Re: OT:The new kid

Reading from news:talk.origins,
Mark Isaak <eciton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> posted:

On Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:19:42 -0500, Damaeus wrote:

[...]
Some people seem to think that being filled with facts makes a person
correct. But being a bundle of facts with no real perception or
inventiveness to make sense of these facts results in ultimate
stagnation. They cannot believe anything until a reputable scientist
says it's okay, first. It's about as bad as waiting for the Pope to
say it's okay to eat meat on Friday, for example.

That's why IQ tests are bogus. IF an IQ test has anything trivial
questions on it, I can't see how it's a proper gauge of IQ. Just
because someone cannot get one particular question right...just because
he doesn't know what obscure some river is called in Overseasistan, he
gets ten points knocked off an IQ test.

IQ tests rarely test this kind of trivia. Typically, they cover
mathematics, logic, abstract spacial reasoning, and vocabulary.

But they are constructed by other humans who have intelligence and can
construct the tests with the intention of testing a particular kind of
skill. That this test is produced by someone who can make decisions, and
is not something that has happened in nature, through natural forces.

It still seems to me that vocabulary is highly culture-dependent,

We use the words we hear all the time. I did a little test/experiment at
Wendy's:

When I went to Wendy's a few weeks ago, I said to the cashier
fixing my drink, "Hey, watch how much ice you put in there to keep
the displacement in check."

He said, "Huh?"

"Sometimes people fill the cup nearly to the top with ice, so I
end up with a small drink in a large cup."

"Oh! Yeah, I know...well, they're not supposed to put that much
ice in there."

He knew what displacement was, but since "displacement" is not a word you
hear at Wendy's everyday, he was taken aback for a moment until I politely
explained a second time.

I know and understand a /lot/ of words. But I strive to explain myself
with the simplest words I know, because I want my explanations to be easy
to understand. But when *some* people see posts without their favorite
big words they like to see, they think the poster is just stupid,
uneducated, and lacking in the vocabulary department.

I tend to judge how intelligent someone is by their usage of smaller
words. Do they use "they're", "there", and "their" properly? Do they
refrain from using an apostrophe for plural nouns? Do they say the dog
wags its tail every time it's raining? Or do they say the dog wags it's
tail every time its raining? The first is correct, the second is not.

I notice when people use "to" and "too" incorrectly, but I don't really
bring it up too much because it's easy to screw those up with
typographical errors.

but it correlates very well with other types of intelligence.

(Sidebar: For a good on-line vocabulary quiz, see
www.freerice.com)

Okay, I'll bite:

caribou - reindeer (correct)
antiquity - ancientness (correct)
expletive - curse (correct)
vermiculate - wormy (I used vermicelli pasta to derive this one correctly)
*mucronate - WRONG! (I picked forgivable, but it was "sharply pointed")

jennet - small horse (correct, but a word I have never heard of (guess))
dander - anger (correct)
*bibulous - WRONG! (I picked worrisome, but then I'm not a drinker)
renumerate - pay (correct)
mote - speck (correct -- memory of a Biblical verse helped here, haha)

Matthew 7 - [3] And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy
brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own
eye?

*swain - WRONG! (I picked secret agreement, but it's a boyfriend)

Why not just call it a boyfriend?

carronade - warship cannon (correct -- so close to cannon)
vaunted - greatly praised (correct)
*melange - WRONG! (I picked rocky island, but it's hodgepodge)
systole - heart contraction (correct)
tenuous - thin (correct)

gamin - urchin (correct - urchin, gamin - more related than the others)
gracile - slender (correct- gracefulness came to mind)
lithic - stone (correct - monolithic came to mind)
*sirocco - WRONG! (I picked robe (as worn by a sir), but it's a hot wind)
*zebu - WRONG! (I picked sea monster, but it's an ox)

*knell - WRONG! (I picked beseiged, but it's toll)
sleight - dexterity (correct)
*crinoline - WRONG! (It's a hoopskirt. But I'm a man.)
lancinating - knifelike (correct)
gyre - spiral (correct)

bedaub - smear on (correct)
pundit - expert (correct)
specious - plausible but wrong (correct)
clement - mild (correct -- opposite of inclement (weather))
*dolor - WRONG! (I picked periphery, but it's grief)

portend - fortell (correct)
*vapidity - WRONG! (it's blandness, but I can't remember what I picked)
bangtail - racehorse (correct)
aflutter - agitated (correct)
*levity - WRONG! (I picked know-how, but it's frivolity)

deprecatory - belittling (correct)

26 correct, 11 wrong. I don't think a 70 is too bad for a test I never
got a chance to study for. All the words I got wrong I had never seen
before except "levity", maybe "melange" on rare occasions. Some of the
ones I got right I had never seen before, but decided what they meant
based on the construction of the word.

The nice part, however, is that the test repeated some words and I got
them all right the second time they showed up. I donated a total of 350
grains of rice by taking the test.

However, knowing a lot of trivia does have another important benefit, or
rather the benefit comes from learning a little bit of a lot of subjects,
which is how one ususally learns the trivia.


That benefit is an innoculation against gullibility. You don't
have to know a lot about a subject in order to get a sense when
something in that subject doesn't sound right, but you do have to
know *something* about it.

I suppose it's possible for one to think of himself as /so/ informed and
full of facts that he has a sense of smug self-satisfaction with his
absorption and retention of information. Any introduction of anything
challenging what he understands is immediately deflected as simply
"wrong". Whether it's actually wrong objectively or not is irrelevant to
that person. It's wrong just because of what he "knows".

Also, learning about lots of subjects is lots of fun.

It's fun while it's fun. It's fun if you're really interested. But I
don't like being forced to study topics I'm not interested in. I also
don't enjoy having to go dig more deeply into a subject than I really need
to just to inject ideas into the brain of the smugly satisfied "you are
wrong" human bullhorn.

Damaeus

.

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