Re: doing exercises for starting forth, kinda discouraging, some are easy and some seem text not prepare me for....

From	Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: doing exercises for starting forth, kinda discouraging, some are easy and some seem text not prepare me for....
Date	2012-06-29 01:23 +0200
Organization	1&1 Internet AG
Message-ID	<jsip1q$adu$1@online.de> (permalink)
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Rod Pemberton wrote:
>> I don't think brain processing speed is an all-too-wrong metric.  But
>> if you have some attention deficite or memory loss, fast processing
>> speed won't help you to gain knowledge or wisdom.
> 
> I don't see why "brain processing speed" is a valid metric at all.  It
> seems completely worthless to me.

Our brains are much too similar architected that speed wouldn't matter.  
It's like a CPU: If you have two CPUs of the same design, the one with 
the faster processing speed will win in a competition on the same task.  
Whatever that task is.  If you had two CPUs of wildly different design, 
clock speed comparison is much less meaningful (e.g. simple in-order ARM 
vs. complex OoOE x86).

> Why should someone who thinks slowly, but can solve difficult problems
> be devalued?  Yes, there are plenty of people who can think quickly
> and solve difficult problems.  There are also plenty of people who can
> think quickly, but can't solve difficult problems at all.

Actually, I haven't seen these sort of people, they are not plenty.  
There are people who think quickly and can solve complex problems, and 
there are thick and slow thinkers, who can't even solve simple problems, 
but they get angry if you are a lot quicker than them, because it 
reduces their already low self-esteem.

People with attention disorder have many difficulties, while they don't 
have problems with the IQ tests.  These conditions are orthogonal to IQ 
measurements, and in fact, they shouldn't be.  An attention disorder 
impacts your capability of solving hard problems, but it doesn't affect 
your capability for simple problems, because there, their limited 
attention span is sufficient to solve the problem.

> So, why should an
> uncapable quick thinker be considered to be smarter than a capable
> slow thinker? I.e., the time consumed by an individual to solve a
> problem seems to have no correlation with the _ability_ of one to
> solve problems.

Average people tend to think that highly intelligent people must have 
other deficits or so, as if the gods spread their gifts equal (they 
don't, the Bible tells you "For unto every one that hath shall be given, 
and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken 
away even that which he hath." Matthew 25:29).  There are people which 
have odd brains (savants), that can do some things extremely good and 
other things very bad, but in general, intelligent people are just 
people with a more efficient brain - faster, less power consumption, and 
they typically are better in every aspect you can test.  It has been 
found out that more stupid people in general face earlier dementia, 
which seems to coincide with Matthew 25:29.  Or maybe it just is 
diagnosed earlier, because intelligent people can hide the symptoms for 
longer.  Who knows.  Highly intelligent people usually have their 
attention disorder diagnosed late, too, because its impact is much less 
than on stupid people - if you are a thick and slow thinker, *and* you 
have a short attention span, you are completely fucked up.

Life is unfair.  And speed does matter.  It's not the only thing that 
matters.  But if you discuss about a metric like IQ, you should stick to 
what is actually measured, and not redefine the way of obtaining the 
value.

IQ is the single number that results of doing a standardized MESA test.  
As all single numbers resulting from some standard tests, they don't 
reflect everything, but they correlate significantly.  And this number 
is only by 50% influenced from your genes, the other 50% are your own 
achievement - you *can* train your brain to become more efficient (it 
will become more efficient on whatever you train it to - if you train IQ 
tests, your IQ will rise without much effect on other problem solving 
skills).  And you also can ruin your brain (called "burn out syndrome").

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/

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