Nerds who aren't that smart

[Doktor Howl]

Well tbh, nerd doesn't mean smart, and when it does there are alot of different kinds of 'smart'.

In truth nerds today is more a fashion. It happened around the time being nerdy became cool. Like the big bang theory, sure they have 'smart' jokes, but anyone with a GED can get the jokes. Truth be told, looking smart is 90% of what you need. Because a 'nerd' today is like a wizard 100 years ago. Normal people have no clue how they work so they don't question it, and when an actually wizard shows up shooting lighting at the other wizards who just throw dirt to defend themselves. Normal people don't know which is which, that's wizard business I'm a fucking farmer, I didn't spend my free time reading wizard books and shitting in my friends mouth while exploring my sexuality, i tended the farm.

That one real wizard is going to be labeled a 'none' wizard by the wanna be wizards and a wizard by the farmer, so he's fucked. We're all fucked.

Cause nerds are magic now, leftest, egolectual, mages who can spout facts, but can't spout anything that matters.

I approve of this ranting.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

Here's these people doing this thing:

http://io9.com/a-test-to-measure-how-rational-you-really-are-609412488

Keith E. Stanovich is Professor of Human Development and Applied Psychology at the University of Toronto. The author of over 200 scientific articles and seven books, he, along with Richard West, was recently given a grant by the John Templeton Foundation to create the first comprehensive assessment of rational thinking — a test that will ultimately determine a person's 'rationality quotient'.

...

Perhaps intelligence is highly associated with rationality even though tasks tapping the latter are not assessed directly on the tests. Here is where empirical research comes in — some of which has been generated by our own research group. We have found that many rational thinking tasks show surprising degrees of dissociation from cognitive ability in university samples. Many classic effects from the heuristics and biases literature — base-rate neglect, framing effects, conjunction effects, anchoring biases, and outcome bias — are only modestly related to intelligence if run in between-subjects designs.

I'm hoping they come up with something workable. It would be cool to see what kind of things they can find comparing IQ to RQ.

[Doktor Howl]

I already know that I am not very rational.  I try to do better, but in the end I am a primate, and "rational" is something I have to DO, rather than something I AM.

[hooplala]

I already know that I am not very rational.  I try to do better, but in the end I am a primate, and "rational" is something I have to DO, rather than something I AM.

Word. It's an uphill battle.

[hooplala]

Well tbh, nerd doesn't mean smart, and when it does there are alot of different kinds of 'smart'.

In truth nerds today is more a fashion. It happened around the time being nerdy became cool. Like the big bang theory, sure they have 'smart' jokes, but anyone with a GED can get the jokes. Truth be told, looking smart is 90% of what you need. Because a 'nerd' today is like a wizard 100 years ago. Normal people have no clue how they work so they don't question it, and when an actually wizard shows up shooting lighting at the other wizards who just throw dirt to defend themselves. Normal people don't know which is which, that's wizard business I'm a fucking farmer, I didn't spend my free time reading wizard books and shitting in my friends mouth while exploring my sexuality, i tended the farm.

That one real wizard is going to be labeled a 'none' wizard by the wanna be wizards and a wizard by the farmer, so he's fucked. We're all fucked.

Cause nerds are magic now, leftest, egolectual, mages who can spout facts, but can't spout anything that matters.

It's funny that people use the popularity of The Big Bang Theory as the tipping point of nerd cool, considering the nerds themselves are the butt of 99% of the "humor" in the show.

[Doktor Howl]

Well tbh, nerd doesn't mean smart, and when it does there are alot of different kinds of 'smart'.

In truth nerds today is more a fashion. It happened around the time being nerdy became cool. Like the big bang theory, sure they have 'smart' jokes, but anyone with a GED can get the jokes. Truth be told, looking smart is 90% of what you need. Because a 'nerd' today is like a wizard 100 years ago. Normal people have no clue how they work so they don't question it, and when an actually wizard shows up shooting lighting at the other wizards who just throw dirt to defend themselves. Normal people don't know which is which, that's wizard business I'm a fucking farmer, I didn't spend my free time reading wizard books and shitting in my friends mouth while exploring my sexuality, i tended the farm.

That one real wizard is going to be labeled a 'none' wizard by the wanna be wizards and a wizard by the farmer, so he's fucked. We're all fucked.

Cause nerds are magic now, leftest, egolectual, mages who can spout facts, but can't spout anything that matters.

It's funny that people use the popularity of The Big Bang Theory as the tipping point of nerd cool, considering the nerds themselves are the butt of 99% of the "humor" in the show.

I fucking hate that show.  It's every awful stereotype of the nerd/science set, with added constant non-funny horribleness to the pretty girl, which I never witnessed as a physics major.

[P3nT4gR4m]

You realize that most of those silly metaphors were created about 100 years ago, when they honestly had no idea of what was going on, right?  For the most part, physicists have stopped doing that a while ago.

Your above rant sounds like a person who only knows about a Turing-style card-fed Automatic Computing Engine trying to describe the Watson supercomputer.

Maybe the problem is lead time, then. Discovery is made then, a century later, someone brings it to my attention. The internets has improved this immensely but finding reliable feeds with good information means navigating a gobshite minefield

[Doktor Howl]

You realize that most of those silly metaphors were created about 100 years ago, when they honestly had no idea of what was going on, right?  For the most part, physicists have stopped doing that a while ago.

Your above rant sounds like a person who only knows about a Turing-style card-fed Automatic Computing Engine trying to describe the Watson supercomputer.

Maybe the problem is lead time, then. Discovery is made then, a century later, someone brings it to my attention. The internets has improved this immensely but finding reliable feeds with good information means navigating a gobshite minefield

In my case, my problem is that I accept information too readily.  I am, as a result, full of truisms, given the avalanche of shit that is the internet.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

I already know that I am not very rational.  I try to do better, but in the end I am a primate, and "rational" is something I have to DO, rather than something I AM.

Yeah. The good news is that these researchers seem pretty solidly founded that unlike intelligence (at least the way IQ measures it), rationality is more skill than genetic lottery. The bad news is that they could still very well be wrong.

[Doktor Howl]

I already know that I am not very rational.  I try to do better, but in the end I am a primate, and "rational" is something I have to DO, rather than something I AM.

Yeah. The good news is that these researchers seem pretty solidly founded that unlike intelligence (at least the way IQ measures it), rationality is more skill than genetic lottery. The bad news is that they could still very well be wrong.

I was under the impression that IQ measures perception with respect to cultural and educational benchmarks, and that there is no actual standard of intelligence.

I could be wrong, though.

[P3nT4gR4m]

You realize that most of those silly metaphors were created about 100 years ago, when they honestly had no idea of what was going on, right?  For the most part, physicists have stopped doing that a while ago.

Your above rant sounds like a person who only knows about a Turing-style card-fed Automatic Computing Engine trying to describe the Watson supercomputer.

Maybe the problem is lead time, then. Discovery is made then, a century later, someone brings it to my attention. The internets has improved this immensely but finding reliable feeds with good information means navigating a gobshite minefield

In my case, my problem is that I accept information too readily.  I am, as a result, full of truisms, given the avalanche of shit that is the internet.

It's the age old problem of signal to noise ratio, scaled up to information overload levels. On the plus side the signal is much quicker nowadays

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

I already know that I am not very rational.  I try to do better, but in the end I am a primate, and "rational" is something I have to DO, rather than something I AM.

Yeah. The good news is that these researchers seem pretty solidly founded that unlike intelligence (at least the way IQ measures it), rationality is more skill than genetic lottery. The bad news is that they could still very well be wrong.

I was under the impression that IQ measures perception with respect to cultural and educational benchmarks, and that there is no actual standard of intelligence.

I could be wrong, though.

My last exposure or even real interest in the subject was a high school psych 101 class in the early 90's--so I'm pretty sure you can take my word as gospel, here.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Well tbh, nerd doesn't mean smart, and when it does there are alot of different kinds of 'smart'.

In truth nerds today is more a fashion. It happened around the time being nerdy became cool. Like the big bang theory, sure they have 'smart' jokes, but anyone with a GED can get the jokes. Truth be told, looking smart is 90% of what you need. Because a 'nerd' today is like a wizard 100 years ago. Normal people have no clue how they work so they don't question it, and when an actually wizard shows up shooting lighting at the other wizards who just throw dirt to defend themselves. Normal people don't know which is which, that's wizard business I'm a fucking farmer, I didn't spend my free time reading wizard books and shitting in my friends mouth while exploring my sexuality, i tended the farm.

That one real wizard is going to be labeled a 'none' wizard by the wanna be wizards and a wizard by the farmer, so he's fucked. We're all fucked.

Cause nerds are magic now, leftest, egolectual, mages who can spout facts, but can't spout anything that matters.

Gee, thanks. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Here's these people doing this thing:

http://io9.com/a-test-to-measure-how-rational-you-really-are-609412488

Keith E. Stanovich is Professor of Human Development and Applied Psychology at the University of Toronto. The author of over 200 scientific articles and seven books, he, along with Richard West, was recently given a grant by the John Templeton Foundation to create the first comprehensive assessment of rational thinking — a test that will ultimately determine a person's 'rationality quotient'.

...

Perhaps intelligence is highly associated with rationality even though tasks tapping the latter are not assessed directly on the tests. Here is where empirical research comes in — some of which has been generated by our own research group. We have found that many rational thinking tasks show surprising degrees of dissociation from cognitive ability in university samples. Many classic effects from the heuristics and biases literature — base-rate neglect, framing effects, conjunction effects, anchoring biases, and outcome bias — are only modestly related to intelligence if run in between-subjects designs.

I'm hoping they come up with something workable. It would be cool to see what kind of things they can find comparing IQ to RQ.

This is interesting, but may actually prove to be as useful as the IQ test (that is, kind of useful in some ways and under constant revision) due to the fact that rationality is social-context dependent.

People who have damage to their social-cue processing centers are very bad at making good decisions.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I already know that I am not very rational.  I try to do better, but in the end I am a primate, and "rational" is something I have to DO, rather than something I AM.

Yeah. The good news is that these researchers seem pretty solidly founded that unlike intelligence (at least the way IQ measures it), rationality is more skill than genetic lottery. The bad news is that they could still very well be wrong.

I was under the impression that IQ measures perception with respect to cultural and educational benchmarks, and that there is no actual standard of intelligence.

I could be wrong, though.

It measures a particular subset of very useful problem-solving abilities that are used heavily in our highly-technological society.