Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!markh
From: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Intelligence (was: IQ), Categorization (was: Racism)
Message-ID: <3549@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Date: 26 Jul 89 17:10:21 GMT
References: <5453@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <2061@cbnewsh.ATT.COM> <5480@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <3506@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> <1696@uceng.UC.EDU>
Sender: news@csd4.milw.wisc.edu
Reply-To: markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins)
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Lines: 35

In article <1696@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny) writes:
>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 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.

Have you ever actually sat down and try to formulate what was involved in
learning a language.  If so, you will realise the enormous power it takes
to learn it.  Nothing even comes close in comparison.  The fact that
we can do it "effortlessly" is a reflection on the emormous power of our
minds that too many people deny in themselves.

Nobody, who is fluent in a human language, has the right to even regard
themselves as being anything less than gifted.

>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?

Would it follow from this that most of our learning difficulties,
intimidations, and anxieties occur as a RESULT of our education? and of the
extensive negative programming too many of us receive as a child?

I think so.

As for the implication you have trouble with: don't make it.  I didn't, you
shouldn't.

As for "technique", much of what I say above is common knoledge more so than
the product of this individual's personal insight.