'An Appalling Report'

[Homo Aestheticus]

Florestan,

Don't underestimate yourself.

Thank you.

Second, your "linguistic ability" is certainly not in the bottom percentage.

Let me explain what has been going through my head for a while now.

First some questions:

Can the words of a language (any language) be arranged in a graduated order of difficulty ? For example, there are approximately 600,000 words in the general English vocabulary (excluding technical/scientific terms). Would it be possible to arrange them not alphabetically, but according to their level of difficulty ? Do words have their own 'precise slot' in the lexicon ?

Second, I have this belief that my ´functional´ vocabulary would improve dramatically if I were to spend time in a private study reciting out loud and repeatedly every example sentence of every word in the general English dictionary. I have this fantasy that somehow through this long (but not boring) process most of the English language would sink in my mind and I´d become very articulate. My self-esteem would improve greatly were I to possess this skill. 

As a supplement to this are 'comprehension/recall exercises' where I reading the World News and Commentary/Opinion sections of the following:

BBC, Times of London, The Guardian, The New York Times, Daily Telegraph and  Associated Press.

The exercise involves two steps:

1. Find the precise definition of any unfamiliar words and record it in notebook with the sentence.

2. Find the main idea of the article and then synthesize verbally or in writing all of the supporting factors, arguments, details, etc.

Now my question:

Am I completely misguided in this whole endeavor and am I wasting my time ?   

[drogulus]

Florestan,

Thank you.

Let me explain what has been going through my head for a while now.

First some questions:

Can the words of a language (any language) be arranged in a graduated order of difficulty ? For example, there are approximately 600,000 words in the general English vocabulary (excluding technical/scientific terms). Would it be possible to arrange them not alphabetically, but according to their level of difficulty ? Do words have their own 'precise slot' in the lexicon ?

Second, I have this belief that my ´functional´ vocabulary would improve dramatically if I were to spend time in a private study reciting out loud and repeatedly every example sentence of every word in the general English dictionary. I have this fantasy that somehow through this long (but not boring) process most of the English language would sink in my mind and I´d become very articulate. My self-esteem would improve greatly were I to possess this skill. 

As a supplement to this are 'comprehension/recall exercises' where I reading the World News and Commentary/Opinion sections of the following:

BBC, Times of London, The Guardian, The New York Times, Daily Telegraph and  Associated Press.

The exercise involves two steps:

1. Find the precise definition of any unfamiliar words and record it in notebook with the sentence.

2. Find the main idea of the article and then synthesize verbally or in writing all of the supporting factors, arguments, details, etc.

Now my question:

Am I completely misguided in this whole endeavor and am I wasting my time ?   

     Do you know any articulate persons who achieved their proficiency in this way? So far as I know a large vocabulary is just something a child picks up in the course of reading, and listening to and speaking with other people with large vocabularies, in particular with parents. You can expand your vocabulary by studying a subject that requires you to learn new words and usages, and in my own case I never sought to enhance my vocabulary as an end in itself. You have to be interested in a great variety of things, and the vocabulary you need to pursue these interests follows from the study that you engage in.

     I'm not sure I understand what you mean by difficult words. I'm more familiar with difficult subjects and the process of coming to grips with a set of concepts that's beyond what you've previously encountered. That's where you may need to look up definitions. I see vocabulary acquisition as something that happens in the process of learning new things, and in my case that mostly amounts to reading books that are a little bit over my head, and then rereading them until I can understand what I'm reading. So I don't see anything like linguistic ability as anything separate from that. Maybe I'm just lucky, though, and other people have to focus on words more than I do.

[c#minor]

Hi C # minor,

Thanks for sharing that. I attended community college between 1990/1993 and in my case it was most definitely not a matter of 'not giving a damn'. I was placed on academic probation several times despite being motivated, studying my tail off and having the guidance of some excellent private tutors...The college expelled me in April 93.

So when I read an article by a leading social scientist who says:  

While concepts such as "emotional intelligence" and "multiple intelligences" have their uses, a century of psychometric evidence has been augmented over the last decade by a growing body of neuroscientific evidence. Like it or not, g exists, is grounded in the architecture and neural functioning of the brain, and is the raw material for academic performance. If you do not have a lot of g when you enter kindergarten, you are never going to have a lot of it. No change in the educational system will change that hard fact.

That says nothing about the quality of the lives that should be open to everyone across the range of ability. I am among the most emphatic of those who think that the importance of IQ in living a good life is vastly overrated. My point is just this: It is true that many social and economic problems are disproportionately found among people with little education, but the culprit for their educational deficit is often low intelligence. Refusing to come to grips with that reality has produced policies that have been ineffectual at best and damaging at worst.

..... I am able to stop berating myself for being intellectually slow and realize that yes, a few of my educators in high school (during junior/senior year) had no clue about the nature of the problem when they wrote their progress reports saying:

Your son is apathetic towards academics. More discipline is recommended.

The fact that my father is a physician and all of my siblings went to Yale, Stanford, Columbia and Wellesley didn't help my situation.... I was the black sheep of the house (i.e. the only one who had major scholastic problems, the only one who is not adept socially, the only one with strong libertarian views, the only one who is fanatical about opera/classical music)

I enjoy what I do for a living but it's a 'nonprofessional occupation' and it requires practically no intellectual horsepower. 

So yes, I am still very convinced that nurture and environment has little effect on intellect (the ability to grasp concepts and to reason). 

I do not want to come off as an intellectual prick because I am anything but. Your academic struggles sound, well like my life. After years of Adderal, Ritalin, Concerta, Vivance, ect. I gave them all up and decided to go it with no meds. I failed, and miserably. I am a highschool graduate but it took five years. I was considered an "at risk" student under Bush's famed no child left behind plan, so my highschool pawned me off on a "middle college" which is exempt from the No Child rating system. The black sheep situation you faced me too. My principle of my grade school saying to my parents (with me there none the less) "What is wrong with this boy, his sisters were such good students and hard workers." I have put my family and myself through hell but I do not believe for one second that I am stupid. I regularly outperform most of the other students in my classes in discussions and papers, but on tests I fail. I can't learn anything from a book because I do not retain any knowledge that way. I literally just failed speech because I could not write the complex/precise outlines. My friend I am not saying the system is not broken, because I am a testament to its brokenness. But I still think if people want to learn they can. Though I am below a 2.5 GPA (even with some bullshit filler courses) I have still learned many things that will help me later on in life. I do give a damn because I am not there to pass, I am there to learn. I believe I need to pass but I have refrained really from worrying myself about it because worrying won't help.

To sum it all up, yes the system is broken. But college is not the culprit; the culprit is an education system that lets students with different learning styles fall through the gap. These people are extraordinarily competent and can contribute in unique ways that the majority cannot, but it's cheaper just to focus on the majority and society ostracizes differences. It's a social problem, the colleges are not to blame.

[Florestan]

After years of Adderal, Ritalin, Concerta, Vivance, ect. I gave them all up 

What the heck are these?

[Florestan]

Am I completely misguided in this whole endeavor and am I wasting my time ?   

I'm afraid you are.

Drogulus put it very well:

     You have to be interested in a great variety of things, and the vocabulary you need to pursue these interests follows from the study that you engage in.

[Joe_Campbell]

What the heck are these?

At least one of them is a medication...

[Homo Aestheticus]

Drogulus and Florestan,

Thanks.

Do you know any articulate persons who achieved their proficiency in this way?

I thought these kinds of exercises along with active reading of the dictionary were an essential supplement to achieving this... Now, in my case it is largely a compensatory activity. Admittedly, it does not feel natural and often fatiguing but I force myself into doing the 'comprehension/recall' exercises anyway, even when an article holds no interest for me because I have convinced myself that my intellect will improve regardless.   

In my own case I never sought to enhance my vocabulary as an end in itself.

But I see verbal fluency as the most enviable of skills. What else can make someone feel more secure and confident than knowing the precise meaning of the words in his or her native language ?   

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by difficult words. I'm more familiar with difficult subjects and the process of coming to grips with a set of concepts that's beyond what you've previously encountered. That's where you may need to look up definitions.

A simple example:

Grasping the meaning of a word from the general English vocabulary like ´meretricious´ is easier than grasping a basic term in psychology like 'operant conditioning'.

Maybe I'm just lucky, though

Lucky yes, and also highly intelligent as your replies/arguments in the old Religion Thread very clearly show.   

[Homo Aestheticus]

Andrei,

Some personal info:

Back in 1998 at the age of 25 I took the standard WAIS I.Q. test along with a battery of aptitude tests lasting 9 hours.

My I.Q. score was a  102  and the results from most sections of the aptitude tests were in the very low range (i.e. Inductive/Deductive Reasoning, Numerical and Spatial ability, Visual Perception, Word Learning and Memory, Structural Visualization, and so on... The highest score was an average (though on the low side) in Clerical Speed.

Two questions:

1. How strongly do you believe the following ?

"Like it or not, g exists, is grounded in the architecture and neural functioning of the brain, and is the raw material for academic performance. If you do not have a lot of g when you enter kindergarten, you are never going to have a lot of it..."

2. Am I justified in citing those scores if someone were to ask about my numerous scholastic failures or why I hadn´t chosen a 'professional' occupation ?

[karlhenning]

Lucky yes, and also highly intelligent as your replies/arguments in the old Religion Thread very clearly show.   

Ernie is a bright fellow, certainly, Eric;  but you are apt to confuse agrees with my opinion and is clearly intelligent.

[Florestan]

1. How strongly do you believe the following ?

"Like it or not, g exists, is grounded in the architecture and neural functioning of the brain, and is the raw material for academic performance. If you do not have a lot of g when you enter kindergarten, you are never going to have a lot of it..."

In order to give an answer, I must first know what "g" means.

2. Am I justified in citing those scores if someone were to ask about my numerous scholastic failures or why I hadn´t chosen a 'professional' occupation ?

I don't know.

I have a few questions for you as well:

- how did you discover classical music?

- do you like reading books?

[Homo Aestheticus]

In order to give an answer, I must first know what "g" means.

Here is the Wiki explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor

I have a few questions for you as well:

How did you discover classical music?

Late one night in July 1988 at the age of 16 when I accidentally left my radio dial set to WXQR station (New York)... It was the most ravishing thing I'd ever heard...   Eugen Jochum conducting 'The Good Friday Spell' from  Parsifal... And so with the operas of Wagner it all began.

Do you like reading books?

Honestly, I don´t really enjoy reading books; it's quite fatiguing and I've never understood why. I think I have serious reading comprehension problems. The only books in my room are limited to general opera. There is a separate shelf that contains about 50 books on Pelleas et Melisande alone.

I enjoy reading about world events, the opinion/commentary sections and the occasional debate over whether there exists a supernatural being but that's about it.   

[Florestan]

Thanks for answering.

Late one night in July 1988 at the age of 16 when I accidentally left my radio dial set to WXQR station (New York)... It was the most ravishing thing I'd ever heard... What was it ?  Eugen Jochum conducting 'The Good Friday Spell' from  Parsifal... And so with the operas of Wagner it all began.

So then, you're intelligent enough to listen to classical music...

The only books in my room are limited to general opera. There is a separate shelf that contains about 50 books on Pelleas et Melisande alone.

...and intelligent enough to read books about it.

Now, if these provide you instruction and pleasure and, besides, you are content with your life and your job (are you?) --- why do you need IQ tests or why do you need to consider yourself stupid just because you can't / won't read Proust or Kant?

Each of us has a unique personality and our worth is not dependent on "professional" careers. A cobbler can be happier than a king just as an illiterate shepherd can be happier than a scholar, and the world needs all of them.

[drogulus]

Two questions:

1. How strongly do you believe the following ?

"Like it or not, g exists, is grounded in the architecture and neural functioning of the brain, and is the raw material for academic performance. If you do not have a lot of g when you enter kindergarten, you are never going to have a lot of it..."

2. Am I justified in citing those scores if someone were to ask about my numerous scholastic failures or why I hadn´t chosen a 'professional' occupation ?

      The first is true, and it appears very likely that the second is as well, though I'm basing this just on what you're telling me. I do wonder about the relation between low intelligence and impaired function. There are people who score low and achieve anyway. I knew a junior college teacher who had an IQ of 86*. The tests can't make fine grained distinctions like "tests poorly but smart anyway".** They have a statistical validity which doesn't predict cases with precision.


      <sub>*She taught English at Suffolk Community College in New York, and wrote a short novel which I read.
     

    ** Did I actually say that?</sub>

[drogulus]

      I'm reading a book by Douglas Hofstadter, who wrote Godel, Escher, Bach, and in the current book he described his school days as a math whiz who then went on to take advanced math courses only to discover that at the higher level all his math intuition deserted him. He had hit a wall, and though he could do the work by memorization it was clear that a future as a mathematician was not going to happen the way he wanted.

      Looked at from the supergenius level that Hofstadter just misses belonging to, the problem could be seen as a learning disability, and that raises the question of whether disabilities are just normal variation and not really evidence of organic malformation. What's a real disability anyway? If no lesion or other abnormality shows up on a brain scan you're just normal. Normal just turns out to be more variable than had been supposed before the tests revealed how different learning potential is for each of us. Maybe Hofstadter is a learning impaired supergenius.*


     <sub>*Even if you can't be a mathematician at the highest level, you don't have to dig ditches for a living. This is from the Wiki on Hofstadter:

     Hofstadter's thesis about consciousness, first expressed in GEB but also present in several of his later books, is that it is an emergent consequence of seething lower-level activity in the brain. In GEB he draws an analogy between the social organization of a colony of ants and the mind seen as a coherent "colony" of neurons. In particular, Hofstadter claims that our sense of having (or being) an "I" comes from the abstract pattern he terms a "strange loop", which is an abstract cousin of such concrete phenomena as audio and video feedback, and which Hofstadter has defined as "a level-crossing feedback loop". The prototypical example of this abstract notion is the self-referential structure at the core of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Hofstadter's 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop carries his vision of consciousness considerably further, including the idea that each human "I" is distributed over numerous brains, rather than being limited to precisely one brain.</sub>

     

[karlhenning]

Some loops are stranger than others.

[Homo Aestheticus]

Thanks Andrei.

And, besides, you are content with your life and your job (are you?)

Yes I am.

Why do you need IQ tests or why do you need to consider yourself stupid just because you can't / won't read Proust or Kant?

Because it's very easy to feel like a "preliterate" in our highly sophisticated culture, filled as it is with abstract concepts and analyses.

Each of us has a unique personality and our worth is not dependent on "professional" careers. A cobbler can be happier than a king just as an illiterate shepherd can be happier than a scholar, and the world needs all of them.

Yes we need all of them but don't you (deep down inside) stand in special awe of those humans with superior linguistic ability ?

[Homo Aestheticus]

Drogulus, thanks.

The first is true, and it appears very likely that the second is as well, though I'm basing this just on what you're telling me.

Yes.. The only thing missing here are my SAT scores which I took in 1989. Combined it was  740  (which is very low) and all this with some intensive tutoring beforehand. The highest score possible back then was 1600.

Btw, here is an angry response to the Murray calling it 'toxic nonsense':

What makes his arguments especially dangerous is that SOME of what he says is true and thus the reader can be lulled into believing it all.  Yes, putting political correctness aside, some people are really smart and some (gasp!) are really slow.  He's right that all the talk about emotional intelligence and multiple intelligences don't change this simple fact.  And yes, half of all people are of above average intelligence and half are below.

But how do people become smart/intelligent?  I'm no expert on the research, but it seems abundantly obvious that it's a combination of nature and nuture.  There was something special about Albert Einstein's brain that made it capable of operating on an entirely different level than the rest of us.  Similarly, there are people who, no matter how much good parenting or schooling they get, simply aren't going to be very bright, however one wants to measure this. 

I hypothesize that, at birth, the intellectual outcome of every human 25 or so years later -- again, however you want to measure it, but for simplicity, let's just say IQ -- is going to be on a bell curve -- even two idential twins, with identical brains at birth might end up with very different IQs (for the average person, the bell curve is centered on an IQ of 100).  But then the nurture part kicks in -- in a HUGE way.  If the child is loved, well fed and healthy, is read and spoken kindly to, is exposed to lots of positive experiences (travel, museums, etc.), has parents (or teachers or other role models) who teach (and lead by example) the values of discipline, hard work, being nice and the importance of education, and, most importantly, goes to a great school with great teachers who excel at motivating, inspiring and imparting knowledge, then the average child is HIGHLY likely to end up MUCH smarter than average (say, an IQ of 120, equal to the 90th percentile).  Conversely, if the child does not have all of these factors -- in particular, a lousy school with mostly lousy teachers -- then he/she will end up with, say, and IQ of 80 (10th percentile). 

This is Murray's first major flaw: the intelligence is somehow immutable. If Albert Einstein had grown up in a broken family, in which no adult had graduated from high school, in a chaotic and dangerous community, and attended failing schools for his entire life, I have no doubt that Murray would have tested him as an adult and concluded that he was stupid. My experience is that it's actually quite remarkable how nature spreads out innate intelligence.I can't tell you how many people I've met who were born into privilege and who've had every educational advantage, yet are complete dopes; and, conversely, how many people I've met who come from modest beginnings but are brilliant...The key is what happens AFTER birth.

Here is the whole article: http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/01/intelligence-in-classroom.html

***********

And that's the 64 million dollar question... What effect does early nurture, opportunity (and personal motivation later on) have on intellectual ability ?

[drogulus]

     I think the upper limit is fixed by nature. Nurture can help you get close to that limit. So Murray is mostly right, and this is mostly wrong:

     I hypothesize that, at birth, the intellectual outcome of every human 25 or so years later -- again, however you want to measure it, but for simplicity, let's just say IQ -- is going to be on a bell curve -- even two idential twins, with identical brains at birth might end up with very different IQs (for the average person, the bell curve is centered on an IQ of 100).  But then the nurture part kicks in -- in a HUGE way.  If the child is loved, well fed and healthy, is read and spoken kindly to, is exposed to lots of positive experiences (travel, museums, etc.), has parents (or teachers or other role models) who teach (and lead by example) the values of discipline, hard work, being nice and the importance of education, and, most importantly, goes to a great school with great teachers who excel at motivating, inspiring and imparting knowledge, then the average child is HIGHLY likely to end up MUCH smarter than average (say, an IQ of 120, equal to the 90th percentile).  Conversely, if the child does not have all of these factors -- in particular, a lousy school with mostly lousy teachers -- then he/she will end up with, say, and IQ of 80 (10th percentile). 

     Either this means nurture develops potential, in which case it's in agreement with Murray on a noncontroversial point, or it's just plain wrong.

     

But then the nurture part kicks in -- in a HUGE way

     Wrong.

[Florestan]

Yes I am.

Fine. What else do you need, then?

Because it's very easy to feel like a "preliterate" in our highly sophisticated culture, filled as it is with abstract concepts and analyses.

Eric, for God's sake, stop pittying yourself! Leave the "abstract concepts and analyses" to those interested in them and live your own life!

Yes we need all of them but don't you (deep down inside) stand in special awe of those humans with superior linguistic ability ?

I pride myself that my own linguistic ability is high enough not to feel envy towards anyone in this respect. 

Now, seriously, yes, I "stand in awe" of geniuses and people with superior intelligence and talent. But this does not diminish my self-esteem, nor do I consider myself stupid.

[Florestan]

And yes, half of all people are of above average intelligence and half are below.

This is pure mathematical nonsense. If half of all people are above average and half are below average, then who the heck is average?