you are at taking IQ tests and any testing mechanism you care to name implies you'd be interested in finding out yourself and that you would answer sincerely.

Doing well on an IQ test determines how good you are at taking IQ tests, but skill at IQ tests is correlated with other things that aren't even remotely related to IQ tests.

[Ulceration]

Since when does Intelligence=sanity?

[chairmankem]

At 11/12/10 12:29 PM, poxpower wrote: I like the part where he talks about brain size relating to intelligence.
At 11/12/10 02:14 PM, aviewaskewed wrote: Brain size has all but been dismissed as correlative to intelligence right?

Way to ignore the point where he said there isn't necessarily a proven correlation between cranial size and intelligence. He says that it is his opinion that brain size influences it, but that obviously isn't a quantitative correlation. Just because he says that centipedes are dumb because their brain is smaller, it doesn't mean that he's saying whales are vastly smarter because they have bigger brains.

Comparing a human's brain and a whale's brain would be like evaluating the difference between Windows and Linux. You can run a lot more useful programs on a Windows machine without the need for fancy tricks. The difference between a human's brain and a centipede's brain might be the difference between the aforementioned operating systems and, say, a toaster.

At 11/12/10 02:44 PM, QuantumPenguin wrote: I didn't watch the video, but if "intellistocracy" is just "deffering to people who are smarter than you in the field of interest", then yes, absolutely unreservationally, YES.

So you would listen to people who were accepted by convention as smarter than you unconditionally? Isn't the point that society should be ruled by intelligence, not intelligent people? How is deferring to a 'smarter' person without any thought whatsoever justified?

At 11/13/10 01:18 PM, LordZeebmork wrote: Chris Langan is a crackpot.

Well, yeah, of course. He may be intelligent, but trying to prove that God exists is an inherently futile endeavor. Besides, even if he is the smartest person to have ever lived (which he probably isn't, by his own admission) it doesn't mean he has the answers to everything.

Intelligence doesn't do all that much to defend against cognitive bias.

Which is what ultimately makes people sound dumber than they really are, or in most cases, as stupid as they really are.

And that IQ test is... They're using vocabulary? Really? People still do that?

That reminds me of that famous "oarsman:regatta" question on the SAT. Lack of language skills doesn't necessarily preclude intellectual ability in any way.

Doing well on an IQ test determines how good you are at taking IQ tests, but skill at IQ tests is correlated with other things that aren't even remotely related to IQ tests.

Just like doing well on the SAT determines how good you are at taking the SAT. If I had taken a prep course or practiced over and over like a trained monkey I would have gotten a higher score, but I didn't because I am a human being, not a chimp. I got a high enough score anyway, so it doesn't even matter.

He does get quite a few things right about the education system though. You do not need more than a decade to develop rudimentary math and reading skills.

[chairmankem]

At 11/13/10 02:01 AM, Gario wrote: Now that's something I agree with 100% in here. The smart guy is being a pretentious idiot by shunning school and such because it treated him bad earlier in his life. Instead of bitching about it he should really just do something about it, instead.

You're being presumptuous for assuming he's being pretentious. He did go to college. He hated that too for different reasons. Either way, does it seem like he's pouring his heart out over it and whining about it? No.

[SmilezRoyale]

The worlds smartest man makes two fundamentally flawed presuppositions.

- Intelligent Oligarchs have any reason to 'care' about their 'ignorant' citizens [i.e. subjects]

- People of high intelligence and personal benevolence have a greater marginal propensity to aim at positions of political power than meglomaniacs, psychotics, and sociopaths. Although these groups do tend to be intelligent, they also tend to be insane.

[Gario]

At 11/13/10 02:40 PM, chairmankem wrote:

At 11/13/10 02:01 AM, Gario wrote: Now that's something I agree with 100% in here. The smart guy is being a pretentious idiot by shunning school and such because it treated him bad earlier in his life. Instead of bitching about it he should really just do something about it, instead.

You're being presumptuous for assuming he's being pretentious. He did go to college. He hated that too for different reasons. Either way, does it seem like he's pouring his heart out over it and whining about it? No.

He hated it because of a bad experience. Instead of getting over that experience, though, he decided to forget all about it and go into bouncing, then he continues to get angry over how bouncing isn't the greatest job for him. It's not the focus of the video, of course, but he does keep referring back to the fact that he'd a bouncer like it's a bad thing, which implies that he doesn't like it, and yet he is unwilling to do something about it. I don't think I'm presuming very much - I'm getting this entirely from what's on the video, there.

[Gunner-D]

At 11/12/10 02:23 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 11/12/10 02:14 PM, aviewaskewed wrote: I'm curious how he was determined to be "the smartest man in the world".

IQ tests

Administered by? The most elite would be the one to create this test. Therefore, I conclude that there must be a messiah of science to come and rule over the masses initially.

So the supreme leader of this society will be the son of the intelligent alien god, like scientific christianity.

[Gunner-D]

I had just watched this OP's youtube link after my first post, and I do have to say, my assumption was pretty much dead on.

He is waiting for the second coming.

[poxpower]

At 11/13/10 02:30 PM, chairmankem wrote:

Way to ignore the point where he said there isn't necessarily a proven correlation between cranial size and intelligence.

Way to ignore everything he says after about how it's his opinion that there is a correlation between brain size and intelligence.
It's like if I said "ok we haven't proven that penis size is related to being good at basketball, but it's my opinion that it is. Think about it, ants can't even lift a ball. Cats can punt it around. Monkeys can grab it and throw it. White people can play but they're not the best. Black people are the top players!.

That's pretty much exactly the level of what he said.
As if I would let that shit go.

[Gario]

At 11/14/10 01:42 AM, poxpower wrote: It's like if I said "ok we haven't proven that penis size is related to being good at basketball, but it's my opinion that it is. Think about it, ants can't even lift a ball. Cats can punt it around. Monkeys can grab it and throw it. White people can play but they're not the best. Black people are the top players!.

That's pretty much exactly the level of what he said.
As if I would let that shit go.

His argument is exactly like you said (lol basketball penis), and I agree that it was a terrible argument, but whether by lucky guess or actual knowledge, as far as humans go head size is correlated with 'intelligence' (IQ, in this case), with an r factor of 0.3. Just sayin', for everyone claiming that it's completely false, it's actually proven to be true, so there isn't really room for guessing, here.

[Chris-V2]

At 11/13/10 01:18 PM, LordZeebmork wrote: Chris Langan is a crackpot. Intelligence doesn't do all that much to defend against cognitive bias. And that IQ test is... They're using vocabulary? Really? People still do that? His background doesn't seem that impressive either; I could read before the age of 2 and I started studying number theory when I was 6 or 7. Big fucking deal.

I once knew a guy who claimed to have an IQ of 180. Crazy-ass forklift driver whose parents were supposedly in the brewing industry. Turned out he had just taken a test in some magazine somewhere, which it sounds like this guy did also.

At 11/12/10 03:40 PM, Chris-V2 wrote: There is no means of quantifying intelligence. Doing well in an IQ test only determines how good you are at taking IQ tests and any testing mechanism you care to name implies you'd be interested in finding out yourself and that you would answer sincerely.

Doing well on an IQ test determines how good you are at taking IQ tests, but skill at IQ tests is correlated with other things that aren't even remotely related to IQ tests.

Logical fallacies 101, correlation does not imply causation.

That is to say being good at IQ tests and being intelligent (whatever definiton we go by here) may correlate but that does not mean that smart people are good at IQ tests. The fact that he could not seem to understand the problem with, say, genetic selection in our uber-narrow gene pool (Humans genetic variation between two people from different continents is similar to that of two sibling monkeys, for example) or even the idea that the best man for the job is not necessarily the most capable person of doing the job.

He has difficulties with pragmatism, really. He has the stereotypical intellectuals idea that intelligent beings shouldnt be caught up in morals. Fact is with all his brains he still wouldnt be able to muster the people skills to run a country for more than a few weeks.

Now tell me the most intelligent person in the world decided to leave a University because he felt academia was making life hard for him (which people shouldn't do, it was wrong of them) and chemicaly castrate people who are geneticaly inferior (again, define a gene we want compared to a gene we dont want when a single one has hundreds of functions) and after that tell me the concept of an IQ isn't inherently flawed.

[SergeiPetrenko]

I feel as if Sergei is the smartest man in the world!!! No, but for real just because he has a massive brain does not make him the smartest man, for Sergei has met big headed stupid people, which shows how flawed that theory is!

[chairmankem]

At 11/13/10 10:39 PM, Gario wrote: He hated it because of a bad experience. Instead of getting over that experience, though, he decided to forget all about it and go into bouncing, then he continues to get angry over how bouncing isn't the greatest job for him.

Bad experience? More like several bad experiences and a rather terrible life overall. It's rather pretentious to tell someone who had an abusive stepfather and a terrible childhood to "get over it." And so what if he complains about bouncing? A job is a job and it's something that he can do, it doesn't really matter if he complains about it or not.

At 11/14/10 01:42 AM, poxpower wrote: Way to ignore everything he says after about how it's his opinion that there is a correlation between brain size and intelligence.
That's pretty much exactly the level of what he said.

Not really. A penis has nothing to do with the ability to manipulate a ball whereas the brain has everything to do with intelligence.

Making a correlation between head size and intelligence is a vast simplification, but it's an interview, what are you going to do? The man isn't a neurologist, even if he is the 'smartest man in the world'. Intellectual ability in one field doesn't necessarily translate to amazing insights in particularly every field of study.

A much more thorough (yet still rather crude) explanation of the relationship of cranial capacity to intelligence would be to say that the quantity of functional neural units in the brain available for the ability to recognize patterns and relationships has an effect upon an organism's overall intelligence regardless of volumetric displacement.

[Gario]

At 11/14/10 10:02 PM, chairmankem wrote:

At 11/13/10 10:39 PM, Gario wrote: He hated it because of a bad experience. Instead of getting over that experience, though, he decided to forget all about it and go into bouncing, then he continues to get angry over how bouncing isn't the greatest job for him.

Bad experience? More like several bad experiences and a rather terrible life overall. It's rather pretentious to tell someone who had an abusive stepfather and a terrible childhood to "get over it." And so what if he complains about bouncing? A job is a job and it's something that he can do, it doesn't really matter if he complains about it or not.

Yeah, his step-father has nothing to do with college. Negligent high school, maybe, but not his step-father, and that wasn't an 'extreme, life changing' experience, either. A poor high school experience and a single bad college run and he's hiding in the hills. I don't even care that he doesn't want to go, either - more power to him. I simply don't see why he has to complain about how he's relatively worthless because he has a job that doesn't fit his intelligence and he has the faculties to change that, if he wanted to.

Perhaps you're missing the point. The guy is the world's smartest guy around, so how is it pretentious for me to believe that he should have the ability to rise above personal problems? Other people have done it before (other less-smart people, by the way), so why can't I hold him to at least that standard? Stop appealing to emotion and answer why I can't hold the supposed 'smartest man on earth' to a higher standard that normal.

[chairmankem]

At 11/15/10 02:37 AM, Gario wrote: The guy is the world's smartest guy around, so how is it pretentious for me to believe that he should have the ability to rise above personal problems?

Because genius or not, people are still human.

And if success had anything to do with intelligence, why isn't this guy (or any very intelligent person for that matter) a billionaire then?