Quote of the day april 19 2006.

kgun · #1 (**permalink**) 04-19-2006, 12:17 PM

“It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.”

I always define your ability to survive (by acceptable standards :-/) as one of the most important features of IQ.

An important difference between sosial IQ (EQ) and IQ.

If you are going to send a spaceship to Mars, IQ may be more important than EQ unless you want it to land on the moon.

Chris · #2 (**permalink**) 04-19-2006, 06:38 PM

i'm glad you noticed that k. i figured most people just glanced right over that.

i took clarke's quote to mean just because someone is intelligent does not mean they will be blessed with uncanny survival instincts. in fact, he seems to be saying that intelligence doesn't provide such skill...

however, on more of a philisophical approach, i took that to mean there's no guarantee that an intelligent society or something smaller, like an invention will survive through the ages....

but i prbly just think too much.

kgun · #3 (**permalink**) 04-20-2006, 08:54 AM

No I do not think you think too much. Why have some of the greatest mathematicians died young (in duells). Was that intelligent?

Recently some unknown papers of Archimedis were found. Mathematics shapes the future. Had they been found earlier, men would probably have lived on mars today.

That may have been important for men to survive. When somebody ask me about intelligence, I always say, the ability to survive by acceptable standard is one of the most important aspects. Another, how you meet / tackle situations that you have never experienced. Your ability to use what you have learned in other different fields.

Knowledge is far from the same as intelligence in my view.

Perhaps I do not like the word IQ, negative association Nietche and "Das ubermench".

Conclusion: Survive happy by acceptable material standard, as long as it is natural, with good relations to yourself, your family and other people. That is my definition of IQ.

There is a saying in finance: "When rocket scientists crash out of orbit." You do not need high IQ to make good investments. Ask Warren Buffett.

P.S. My aunt Sigrid, 93 years old, living in Greenwich Connecticut, she is intelligent! I think she takes a glass of wine, two or three ... every evening :-) She would not have been intelligent, according to my definition, if she died younq as an alchoholic.

JKomp · #4 (**permalink**) 04-20-2006, 12:38 PM

I took it to mean that intelligent humans have not existed long enough for us to conclude that it is a successful evolutionary strategy - in terms of evolutionary history we are a fairly new species.

When you think about it the brain takes up a lot of energy, a lot of our resources are invested in our apparent intelligence - the quote states that we have yet to seen whether this is a wise investment.

pemburung · #5 (**permalink**) 05-01-2006, 05:01 PM

Sorry folks, but the quote is attractive but garbage. Intelligence is a continuum from a little bit to lots, found across the animal kingdom in tens of thousands of species. It's not a human, or even higher primate, thing. No-one's ever proven that two legs, or four legs, or one head, or extreme eyesight, or anything else has survival value. There are blind cave fish and eagle-eyed raptors, slow as cold treacle chameleons and fast as a politicians tongue agamid lizards; flightless birds and hummingbirds.

It's one part of survival, for certain species, at certain times under certain circumstances.

Nothing's ever proven, just not disproven.

Remember "all generalizations are wrong."

And why isn't it "prooven, not proven?"

JKomp · #6 (**permalink**) 05-02-2006, 01:41 PM

surely that is exactly the point being made here?

Chris · #7 (**permalink**) 05-02-2006, 02:57 PM

i'm w/JKomp. you say the quote is garbage, then you proceed to point out exactly why it's true.

pemburung · #8 (**permalink**) 05-02-2006, 11:46 PM

Because the quote implies a negative result, and it is implying a specific definition of intelligence with it - see responses for agreement. In affect it is saying "intelligence is a human trait that separates us out from other species" and "it is provable that intelligence has or has not survival value, and it has not been proved." There's a follow-on along the lines of "don't gloat about our smarts putting us in the top position too soon."

It is setting up a straw man - that the survival value of intelligence is provable within the parameters available to us - then swatting it down.

Even if intelligence as a survival value is provable, no-one has done the test(s). There is no implication from that, certainly not one that intelligence may therefore not have a survival value after all.

That's what I mean by garbage. Not a useful statement. I tried to clarify it by indicating that intelligence is like motion - can you prove that motion has a survival value? It doesn't for trees. Does for gazelles. Not much, other than getting down for a swish, for sloths. But what meaning is there to "it's never been proved that motion has a survival value." No meaning at all. Roobish, as the pommies would say.