Intelligence

Intelligence is the thing that makes us different from other animals. It is hugely important. What is it and how do we measure it? Others would say can we and should we. This tends to be because they do not like the results. Some sources are at IQ. But first Fred explains brains. Perhaps you should not take him too seriously but there are gems among the wit:-

Fred Explains Brains
QUOTE
Thinking About Intelligence -More Trouble Than It's Worth
I have decided that intelligence is pernicious, and should be extirpated. It just causes trouble. Practically every damn fool, deleterious thing our sorry race has done can be traced to intelligence. It is a bad idea. When it is not merely a bad idea, it is usually a waste of time..... Pick your subject—economics, say, or foreign policy, or crime. You will find brilliant men on Left and Right, each arguing intricately to a bellowing claque of witless followers who don’t know anything about it either. You can tell where they will come out by seeing where they went in—on the Left or on the Right. Generally intelligence has no effect on conclusions, which are glandularly determined. It just rationalizes hormonal inevitabilities. [ So true - Editor ]..... Where intelligence unfortunately does work reasonably well is in the sciences. Really smart men have ideas; lesser men, usually engineers, make them explode; the least men get the triggers. This suggests that we ought to put a bounty on engineers.
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Fault him if you can but at least enjoy his writing. There aren't that many that good.

 

Racial Differences In Intelligence
Intelligence gets measured. It gets compared with race. Propagandists do not like honest answers so they claim that intelligence can not be measured and that race does not exist. They lie on both counts. This article is rather long but has value.

 

Affirmative Action Hoax
It is run by liars. Stephen Gould, the author of Mismeasure of Man is one of the most effective.

 

Ancient Wisdom
Is highly valuable. We have lost out in a big way by not remembering it. It sounds plausible but ask why it was forgotten in the first place. Then ask who resurrected these stories and whence. It is not always an excuse for making up stories for credulous mug punters. It needs a calm look before being taken seriously.

 

Ashkenazi Jews and Intelligence
A medic tells us that evolution and in breeding produced intelligence and some fairly nasty diseases.

 

BELL CURVE : Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life
Intelligence is what makes us different from other animals. Measuring it is worthwhile. Psychologists did then found that they did not like the answers and their implications so they pretend that  measuring IQ is impossible or irrelevant. This is a standard method in the soft sciences. The fact that they dislike is that intelligence is different in different races. It is not politically correct to say this. Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein did, in detail, with the facts, with the evidence. This has made them unpopular in some circles. It is well written and an easy read in what can be a difficult area.

 

Darwin Awards
Are about stupidity and survival. They can become opposites.

 

Origins Of Human Intelligence
QUOTE
Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years—the conversion of just another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly progressing technologies. Once "progress" started to produce new tools, different ways of life and burgeoning populations, it accelerated all over the world, culminating in agriculture, cities, literacy and all the rest. Yet all the ingredients of human success—tool making, big brains, culture, fire, even language—seem to have been in place half a million years before and nothing happened. Tools were made to the same monotonous design for hundreds of thousands of years and the ecological impact of people was minimal. Then suddenly—bang!—culture exploded, starting in Africa. Why then, why there?

The answer lies in a new idea, borrowed from economics, known as collective intelligence: the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural change of a population is the amount of interaction between individuals. Even as it explains very old patterns in prehistory, this idea holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead—because ideas are having sex with each other as never before.
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I am not entirely convinced but it has a degree of plausibility. It does not cover the fact that people who moved north had to develop methods for dealing with harsh winters which means intelligence was a survival characteristic. Harvesting in autumn to survive winter means using foresight.

 

Ig Nobel Prizes
Are on the same lines and definitely not the Nobel Prizes.
QUOTE
The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative -- and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.
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Inequality Taboo
It is taboo to talk about racial differences for example. This leads to bad policy decisions. An important article by Charles Murray, the author of The Bell Curve

 

Nobel Prizes
Have a degree of interest. To some extent they tell us where the brains are. The answer is America, England and Europe - make that Europeans. Some of the awards are down right silly. Filtering them out would make some difference but it would still be white men at the forefront.  Actually Jews do even better. The scientific awards are on the right lines. The peace prize committee are ridiculous.

 

IQ
Is short for Intelligence Quota. It was something psychologists tried to measure. They gave up when they found that they did not like the results.

 

IQ Will Put You In Your Place
Charles Murray, a sociologist explains what the data tells us.

 

Griffe du Lion
Is an academic and a sociologist. He looks at statistics and tells us about the effects of intelligence and heredity. Psychologists started measuring it then decided that they did not like the results. Now they pretend that it cannot be  measured and that IQ is meaningless just as it becomes more important than ever. His methodology and data have been severely criticized - see the Metapedia on the point. This does not mean that he is wrong.

 

Race differences in average IQ are largely genetic
The psychologists in the business agree about the difference and the evidence. Some tell the truth about it. Others suppress it.

 

Why Are Jews So Smart?
QUOTE
Jews comprise an amazing number of history’s most important figures, people who have had a profound impact on humanity: the Patriarch Abraham, whose life and teachings are considered sacred by Jews, Christians, and Moslems; Moses, the lawgiver to Jews and Christians; Jesus and his disciple, Paul, who founded and spread Christianity.... physicist Albert Einstein; the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud; Communism’s Karl Marx; developers of the polio vaccine Dr’s Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin; and the leading developers of the first atomic bomb, as inspired by Einstein’s theories – among them, Felix Bloch, Niels Bohr, Otto Frisch, Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and Edward Teller. Indeed, Jews were so dominant in the field of nuclear physics in Europe throughout the 1930’s that it was often referred to as “Jewish physics.”
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Selection for intelligence is the obvious answer. This article doesn't have one but here is an alternative.