Re: [dylug] Isaac Asimov: What is intelligence, anyway?

hey debs , 
loved the asimov piece. keep sending more stuff like
this. 
vivek 
"I never let my schooling interfere with my education"
 -- Mark Twain 

 
--- Debajit Adhikary <[email protected]> wrote:

> "What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the
> army, I received the
> kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and,
> against a normal of
> 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a
> figure like that,
> and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It
> didn't mean
> anything. The next day I was still a buck private
> with KP - kitchen
> police - as my highest duty.)
> 
> "All my life I've been registering scores like that,
> so that I have
> the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent,
> and I expect other
> people to think so too. Actually, though, don't such
> scores simply mean that I am very good at answering
> the type of
> academic questions that are considered worthy of
> answers by people who
> make up the intelligence tests people with
> intellectual bents similar
> to mine?
> 
> "For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who,
> on these
> intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored
> more than 80, by my
> estimate. I always took it for granted that I was
> far more intelligent
> than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my
> car I hastened to
> him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored
> its vitals, and
> listened to his pronouncements as though they were
> divine oracles -
> and he always fixed my car.
> 
> "Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised
> questions for an
> intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a
> farmer, or,
> indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every
> one of those tests,
> I'd  prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too.
> In a world where I
> could not use my academic training and my verbal
> talents but had to do
> something intricate or hard, working with my hands,
> I would do poorly.
> My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a
> function of the
> society I live in and of the fact that a small
> subsection of that
> society has managed to foist itself on the rest as
> an arbiter of such
> matters.
> 
> "Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit
> of telling me
> jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his
> head from under the
> automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy
> went into a hardware
> store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers
> together on the
> counter and made hammering motions with the other
> hand. The clerk
> brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed
> to the two fingers
> he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He
> picked out the sizes
> he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who
> came in was a blind
> man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked
> for them?"
> 
> "Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made
> scissoring motions with
> my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man
> laughed raucously
> and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and
> asked for them."
> Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all
> my customers
> today." "Did
> you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said,
> "but I knew for sure
> I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked.
> 
> "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew
> you couldn't be very smart."
> 
> And I have an uneasy feeling he had something
> there."
> 
> - Isaac Asimov
> 



		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. 
www.yahoo.com 
 



------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar.
Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/zCsqlB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->