Vocabulary
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| Vocabulary (lemmas) on the horizontal axis, verbal IQ on the vertical |
Your verbal IQ goes up one point for every 450 new "lemmas" or headwords you learn.
Often, we will encounter a word that we know but it is dressed up in prefixes or suffixes that disguise that word. So having a firm grasp of prefixes and suffixes is fundamental to being able to peel a newly-encountered word down and decoding it.
Let's take the word "Investiture" for example.
The prefix "in..." is more complicated than most. It can mean "in, on, onto" or "not" depending on the context.
The suffix "...ture" is from Latin and is used to form a noun indicating state, status, condition or quality.
If you guessed that "In..." + "...vest..." + "...ture" has something to do with a change of status related an article of clothing being placed onto an individual, you would be exactly right. The ceremony of putting the robe on a newly minted clergyman or judge and thereby confirming their new authority is called...you guessed it... an investiture ceremony.
From a practical standpoint, if you know 30 prefixes, 100 lemmas and 30 suffixes you have 90,000 functional "words" on-tap. If you learn one more prefix or suffix, it adds 3000 more "words" to your functional vocabulary. There is a lot of leverage there!
The factorial nature of language
Language is how most people think. We have voices in our heads and we process information by transforming it into language and then manipulating (comparing, sorting, combining, assigning value) those verbal representations.
The "combining" part is particularly rich and complex.
Combinations can be described mathematically with "factorials".
Imagine two kids walking to the lunch-line at school. There are two ways they can order themselves. Suzy first and then Mary or Mary first then Suzy.
Now imagine Roger joins them. We have the possibility of Suzy, Mary, Roger or Roger, Suzy, Mary or Mary, Suzy, Roger or Roger, Suzy, Mary or Suzy, Roger, Mary or Mary, Roger, Suzy for a total of SIX different configurations.
The number-of-combinations is mathematically described with factorials.
The symbol for the factorial described above is 3! and it is calculated as 1 * 2 * 3 *....* (total number of elements).
As demonstrated above, 3! equals 6.
4!= 24. 5!=120. 6!=720. 7!=5040. 8!=40,320.
They escalate quickly! Maybe that is why they chose the exclamation point to represent factorials.
Invention
The growth in the physical culture can also be described in terms of factorials. New inventions are typically combinations of preinvented elements. A video-game or other electronic devices is an assembly of various cards and discretes and modules of software.
A person who fiddled with hot-rods in the 1930s understood about carburetors and venturii. Consequently, he had an instinctive grasp of how the shape of airplane wings created lift. He also knew about linkages and bell-cranks and wire clips and a host of other mechanicals. When presented with a novel problem, like how to fire a M-2 remotely, he had a mental parts-kit of gizmos he could tinker-toy together to create several workable solutions.
Had that exact, identical fellow been born in 1770 or a contemporary culture without carburetors it is highly unlikely that he would be able to synthesize a solution because "he lacked the intelligence".
The break-out effect
Since the rate of invention explodes due to the ability to integrate pre-invented components, it is possible for cultures with very similar resources to exist at very different levels of wealth. The wealthier culture either started inventing first or invention was more geographically concentrated so new-inventions were rapidly communicated to other inventors who could then implement them in their gadgets.
The Flynn Effect
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| Image from Wikipedia |
The Flynn Effect is the observation that if the parameters used to quantify IQs in 1997 were applied to the results of test scores from 1932, the average 1932 test taker would be assigned an IQ of 80. That is, "IQs rose by 20 points in roughly 65 years).
One possible reason is that we are now immersed in language (both written and oral) and that we have a wealth of "gizmos" to play with. The kid taking the IQ test in 1932 (often in the military) did not have the level of exposure to language and the written word that somebody living in a world where there is a TV or computer in every room is soaking in.
I'm not buying it, (at least not the way you put it). I can estimate, pretty accurately, the intelligence of person (and therefore their IQ test results) after 10 minutes or so of talking.
ReplyDeleteThose with low intelligence (Let's say near 80 IQ)cannot make the connections you describes in the carburetor example. They simply cannot make that leap. They will never be able to learn enough vocabulary or physical concepts to make them to be able to do so.
Sorry that we disagree.
Are you agreeable to the concept that an Amish kid might score an 80 on a modern IQ test but after working in a small engine shop for a couple of months he could make the jump from a venturii to an airplane wing?
DeleteNot at that low level of native intelligence. Maybe a bit higher, but at or near 80, the ability to do so just isn't there. Setting a a specific number is difficult, but I think you get my point. I do see yours, that the test is not the do-all/end-all of a measure of intelligence,....but it is an indicator of overall cognitive ability.
DeleteAt some point, the ability to cognitively make the connections is just missing from many people in the cohort. They simply cannot grasp the concepts, nor can they make the leap from carburetors to wings because they just don't have the ability.
There is a reason that most armies do not want people below a certain level of intelligence in their ranks.
It feels like I am beating a dead-horse, but...
DeleteIf the people who you hired were officially identified as "Intellectually Disabled", the current definition is a person with an IQ of 70 or less AND lacks at least one "Adaptive Skill" like significant problems with:
-Daily living skills, such as getting dressed, using the bathroom, and feeding oneself
-Communication skills, such as understanding what is said and being able to answer
-Social skills with peers, family members, spouses, adults, and others
The difference between an IQ of 70 and an IQ of 80 is that there are four times as many people with IQs between 70 and 80 as there are people with IQs 70 and below.
You were a saint to hire them. They were severely damaged people.
I still believe that a person with an IQ of 80 with no other issues (no drug/alcohol issues, shows up to work every day and doesn't start fights with other workers) can put in an honest day's work in an automotive assembly plant.
The flip-side of that statement is many people with cognitive issues also picked up some mal-adaptive ways of coping with those shortcomings
-Joe
The premise reminds me of the series "Connections" with James Burke.
ReplyDeleteI am going to have to sleep on this one. I definitely do not always think in the same language. I am not certain how it works really, but I think if I have been speaking German then I continue thinking in German until something upsets the system, such as meeting something that I have learned in English or Spanish. I do know that there is a translation lag if I tell a story to my workmates (in German) about something I experienced in my youth (probably in English). The first time I tell it, it has to be removed from the memory and translated. After that, it is available in both languages and can be told with no delay or extra pauses.
ReplyDeleteYou see, there are things that I learned in German and things that I learned in English and it is not automatic that I can explain them in the other language. Works in both directions as well.
So I would probably get two different scores, depending on which language you test me in. Just to make it interesting, English was the first language I spoke, but German is the one that I have spent most of my adult life speaking, so this could become complicated. If you test me in Spanish, which I speak very badly, then I would come out as idiot level.
Thought is definitely not independent of language, assuming you have a language. We need now somebody that grew up alone or at least in a small group separated from society. How will they think? They cannot express themselves for not having a language as such, but presumably they will think in some way.
Nonsense.
ReplyDeleteThis is a popular misconception - especially with civic nationalists and sanctimonious Christians that pride themselves on not seeing race or colour. Clinical psychiatrists like Jordan Peterson have tweaked IQ tests to negate cultural bias and the same people still score better than stupid people. IQ is real, it’s measurable and it’s often a reliable predictive indicator of behaviour and virtue. (Peterson disagrees with that last because he is a classical liberal - science is great until it proves you wrong. We see the same ass hattery in every second two bit “climate study”). You’re getting confused by the fact that there are really two types of stupidity:
There is natural stupidity brought about by birth defects, genetics or physical head injuries. For whatever reason, the mind lacks the data acquisition, processing and synthesis hardware required for effective intelligence, and
There is artificial stupidity (Hi Gary!😂👍) - that is a function of the deliberate short circuiting of those intelligence gathering/producing mechanisms to avoid work, unpleasant truths, and/or things that cause cognitive dissonance.
The empirical evidence is overwhelming in Africa alone. The old nickel is that “you can give a white man a pile of bricks and he’ll build a house. If you give a black man a house he’ll create a pile of bricks.” We see it here in black slums.
I don’t understand you, Joe. As an outhouse agrarian you understand the realities of species, genetics and wildlife behaviours that govern all living things - and it seems that you want to dispense with them when it comes to people…?
Hold on there, Hoss.
Delete"Clinical psychiatrists like Jordan Peterson have tweaked IQ tests to negate cultural bias ..."
While that might be true in-the-lab, the normal resources allocated in giving an IQ test requires that the test writers take shortcuts. Let's say the testers have six clock-hours and four hours with the exams open. To eliminate cultural biases would require them to create a synthetic universe, drill the test-takers on the "physics" of the universe and then present them with problems that can only be solved using the parallel universe's rules.
But that doesn't happen. If a 17 year-old Amish boy takes a test that can be converted to an IQ (say the SAT or ACT), the test writers assume he has been exposed to English language, grammar and vocabulary. They also assume the kids taking the test have been exposed to all of the typical pre-college math curriculum of geometry (proofs), algebra, trig, vectors and so on.
The Amish kid grew up in a home that still speaks low-German. Math stops at arithmetic. Likely he scores 10th% for both verbal and math reasoning and is assigned an IQ of 80.
All measurement tools (and that is exactly what a test is) have a range for which their calibration is solid. Go outside of that range and their indicated measurement drifts from actual.
A kid who grows up in a non-English speaking household and attends Amish schools with Amish centric curriculums is outside of the range where those tests are valid.
Suppose you had a choice of hiring somebody for a maintenance position in a 150 unit motel. Your two choices are a 19 year-old Amish kid named Billy Yoder who has a documented IQ of 80 or Maddy Rigby who just graduated from Hammond High and has an IQ of exactly 100.
If IQ (which really means the ability to perform well on a standardized test and is not identical to INTELLIGENCE) is destiny, then you have no choice but to pick Maddy. If IQ is not destiny, then you are compelled to take a really hard look at Billy.
Really, how often is your maintenance person going to have to solve for the arctan (anything)?
I believe the following are key points:
-IQ is not identical to intelligence.
-IQ tests have a range of people where they generate useful information but that information throws a finite shadow. Outside of that range of people the "IQ" is not very meaningful.
“ While that might be true in-the-lab, the normal resources allocated in giving an IQ test requires that the test writers take shortcuts...”
DeleteNot so. The fact is that any given environment can be a construed as an IQ test. Because I’m a loud and proud racist - let us continue picking on black people?
Blacks in Africa failed to develop beyond Neolithic levels on their own. They lived under constant threat of pestilence, war, and famine. A comparative handful of whites come in, adapt within one generation and conquer the continent. Oh heck - let’s pick on the indians, dot and feather too! despite being given every opportunity to use these tools themselves… none of them have done so. If your theory were correct the blacks wouldn’t need DEI to compete with us. The fact that DEI has failed proves you wrong.
Let’s look at the yellows. You evil American capitalist pig dogs used gun boat diplomacy to open up Japan over 100 years ago. Within 80 years they went from horseback samurai cavalry to fighter planes and aircraft carriers - in 80 years. 40 years after that they’re eating your lunch in manufacturing. Right now the Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese are threatening to do the same to them in turn.
If IQ worked the way you say it does… we’d have truly sentient artificial intelligence by now. Clearly IQ has to be in place before advanced learning can occur. You are putting the cart before the horse…or you are trying to.
Actually… I must retract! The Indians (dot…pull start, push start and kick start) - have the intellect and IQ as the orientals do. My bad!
DeleteMost people don’t know it, but the Japanese independently developed calculus on their own, about 150 years after Newton and Leibniz.
A member of McNara's One Hundred Thousnd
ReplyDeleteSotty. Fat fingers. McNamara's One Hundred Thousand will always be one of them. Some of them were the 'best they could be' Others weren't worth the trouble to take to Mannheim.
ReplyDeleteThere is also the human, even spiritual, aspect of how knowlege is applied. Ask Copernicus how that worked out for him. It doesn't matter if Albert Einstein was born on Easter Island and pointed out that using up the limited stock of timber to build giant statues would kill the civilisation. Better for him not to have been born there and then, because they will kill him as a heretic, and then gnash their teeth as they die off. In our own age, it makes no difference anymore for one to point out that abortions, divorce, foreign aid, crimmigrants, and "renewables" are all suicide...they will kill him first and merely be the last corpses on the pile. Albert is famous because he was born in a place and time where he could be effective, and was allowed to be. The former United States were great because they were settled by a bunch of folks with the experience of how to and not do things, and were superior enough to prevail over the entrenched fools. Now, all places are infested with fools, armed with the tools the wise invented. Ask Noah what came next.
ReplyDeleteIntelligence vs. wisdom. Idiots vs. fools. The beginning of wisdom is..... (search The Scriptures for that quote!).
Stefan v.
Albert is famous because he had the backing of his tribe, which not coincidentally had the ability to mythologize him as a Great Persecuted Genius due to their control of newspapers and films. His scientific work, such as it is, was mostly plagiarized from an Italian scientist who now languishes in obscurity. Any complaints about how unprovable advanced physics theories sound a lot like made up dorm room BS are easily dismissed with some hand waving about how you just aren’t smart enough.
DeleteAnd it’s about the same story with Oppenheimer, and for about the same reasons.
Interesting, and the hot rod analogy is proving out every day with 'simple' things us old farts 'know' how to do vs. kids that grew up playing video games.
ReplyDeleteI did a search for "lemma" in my Brave browser. This is what I got..."the lower and stouter of the two glumes immediately enclosing the floret in most Gramineae". Now I understand perfectly(ish)!
ReplyDelete