h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>> the average IQ of Nobel prize winners is supposedly 137 <<

It is not irrelevant to restate that there are many kinds
of IQ test and they all use a different numeric score system.

http://www.peekassociates.com/SMU/Projects/binetsimontowechslerbellevue.pdf

The Wechsler-Bellevue test developed at Bellevue hospital
in the US was for decades the standard used by the military
and most US Corporations and Universities.

IIRC it only scored to 144.
With 4 points awarded for every correct answer a perfect score
(absolute genius?) totaled just 144.

I only got 140 because my visual acuity failed me and I had
skipped a question leaving it blank. I didn't even spot this
error when having some time left I reviewed all my answers.

This blind spot, if extrapolated into the real whirled of
tooth and claw could have proved fatal - so what point is
being a genius if you get eaten.


~jwf~

It is also important to note that all IQ tests
are developed using captive participants
such as military personnel or inmates or
college football teams.

So averages are biased by the standards set in
the initial testing phases which were conducted
with mostly male and often criminal groups.

~jwf~

"Interestingly the average IQ of Nobel prize winners is supposedly 137. That's smart, but not *that* smart. I guess the geniuses are doing too abstract work" [Xanatic]

My mother, fatherm and sister all scored 150 or above on I.Q. tests taken in the early 1950s. I had a college roommate who guessed that my IQ was a bit above 130. None of us has won a Nobel Prize. I would rather live in a world where bright but not genius-level people have a shot at the highest honors available. But maybe that's just me.

Taking sensory capacity from the cellular level, there are a couple of fundamentally different kinds of senses.

The first and most primitive, providing the root of olfactory and flavor senses, depends on interaction of environmental chemicals with receptor sites on the surfaces of cells.

The second and more advanced, providing the evolutionary root of senses like touch, hearing and sight, depends on biochemical responses within the cell to external stimuli of purely physical character like pressure and light or heat.

>> biochemical responses <<

Obviously, heat and light originally just caused
chemical responses (reactions) which evolved, as
a result of experiencing survivable ranges, into
the first mechanisms of choice such as mobility
to avoid 'known' extremes and seek out favourable
environments.

BTW:
That WBIS scored two points per question not four
as I suggested above. Having put my recall faculties
into overdrive I also now remember that I got one
question wrong in addition to the one I skipped.

~jwf~

Studies indicate that the average IQ of a person involved in setting up the IQ test is 122. Just saying - something to think about.

~*~In mammals, a big processing unit that reads and interprets all
internal and external nerve stimuli, evolved along the lines of
a brain inside a protected skull.~*~

In all animals it evolved as a brain, and in all animals with skeletons it evolved inside a protected skull.



~*~But not before some dinosaurs
went down a dead end of evolution when they developed brains
that were located in their back end quarters.~*~

The idea that Stegosaurus had a second brain has been thoroughly discredited. I guarantee you that any and all neurons in the body that AREN'T part of the brain exist solely to transmit sensory information TO it.

Volition reposes in the brain.

The ganglia none the less have a capacity for reflex that operates more quickly than a neural signal can get to the brain and back in emergency situations.

Touch something dangerously hot, the hand jerks away reflexively in a motion actuated by the major ganglion controlling that limb in less time than a signal from the brain would take.




The evolutionary relationship between the four major ganglia and the brain is perhaps best illustrated by means of reference to echinoderms like sea stars and sea urchins.




With the sea star, one of its five limbs has an eye spot on it, which cannot resolve an image and serves merely to advise the creature when its been out in the sun too long.

This limb corresponds to its head.

If it loses its head, the head will grow back.




With the sea urchin, the five major ganglia, its sweet breads, the parts one eats if one like sea urchins, comprise over 90% of its soft tissues and are often hard to differentiate from one another.

Besides serving as its brain, also take up functions served the endocrine system and the liver in the vertebrates.




The ganglia of the vertebrates are often vital organs without which the creature cannot survive.

For example, one dies without the Bundle of Hiss, a tiny ganglion about a 50th inch in diameter located on the heart, serving as its 'brain', timing the heartbeat.

Sometimes, when the Bundle of Hiss malfunctions, it is replaced or supplemented with an artificial pacemaker and when it is functioning well, it exerts an effect of the entire body all out of proportion to its size, not without a great deal of complcated feedback between it and the remainder of the nervous system.

Premature Post. (I don't know why it did that, whether its a problem with Pliny, Firefox or my own computer.)

Amend post 48, paragraph 4,2nd sentence to include between the words 'brain,' and 'also', the words: 'the five major ganglia of the sea urchin'.

In 1985, I was bagel boy, coffee jockey and chief copier unjammer for a law firm in Washington, DC, and Dr. Carl Sagan was called to give a deposition before testifying in a trial/hearing. It was my job to keep him entertained for what turned out to be an hour and twenty minutes.

In my defense, I was pretty big on OMNI magazine, and thought I kept up pretty well with popular scientific development. I at least tried to ask him intelligent questions. I was also 25 at the time.

He was relaxed, gracious, quite easy to understand in regular and technical conversation and almost gleefully answered questions about the space program, asteroid mining and anything else I could come up with. I was going out of my mind.

Afterward, when I thought about it, we only talked about science stuff for maybe fifteen minutes. The rest of the time was spent with me answering his questions about growing up in Alabama, the Air Force, living in England, etc, like I was interesting. He must have asked me fifty questions.

I was gone by the time he finished in the courtroom, but I got a note from him two days later, thanking me for my time, and touching on a couple of things we had talked about that he thought were pretty interesting. I was absolutely impossible to live with for a week.

Genius? Probably. Swell Human Being? Definitely.

and there you have it... the recipe for genius...
an insatiable appetite for information...
curiousity...
and a cheerful and affable attitude in acquiring it...
and love...
lots of love...

don't you think?

ah, maybe love for life?
yesssssssss

Sagan himself? Quite a privilege there.

i have heard Einstein was a whole lotta fun too

Nice story regarding Sagan. His mind was probably free-wheeling in preparation for the court appearance, which probably did not require much intellectual thought.

An Einstein anecdote (from the literature): once he consented to have an eeg made of himself thinking about relativity.

The eeg tracing, showing some dramatic spikes, was published along with some interview material in which the interviewer asked Einstein whether thinking about relativity were in part muscular.

Einstein agreed that it was.




Some time later I was undergoing an eeg exam of my own, and just for the heck of it, decided to compose verse mentally while the scan was being made.

The machine went wild, producing the same kind of spikes I'd seen from the Einstein eeg.

The neurologist, seeing that, asked me from another room where he was monitoring the eeg, to stop wrinkling my forehead and hold still, since the muscular contractions were masking the signals he was looking for.

Not having realized to that moment I was wrinkling my forehead, I complied.

fascinating... so are you insinuating that Einstein, rather than being a genius, was just a forehead wrinkler?!

or are you saying that wrinkling one's forehead causes geniusness?

If you learn something while hopping on one foot, it is easier to recall it later if you hop on one foot.

What is important is having a beard. Without a beard to stroke, you can't do proper contemplation.

I remember once being seated at a dinner table across from Meryl Streep.

She playfully began copying my facial expressions, which startled me.

I hadn't realized I was giving so much away.

Meryl Streep has a marvelous and exceptional talent that way.

Showed a great deal of practice, probably in front of a mirror.




Another occasion, having had an extraordinarily bad day the day before, I went to the mirror the following morning to brush my teeth and shave.

Caught by surprise by the expression on my face, I gasped, my jaw dropped and I turned white.

I'm glad I didn't take that facial expression with me when I left the house that morning.