Down With IQ-ism

An amazing story in the news today of a child born without a brain, who nevertheless, at the age of two, said "Mummy," which prompts the question: is a brain really necessary? Indeed the question "Is Your Brain Really Necessary?" was the title of an article published some decades ago in Science Magazine, in which was given an account of someone who, at birth, was afflicted with hydrocephaly, a condition in which there is excessive pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles of the brain, causing the cerebral hemispheres to be crushed and the cranium to be more or less enlarged. In this particular case, the cerebral hemispheres were crushed to a layer about one millimeter thick, the bulk of the cranial cavity being filled with fluid. But despite this apparent near total destruction of the higher brain centers, the individual was socially normal, had an IQ of 126, and a first class honors degree in mathematics.

Image source

But if there is reason to question the necessity of the supposed organ of intelligence, namely the brain, one has to wonder how scientific is the business of measuring intelligence, the manifestation of the supposed function of the brain. True, the ability to apply the mind to this or that task does vary greatly among individuals. Moreover, although the degree of individual versatility varies, there appears to some relationship between being smart at one thing and being smart at another, and it is this notion of general smartness, whatever it's organic basis, that the shrinks have latched onto as a basis for grading the intelligence of all humanity on a linear scale from super-genius to thick as a plank.

General belief in their ability to so grade people places considerable power in the hands of the psych doctors, which surely explains in large part their commitment to the notion that human intelligence can be measured with the same precision as height or weight. At the same time, the existence of such self-serving motivation provides reason for skepticism in judging the intelligence-measuring claims of the psychology profession.

My own skepticism on the subject of IQ testing was evoked more than four decades ago on reading a book by Arthur Sinton Otis, inventor or the Otis Intelligence Test, variants of which were used by the US army to evaluate 1.7 million recruits during the First World War. The book, which is concerned with physics, not psychology, is entitled: Light Velocity and Relativity: The Problem of Light Velocity, Disproof of the Einstein Postulate, and argues against the theory of the constant velocity of light on the basis that a beam of light, like a bullet from a gun, will travel faster relative to the ground if emitted by a forward-facing flashlight mounted on a moving train, than if emitted by a flashlight that is stationary relative to the ground, i.e., the frame of reference in which the speed of the light beam is measured. The argument seems compelling except that what it concludes should be observed is not what has actually been observed in countless experiments beginning with the famous Michelson–Morley experiment for which Albert Michelson won the 1907 Nobel Prize in physics. The failure to acknowledge the primacy of the observed result over a common sense assumption seemed to me, well, not very intelligent, which in turn made me wonder how well qualified Arthur Otis and other experts in mental measurement really are to evaluate the intelligence of their fellow creatures.

But other reasons for skepticism about IQ testing abound. My own academic performance being a case in point. Had I been raised in America at the start of the 21st Century, I would undoubtedly have been labelled ADHD and drugged into submission. As it was, discipline in the English schools I attended during the 1950's was administered with the rod, for which I had a healthy respect. But while I was verbally and kinetically submissive to authority in the class-room, my mind was as free as the air with the result that my academic grades corresponded almost perfectly with the degree of my respect or antipathy for my teachers. Generally, I liked female teachers and was around the top of the class during the first several  years of my schooling under the tutelage of women. But in subsequent years, under instruction exclusively by males, my academic performance varied almost exactly in proportion to the charisma of my mentors. At times, I was top of my class in most if not all subjects but Latin, at other times I was near the bottom the class, although, it must be admitted, there was always some wretch more academically obtuse than myself to deny me the present pleasure of claiming to have been absolutely bottom of my class. At university, I was taught by several very competent female scholars and, perhaps not coincidentally, I graduated with the faculty prize. So in my youth, was I intelligent, or was I not? In response to such a question, the psych doctors may say academic achievement has little to do with brains, but in so doing they undermine the entire IQ-testing business, for if it fails to predict something as significant as academic achievement, what's the point of it? Does it predict business success, or acting success, or military success, or musical success any better? Probably not, and in which case, there seems no point in it at all. Ah, but the shrinks will say, it measures potential achievement. There you are then: if your kid has a mediocre IQ, not much point in encouraging them in academics: better to take them every day to 4 AM hockey practice, or encourage them to study something really dumb like, say, psychology.

Fortunately, many great achievers, all in fact prior to the invention of the intelligence test, were spared being told the supposed limits to their potential. Mozart, for instance — almost certainly a case of ADHD, — was good at stringing notes together, but on an IQ test how sure can we be that he would not have bombed? And there are certainly many others renowned for great intellectual achievement who clearly lacked all-round general intelligence. Einstein, for example, the most famous physicist of the 20th Century, seems to have been pretty ignorant when it came to philosophy and politics, or at least that was the view of George Kennan, architect of US foreign policy following WWII and Einstein's colleague at the Institute for Advanced Research. Of Einstein's subject, Kennan said, "I knew nothing ... and knew it" but of my subject, Kennan said, "Einstein knew nothing ... and didn't know it."*

And then there's Richard Feynman, another physicist of genius, who was reputed to have an IQ of 123, which is pretty decent, but not as smart, according to the IQ-ists, as about 20 million present day Americans. LOL.

So my advice is, if there's some big challenge you're really keen about, go for it, whatever your supposed IQ. As for my IQ? I haven't a clue. I was tested once or twice but never told the result — thank God.

* Source: John Lewis. Gaddis. 2012. George F. Kennan: An American Life.

Related: 

CanSpeccy: IQism, Racism and the Decay of the Great American University
CanSpeccy: Intelligence, the G-Factor, Linus Pauling and Glutamate

Free Will versus Determinism and Moral Responsibility

Michio Kaku, the Physicist of the New World Order, who calls those opposed to globalization terrorists, tells us in this video (via Aangirfan's interesting post on free will and consciousness) that quantum theory proves that human action is not predetermined.

But the point he makes is a trivial quibble of absolutely no consequence. Microscopic events may be indeterminate, but anyone expecting a bunch of air molecules by chance to pile up behind their automobile and drive them to the office without the use of gasoline is going to be late for work. The behavior of most macroscopic systems is highly deterministic.

Quantum uncertainty? Image source.

And when a macroscopic system behaves in an unexpected fashion, for example, if your car accelerates when you put your foot on the brake, no sensible person will say it must have been due to quantum randomness. In such an event, the sensible assumption is that there has been a serious mechanical or electronic malfunction, or perhaps someone sabotaged your car.

The human brain, so far as we know, functions as a deterministic system little if at all affected by quantum uncertainty, which means that Kaku's remarks about Einstein versus Heisenberg are irrelevant. But, that does not mean that the workings of the human brain are necessarily predictable. For one thing, complex macroscopic systems, though operating in accordance with classical deterministic laws, can be highly unpredictable. Thus, as Richard Feynman explained:

If water falls over a dam, it splashes. If we stand nearby, every now and then a drop will land on our nose. This appears to be completely random … The tiniest irregularities are magnified in falling, so that we get complete randomness.

Feynman's insight has since been formalized in chaos theory, which reveals that many complex systems, the weather for example, or the economy, operate chaotically, which means for all practical purposes, indeterminately.

Transitions in the evolution of a complex system under the
influence of a strange attractor. Image source.

An interesting feature of chaotic systems is that they may show a relatively constant pattern of behavior for long periods, following what is know as a "strange attractor," but then abruptly switch to a totally different pattern.

Not surprisingly, the brain, the most complex system that we know of in the entire universe, will sometime undergo a sharp transition in mode of operation, shifting abruptly from one more or less constant pattern to a strikingly different pattern. Such epiphanies may occur spontaneously, although they are perhaps more often the result of an external shock.

But even if, for classical or quantum reasons, the operations of the brain — which we assume to underlie the workings of the mind — are indeterminate, this tells us little of interest about the question of free will.

Image source.

If the possession of free will consists solely in the fact that our brains sometimes do random and hence unpredictable things, so what? As far as the question of moral responsibility is concerned, we can no more take credit or blame for what is strictly determined than for what occurs as a matter of pure chance.

Which brings us to the core question: what is free will, anyhow? If Cain willed to kill Abel, how could he have acted otherwise than to go ahead and kill him? Could he, at the same time, have willed not to will to kill Abel? But if so, what if the will to kill Abel were stronger? Could he then have willed to will not to kill Abel more strongly? This leads to an infinite regress.

The conclusion seems to be that we will what we will and that's that for good or ill. And if sometimes our actions are theoretically unpredictable due to classical or quantum indeterminism, our actions are nevertheless driven either by chance or necessity, which is rather different from the idea that most people have of free will.

But this is a dangerous conclusion if naively understood, since it seems to imply that we are not responsible for our actions. But this is an error arising from ambiguity of the term "responsible."

Cain killing Abel. (Rubens)

To many, the notion that Cain could do no other than kill his brother means that he was not morally responsible for his actions and therefore should not have been held accountable or punished. But "moral responsibility" is not synonymous with "legal responsibility." Under the law of sane and civilized society, Cain would be held responsible for killing Abel, for the simple reason that he did indeed kill Abel.

Furthermore, under the law of any sane and civilized society, Cain would be punished for killing Abel, not because of his moral culpability but to deter others who might otherwise emulate his crime. And if a jeering hate-filled mob attended Cain's public hanging, so much the better to deter others who might otherwise follow Cain's criminal example.

Sadly, such simple logic is beyond the comprehension of most brought up under the lib-left ideology propagated by Western cultural institutions. We have been taught by the state propaganda machine — known as the K-to-middle-age education system — to see only the relationships among events that the state wishes us to see, while ignoring most of the picture without an understanding of which a sane and civilized society is impossible.

But what is perhaps an even more subversive and dangerous view of the world than some flaky notion about free will, is the Parmenidesian belief that all change, and therefore, all human action, good or evil, is an illusion.

In Parmenides' day, the best evidence for this idea was provided by the paradoxes of Zeno, which showed that movement was, if not impossible, almost so. The most famous of Zeno's paradoxes concerned the race between Achilles and the tortoise, in which Achilles was continually reaching the point just left by the tortoise, by which time the tortoise had moved ahead just a little bit more, so Archilles was always behind.

Image source

Zeno had another zinger: the Arrow Paradox. At any instant, an arrow in flight must be at a particular place. At that moment it cannot be moving to any other place or it would not be where it is, so at no instant can it move. This would have been more convincing if Zeno had offered to serve as the target at javelin practice. Still many sharp physicists of the modern era are Parmenidisians: Einstein for instance, and Hermann Weyl who wrote:

The objective world simply is, it does not happen. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the world-line of my body, does a section of the world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time.

On this view, we are like flies in amber, incapable of doing right or wrong. Our entire potential, intellectual, physical and moral, has already been realized and is open to view by any time traveler, in which case, the notion of free will is entirely redundant.

Related:

Medical Express: Our brains reveal our choices before we're even aware of them

Of Men, and Apes and Civilization

The close DNA sequence similarity between men and apes has led some to suppose that a man is no more than a wimpy chimp with a slightly swollen head. Further, it has been suggested, since the difference between men and apes is so trivial, there must be creatures somewhere in the limitless expanse of the universe at least as superior in intellect to us as were are to chimps. So, according to this line of thinking, despite the modest enlargement of the human fore-brain, we have little to be swelled-headed about.

But this reflects a misunderstanding of the difference between men and apes and the significance of that difference.

Both men and apes are mammals, which means that they are built to the same plan. They have liver and lights, stomach and spleen, four limbs, a head and a tail. At the cellular level the similarity of design is even closer: the same membranes, organelles, nucleic acids and enzymes. So inevitably men and apes share much the same DNA sequence, as they do with horses and hamsters, and even with reptiles and fishes, fungi and forest trees.

There is an underlying biochemical unity to the life of this Earth. But that does not make the fangs of a tiger and the molars of a camel functionally equivalent. Small changes in the proportions and slight differences in the elaboration of a basic design can result in fundamental differences in function.

Thus with the brains of man and chimp. In the lobes and their connections the two are largely similar. But the human brain has approximately twice the mass of the brain of a chimp, and there is a many-fold difference between the two in the size of certain lobes. The human brain is thus adapted to functions unknown to the mind of a chimp.

And it is possible for very slight genetic changes to result in qualitatively transformational changes in function. For example, a single-gene mutation that results in one additional rounds of cell division in some portion of the embryonic brain would double the final volume of that part of the brain.

Why, then, it might be said, if the only thing distinguishing a man from an ape is a small collection of single gene mutations, the difference between us is indeed trivial. But that is to misunderstand the evolutionary step that man has made and which no other ape has, or could ever make, so long as mankind exists.

To evolve a larger brain, an organism must have use for a larger brain. The brain is an energy intensive organ, requiring a continuous infusion of glucose and oxygen. A chimp with a brain like that of a human would be at a severe disadvantage. It would want to sit around and think but it would need to work harder than every other chimp to obtain the food necessary to keep its costly brain alive.

The only way such a chimp could survive would be to invent language, create a civilization and its associated technologies thereby raising the chimp living standard while lowering the hours of work.

That is what mankind achieved. And that is what no other species on Earth can achieve while mankind exists because mankind has preempted the resources of the entire planet.

As to the claim that an extraterrestrial intelligence would likely consider the mind of man as feeble a thing as we humans are inclined to consider the mind of a chimp, the answer should be, "give us time."

It took humans about one hundred thousand years to exchange the lifestyle of an ape for that of a yuppie. But most of that transformation occurred, with exponential acceleration, in the last ten thousand years.

Humanity is now at a critical point in its existence. We have technology that can put the entire accumulated knowledge of the species at the fingertips of every one of the seven billion membners of the species. And electronic media allow us to do that at trivial cost. The result could be an explosion in technological innovation the like of which we can hardly imagine and which will either lead us very quickly to self-destruction or grant us the power of gods.

Not only do we have the ability to educate every receptive mind to a point far beyond that reached by Aristotle or Newton, but to build intelligent machines that can outperform the human intellect by orders of magnitude.

This is precisely the transformation that any intelligent civilization created by organically evolved creatures anywhere in the universe must have undergone. It is the transformation from advancement through haphazard accumulation of mutations and genetic rearrangements that yield short-term survival advantage, to the engineered improvement of the organism and its enveloping civilization.

And once evolution is intelligently planned, it likely follows the same course anywhere in the universe. There is now no apparent limit to the advancement of human knowledge and dominion over the planet and beyond—unless we are destroyed by our own technology. But in that case, intelligent life may be a self-limiting phenomenon wherever it arises in the universe, in which case the civilization of humanity is approaching a climax of complexity that will never be exceeded anywhere in the universe.