h a l f b a k e r yThe embarrassing drunkard uncle of invention.
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Be it a popup on your calendar, an email sent in the
morning, a fortune cookie or whatever, messages telling
stories about somebody that isn't as lucky as you who
overcomes their misfortune by doing a specific thing.
"David was born with cognitive impairment, so to take
care
of
himself
he has to be very organized. Every morning he makes a
list
of what he has to do. He can't spell very well so
sometimes
he draws pictures, but being organized like this gets him
through his day. Be like David."
"Mark lost use of his legs in a mountain climbing accident
so he
became a motivational speaker after being the first
paraplegic to climb Halfdome. Be like Mark."
The first example is a fictionalized example of a dear
family friend who always works, owns a house, has a nice
car
and travels the country to visit people who love her very
much. She has kids who are successful and generally has
a good life but doesn't have a
very high
IQ. I realized how she did it when we were at dinner and
she opened her wallet (I told her I was treating so she
put it away) but before she did, I realized I had never
seen an example of such neatness, order and logical
arrangement in my life. It then occurred to me how she
does it and came up with the concept of latent IQ vs
tangible IQ using the engine / transmission analogy.
Everybody knows you can have a high IQ and be
worthless
if you don't apply it properly, but you can also have a low
IQ and be effective if you apply what you have
efficiently. This is like an engine and transmission in a
car. You have have a 200 horsepower engine, but if your
transmission is lousy, you're just sitting there making
noise, but if you have a very effective transmission, you
can take a much smaller engine and move very
effectively. In this analogy, the engine is raw
intelligence, the transmission is discipline, order,
structure and sticktoitiveness.
The second is actually a friend of mine that I grew up
with and that story is
true.
Ray's "old age suits".
https://www.youtube...watch?v=CEDF9ut7iCc
Very cool. [doctorremulac3, Jun 18 2022]
Smart guy
https://en.wikipedi...saac_Newton#Alchemy
But wrong about some things... [neutrinos_shadow, Jun 19 2022]
[link]
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A disability is not a virtue, and I find this idea patronizing. Aside from disabilities that effect emotions, the disabled and the fully able are capable of equal levels of good and bad personality traits. An intelligent and hard-working person is no less to be applauded than an unintelligent but hard-working person. |
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If I have a disability I hope to be treated like everyone else: applauded no more or less for my actual virtues and denigrated no more or less for my vices. [-] |
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A disability is not a virtue, but empathy is. |
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I was hoping for some sort of virtual reality experience or
something beyond an inbox item. |
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At Ford we had 'old age suits' in the interior design group that
simulated the experience of trying to work car controls while
encumbered by restricted motion, cataracts, tunnel vision,
etc. They were interesting. |
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//An intelligent and hard-working person is no less
to be applauded than an unintelligent but hard-
working person.// |
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That's like saying "A person born with no hands that
adapts, improvises and overcomes to be just as
successful as the person born with hands is no
better than the person born with hands." |
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No, the person who overcomes a disability had to
show more strength and determination than the
person without that disability. |
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So it's fine to ignore people who overcome
disabilities for whatever reason, I'm studying them.
I think they're awesome. Having respect for
somebody isn't patronizing, patronizing is fake
respect. |
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A blind person who rises to the same level
of success as me with my two working eyes is
better than me. |
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Ray, that's pretty cool. Old age suits. (see link) |
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I wonder whether you're missing my point deliberately or accidentally. Either way I will not restate it. |
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I think your point was people who overcome
adversity are no better then those who don’t. If
not, sorry to have angered you, wasn’t my
intention. |
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The flip side of this is my fascination with smart
people who are wrong all the time. Often this
seems to be a result of what I call “brain farming”
where a group of leaders endeavor to control a
group of followers. The methods of doing this are
too numerous to mention. My obvious question to
myself is “If they’re smart but wrong all the time,
can I be wrong all the time without knowing it?”. |
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That’s why I’ve come up with the idea of looking
at intellectual capacity from an engineering angle
with hard fast measurable parameters gauged by
outcome, not just theoretical capacity abilities. |
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Just Saturday morning coffee thoughts before I go
to the beach with the family, not a call to arms
one way or another. |
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Prime example: Rand Paul. Bright guy but
intellectually dishonest and lacking any sort of
humility. |
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My own hypothesis is
that being bright, and intellectually curious allows
you to find the underdiscovered, undertraveled
intellectual paths and make connections in new but
not always rational ways, so after awhile you
become used to the flora and fauna off the beaten
path. A select few of these paths lead to streams of
new knowledge to become larger branches over
time. But most just wander around into dead ends.
And historically the beaten paths are often that way
for a reason, and in at least the scientific and
physics realms or in anything remotely related to
math or logic that's the way it is. |
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I just find that the more I know, seems like the less I
know. Every answer brings twenty more questions. |
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It's best to ease into these things so as not to implode. |
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I think the way to be very clever and wrong is to cultivate a detachment from introspection. I think the best way to end up less wrong is to constantly ask yourself "am I wrong? What would happen if I was wrong about this idea? Can I think of any evidence or argument that could prove this idea wrong?" |
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Of course I may have taken this idea too far and end up doubting everything and ending up even stupider. |
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//people who overcome disabilities for whatever reason, I'm
studying them.//
[doctorremulac3], I have a physical disability. If you're serious
about this study & want to discuss such things, drop me an e-
mail. |
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Wow Neut, I already have additional respect for you.
I'll drop you a line. |
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//fascination with smart people who are wrong all the
time//
//undertraveled intellectual paths and make connections in
new but not always rational ways,// |
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These are linked. You can be too smart for your own good,
able to justify essentially anything to anyone, including
yourself. I can argue my way out of doing things I should
do. Jurgen Klopp, arguably the best football coach in the
world right now, said players should be intelligent, but not
"too smart", "they can disassemble a careful plan in a
completely rational way and then nobody has anything".
Military leadership training warns against being drawn into
arguments, those in charge may not be the brightest or
most convincing, but you can't allow the group discipline to
be questioned at each turn. |
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Another interesting group, is the smart people, who are
almost always right, have the right tools and are
encouraged to check their work still get things wrong.
Example: BMW 5 series (e39) where the rear lights had a
wire going to each individual lamp, and a common ground
wire. Only the ground wire wasn't large enough to handle
the current of many lights on all at once. Professional
electrical engineers forgot the absolute basics of circuits. It
got signed off in a tediously careful German paper trail,
passed to the testing crew, no-one picked it up. |
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//the more I know, seems like the less I know. Every answer
brings twenty more questions.// |
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This is wise, and dangerous. It's wonderful to understand
your limitations, but in complex systems like the wet &
salty sciences, there's a dangerous path. I'm experienced
enough in a rigorous enough lab to know that most of the
tools I use are being mis-used by 90+% of people in the
field, and by extension, industry. That leave you with so
few solid data points to constrain your thinking, that you
might as well know nothing. Add to that the incentives for
arriving at the "correct" results in a high pressure system
where your job, health ins, and presence of yourself/family
in the country are tied to a single person... It becomes a
real mess. I'm now in the situation, where roughly half of
what I KNOW to be true is false. The hard thing to do is
build clever tests to start shoring up knowledge. The harder
thing to do, is to get money for that, when the money
givers are not interested in shoring up what we know and
instead like "Moon Shots". |
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//the way to be very clever and wrong is to cultivate a
detachment from introspection.// |
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Yes, or more formally, a failure of mental discipline/critical
thinking. It's mental self-indulgence without the right level
of cynicism, if that's the right word. That and the human
love of narrative. |
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