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From: cam@edai.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.edai   031 667 1011 x2550)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: IQ is not static, genetic differences inconsequential.
Message-ID: <485@edai.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 31 Jul 89 15:15:17 GMT
References: <3549@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> <4431@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> <3558@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> <504@dcdwest.UUCP> <3612@csd4.milw.wisc.edu>
Reply-To: cam@edai (Chris Malcolm)
Organization: University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh
Lines: 64

In article <3612@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:

>So back to my original point: whatever intelligence I possess that is over an
>beyond what is regarded as normal intelligence is solely the result of my
>own special training in the learning process itself.  If anyone else had used
>the same technique over the same extensive period of time they would have
>achieved the same results to the pretty much the same extent.  Maybe a little
>less in virtue of my unusual ancestry, but nothing that couldn't be made up for
>in due time.
>

Your phrase "in due time" is interesting. Let us suppose for the sake of
argument that there exists a regime of mental exercises, starting at age
six months, which can produce Einstein-level intelligence in anyone. Let
us further suppose that Einstein's own special ancestry means that the
intelligence he had developed by age 25 would take you 50 years to
develop, and me 100 years to develop, and Harry 200 years. Not much use
to me or Harry, I'm afraid.

I presume that you do not suppose that simply by working at it you could
become an Olympic standard weightlifter. I certainly don't think I
could, even if I had started exercising in the cradle: I come from a
long line of weeds and weaklings, some of whom have made heroic but vain
efforts to acquire Charles Atlas, or even average muscular endowment. Why
should mental strength behave differently than physical strength?

>The significance of what I have said all along is that it is not
>only learnable but is teachable.  As far as I am aware, this is
>not a commonly accepted fact of the psychological or cognitive
>science communities, though there are many successful programs
>out there developed in the last couple years essentially based
>on this observation.  It a totally new observation concerning
>the nature of human intelligence.

The cognitive scientists I know accept, and have accepted for at least
decades, that whatever intelligence is, it is - like most other
complex performance measures - subject to considerable environmental
variation (teaching, training, etc.), within limits set by individual
genetic endowment, and that the range of environmentally producible
variation is somewhat less than the variation seen in a standard
environment, i.e., genetic. That kind of opinion can be found in
decades-old undergrad psychology textbooks. So what exactly is this
totally new observation concerning the nature of intelligence?

>Past a certain threshold, which I claim to be the ability to comprehend a
>human language and generate it, genetic differences are no longer of any
>consequence.  The reason being that the ability to infer at arbitrary levels
>of abstraction must already be present in order to learn and use a human
>language -- an ability which underlies the origin of all other forms of
>human intelligence.

A great deal of linguistic experimental evidence contradicts you here.
Studies of human ability to understand and generate complex sentence
structures show strict limitations on our ability to handle levels of
abstraction. There are many linguistic constructions capable of abitrary
levels of recursion, and the level at which we "lose the thread" varies
markedly with the type of contruction. Rather than requiring an ability
to handle arbitrary levels of abstraction, it seems that human language -
as we employ it - is well designed as a means of communication that fits
within our strictly limited mental capabilities.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.edai   031 667 1011 x2550
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK