hatsoff

Because (and the Bell Curve) have a distorted notion of what "every other heritable trait" is. Most traits are polygenic -- that is, they are the result of many genes. It is the combination of alleles that gives the trait. And, in a very important sense, intelligence does follow the path of every heritable trait: you have a broad bell-shaped curve for every population. Those curves overlap since all human populations can interbreed.

Believe me, this isn't lost on me. I realize that most traits aren't, say, mere single-gene sex-linked traits, like baldness. Even simple skin color requires a whole host of autosomal factors. Yet on a large scale I think generalizations are appropriate. It just has to be a *sufficiently* large scale.

intelligence and knowledge are not the same. and yes i don't consider farmers to be intelligent in the way i am speaking. it's all relative of course. all humans are smarter than the majority of animals. but in the way i meant the large majority of human beings would not be intelligent. only a small minority would be. the ones responsible for all of our knowledge. if you think about it, were it not for others and language and books sharing the knowledge from generation to generation how much really would we know? pretty much nothing. just inventing language was a huge leap. look at plato and socrates and stuff they were some smart dudes but look how little they knew. now think of how little everyone else knew. and language had been around for a while already by then, and they had a fair amount of know-how in construction and stuff like that. most of the people i would deem to be intelligent of the caliber i was referring to are people to which pretty much every body knows their names for precisely the reason that they brought knowledge to our specie.

 

I don't care what your job is i don't care about technology. i don't judge value by looking at the price tag. but you don't need to be smart to be a farmer. In China the smartest people worked for the government and the others did manual labour.

 

our hunter gatherer ancestors were just as not smart as we are.

 

from what i know about washington he didn't need to be smart. but i don't know much about him so i could be wrong but jefferson was pretty smart. if he lived in China at the time he wouldn't have been a farmer, i would guess he would have worked for a provincial government, or maybe a teacher, teachers were really valued too but i think they may have been of the lowest of government but i'm not sure exactly where teachers fit in. wealth was not prestigious, only knowledge was.

 

I would define 3 sections of intelligence, but with varying degrees between them. so, it would be a smooth progression between each section with some nice gray areas but still 3 separate sections. the first would be incapable of comprehension like most animals and insects and stuff. next would be comprehension, and next would be invention. when i said intelligent i meant invention. so you're right i used an ambiguous word and i should have defined it better.

Washington and Jefferson were quite intelligent--and neither were farmers. Washington made his earliest living in land surveying. Jefferson was a college student before he became a politician.

I took a LONG break from school and stopped at college algebra. I am taking Pre-cal during this summer, but they skipped over any trig in the book since its a short 6-week session. I have a choice in taking Cal next semester, or taking Trig.

 

I know the very BASICS of trig, such as what sin/cos, etc are from a triangle, but none of the identities, circle units, etc. Some of my peers say that a trig course isnt needed, and that I can learn myself. Is this true? Right now I am undecided what is best for me. I had a hard time doing polar coordinated in precal because of the basic trig. Other than that, I have an A in the course(i have final next week).

 

So...should I take trig? Or continue on to Cal and learn trig by myself? I have to take Cal I - III. I am a CS major.

 

please any input....

 

BTW, Trig was a pre-req for pre-cal...but I took pre-cal at a community college before and got a D, thats why they allowed me to take pre-cal without trig at the university.

Unlike these blokes, I was actually in your position. I took Calc II in high school, aced the BC AP test, and never bothered with math again. Then I sort of ran off into drugs and alcohol for nine years or so, and only recently came back to it. I *just* finished taking Calc 1 as a refresher course.

Do you need trig?

Yes and no. Yes, you really need to re-learn it, but, no, you don't need to take a class on it. Remember, trig was just a unit in Geometry, and you learned more about it in Algebra 2 and Calc 1. But it was never its own class.

The identities are helpful, but unnecessary. Just remember the good ol' Pythagorean Theorem. That's the basis of all identities, anyway. But you should learn them, regardless.

Just remember, you don't *need* to re-take trig, but you *will* need to re-learn it some way, usually online. So be ready.

Intelligence is both heritable and determined by the environment.

So I'm not crazy in thinking that it is heritable. That helps, thankyou. So why don't you think it follows the path of *every other* heritable trait?

You've got several problems:

1. Define precisely what you mean by "intelligence". No one has so far. We have an intuitive feel for it, but no precise definition.

2. Figure out a way to objectively test for it. And no, IQ tests don't do that because they test for knowledge that is cultural. For instance, you could ask you and I what continent France was located on. Or you could ask us how many people are on a football team. Both of those are cultural but give an indication of our "knowledge" or "intelligence", but a !Kung wouldn't know the answers. BUT, ask us which plant indicates underground water in the Kalahari desert, and we would be stumped. A !Kung would know, however.

Have you ever taken a non-verbal test? I have. It's a bit Alfred Hitchcock-like. But an argument from emotion is not what I'm about.

One problem of The Bell Curve is that they didn't compensate for socio-economic differences in IQ scores. What they needed to do was compare middle-class blacks that lived in the suburbs with middle class whites that lived in the suburbs. Intead, they ended up comparing middle class whites that attended private schools in the suburbs with blacks who lived in the inner city. Apples and oranges.

Another problem is using the information to make social and political judgements. If you plot "intelligence" on the y-axis vs number of people with that value on the x-axis, you will end up with a bell-shaped curve (the title of the book). Even in The Bell Curve, the curves for IQ scores had a HUGE overlap. The means differed (where the most people had a particular IQ score), but that doesn't help you with the individual. Faced with 2 job applicants -- one white and the other black -- it doesn't tell you which is more intelligent because it is extremely easy for the black to be on the right hand side of the curve and white to be on the left hand side. Thus, on an individual basis, the black has about a 50:50 chance of being smarter than the white. So you can't use any differences (even if they exist) in any meaningful way for social or political judgements.

Hey, all. This is my first post on these forums, and it's going to be a doozy!

I have two questions: 1) Is The Bell Curve a logical, sound book with reasonable, if unverified, conclusions? 2) Is intelligence heritable, and, if so, is it not reasonable to assume that geographically separated populations will have varying intelligence trends?

I know these issues are hot buttons, but I'm hoping you'll help me wade through the bullshit, as it were.

EDIT: Oh, I'm putting this thread in the "Evolution" section because it deals with heritability. I would have put it in the psychology section if one existed. The mods can move it if they have a better idea.