Ben said
> I don't believe IQ is everything, but I believe it is very
> important. Charles Murray, author of the Bell Curve, suggests that
> really successful companies hirer people with a high IQ.
I.Q. rewards a certain type of focus (as Ben said earlier, perhaps
focus on patterns or visual analogies) and would reward the ability
to redirect one's focus according to the method of the test. For
example, the verbal analogies seem the most difficult part of the
college entrance exam, yet usually one's focus would not be "this
word is to this word as that word is to what?"
As I was walking yesterday, I thought about the "intelligence" of an
animal in the woods at night, perhaps an animal of prey, listening
across a perimeter, hearing if the sound of the leaves varied.
Pretty smart, if attention and processing details count.
Usually when I walk, I look away from the variety of things around
me, and may not notice for a time what I am passing by - because I'm
thinking about something, maybe why blueberry tastes different than
other fruit or if a shop owner will give me credit for shoes that
seem to wear out sooner than expected. How does that compare to
sitting in the woods, I'm not prepared to say!
I wouldn't request the opportunity to live and work in an environment
where I was greatly rewarded for seeing that three lines and a dot if
revolved counterclockwise and reflected in a mirror were the same as
pattern C. Particularly if it were essential that I always catch
those kinds of things :)
There's a theory, with experimental evidence, that as people learn
more their classification systems have more options and searching a
category takes more time. For example, if asked to name three male
movie stars of the 50's, I could maybe name three and miss one.
Someone else could maybe name ten. If asked, hypothetically, if a
movie star of the 50's had a son whose army career greatly affected
his movie career, I could say "no" pretty quick. Someone else might
have to "think about it". No wonder, there's more to think about. And
beside that, as we grow older (not old!) some of our youthful
energies (metabolism) changes.
There are some consequences for highly valuing I.Q., though they may
not be consequences of having better products. In my opinion, the
smartest people are not in charge and must not want to be. Aiming to
have the smartest people may not get them anyway, and I imagine that
it would cause what should be the rest of us much narrower
boundaries. "Person A can't do that because we already tested him."
>From "The Little Princess" -- "Honey, you can be whatever you want to
be, and you'll always be my little princess." Neat movie. :)
Have a nice day
John Paul Fullerton
jpf@myriad.net
--"John Paul Fullerton" <jpf@mail.myriad.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>