Time-scales

It's important to remember that, by definition, a person average
intelligence has an IQ of 100. Therefor, by definition, a large
fraction of the population will always have an IQ under 100 -- even if
every single individual is actually smarter than Einstein.

On Friday, September 5, 2003, at 01:38 PM, victoriatangoman wrote:

> --- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Xenophile"
> wrote:
>
>>> For anyone interested:
>>> =============================>>> ~~~~~~~~ The ORION Initiative ~~~~~~~~
>>> ~~~~~~ launching an off-Earth future ~~~~~
>>> ~~~~~~ for the gifted & talented ~~~~~~~~
>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~ since 1996 ~~~~~~~~~~~
>>> Please visit our Web Site In Progress
>>> at http://pages.ivillage.com/orionaut
>>> =============================>>>
>>> spike
>>
>> Oh. My. God. This old type of thing again. Hey, anybody here
> read
>> the Lagrangia books by Mack Reynolds and Dean Ing? It is
> something
>> like this.
>>
>> So the Orioners go off with 130+ IQ's, and congratulate themselves
>> that they don't have to putup with all the dumb 125's back on
> Earth.
>> They go on with their plan to raise the average IQ through
> selective
>> breeding... and then one of the 122's in one of the "dumb"
> habitats
>> figures out how to put a quantum computing chip and a brain
> together,
>> and suddenly the Earth and Space are crawling with 357's!
>>
>>
>> Xenophile (smart, but not as smart as I might someday become)
>
> What I get from your comments above is a feeling of distaste about
> the self-righteousness and smugness of this proposal and I share it
> to.
>
> But there is a kernal of truth to which they speak. In the past when
> the majority of society was involved in manual labor, intelligence
> while important, wasn't as central to the economic well-being of a
> nation. The cognitively gifted were spread throughout the socio-
> economic realm because of lack of educational and vocational
> opportunities.
>
> We've entered a "knowledge era" where a cognitive elite is forming
> because of better opportunities and this is becoming central to the
> wealth of a nation.
>
> Look at this IQ distribution chart.
>
> http://mypage.iusb.edu/~mlee/ch_13/sld023.htm
>
> Those with IQs of 130+ ( 2 S.D.) make up 2.14% of the population and
> if you look to the statistical relevance of IQ to job performance
> and innovation and you'll find a strong statistical correlation.
> Simply put, the cognitve elite are a driving force in the knowledge
> economy.
>
> Further, high IQ people tend to marry and procreate with each other.
> Anecdotally and empirically evidence abounds. You don't see many
> doctors marrying short-order cooks or many research scientists
> marrying prison inmates.
>
> To further complicate matters, IQ has a high heritability factor,
> which is tilting the "great debate" away from a total environmental
> influence to a growing genetic influence for a variety of behavioral
> and cognitive traits.
>
> The field of study is vast and knowledge is accumulating rapidly. I
> would give an enthusiastic recommendation to a book by Steven Pinker
> called "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature." He is a
> professor at M.I.T. and is not tainted with the racist label that
> some other scholars of genetics have had bear.
>
> The point that many people are making is that low IQ has many
> detrimental personal and societal features and these come at a cost.
> Further, in the West there is a dysgenic trend occuring that when
> considered in the light of the nature vs. nurture dialogue isn't
> reassuring, i.e. more money on social programs will cure the ills of
> society and that low IQ has an entirely socioeconomic cause.
>
> I could go on for a lot longer for this is a very interesting and
> timely subject of study, but I'll leave it here and I do hope you
> get a chance to read the abovementioned book or it delves into
> topics that range from IQ to the philosophical underpinnings of how
> we view the world and neatly ties it all together.
>
> Lastly, the cutoff between a IQ of 130 and 122 as you wrote above is
> marginal while the difference between the average IQ of 100 and 130
> is significant. It is unlikely that the innovation that you wrote of
> would be conceived by a person with an IQ of 100.
>
> My 2 cents on the matter. :)
>
> TangoMan
>

Space tourism could be our ticket to the stars. Save your pennies,
suborbital flights for $100,000 may start in 2005! See
http://www.spaceadventures.com/suborbital for details.

Al Globus
CSC at NASA Ames Research Center
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/~globus/home.html

Views expressed in this email are only my opinions and are not the
position of any organization I'm familiar with.