Can you do better than Boris?

Mark wrote:

I disagee with your definition of "proof of intelligence". It is
quite possible for someone to have acquired wealth without having done
anything much. You can inherit or win money, for example. Any test
for intelligence must look at skill or learning.


I did start off by saying 'accumulated wealth'. I realise now that this
was too broad. I should have said 'wealth accumulated by ability (except
footballers and suchlike)'.

Bill

In article , Bill Wright
wrote:
Mark wrote:

I disagee with your definition of "proof of intelligence". It is
quite possible for someone to have acquired wealth without having done
anything much. You can inherit or win money, for example. Any test
for intelligence must look at skill or learning.


I did start off by saying 'accumulated wealth'. I realise now that this
was too broad. I should have said 'wealth accumulated by ability (except
footballers and suchlike)'.

So back to, "Cherry pick those who you think have 'ability', then call them
'intelligent'!" Brilliant test method. Saves all the fuss over trying to
devise an objective test, stats, etc. :-)

Pretty much what I guess Boris and the present government would like as a
'definition' to suit them and their rich chums. Mustn't tax or regulate or
hold to account people just because of their personal misfortune of being
'intellegent', eh? ;-

Jim

--
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On Mon, 09 Dec 2013 19:04:21 +0000, Bill Wright
wrote:


I disagee with your definition of "proof of intelligence". It is
quite possible for someone to have acquired wealth without having done
anything much. You can inherit or win money, for example. Any test
for intelligence must look at skill or learning.


I did start off by saying 'accumulated wealth'. I realise now that this
was too broad. I should have said 'wealth accumulated by ability (except
footballers and suchlike)'.

How would you rate "wealth accumulated by ability to work the system"?

Rod.

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , JohnT
wrote:

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...



I am struggling somewhat with the logic of "Given how well crime can pay
(look at bankers and lawyers) I guess this means intelligence will come
with being a crook who doesn't give a hoot for anyone else." Perhaps
Jim could give some examples.

I confess I am a little surprised that you have missed events from 2008
onward. Mis-sellings of all kinds, LIBOR, fines, etc, etc.


You have a very strange definition of crime.

--
JohnT

On 09/12/2013 15:52, Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , Zimmy wrote:
On 08/12/2013 12:21, Jim Lesurf wrote:


A friend of mine when we were undergrads spent some time doing a
series of tests in 'Check your IQ' books. His 'IQ' rose as he did
more of them. No idea if this ever helped him in the world outside
such tests.

Indeed. Apparently average IQ test results have been rising every year
since they became widely used, such that if you project the rate of
increase backwards, the average IQ in 1900 would be have been below 70,
meaning that the average person then was mentally retarded.

We'd need to unpick that a bit. IIRC The reality for traditional formal 'IQ
tests' is that the outcomes are statistically *defined* to be a 'normal
distribution' with its peak at '100' and that this distribution, being
normal, is symmetric. Hence the mean/peak/mode/median all neatly coincide.
How wonderfully neat humans must be. :-)

So I can see that any raw results from a test which has remained the same
probably will drift about with time. But AIUI the statisticians then
cheerfully year-by-year reshuffle each years's results to get the average,
etc, back to being the same IQ score distrubution and shape once they have
done bending the results into this shape which they *require*. This is one
of the oddities of such 'measurements' that they start with the statistics
they 'require' and then make the actual values fit. One of the reasons that
different tests may give different results for a given individual.

In a similar way, other exams may be processed in a similar way.

Yes that's true and in that case the results of no two exams are
comparable. The fact remains that if new people can still take the old
tests and do better in them, the tests must be getting harder and
perhaps people world-wide are getting better at these kinds of tests.

Thus you cannot say that someone 'has' an IQ of X, all you can say is
that when compared to the other people that took a certain test at a
certain time, they ranked X, which cannot be directly compared with any
other test or group or year.

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

Z

Roderick Stewart wrote:

I did start off by saying 'accumulated wealth'. I realise now that this
was too broad. I should have said 'wealth accumulated by ability (except
footballers and suchlike)'.

How would you rate "wealth accumulated by ability to work the system"?

Rod.

Don't we all work the system? Isn't that what it's all about? I'd say
such an ability displays intelligence.

Bill

Jim Lesurf wrote:

I did start off by saying 'accumulated wealth'. I realise now that this
was too broad. I should have said 'wealth accumulated by ability (except
footballers and suchlike)'.

So back to, "Cherry pick those who you think have 'ability', then call them
'intelligent'!" Brilliant test method. Saves all the fuss over trying to
devise an objective test, stats, etc. :-)

Yes but other established IQ tests aren't objective or meaningful
either. I'm merely suggesting yet another similar one. You can't measure
intelligence really. It's too amorphous. It can't be done.


Pretty much what I guess Boris and the present government would like as a
'definition' to suit them and their rich chums. Mustn't tax or regulate or
hold to account people just because of their personal misfortune of being
'intellegent', eh? ;-

Actually, Cameron sometimes seems strangely left wing, especially on
social issues.

Bill

In article , Bill Wright
wrote:



Pretty much what I guess Boris and the present government would like
as a 'definition' to suit them and their rich chums. Mustn't tax or
regulate or hold to account people just because of their personal
misfortune of being 'intellegent', eh? ;-

Actually, Cameron sometimes seems strangely left wing, especially on
social issues.

Can't say that the bedroom tax, or shoving people off benefit, or
pretending those on zero hours contracts are "employed" seems very 'left
wing' to me. Nor all the privatising, outsourcing to rich mates, etc, etc.
I guess you could argue that some of his 'social' policies like those on
partnerships/marriages are 'left wing'. But the real features of his
behaviour seem to me to be inconsistency and a lack of real thought. Plus
the way his views seem starkly limited by his experience.

To me he just seems like a vacuous political 'flag'. Turns however he
senses the wind blowing. Conditioned by being embedded in a wealthly and
self-concerned set of 'chums'. No real awareness or grasp of anyone's
experiences beyond that walled community. Hence he'll say "vote blue get
green" one day and "dump the green crap" another and assume no-one will
notice he is making it up as he goes along simply to get votes, or
money/press coverage from his chums.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
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In article , Martin
wrote:
On Wed, 11 Dec 2013 09:35:47 +0000 (GMT), Jim Lesurf
wrote:


To me he just seems like a vacuous political 'flag'. Turns however he
senses the wind blowing. Conditioned by being embedded in a wealthly
and self-concerned set of 'chums'. No real awareness or grasp of
anyone's experiences beyond that walled community. Hence he'll say
"vote blue get green" one day and "dump the green crap" another and
assume no-one will notice he is making it up as he goes along simply to
get votes, or money/press coverage from his chums.

He tends to be driven by opinions expressed in The Daily Mail.

I guess he has lost his mentor who is currently 'otherwise occupied' by
being on trial. Wonder if after that his ex-mentor will go on trial again
in Scotland wrt perjury against Tommy Sheridan. So I guess it may simplest
for him to read the Sun/Mail and try to do as he is told more directly.

The worst job he ever had was working in a distribution centre in
Newbury. I assume that this was sorting Royal Mail parcels one Christmas.

Didn't he also once work in Apartheid South Africa for a while? Or has that
also been expunged from history?

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
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In message , Jim Lesurf
writes
In article , Martin
wrote:
On Wed, 11 Dec 2013 09:35:47 +0000 (GMT), Jim Lesurf
wrote:


To me he just seems like a vacuous political 'flag'. Turns however he
senses the wind blowing. Conditioned by being embedded in a wealthly
and self-concerned set of 'chums'. No real awareness or grasp of
anyone's experiences beyond that walled community. Hence he'll say
"vote blue get green" one day and "dump the green crap" another and
assume no-one will notice he is making it up as he goes along simply to
get votes, or money/press coverage from his chums.

He tends to be driven by opinions expressed in The Daily Mail.

I guess he has lost his mentor who is currently 'otherwise occupied' by
being on trial. Wonder if after that his ex-mentor will go on trial again
in Scotland wrt perjury against Tommy Sheridan. So I guess it may simplest
for him to read the Sun/Mail and try to do as he is told more directly.

The worst job he ever had was working in a distribution centre in
Newbury. I assume that this was sorting Royal Mail parcels one Christmas.

Didn't he also once work in Apartheid South Africa for a while? Or has that
also been expunged from history?

Jim

No it hasn't.

In April 2009, The Independent reported that in 1989, while Nelson
Mandela remained imprisoned under the apartheid régime, David Cameron
had accepted a trip to South Africa paid for by an anti-sanctions lobby
firm. A spokesperson for Cameron responded by saying that the
Conservative Party was at that time opposed to sanctions against South
Africa and that his trip was a fact-finding mission. However, the
newspaper reported that Cameron's then superior at Conservative Research
Department called the trip "jolly", saying that "it was all terribly
relaxed, just a little treat, a perk of the job. The Botha regime was
attempting to make itself look less horrible, but I don't regard it as
having been of the faintest political consequence." Cameron distanced
himself from his party's history of opposing sanctions against the
regime. He was criticised by Labour MP Peter Hain, himself an
anti-apartheid campaigner.

More on topic for this group,

In July 1994, Cameron left his role as Special Adviser to work as the
Director of Corporate Affairs at Carlton Communications.[63] Carlton,
which had won the ITV franchise for London weekdays in 1991, was a
growing media company which also had film distribution and video
producing arms. Cameron was suggested for the role to Carlton executive
chairman Michael Green by his later mother-in-law Lady Astor.[64] In
1997, Cameron played up the Company's prospects for digital terrestrial
television, for which it joined with Granada television and BSkyB to
form British Digital Broadcasting. In a roundtable discussion on the
future of broadcasting in 1998 he criticised the effect of overlapping
different regulators on the industry.[65]

Carlton's consortium did win the digital terrestrial franchise but the
resulting company suffered difficulties in attracting subscribers.
Cameron resigned as Director of Corporate Affairs in February 2001 in
order to fight for election to Parliament, although he remained on the
payroll as a consultant.
--
Ian