X-Message-Number: 11505
Date: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 14:55:23 +0100
From:  (John de Rivaz)
Subject: Re: Intelligence tests

In article: <>  Thomas Donaldson 
<> writes:
> if the people of 100 years ago might have scored as mentally 
> deficient on our tests, no one can seriously believe they were really
> mentally deficient considering what they accomplished in their time.
> And so the discoverers of electromagnetism, Gallois, Henry, and Gauss
> were mentally deficient?

Two points:

1. Intelligence seems to have more to it than a simple ability to do 
arithmetic or solve clever puzzles. Someone who may be very good at these 
things may still only spend his time in commonplace leisure activities and 
work in some repetetive task, even if such repetition is maybe upmarket 
tasks such as doing people's accounts or participating in law court cases. 

I conjecture that intelligence may be a vector quantity, z=x+jy, where j= 
the square root of minus one. The value of y may be some measure of the 
willingness to think laterally and to consider new ideas. Thus someone like 
Dr Pegg may have a high value of x to get him through the exams he has 
passed to get the qualifications he has, but a low value of y that makes him 
quite incapable of *considering* the arguments surrounding cryonics, and 
comming up with his infamous and ill conceived hamburger statement. Note 
carefully that I said "considering" not necessarily "agreeing with".

2. Many respected scientists such as Tesla and Heaviside were also quirky 
individuals. Dr Clifford Pickover has recently published a book entitled 
"Strange Brains and Genius" which provides potted biographies of some of 
major and a few lesser known scientists and also enters into discussion 
about intelligence. It even has a few pages on cryonics, mentioning Alcor 
and the Society of Venturism.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0306457849/longevitybooksA/
for more details.

 
-- 
Sincerely, John de Rivaz
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