Cause or Effect?

It can be surprisingly difficult to tease out which variable is the "cause" and which is the "effect". It is naive to assume one way or another.

Dementia

My father passed away of dementia. It is not one of the better ways to go.

Consequently, I am starting to pay attention to things I can do to reduce my risk of dementia.

As I read the popular-press articles, I get the twitches; what if most of the smart-money had their causality reversed?

For instance, a typical article might state "Data proves that people who are more socially active are less likely to suffer from dementia!"

My dad became increasingly paranoid as he slipped into dementia. He did not relish spending time socializing with strangers. My experience was that the causality was the reverse of what all of the smart-people say. My experience was that people sliding into dementia avoided socializing. People who were not sliding into dementia were less resistant to new social situations.

In a similar way, Dad pulled away from new cognitive challenges and let go of Sudoku as his cognitive abilities slipped away. So do "new cognitive challenges" prevent dementia or is it evidence that it hasn't started to sink its claws into the subject?

The question might seem fussy and academic, but it is not.

Professional and career success

I am engaged in an email discussion with a brilliant person who contends "I.Q. is very highly correlated to professional achievement, therefore IQ is critical for society"

I don't quibble with the correlation between the echelons of upper-management being higher than the general public but I see that another hand might be in play.

High scores on college entrance exams, the ACT and SAT are accepted by MENSA as proof of high I.Q. Ergo, it is difficult to get admitted to a competitive, high-prestige university without high ACT and SAT scores.

To punch into the ranks of middle-management, it is almost mandatory to have a graduate degree, preferably from a high-prestige university. To get admitted into graduate school, one needs to take either the GRE and the GMAT. Both are accepted by MENSA as valid I.Q. tests.

My point is that there are several layers of filters that weed out people who do not have a quick grasp on those types of material that is most amenable to testing. Surely, every student has had the "Ah-ha!" when they realized a tidbit the professor dropped in lecture was going to be on the test because it was a shoe-in for the timed format of the test or the A.B.C.D.(None of the above) format.

It would be totally weird if the usual measures of career success did NOT show strong correlation between IQ and success because it is the primary means used to select and promote with nepotism being a very distant second-place. So generalizing from "Highly successful people have high I.Q.s and therefore society will collapse unless the people with the very highest I.Q.s continue to run the show." contains a bit of circular logic.

Perhaps as important as quick recall of "testable information" is the ability to entertain multiple interpretations of data.

People used to tell jokes. A typical joke involves a quick sketch of the situation and a picture is painted in the listener's mind. Then one additional bit of information is added that invalidates the "obvious" picture and the listener must be able to abandon the literal, obvious interpretation and embrace one of the other scenarios that reconciles the new information with the original (but misleading) word-sketch.

It is tragic that people no longer feel safe sharing jokes. The younger generation has been deprived of a tool that teaches mental agility and society will suffer as a result.