People of class drink alcohol

[Triple Zero]

Exploring demographics on alcohol usage

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/05/people-of-class-drink-alcohol/

The very last chart is the kicker, though:



WORDSUM is a measure of vocabulary size, afaik. And thereby a sort of broad indicator of intelligence.

The amazing thing is the incredibly strong correlation. If you look at the other charts in the demographics there are lots of predictable results, things you would expect, but the correlation is a littlebit rough.

But this one, it's a near straight line. That's pretty statistically significant.

What do you think about it?

Alcohol makes you talkative is the best thing I can come up with.

But what about the "tool of the machine" belief we have over here? Not saying it invalidates it (wouldnt want to either), but what does that belief mean in the light of this chart?

Vocabulary doesn't correlate with how much of a biped you are?

Makes me think, can we come up with a quantitative way to gauge bipedality?
[not in the way of "you must do/think this and that to be(come) a biped", rather a way to sample a person, a test, to score them, not to judge but to draw other correlations similar to this from]

[h-town]

drinking is bad. without question. i'm drunk right now so i'd now for sure without question.

[Adios]

I refer to alcohol as tongue oil.

[LMNO]

We all may have different ideas about what the Machine™ is, but I remember saying once that the Machine™ is what happens when people forget about their BIP. 

As such, intelligence or vocabulary doesn't really matter in this case. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Maybe it's as simple as people with better vocabularies being more likely to have money to spend on alcohol?

[MMIX]

Maybe it's as simple as people with better vocabularies being more likely to have money to spend on alcohol?

. . .  and the Machine certainly has a lot to gain from ensuring that the thinking classes are also the drinking classes . . .

[LMNO]

I refer to alcohol as tongue oil.

Mrs LMNO calls gin martinis "loudmouth soup".

She has very good reasons for doing so.

[Adios]

I refer to alcohol as tongue oil.

Mrs LMNO calls gin martinis "loudmouth soup".

She has very good reasons for doing so.

I had the right to remain silent... but I didn't have the ability.
Ron White

[Jasper]

INTERESTING...

Because some of the first written documents are booze recipes, historically speaking.

COINCIDENCE?

I think not.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Mr. Language was talking about the birth of written language last night; he thinks there is a strong correlation between use of mind-altering substances and humans becoming literate.

He might just be a filthy hippie, but I'm not the linguistics professor.

[Jasper]

It makes some sense, neurologically.  Doesn't it follow that it takes a certain degree of synaesthesia to recognize the sound of the word with the look of it's written form with the actual thing in itself?  And don't some psychoactive chemicals cause a certain loosening of those distinctions?

[LMNO]

Mr. Language was talking about the birth of written language last night; he thinks there is a strong correlation between use of mind-altering substances and humans becoming literate.

He might just be a filthy hippie, but I'm not the linguistics professor.

I think that's a mildly popular theory, but I can't remember any of the supporting arguments.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Mr. Language was talking about the birth of written language last night; he thinks there is a strong correlation between use of mind-altering substances and humans becoming literate.

He might just be a filthy hippie, but I'm not the linguistics professor.

I think that's a mildly popular theory, but I can't remember any of the supporting arguments.

I'd never heard it before. I'm assuming that, being a guy who is completely obsessed with language, has a grant to open a language school, and teaches college classes on teaching language, he probably knows more or less what he's talking about in terms of research.

[BADGE OF HONOR]

So tell him cause I really want to see that!

[LMNO]

In Guns, Germs, and Steel, they talk about the different kinds of language, from pictograms to alphanumeric, and the relative ages and paths of each style of language.  

Although a good case is made for language starting out as a method of accounting/bookkeeping, there had to be a point where things got abstracted, where a headspace was required that combined two previously unrelated things in a meta sort of way.  

It's not hard to imagine psychotropics having some hand in this.  But like I said, I'm not sure if there's any concrete proof of this.