Away back in the year 1859, a fellow named
Charlie Darwin published a book entitled The
Origin of Species. Darwin’s book was severely criticized almost
from the start, mostly on a philosophical basis. It is usually cussed and discussed under the
popularized name of Evolution. I
don’t intend to explore that issue here.
You can explore it yourself (or even download the entire book)
by going to http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/origin_of_species/
.
That same book generated yet another controversial issue that went unnoticed
by the unwashed public—but not from the meticulously clean scholars--for
nearly a century. Darwin’s “species”
book almost immediately resulted in new studies, by other scientists,
which ignored the issue of evolution in order to concentrate on the
intelligence differences between species
and, more alarmingly, between the members of each specie. I do intend to explore that issue.
With most of us, IQ is the first thing that pops into our mind when
intelligence measurement is mentioned. IQ was introduced into our popular culture near
the beginning of the last century—shortly after 1900—and stands for
Intelligence Quotient; a ratio of a mental age to a physical age. In the absence of other factors IQ is supposed
to be a constant number throughout life. The physical age is determined by the calendar
and the mental age by a simple test.
To get the IQ of anyone you divide the mental age by the physical
and multiply by 100. For a 15
year old girl who tests out with a mental age of 15 her IQ would be
15/15 X 100 or 100. If another 15 year old girl tested out with
a mental age of 20 then her IQ would be 20/15 X 100 = 4/3 X 100 = 133—quite
high indeed. And so forth at
any age. Thus 100 is considered to be normal, anything below is sub-normal
and anything above is superior.
So much for all that.
Intelligence soon became an emotional topic—like religion and
politics—so every method of testing for it became controversial. Consequently this method of arriving at an Intelligence
Quotient, and every other method, came under attack. But the term, IQ, stuck like glue and, in the
popular parlance, is still used to express any measurement of intelligence
Think about the consequences of this for a moment. Who amongst us hasn’t been amused when reading
about a bank robber who is caught because he wrote his demands on a
piece of paper that had his name and address printed on the back side? Or baffled by the account of someone who actually
“purchased” the Brooklyn
Bridge and tried
to collect tolls on the traffic across it.
It happens and, truth be known, all of us meet or pass by people
everyday who, although they may otherwise appear to be perfectly normal,
cannot read or write without great difficulty, if at all; it may be
the maid who cleans our hotel room or it may be the janitor who does
odd jobs in an apartment complex. Even if you are enormously wealthy someone must
clean the mess you daily create and walk away from; especially if you are enormously wealthy.
None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who has given
the matter a few moments of thought.
In spite of the Declaration
of Independence declaring it to be so, all men are NOT created equal. Some are more equal than others. In any population some are very intelligent,
some are intelligent enough and some are downright stupid. The very stupid ones may not even be aware of
this embarrassing discrepancy but the intelligent ones are and they
daily take advantage of it.
For a variety of reasons the consequences of this awkward
distribution of intelligence in our own species causes at least as much
anxiety as the mystery of how life (our life, any life) might have originated
in the first place. IQ is such
a sensitive issue that the mass media avoids most meaningful discussions
altogether and heaps gobs of criticism on anyone else who might try
to discuss the subject—unless the discussion concludes positively that,
yes indeed, all people are created exactly equal, just as implied by
our constitution.
This is not because newspaper or magazine editors
aren’t aware of the problem. Quite
the contrary, they see and understand better than most because, after
all, they are in the information business. They daily deal with masses of statistics.
Editors and the better reporters understand that
while very few of their readers would qualify as being stupid
a very large number, probably most, have an IQ of less than 110.
Serious discussions about intelligence may make such readers
(or listeners) feel very uncomfortable.
It’s not good business to make your customers feel uncomfortable
unless you can direct this feeling away from you and onto someone else.
This avoidance comes with a price and the price is measured
in human misery. For one thing,
a disproportionately large number of these people at the low end of
the spectrum end up in prison for reasons far removed from reality. For this appreciable segment of humanity their
real crime is that they were born stupid.
Not ignorant, mind you, but stupid.
We’re all born ignorant. This
is but one of the many serious consequences we pile onto a segment of
our population that has practically no resources with which to defend
itself.
Statistics can be VASTLY important in helping us understand
what we are doing and where we are going as a society—as opposed to
what we believe we are doing and where we believe we are going. Very often these are quite different things. IQ is an unforgiving statisticAn understanding
of statistics often—but not always--allows us to intelligently modify
our behavior for the better. It
does not need to be mentioned—but I will—that while most of our fellow
citizens wish to modify your
behavior—intelligently or otherwise—they do NOT equally wish to modify
their own.!
All of this brings up the very, very important question of
the source of these magnificent tests that are used to “measure” IQ.
All of these measures were designed by human
beings and not some omniscient creature from outer space. The means that none are perfect and many are
far from perfect. This fact should
not negate their value. I had
a number of professors who were far from perfect and a few bosses as
well. Yet I managed to get a reasonably good education,
to complete some reasonably good work projects and to advance reasonably
far in my profession. It all
averages out. Good IQ tests are
based on this same philosophy of averages.
They are built from many different points of view contributed
by many different people who have specialized in this field.
This averages out their biases, their ignorance (we are all ignorant
in many areas) and their errors. But,
of course, it requires us to believe in averages.
An IQ number can be attached to almost everything that people do or
are. The college or high school
you and I attended has a measurable IQ.
Your family has an average IQ as does the family next door or
the business down the street. You
may not know this number and quite likely no one knows it. But it would be possible to measure if only
someone or some authority cared or needed to.
Likewise, cities have IQs; Toledo,
Cleveland and Cincinnati as
well as Fostoria, Findlay
and Tiffin. And it is almost a dead certainty that cities
with the highest IQs would be the wealthiest and probably the cleanest
and the most progressive.
Where one stands in this hierarchy is almost totally out
of anyone’s control. The most
striking characteristic of those with the lowest IQs is that these members
are disadvantaged through no fault of their own doing. None of us can choose our parents or our heritage.
None of us can take the credit
(or the blame) for our inherited mental or physical equipment—only with
what we do with it after the fact. Yet
the attitude of a very few of those who are intellectually blessed toward
those not so fortunate leaves no doubt that they believe their gifted
intellect is all their own doing. This
is bad enough when noted in a random individual.
It is tragedic when revealed in a public official or anyone in
a position of authority.
You, dear reader, are not one of those in that small
segment of the population, perhaps 10% or less, with the lowest IQs. If you were you would not be reading this. At this point I offer no solutions to our many social problems--based
on IQ or on any other general characteristic of the population.
Even so it seems clear to me that many of the problems we wring
our hands over are self-inflicted wounds.
Collectively, as a society, we usually know how to improve the
situation greatly and often we know how to correct it permanently.
But the social mores we’ve built up over the years will not allow
many of the most effective solutions.
Hence, we resort to the ineffective and fumble along blindly
with tenth and quarter solutions that ultimately do more harm than good.
One thing for certain is that we can’t turn back the clock.
In my next and final discussion about IQ I’ll take
a quick look at behind-the-IQ-scenes. This
will quickly lead us to conclude that your intelligence and mine, collectively
or individually, is only one small factor affecting the happiness and
success of our lives on Planet Earth.
Email to editor@noguska.com
* *
DISCLOSURES
For
the sake of simplicity--and so the reader will know exactly who is to
blame for this discussion—everything is written in the first person
It’s
accepted practice when writing financial news, for the reporter to reveal
whether he or she has any financial interest (such as stock or bonds)
in the companies being discussed. This
doesn’t guarantee the reporter will be unbiased but it helps a little. In this same spirit I’ll reveal the sad news
(to me) that I do not test out in the high end ranges of “IQ”. Sigh. I do test out above 100 but not seriously above.
In my lifetime I’ve met very, very few of those gifted people
who test out in the high ranges of IQ (above 140 for instance) and I’ve
met or known of an equally tiny number of those who might be fairly classed as morons
(less than 60). This is because
there are so very few people out on either extreme.
Most of us are depressingly ordinary!
Where
possible I will give my sources for statistics and facts used. Statistics are always suspect. Most of the statistics quoted here come from recent syndicated newspaper columns.
They are probably inaccurate because news statistics often represent
the biases of the writers as much or more than they do the facts of
the case. And that is true of
me—and you—as well. However the
statistics used here are quite likely accurate enough to support the
arguments. The reader needs to
be his or her own best judge. Of
course the internet was used liberally as a source of material for this
article. Below are two books
from my own library that were used as references for much of the statistical
discussions.
2)
Elementary
Statistics Henry E. Garret,
University of VA
3)
Basic Statistics
George Simpson, Brooklyn
College and Fritz
Kafka, Pfizer & Co.
Response by Jeannie Beck
