Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!uccba!uceng!dmocsny
From: dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Intelligence (was: IQ), Categorization (was: Racism)
Summary: Self-made.
Message-ID: <1696@uceng.UC.EDU>
Date: 25 Jul 89 01:07:43 GMT
References: <5453@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <2061@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> <5480@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <3506@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Organization: Univ. of Cincinnati, College of Engg.
Lines: 31

In article <3506@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>, markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:
>"Superior" intelligence is solely the product of individual effort, using
>techniques which everyone else (who has fluency in at least one human language
>) can follow.

And, conversely, "inferior" intelligence is solely the product of the
absence of this individual effort? These techniques you mention, they
should be of great interest to people who are attempting to educate
the unfortunate people who are as many standard deviations below the
mean in "intelligence" as you are above.

And where does this "fluency in ... one human language" originate? I
doubt the average five-year-old is exerting titanic efforts as she
learns to speak. Most children I have seen seem to learn naturally and
painlessly, *until* they go to school. I also have a problem with your
implication that the child with learning deficits is simply not
putting forth an effort. What motivates one person to exert an effort,
anyway?

I quite agree that learning to think like a digital computer (which is
what formal schooling is about, to a first approximation) is difficult
for most people, it requires great effort, and I don't minimize the
accomplishment of those who (like myself) have weathered their share
of same. Nonetheless, even in this highly contrived arena, I have
observed little correlation between efforts of my peers and the
results they obtain. If you truly have found the "technique" that
could erase these distinctions between individual performance, I think
that you should have become wealthy from it by now.

Dan Mocsny
dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu