I'm reminded of the effect where people who know little about a subject tend to overestimate their understanding of it and people who know a lot tend to underestimate the same.
EDIT: Dunning-Kruger effect*
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I saw some stuff about calculators undermining people's ability to calculate themselves, but why hasn't anyone complained about simulators or about optimizers yet?
I've oft wondered about the testing. Some are more apt to score well in certain areas with others doing well elsewhere. How do you combine to evaluate as a whole? Someone might have an IQ of 190 in mathematics and one of 10 in biology. Is that person, now counted as IQ of 100, considered average or normal? Not in my thoughts they aren't. I average 130 to 150 in these tests and I do not consider myself an intelligent person. I feel I am quite average indeed. I am very proud of my abilities in some areas and quite dismayed by my lack of prowess in others. In fact I find the content of intelligence testing quite perplexing.
See? I told you I was no better than average.
My first car was a 1949 Plymouth with a flathead six and three on the tree (youngsters may need to Google those words). Of course, as kids do it didn't take me long to blow up the engine. Once it was dead, the next obvious move was to take things apart. Removing heavy parts like the engine block required some teenage ingenuity, a pickup truck, a long chain and a pine tree. It took several trips to the junkyard, and lots of head scratching, and some serious studying in the Chilton's manual, but they car would be running again. I would blow it up again and again, but each time I put it back together it was faster. It would live on for 25 more years before being traded for a Scott vacuum tube stereo. I remember driving that car to work the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded. The old car liked cold days and this day was really cold for Florida. I saw the disaster through the windshield while sitting in the parking lot of the Motorola plant where I worked.
This process repeated, although with some serious process improvements for most of the first half of my life. Yes, cars were a bit harder to take apart, and there was a NEED to put them back together, but old TV's, radios, and the occasional HiFi console were almost never returned to their original state. A few did morph into guitar amps though.
The pictures show a completely disassembled car shell as it looked when it returned from the paint shop. There is an automatic transmission in pieces and the finished trans attached to the engine ready for stuffing into the car. The mostly assembled car is also shown being "tested." All of this was done before cell phones got smart. Note that I was a cell phone designer at the time I built this car. Phones could only do voice then. There was no screen or "data."
Last Wednesday night, Sherri, myself, and our 84 year old neighbor walked out to Sherri's Honda Pilot to go to church. We got inside and when Sherri turned the key nothing happened. The dash looked normal, but the car wouldn't crank. While riding in the back of the neighbor's Toyota, I was Googling away. Well, I had just changed the batteries in both smart keys, so that had to be the problem according to Google. Unfortunately, Google was wrong. The little green key icon on the dash was doing the right stuff, so the problem lied elsewhere. It seems that turning the key to the start position sends a request to the computer and the computer checks a few things to see if it's OK to start the car, and if so, it signals some other electronics to send power to the starter solenoid. Google tells me that on a 10 year old Honda the probability of a "no crank condition" being caused by the starter itself is 38%. OK, let's look there first, surely this modern miracle of automotive technology can still be started with a paper clip like my old Camaro or Mustang could? OK, Google, where is the starter, I can't find it. That's where things got complicated.
I resorted to YouTube for several disassembly videos since it took me over a day to get down to where I could touch the starter. Sure enough the jumper wire from the big fat wire on the starter solenoid to the small terminal produced a click from the solenoid, but no crank from the starter. The starter was dead. The Honda dealer wanted almost $600 for a new starter, and almost $400 to install it, plus the 15 mile tow to get it to the dealer. NOT HAPPENING.
Amazon put a genuine Denso rebuilt starter from Denso in a UPS truck for $230 and Youtube showed me all the tricks needed to finagle the old one out and the shiny one in. The Pilot is running again after a whole day of taking it apart and a whole day of putting it back together. Maybe I could have done it without watching a video or three....or five....or, but it would have been much harder. So maybe a smart phone in the hands of a smart repair tech isn't such a bad thing.
Note that I spent 41 years of my life working at Motorola who invented the cell phone. For several years of that time, I was a cell phone design engineer. Every Sunday morning my phone reports the "screen time" use. My weekly screen time is usually well under an hour......except for last week. My daughter's phone shows lots more.
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That's not the way IQ tests are supposed to work. IQ tests are supposed to measure intelligence, not knowledge. But of course they can't help but be somewhat biased there. Also intelligence tests tend to be written by people who like games and puzzles, so they are biased toward people who are good at puzzles and have practice doing them.
Yes Pano, I have a feeling that's why I score well. Hey, you and I have spent time together, you know I'm just a regular guy. I score well on the tests but I feel equal to most of my peers. No smarter, no dumber.
I am a troubleshooter. Can't design worth a load of banana peels but if it stopped working, I will solve and conquer, like a puzzle solver.
Okay, now I feel smarter. I just went to IQ 101 because of you. Thank you Pano.
I am a troubleshooter. Can't design worth a load of banana peels but if it stopped working, I will solve and conquer, like a puzzle solver.
Okay, now I feel smarter. I just went to IQ 101 because of you. Thank you Pano.
Yes, I understand but knowledge is at the heart of the ability to solve a mathematical problem just like knowledge is at the heart of solving a medical or biological concern or anomaly. The ability to gain and retain knowledge I dare say is integral to what we call intelligence.
Indeed, jan, self praise and ego are definitely flavored with bias.
Me, I may sometimes spout and annoy concerning my talents, but isn't that a human thing?
And screen names are just that..... names, and they often don't convey the actual person's reality, background, or intelligence.
I let my reputation do the talking.
I have tons more if you like. 😉
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The only IQ test i took was in Grade 1. My mom said i scored high but wouldn’t tell me (ever) what it was.
I did well at math, science, maps, etc. I was a social cripple (clinically shy).
dave
I did well at math, science, maps, etc. I was a social cripple (clinically shy).
dave
So while they were all out there trying to be 'normal', you were the one making the best of yout time 😉
I was a misfit in elementary school. I couldn't pay attention in class and thought that my teachers were stupid. Some were! I got in trouble often but couldn't understand why, or what I did. Things degraded at home too, and by grade 3 I spent more time in the principal's office or the library than in class. I had read every science book in the school library, but early on in the 4th grade the school brought in a county psychologist and another person with a title I couldn't remember to analyze me. My mother was there too. I spent nearly a whole day answering stupid questions, drawing pictures that they requested then answering questions about what I drew, and many other things that I didn't understand. I remember the words "genius level IQ" even though I had no idea what that meant. About a week later I was subjected to another round of interrogation by different people including a person that I believe was a medical professional of some sort because he prescribed some pills for a condition I now know as ADHD, which was not well understood in 1959. Unfortunately, I never knew if the pills worked because my father threw them into the toilet before I ever got the chance. Within a month I was removed from the public school system and sent to a "special" school for other misfits. Two years of that didn't help, so I returned to the public school system and continued to struggle. In high school there was a vocational electronics program which I got into. They taught basic theory and TV repair, all vacuum tube based. This place had a huge collection of surplus stuff that had been donated to the school system by local businesses. The school said that "if you can fix it, you can take it home." I didn't even take part in the classwork. I just came into the classroom for the 3 hour long class, went to my bench in the back and fixed stuff. I made sure that the teacher got what he wanted, then gave stuff to other kids in the class. Of course, we made stuff too, mostly guitar amps. I was in my element here, so by 1970 I had the only working color TV in the neighborhood, so lots of people came to my bedroom to watch the lunar landing and moonwalk that was broadcast in color. I also got a Baldwin organ courtesy of the school.
I still fight ADHD today, some days I win, some days I just watch YouTube videos all day long. It has been said that there is a fine line between genius and insanity, I walk with one foot on either side of it. Sometimes I stumble.
I annoyed my high school electronics instructor.
Having made some simple things like little tube amps when I was 15 or so, and read many books and magazines on electronics, but the time 12 grade high school came along I was always jumping ahead of the rest of the class.
They built dumb little "Graymark - designed for learning" projects, and I was designing more complex projects.
But then... since I was such a snot-nosed pupil, the instructor sternly put me up at the front of the classroom to explain what I made in detail.
See what reading and absorbing magazines like Electronics World, Popular Electronics, Electronics Experimenter's Handbook etc etc, all got me into trouble?
Having made some simple things like little tube amps when I was 15 or so, and read many books and magazines on electronics, but the time 12 grade high school came along I was always jumping ahead of the rest of the class.
They built dumb little "Graymark - designed for learning" projects, and I was designing more complex projects.
But then... since I was such a snot-nosed pupil, the instructor sternly put me up at the front of the classroom to explain what I made in detail.
See what reading and absorbing magazines like Electronics World, Popular Electronics, Electronics Experimenter's Handbook etc etc, all got me into trouble?
I has been considered so over the ages - because smart people generally learn quickly and retain information. But that's not all there is to it, problem solving plays a large part. We see that with intelligence tests for animals. Working memory is another part, often overlooked. How much can you hold in your mind for short term while you work on a problem? Recognizing patterns and relating them to other patterns is also a part.
I read somewhere that it took someone several months to get the image of the falling man ( 9 11) out of their head; I think I was the same with the space shuttle explosion, yet ( I'm ashamed to admit ) the next few days we were telling jokes about it at school ( as with the Ethiopian famine and Joey Deacon ), perhaps humour is sometimes the only way we can deal with stuff as we come to terms with it.
Of all the news I saw as a child, the most powerful images were the naked girl after the explosion, and the man in front of the tank.
I used to judge peoples intelligence by their education, but now I think that someone's education is more of a measure of their parents intentions, you can meet an intelligent person from any walk of life, and some supposedly intelligent people can say some remarkably stupid stuff - but most people will except it because of their position/qualifications.
I believe IQ tests are meant to test problem solving abilities, sort of mental gymnastics. Therein lies a bias of course; a tribesman in the Amazon has tremendous problem solving abilities, just not useful for a Rubick cube or congruent triangles.
@cal: reading your post, I'm tempted to call you wise ;-)
Jan
I read somewhere that an intelligent person will know how to solve a problem if it arises, a wise person will know how to avoid problems before they arise.
I've recently found out that I seem to be an INFJ introvert.
I've recently found out that I seem to be an INFJ introvert.
I did read somewhere that the thing intelligence tests measured was your ability to complete intelligence tests. But that said there does appear to be a correlation between success at the tests and ability to comprehend and learn...
In intelligent person knows that a tomato is a fruit, but a wise person knows not to use it in a fruit salad...