Is anyone else disgusted by the rash of internet iq-tests, iq-based game shows, and all that BS?
Intelligence can effectively be measured by a single number, so they say. Why do people believe it?
I am at a loss. I can only say that when googling, I can't seem to find a single page criticizing the idea, only rather rabid advocates of eugenics and what's worse. On the page of one white supremacist I did find an article from a scientific journal criticizing the traditional idea of iq, but it wasn't even very readable, and of course it was interspaced with rants from the site's owner. I won't even bother linking to it.
Even the Densa web page is gone. Even this humorous, but careful, protest from the society open to the bottom 98% iq-rated of society, is gone.
It really really disappoints me when I see people I respect are in Mensa. I could understand it if it was just a love of the quizzical, the joy of solving abstract puzzles - I'd join it myself, in an instant! But unfortunately love of puzzles, or love of any kind, is not what mensa is about. It's about the belief that their ability to solve various puzzles sets them fundamentally apart from other people. And I'm not interested in "proving" that I am more worth than my neighbor.
I do like puzzles, particulary those that are easy to grasp and hard to master. The fellow I said I respected, I respect him for writing such great puzzles. and sharing them. Sometimes I wish my friends (and my spouse! :-) shared my interest in puzzles, but it's an interest, nothing more.
Cyril was a good ol'fashioned racist. The first Mensa president, and he verifiably falsified data and even invented co-authors in order to support his hypothesis that some "races" were more intelligent than others. For you who consider joining mensa, or perhaps already did, perhaps flattered by the praise of people coming to you saying that this "scientific" test proves you have exceptional potential, I ask you to think about that. It shouldn't suprise anyone. It's no coincidence, just like it's no coincidence that IQ-tests used to be the litmus test of the eugenics movement. Mensa people: do you approve of this? If not, why join an organization that is fundamentally antidemocratic, antihumanistic, not to say anti-christian?
There's something about mensa that reminds me about scientologists, I can't quite explain why, but perhaps the link can.
This is a weblog, therefore the writing style just ... IS like this. I apologize to those
whom
it might offend.