Folks: You undoubtedly have a ton of intellect and a wry sense of humor (or else you wouldn't be at HalfBakery). If you are like me, you deal with emails from all levels of intellect. However, I'll bet you don't care much for emails (sometimes repeatedly) from certain friends/family who insist on dispatching urban legends as if they are the truth. So, the invention: develop a dossier on each sender based on wether the sender sent you infomarmation that is above or below the expected intellect of somebody that age (and sobriety ;). The dossier receives clicks on two buttons -intelligent- -stupid-. Everyone starts with an intelligence rating between 1 and 100, and starts at the position of 50. With each click of the -intelligent- button, you alter their score by splitting the difference between their current score and 100. Similarly, the -stupid- button would adjust the score downward. Then new emails would be automatically dropped into several folders varying between "Ph. D. Candidate" to "Brain Dead" based on their track record. That way, you could save the "Brain Dead" folder for just around quitting time, and just quickly go through and 'delete', 'delete', 'delete'. This isn't exactly a spam filter, but it does cut back on the BS that would otherwise soil your esteemed eyes.
If you want to get really advanced/daring with this invention, set up some kind of collaboration where your score is rapidly established by vote. The fun part will come in when you send yourself an email and see which folder you end up in :).-- pathetic, Aug 10 2004 Elitist Filter http://www.halfbake..._20Elitist_20Filter [pathetic, Oct 04 2004] [admin: corrected spelling of the idea title, as we always do; I also fixed the link to actually point to the destination, rather than to an empty idea, and fixed the spelling of "Elitist" in the link's title.]
As far as I know, there is no connection between intelligence and lack of gullibility; nor one between intelligence and good spelling.
There *is* a relationship between intelligence and ingrained belief in one's superiority; that relationship is inverse.
"IQ" is already age-adjusted, so "IQ/age" is redundant.-- jutta, Aug 10 2004 [jutta] - is it really? ...I guess it must be, thinking about it.-- Detly, Aug 11 2004 [Detly] - yes. That's where the "Q" bit of IQ comes from.-- benjamin, Aug 11 2004 qage?-- Lacus Trasumenus, Aug 11 2004 IQ is (allegedly) the ratio of a person's "mental age" - one could say "intellectual age" - to that person's actual age. In fact, it simply measures the ability to perform IQ tests.-- angel, Aug 11 2004 the title really was never integrated into the idea so all the IQ debate is really a red herring. you basically vote on whether you think the sender is intelligent or not.
my experience has been that chronic, constant purveyors of urban legend and joke emails are a bit lonely and are reaching out for some contact. they'd like to hear from you. the act of sending them really has little or nothing to do with gullibility etc. and certainly nothing to do with intelligence.
this is a general statement but i believe its true more often than not. test it out. write to them more often about a common interest and see if the unwanted mail continues. bet it doesn't.-- xclamp, Aug 11 2004 I will concede that [xclamp] is very likely right. As much as I hate to admit it, I sense that the two or three chronic senders to me are lonely. So perhaps a better adjustment to this idea would be to automatically respond to with something inane, but warm and fuzzy, e.g. some cut-and-paste text from www.inspirationalstories.com .
Is it just me, or do others agree that as a general rule, dispatching condolences, apologies, inspiration and the heavily-laden emotional stuff via email just doesn't come close to matching a nice phone call? One of these days, I've got to change my HalfBakery login-id. P.S. I like irony... that's why I misspell :)-- pathetic, Aug 12 2004 That's not irony.-- jutta, Aug 12 2004 for what it's worth: i recently had this sobering realization about IQ and age. it dawned on me that since having finished school, i wasn't learning as much as fast. so, although i am not getting stupider (i hope), my IQ is dropping.
ouch.-- the27man, Aug 13 2004 [jutta] - in the right context, it could be Socratic.-- Detly, Aug 13 2004 random, halfbakery