What's The Odds That The Man Who Stops Hurricanes [Archive]

einbert

08-31-2005, 11:30 AM

I apologize for the extreme length of this post, but I took a lot of time and effort writing it so I hope you guys (who are reading this thread) will give it some attention and maybe we can get some good discussions on this subject going.

[ QUOTE ]
The other possibility is that the smarter people who were born Christian are more likely to become non religous than the less intelligent ones. Or it could be some combination of both.

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Many people on earth claim to believe in a personal God. For most of the people that make this claim, the concept of God and everything they understand about God have basically been handed down from their parents. People who accept a belief system simply because it was handed down to them and never question or doubt those beliefs are something, let's call it a "weak will" as opposed to the "strong will" of someone who at some point finds the capacity to doubt everything he has been taught and everything he knows is true. I say that because it really does take a lot of strength to do these kinds of things, and it is the kind of strength that most people will never find throughout their entire lives.

Of those people that are strong willed, they very frequently end up believing something other than what their parents taught them. There is a very good reason for this--the belief systems of their parents (who are probably weak-willed, since most people are) are very simplistic and often extremely irrational. It is totally natural for the average adolescent strong willed person to begin totally abandoning these simplistic, irrational beliefs and of course the natural thing for these people to dive right into is the polar opposite of what their parents believed. For many this set of beliefs will fit so warm and snug on them that they will never have to look back. They will even look on their parents and say "Those poor people, they don't even begin to understand what reality is like because they simply accepted the viewpoints of their parents without ever doubting them or considering the opposite side. Their thinking is so irrational and their logical reasoning is so poor that it is obvious that they are wrong about God and the universe."

There are certain illusions in life that may be the result of evolution in one form or another. For example, people in their twenties, especially women, seem to have a great illusion that raising children is going to be more fun than work. Illusions like these have been totally necessary for the survival of the human race--they simply make life and all of its challenges so much easier to face. Easily the strongest of these illusions is the loving, all-forgiving, God that is the eternal seeker of justice and achieves this goal by striking the evil down to hell and rewarding the pious for their faithfulness with an eternal life of joy and contentment. Of course it would follow from what I have been saying that a weak-willed person would be more likely to latch on to these kind of illusions. Strong-willed people experience these illusions during their lives just like the weak-willed people, but they very frequently are able to doubt these kinds of feelings and eventually abandon them to some great or small degree. Since more people are weak willed than strong willed, it again makes sense that most people on earth are going to come to believe in this kind of a God.

So maybe we can finally get to the bottom of it. Most people are weak-willed, so most people are going to latch onto this illusional God of fire, brimstone, and pearly gates. They pass their simplistic, irrational belief systems on to their children. If their children are weak willed, they will probably never venture far from this comfortable blanket their parents have fashioned. If the children are strong willed, there is a great chance that they will jump out of this blanket and into the very next one, generally atheism or agnosticism. But here's where it gets really tricky. Since these strong-willed people can so clearly see the fallacies and ridiculousness of their parents, it becomes very difficult for many of them to ever again consider the possibility of this loving God. Some of them even go so far as to avoid subjecting themselves to consideration in the belief of ANY personal God. They fear getting back to where they started, and they fear passing on to their children the kinds of philosophies their parents attempted to pass on to them. In particular agnosticism lends itself well to the philosophy of "doubt everything except religion--of course that is false."

Most people who will accomplish something worthwhile in a scientific field are naturally going to be strong willed. It makes complete sense that these people are going to achieve considerably more than weak-willed people, especially if they focus their fierce ambitious mindsets onto something like how to divert hurricanes. And for the reasons I've stated, most strong-willed people will spend most of their lives considering the concept of a personal God to be quite ridiculous.

So I guess what I'm really saying, is that I kind of agree with you, but I believe the truth is much more complex than you have made it sound by stating that "intelligent people are less likely to become religous". I agree with you that strong-willed people tend to believe in a personal God far less frequently. I think, however, that reality is a lot more complex than "that's silly, there's no way that's true." The fact that most people that accomplish great scientific achievements don't believe in a personal God isn't actually direct evidence against the existence of a personal God.

One last thing--I really pity weak-willed people. Weak-willed people, from what I can tell, don't have a chance for success in this world. They simply don't have that thing in the back of their minds that drives you and I to question everything around us, to try to understand reality and the universe and to try to solve every problem, accomplish any task and achieve any goal. No matter how much you try to explain reality to a weak-willed person, it is just too easy for them to hang onto what they have been taught all of their lives than it is for them to doubt for a minute that precious blanket that keeps them warm. So I try to spend as little of my time as possible worrying about the weak-willed people, instead focusing my time on my own quest for truth and reality. Maybe one day I will understand the situation more clearly than I do now, and maybe one day I can even help them.

xniNja

08-31-2005, 12:14 PM

I agree with most of your post, but the definition of "weak-willed" becomes of key importance.

I would tend to think it had to do more with base intelligence, rationality, and exposure to an environment where critical thinking was necessary rather than simply having a strong or weak will by conventional definitions. This does tie in to your point about people not wanting to throw away their security blankets, but the key difference or distinction I want to make clear is that even people with a "strong will," are not necessarily prone to break out of this comfort loop without either that base intelligence, rationality, or exposure to critical thinking.

Also, for most stuck in this loop, I don't think religion is so much of a crutch as it was for their ancestors. They probably don't have to endure the same degree of hardships and they certainly have much more knowledge of the actual world.

Instead, I would argue that these people simply a) are not concerned with reason, b) do not understand reason, and c) would view any break from the tradition of their ancestors as a rejection of their family, friends, and so on... not as a logical or personal choice.

In this sense, it is true that they might be weak-willed (those that fear being ostracized or ridiculed by their friends and family) but I think the more reasonable explanation is that they never gained any foundation for any logical or critical analysis.

When they asked where babies came from, God was the answer. When someone wronged them, it was of no consequence, because God still loved them. When they had a problem that they should have been solving, they were told not to worry because God would provide.

Why would you need to think about anything critically or logically if everything can be explained by God?

Now, on the other hand, if they were Christian by birth, (I say this to imply their parents forced it upon them) and then faced with a difficult situation in which logic and reason were necessary, one where simply having "faith" and/or "praying" were useless, they would be much more likely to come to conclusions based on reason than their parents teachings.

NotReady

08-31-2005, 12:36 PM

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will be a religious Christian?

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This post and the replies typify a bogus approach to the questions involved. The false syllogism implied by this is:

1. Smart people will try to solve human problems.
2. Christians don't try to solve human problems.
3. Christians aren't smart.

A similar bogus syllogism is:

1. Smart people will only believe what's true.
2. Smart people don't believe Christianity.
3. Christianity isn't true.

None of this really tries to discuss the basic questions mankind has about himself, the universe and God. Mankind is stupid relative to God. Einstein 1X10 to 1,000,000 th power is an idiot compared to God. If someone with an IQ of 80 believes the truth and every other human being believes the lie, taking a poll does no good.

Your post is really just a subtle form of ad hominem. I don't go into the number of brilliant people who have been Christians because I believe the poll taking is a false approach in the first place.

08-31-2005, 01:39 PM

I'm sure there's someone in Tennessee that is sure he was able to turn Katrina into a tropical storm before it hit his town.

My first reaction, though, was to wonder if man would ever be able to stop hurricanes.

08-31-2005, 03:40 PM

One major reason, but not the only reason, that I believe that a Christian is less likely to figure out how to stop a hurricane is because there is a very dangerous cultural bias within the Christian community. This bias is both anti-scientific and anti-academic. For example, if you are a young impressionable Christian and you are told by your religious leaders or parents that creationism is correct and evolution is wrong, you are likely to believe them. Then when you are told that it is the "scientific community" that is behind the theory of evolution, you will start to naturally gravitate away from the path of these "godless" scientists.

Also combine this with the fact that political leaders of the Christian right consistently rail against the "liberal elites" in those ivory towers of academia and you've just gone a long way toward pushing a young Christian away from ever getting a Ph.D. from Harvard.

Throw in home-schooling and we've got an anti-science, anti-academia crisis on our hands. The kind of epidemic that might very well topple the empire, or at least allow many other nations to blow by us. Chris Rock jokes about the problem in the black community of the anti-academia bias where if you are studying books, you're not "keeping it real." How do you think a young Christian must feel today if he's caught reading Darwin.

A previous poster smartly observed how future generations may look at how dangerous a religious upbringing was to impressionable minds because of not teaching them to question and doubt. That is true. But there is also the danger for an impressionable mind of going too far in the other direction and doubting science and academia to the point of dismissing it all and going into something supposedly more potent like joining churches instead of universities. You could join both but any hour spent at church is one more hour that you can't spend in the lab.

On that note, the governor of Louisiana was on the Today Show this morning and in her brief opportunity to effect the greatest help to her beleaguered state, her call to action for the country was for everyone to pray today. No mention of sending money to the Red Cross of maybe donating blood or anything helpful like that.

Thanks governor. I'm sure no one thought of that as the hurricane was approaching or that would have surely avoided this whole problem in the first place.

BluffTHIS!

08-31-2005, 04:45 PM

[ QUOTE ]
will be a religious Christian?

Also I think most will agree that the percentage of religious Christians who have a clue about the difficult science and math necessary to one day stop or divert hurricanes and thus save millions of lives is smaller than the percentage of people not in that category who have that knowledge. Why is that?

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You are trying to assign a probability to assumptions for which you have given no factual basis. And even if granted those assumptions are true, then you have really not shown that a high degree of scientific understanding leads to religious unbelief, since you cannot show that such people who were raised in a certain religious tradition were "true believers". In the Catholic Church to which I belong, as well as other Christian denominatins, we see a great turnout for religious services during holidays and occasions like weddings and funerals. We call these type of people Christmas/Easter Catholics. These people do not really practice their faith, and likely were only nominally raised Catholic in the first place. Even those who might attend every single Sunday are not necessarily very fervent, and likely do not possess a greater theological understanding of their faith, especially one which would equip them to answer the apparent contradictions that non-believers so readily claim between science and religious belief.

But the real answer here is that whoever might figure out how to prevent or divert hurricanes, if even such a thing is possible short of using an air-burst nuclear detonation which might have side effects, and regardless of whether that person possesses religious belief or not to any degree, will nonetheless be merely an instrument in God's grand design, which uses mainly processes consonant with the physical laws of our universe, and it will be to God, as with everything in creation, that the ultimate praise and glory is due.

But of course prideful self-centered man doesn't like to think like that. He likes to think that by virtue of the talent possible because of his genetic coding that he had nothing to do with, and by dint of his labors to put that talent to good use, that it is he, the man, who has single-handedly conquered nature and shown himself to be the master of his own fate and thus due all the approbation due his grandiose actions.

And yet as it says in the Bible in Ecclesiates, this is only vanity for we shall all die and take nothing of any earthly glory with us, returning to dust like the thousands of generations before who are no more. And after we are dead, it will not matter who helped to prevent or divert hurricanes, only whether that person knew or was ignorant of the true destiny of men as children of their Heavenly Father, who should instead seek to live here and now so as to be with that Father in the eternal life.

David, if God does indeed have a sense of humor, then he laughs at your attempts to refract everything through a sophistical lense of intelligenge and scientifc knowledge, when it is really what is in your heart that He cares about. Much as we would laugh at the assertions of 5 year old who thinks himself grown up.

08-31-2005, 04:55 PM

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Throw in home-schooling and we've got an anti-science, anti-academia crisis on our hands.

[/ QUOTE ]There are many approaches to home-schooling, some would say as many as there are home-school students. Not all of them are non-secular or even have a non-secular bias. Institutional learning is not the only form of learning out there, and many would suggest that the institutionoften gets in the way of the learning.

spaminator101

08-31-2005, 05:37 PM

im only a teenager but i plan on being some kind of engineer

David Sklansky

08-31-2005, 06:08 PM

But the person who stops hurricanes will almast certainly disagree with you so why should we believe you rather than him? You just don't get my point. Which has nothing to do with man's pride. Change it to martians.

The point simply is:

If a martian is more likely to figure out how to stop hurricanes than you, he is more likely to be correct if he disagrees with you about any subject assuming you have spent the same time and effort investigating it. Religion baseball, tuning a piano, or even coming up with a good joke. He has the same type of advantage over you that you have over a retarded person. Even if that advantage came from Stephen Hawking's God that has nothing to do with Jesus.

08-31-2005, 06:15 PM

Zapt, I'm not saying that all home schooling is religious or Christian based, just that a disproportionate amount is. Randomly select any home-schooled kid today and ask him if he is a fundamentalist Christian and you will have a higher likelihood that he will say yes then if you just randomly select any kid period. I'd be shocked if you could prove otherwise, but if you could then I would retract my argument that Christians and home-schooling have anything to do with each other.

Now, onto your other point about institutions being less than ideal. While these institutions certainly may not be perfect and could be improved, you seem to be arguing that these institutions get in the way of learning. So by your logic, if we shut down the doors of Harvard, Yale, M.I.T., Stanford, etc., we will have a better chance of creating this scientist who figures out how to stop hurricanes than if we left their doors open. I whole-heartedly disagree with that.

So what I'm saying is that a Christian when compared to a non-religious kid is disproportionately more likely to take the home-school and then Oral Roberts or Bob Jones University route while the non-religious kid in comparison to the Christian is disproportionately more likely to take the advanced magnet school and then Ivy League route. And it is disproportionately more likely that this Ivy League scientist will go on to stop hurricanes.

And therefore this is one of the reasons that Sklansky was wondering about for why this could be.

David Sklansky

08-31-2005, 06:25 PM

This post and the replies typify a bogus approach to the questions involved. The false syllogism implied by this is:

1. Smart people will try to solve human problems.
2. Christians don't try to solve human problems.
3. Christians aren't smart.

A similar bogus syllogism is:

11. Smart people will only believe what's true.
2. Smart people don't believe Christianity.
3. Christianity isn't true.

I imply neither syllogism.

The better syllogisms are

1. People who are both well meaning and smart have a chance to figure out how to stop a hurricane.

2. A religious person has no chance to figure out how to stop a hurricane

3. Since religious people are well meaning, they must not be smart.

The second syllogism should be changed to:

1. Smart people are more likely to be right than non smart people about subjects they have thoroughly investigated.

2. Smart people who investigate specific religions are more than 99% sure that any particular religion is wrong.

3. Therefore there is a greater than 50% chance (not 99%-see why?) that any particular religion is wrong.

For the record I am not saying that I am sure about the premises. I'm just fixing the syllogisms to more accurately reflect my points.

RJT

08-31-2005, 06:46 PM

I believe you have posted previously that the large majority of scientists/mathematicians are agnostic/atheists. So, haven’t you already answered your own question?

What you really want to know, it seems to me, is the answer to your second question, “Why is that?”

I can think of a number of reasons. We would need further survey to find out why. But, to throw out some ideas regarding why so many are agnostic:

- They were raised in a family of the same (weren’t you?).
- They might or might not be religious, but rather choose to devote their full attention to the sciences.
- They choose not to believe in things that cannot be studied in the manner they are accustomed to. They therefore decide on the easy answer that it cannot be so - there is or cannot be proof.
- They like many folk in modern society they simply abandon religion out of convenience and/or a more self centered life-style. ( I am not using “self -centered” in the pejorative sense.)
- They have never spent time studying any religion. How any scientists, for example, have read any of the mystic Saints? That is the Saints who have had (in their own minds at least) encounters with God. (Basically, these encounters happen during serious contemplative prayer)

On the other side:

What are the statistics of religious to non-religious in other careers? Especially high power careers like scientist that are similarly non-social interacting.

Corporate executives for example often spend as much time chairing fund raisers, chambers-of commerce and the like. Being a church-goer is generally considered a good thing in the corporate world.

Politicians - like John Lennon said “If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao. You ain’t gonna make it with anyone, anyhow.”

These two examples don’t seem to fit the same category as scientist.

Writers and artists seems to fit the scientist, non-social interacting category. I would venture to say that a large number in these careers are also agnostic or non-religious.

Poker players, although certainly social interacting, the actual work of playing poker is strictly self absorbing. What is the percentage of poker players who are agnostic? Judging from this forum, quite a few.

I have had a theory for a while that long (and/or perhaps even early ) periods of masturbation before any lengthy heterosexual experiences might have something to do with homosexuality. That is, one becomes subconsciously overly accustomed with one’s own body leading to becoming more comfortable with one’s own sex.

If this theory has any validity(even if my theory is bogus), couldn’t we compare it to scientists who are constantly absorbed in their own minds with their work? They simply become comfortable in the immediate non God filled environment.

David Sklansky

08-31-2005, 06:57 PM

Posts like yours make it seem like religion is a sociological subject. "They are not comfortable with the concept of god". Stuff like that. But the stuff I am talking about is purely factual. Did the lamp in the temple last eight days when there was only fuel for one. Did God part the Red Sea? Was Mary a virgin?

The smarter people are, the more likely they are to say no. For the same reason they are more likely to believe that OJ is guilty or that there is no dice system that wins. Those who try to say that those other psychological things are the main reason for smart people's beliefs are just deluding themselves.

RJT

08-31-2005, 07:35 PM

I am not saying religion is a sociological subject. Your question “Why is that?” is the sociological subject.

First of all perhaps we are talking about two different things. I am talking about agnostics. Are you talking about only those who decide that the major religions are bogus? To discuss whether the religions are or not bogus without deciding or including whether or not God is bogus first seems -well I don’t know what it seems - but it makes no sense to me why one would want to talk about the validity of religions alone (absent the God exists or not question).

It also seems that you are saying that the scientist have decided against God/or religion after studying the issue. If the studies show this, that is one thing. Then I stand corrected. Are you saying that? I do not assume this to be true.

If there are no such studies, I say that there is as good a likelihood that they are agnostic for a number of other reasons - and perhaps more so - than because they have deduced and decided God is unlikely.

I am only going from an earlier post of yours in which you alluded to a study about the large percentage of agnostics in the scientific community. No reference to any particular survey was cited in that post.

08-31-2005, 08:12 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Now, onto your other point about institutions being less than ideal. While these institutions certainly may not be perfect and could be improved, you seem to be arguing that these institutions get in the way of learning. So by your logic, if we shut down the doors of Harvard, Yale, M.I.T., Stanford, etc.,

[/ QUOTE ]I did not say these were my positions or my logic. I would not make a generalization like: we'd be better off without institutional learning. Some will be better off without it, some will be better off with it.

Nor did I say that most home schooling is secular. Just that not all of it is non-secular. I've done some research in preparation for home-schooling my own kids, and I will concede that probably more than half of the home-schoolers out there take a non-secular approach. But, I don't think it is as high as 75%.

BTW, there are homeschooled children that end up at Harvard and MIT.

RJT

08-31-2005, 08:12 PM

“If a martian is more likely to figure out how to stop hurricanes than you, he is more likely to be correct if he disagrees with you about any subject assuming you have spent the same time and effort investigating it.”

I read this as: The scientists (who are smarted than the average Joe) who have decided on being agnostic have spent they same amount of time as the average Joe investigating various religions and have decided that they are bogus. They are smarter than the average Joe and are right more often then he. Therefore, they probably are right about religions being bogus.

Is this what you are saying? Or am I an idiot who simply cannot understand what you write (or am I assuming too much when you say such things)?

Without proof that the agnostic scientists have studied the religions with even a slight modicum of sophistication, I don’t see how one can assume that they have. I know you would not use yourself as an example and I mean no insult when I say to you that judging from what you have written about Christianity, you have no clue what it is about. You have gotten even some of the basics wrong in the past. I would need further proof that these scientist have a clue what most religions are really about.

udontknowmickey

08-31-2005, 08:29 PM

[ QUOTE ]

1. People who are both well meaning and smart have a chance to figure out how to stop a hurricane.

2. A religious person has no chance to figure out how to stop a hurricane

3. Since religious people are well meaning, they must not be smart.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know you said you're not sure about the premises, but how can you establish 2. in the first set of statements? This sounds suspiciously like circular reasoning.

David Sklansky

08-31-2005, 08:39 PM

Number 2 is obviously an exaggeration. I don't even have ironclad proof that religious Christians are LESS likely to have a member who figures out how to stop hurricanes. The original questions and most of the replies simply stipulated to that.

NotReady

08-31-2005, 09:31 PM

1. People who are both well meaning and smart have a chance to figure out how to stop a hurricane.

There's no way to know this. I think many smart people would say there is no known technology that would even begin to hold any hope. We can't even make it rain(in any significant way). We can't stop it from raining. So there's no reason to believe humanity will ever have a clue how to stop a hurricane. Also, it's not in the OP.

2. A religious person has no chance to figure out how to
stop a hurricane

Ridiculous premise as to "religious person" but accurate in general.

3. Since religious people are well meaning, they must not be smart.

Since both 1 and 2 are false(or unknown as to stopping hurricanes), 3 is false.

**********************************

1. Smart people are more likely to be right than non smart people about subjects they have thoroughly investigated.

2. Smart people who investigate specific religions are more than 99% sure that any particular religion is wrong.

This premise isn't in the OP. I doubt you have any data for this either, it looks like a totally unsupported assertion.

3. Therefore there is a greater than 50% chance (not 99%-see why?) that any particular religion is wrong.

Even if 2. was in the OP, 3 doesn't follow logically. (see why?)

RJT

08-31-2005, 09:38 PM

David,

Perhaps this is obvious to you. I feel it might not be.

Most people who call themselves religious have not really studied their own religion seriously. Most folk simply live there lives. They are born into their religion, get a job, have families. Then they spend the rest of their lives with their religions and their families. I wish I could have such a life. Wouldn’t you really choose the life of not thinking about it? (One way or the other - a believer or an atheist rather than agnostic?)

Most who look seriously into their religion do so as an adult. After they have chosen a profession. They become for example scientists first then they re-evaluate their religious beliefs.

Most people don’t discern their religious beliefs and then choose a vocation in life.

I would venture that scientists are scientist first then they discern to be agnostics. You seem to suggest the opposite. That the number of scientists come from the pool of agnostics. I find this hard to believe.

It isn’t that Christians are choosing not to be scientist. It is scientist who are choosing not to become (remain? ) Christians (or any religion).

Maybe, I am wrong.

RJT

xniNja

08-31-2005, 10:13 PM

[ QUOTE ]
It isn’t that Christians are choosing not to be scientist. It is scientist who are choosing not to become (remain? ) Christians (or any religion).

[/ QUOTE ]

In my mind this is the same, or an even better point than the OP is making. If they were originally Christians, once they learn methodology, or scientific reasoning, they abandon their illogical blind-faith... wouldn't this support the arguments Sklansky is making?

RJT

08-31-2005, 10:28 PM

Posts like these are so pompous. Of course, smart people can deduce that the odds of the Red Sea being parted are astronomically against it.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (literally) to realize that the odds that any major religion is the true one is over whelming against it being the true one.

Again, what does a zillion to one mean when discussing God? Is that highly likely or highly unlikely?

Any discussion about probability and faith is absurd on its face. Any suggestion that intelligent people have a better grip on what life is about is equally absurd.

David Sklansky

09-01-2005, 01:16 AM

"It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (literally) to realize that the odds that any major religion is the true one is over whelming against it being the true one."

If you really believe, this then I have been wasting a lot of words.

RJT

09-01-2005, 01:26 AM

Wait a sec. You are saying that it does takes above average level of intelligence to realize that the odds are against Christianity ?

Seems simple to me that Christianity is completely illogical and the odds are against it being true.

David Sklansky

09-01-2005, 01:29 AM

I was saying almost the opposite.

RJT

09-01-2005, 01:42 AM

RJT- “Wait a sec. You are saying that it does take above average level of intelligence to realize that the odds are against Christianity?”

DS - “I was saying almost the opposite.”

Well, that is what I was saying - it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out. Perhaps my verbiage was a bit garbled.

andyfox

09-01-2005, 02:01 AM

"he is more likely to be correct if he disagrees with you about any subject assuming you have spent the same time and effort investigating it. Religion baseball, tuning a piano, or even coming up with a good joke."

This is clearly untrue. A smart person is more likely to be correct only in areas where he is smart, or expert (or both). Piano tuning, for example, involves having a good ear and some physical ability as well as smarts and science. George Carlin can come up with much better jokes than Ed Miller.

I brought up the example, in another thread, of Von Neumann, and his thinking that the world would be doomed once the Soviets got nuclear weapons, so we should attack them at once. Was he more likely to be right in this than, say, Dwight Eisenhower, or J. Robert Oppenheimer? I've also posted about Robert McNamara, a brilliant man who saved Ford Motor Company. He was indeed among The Best and the Brightest, the group of brilliant men John Kennedy brought to Washington. They studied Vietnam backwards and forwards, using their brilliance to design a disastrous policy because A) they were looking at all the wrong things; and B) [and I think this is the important thing] they were so sure that because they were smarter that they were more likely to be right, that they refused to consider other possibilities.

Beware the experts when they get out of their field of expertise. All too often, brilliance + hubris = trouble.

jester710

09-01-2005, 02:15 AM

[ QUOTE ]
If a martian is more likely to figure out how to stop hurricanes than you, he is more likely to be correct if he disagrees with you about any subject assuming you have spent the same time and effort investigating it.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a complete non sequitur. You're making the assumption that intelligence is a single, quantifiable entity that spreads itself equally over everything. You completely ignore the fact that two people of equal intelligence could have predilections for completely different fields of thought (e.g., Einstein wasn't necessarily smarter than Shakespeare because he was the better physicist).

If you had said that a person who excels in math and science is more likely to be the one who stops hurricanes, then that would be a valid point. Saying that this person is smarter than everyone who didn't figure out how to stop hurricanes is not.

Also, I take offense to your statement that religious people are less intelligent than non-religious people. I have known quite a few highly intelligent people who happened to be religious as well. Several of these were not brought up in religious households, but made a conscious choice as adults. Several of them are scientists, philosophers, engineers, etc., as well as quite a few artists. I will concede the point that you are smarter than I am, Mr. Sklansky, but I find it extremely arrogant that you believe yourself to be smarter than all religious people. Perhaps if you had said you believe non-religious people are smarter on average than those who are religious, you might have a point; I don't think it's something that can be verified either way, though.

Many of the non-religious people who frequent this forum like to paint a picture of believers as slack-jawed yokels who believe any lie they are fed. They point to the many crackpot preachers and so-called holy men who are looking to make a quick buck off of the desperate people who cling to them, as well as the radicals who try to ignore/avoid anything that's not somehow religious in nature. These people are not your average believer, and it's unfair to make that comparison. It isn't hard to find a crackpot scientist who believes there is scientific proof for some dumbass thing or another, yet I'm pretty sure you'd be quick to correct me if I said they were indicative of your average scientist.

Now, having said all that, I think one of the primary reasons why a non-religious person is more likely to stop a hurricane than a religious person is the latter is more likely to consider a hurricane an act of God, and therefore something that he/she would be unable to stop no matter what.

jester710

09-01-2005, 02:17 AM

Excellent points. Glad to see we made basically the exact same post at the same time.

David Sklansky

09-01-2005, 02:19 AM

"he is more likely to be correct if he disagrees with you about any subject assuming you have spent the same time and effort investigating it. Religion baseball, tuning a piano, or even coming up with a good joke."

"This is clearly untrue. A smart person is more likely to be correct only in areas where he is smart, or expert (or both). Piano tuning, for example, involves having a good ear and some physical ability as well as smarts and science. George Carlin can come up with much better jokes than Ed Miller."

This is clearly untrue? I would write something that was CLEARLY untrue? It didn't occur to you that if you think something I said is CLEARLY untrue in your mind there might be some miscommunication?

Well you are Absolutely wrong and I'd lay 1000 to one on it. Except that in this case you apparently misinterpreted my words, maybe because I didn't make myself more clear. In fact you have at other times agreed with my actual point. Which is that GIVEN THE SAME INFORMATION OR LACK OF INFORMATION ABOUT TWO PEOPLE, the smarter one is favored to excel in almost any endeavor as long as they have studied it equally. In other words if I take a random smart person and a random average person I can bet on the smart person if I also know they have spent equal amounts of time investigating a particvular endeavor.I can think of a few possible exceptions. But piano tuning, or coming up with good jokes are not one of them.

"Beware the experts when they get out of their field of expertise."

But if their expertise is in pure thinking rather than a specific field, they will on anverage, do better than non thinking experts in any field they know equally. And they will in fact sometimes do better after just a little bit of study than actual experts in many fields who have mediocre minds in general.

RJT

09-01-2005, 02:33 AM

“In other words if I take a random smart person and a random average person I can bet on the smart person if I also know they have spent equal amounts of time investigating a particular endeavor. I can think of a few possible exceptions. But piano tuning, or coming up with good jokes are not one of them.”

Who would argue with this?

But, how many scientist have ever even heard of St. John of the Cross, let alone read him?

Read Simone Weil’s “Waiting for God”. Then tell me you wouldn’t rather have a portion of her Faith in your life than being agnostic. Even with your knowledge that her Faith is probably untrue. So what?

On second thought you would probably find her a brilliant, yet foolish woman

David Sklansky

09-01-2005, 02:47 AM

"But, how many scientist have ever even heard of St. John of the Cross, let alone read him?"

My contention is that this degree of detailed knowledge is no more likely to sway a scientist than my knowing the details of a craps system.

"Read Simone Weil’s “Waiting for God”. Then tell me you wouldn’t rather have a portion of her Faith in your life than being agnostic. Even with your knowledge that her Faith is probably untrue. So what?"

I didn't realize you are Pair The Board's cousin. My quarrel is not with you.

andyfox

09-01-2005, 02:48 AM

"This is clearly untrue? I would write something that was CLEARLY untrue? It didn't occur to you that if you think something I said is CLEARLY untrue in your mind there might be some miscommunication?"

Yes it occured to me. But I read through you post again and rejected the notion. No man is perfect. Your current post confirms my assessment. To wit:

"GIVEN THE SAME INFORMATION OR LACK OF INFORMATION ABOUT TWO PEOPLE, the smarter one is favored to excel in almost any endeavor as long as they have studied it equally."

THIS IS CLEARLY UNTRUE. Again, I cite the example of Robert McNamara. Clearly a brilliant guy He studied Vietnam more than anyone. And he got it wrong. He himself now admits he got it wrong. There is a difference between studying something equally and studying it equally well.

"I can think of a few possible exceptions. But piano tuning, or coming up with good jokes are not one of them."

CLEARLY UNTRUE. My piano tuner, clearly not anywhere near as smart a guy as you, has perfect pitch and a great and subtle touch and a fabulous technique; he will tune my piano better than you ever will be able. And while I know and like Ed Miller immensely, and know that he's a much smarter guy than, say, Woody Allen, he will never be able to come up with a joke as good as Allen's that he was thrown out of NYU for cheating on a metaphysics exam: he looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to him.

I have indeed agreed with your point before. I think you take it too far,sir.

David Sklansky

09-01-2005, 03:04 AM

I can't believe that I have to explain this to you like a six year old. You are making a fool of yourself and if it was somebody else I'd wait for others to show you why.

"GIVEN THE SAME INFORMATION OR LACK OF INFORMATION ABOUT TWO PEOPLE, the smarter one is favored to excel in almost any endeavor as long as they have studied it equally."

THIS IS CLEARLY UNTRUE. Again, I cite the example of Robert McNamara. Clearly a brilliant guy He studied Vietnam more than anyone. And he got it wrong.

Did you miss the word "favored". Please don't tell me I have to elaborate further.

"My piano tuner, clearly not anywhere near as smart a guy as you, has perfect pitch and a great and subtle touch and a fabulous technique; he will tune my piano better than you ever will be able. And while I know and like Ed Miller immensely, and know that he's a much smarter guy than, say, Woody Allen, he will never be able to come up with a joke as good as Allen's "

What do you think I meant by

GIVEN THE SAME INFORMATION OR LACK OF INFORMATION ABOUT TWO PEOPLE,

That means that everything else is equal as far as your knowledge about them. It is not exactly equal if you know one person is a PROFESSIONAL PIANO TUNER OR COMEDIAN and the other one ISN'T. (In fact in the case of a comedian I'd say you could lay a pretty big price that if two randomly chosen people had a fairly big IQ disparity, the smarter one would make the better comedian.)

The fact that you are not getting this is a cause for concern.

Lestat

09-01-2005, 03:10 AM

In fact you have at other times agreed with my actual point. Which is that GIVEN THE SAME INFORMATION OR LACK OF INFORMATION ABOUT TWO PEOPLE, the smarter one is favored to excel in almost any endeavor as long as they have studied it equally. 

You are on the verge of making a fool of yourself with statements like these. You no doubt have a higher IQ than me. Yet, I'll give you as long as you want to study sales and/or negotiations and I'll lay YOU 1000 to 1 that you will never out perform me. In fact...

Intellectual people are notorious failures in many areas most notably sales and negotiations. With few exceptions, the highest IQ's perform better behind the scenes where they can invent, crunch numbers, and problem solve. No matter how hard they study they are inferior to people with half their IQ when it comes to the real world of making things happen and going out and making money from all their hard work and intellect. Their brains are just not wired to develop people or social skills. I'm not sure, but I think the same holds true for sports. There are some very smart athletes, but I'd be willing to bet that the people with the very highest IQ's couldn't throw a baseball from 3rd to 1st base on one hop.

Before you give an example like Bill Gates you should know that I'm generalizing of course, but so are you. And my generalizations hold truer than yours when it comes to sales, negotiation and business skills as well as sports. Not everything in life comes down to how smart you are. There are some very smart people who are social misfits and live reclusive lives. They can have their smarts.

Non_Comformist

09-01-2005, 03:17 AM

out of curiousity are what are the current theories on how one would stop a hurricaine? any?

xniNja

09-01-2005, 03:20 AM

I think you're wrong about athletes and other professionals. I remember reading an article in Sports Illustrated about how the top athletes are all known for being very intelligent people. (High IQ's, excellent communication and logical skills) (ex. Jordan, Montana, Young, Nicklaus, etc.)

I also think you're wrong about professionals in business/sales not being intelligent. You're confusing intelligence with concentration in mathematics or science. I don't think the claim is that a physicist can become a better politician than a politician, but that an intelligent person will make a better physicist or politician than an unintelligent one.

While stupid professionals may succeed; Can you really argue that the intelligent person is an underdog in an unspecific endeavour?

jester710

09-01-2005, 03:28 AM

I don't know that many people would consider being athletically gifted the same thing as being intelligent. Likewise, I don't believe Sklansky was lumping people skills in there when he spoke of intelligence, or else he'd have to recognize the brilliance of the religious leaders who have converted thousands of people.

However, I would agree with you that intelligence should be broadly defined, rather than limited to science or mathematics. Also, many people believe what seperates the good from the great in professional sports is not raw physical ability (as this is usually roughly equal at the highest levels), but mind speed. The best in most sports usually say they saw the game developing much more slowly than their counterparts.

xniNja

09-01-2005, 03:33 AM

[ QUOTE ]
The best in most sports usually say they saw the game developing much more quickly than their counterparts.

[/ QUOTE ]

FYP? That reminds me, they say the difference between top boxers isn't physical, but who has a higher level of critical thinking in split second decisions.

Edit: (to pre-empt) In the case of the dynamite kid, he was critically thinking "KILL" every split-second.

jester710

09-01-2005, 03:39 AM

I think we're saying the same thing. For example, most college QBs would find the NFL game is way too fast for them to process all the necessary information in time. However, the great NFL QBs most likely see the action developing more slowly, enabling them to make better decisions. So, they see the game more quickly, but the game looks slower to them.

Also, in regards to the boxers, I think the best could always see the punches coming or the openings developing or whatever quicker than their counterparts. I assume this is what you mean by "critical thinking" in boxing.

einbert

09-01-2005, 03:44 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Intellectual people are notorious failures in many areas most notably sales and negotiations

[/ QUOTE ]
This is so horribly wrong. You have a very bad idea of what the word "intelligence" means. It is much broader than what you perceive it to be.

Lestat

09-01-2005, 03:44 AM

I think you hit it on the head. Intelligence needs to be more broadly defined. But would you argue that David isn't extremely biased towards defining intelligence mainly by IQ scored and math/logic skills? This is what caused my response.

Of course athletes are intelligent and quick minded. So are salespeople and negotiators. In fact, athletes often go into these fields when their careers are over. My point was that there are different kinds of intellect. Sometimes DS seems to overlook this.

einbert

09-01-2005, 03:49 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Their brains are just not wired to develop people or social skills. I'm not sure, but I think the same holds true for sports.

[/ QUOTE ]
Again an incredibly dumb statement. You have absolutely no statistical evidence to back this up either.

It makes sense that the top 1% of the world in intelligence has difficult relating to the bottom 99%. Many people with above average intelligence, however, are extremely adept at social skills and handling other social problems. And your definition of intelligence is way too narrow and just plain wrong, as it actually seems to exclude some of the factors that are included in the most modern definitions of intelligence.

[ QUOTE ]
Main Entry: in·tel·li·gence
Pronunciation: in-'te-l&-j&n(t)s
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin intelligentia, from intelligent-, intelligens intelligent
1 a (1) : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations : REASON; also : the skilled use of reason (2) : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)

[/ QUOTE ]
link (http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=intelligence&x=0&y=0 )

David Sklansky

09-01-2005, 03:53 AM

"You are on the verge of making a fool of yourself with statements like these. You no doubt have a higher IQ than me. Yet, I'll give you as long as you want to study sales and/or negotiations and I'll lay YOU 1000 to 1 that you will never out perform me."

That statement is TOTALLY unrelated to my point. (Although I would take 1000-1 odds in a second)

"Intellectual people are notorious failures in many areas most notably sales and negotiations. With few exceptions, the highest IQ's perform better behind the scenes where they can invent, crunch numbers, and problem solve. No matter how hard they study they are inferior to people with half their IQ when it comes to the real world of making things happen and going out and making money from all their hard work and intellect."

First I said smart rather than intellectual. Second I agreed that there are a few exceptions. Third I wasn't necessarily talking about the mega IQs. My words were that the smarter one is favored. Do you think there are more than a few endeavors where an IQ of 135 isn't preferable to 115? Fourth I assume a large exaggeration on your part when you say "half their IQ's". Fifth, even though I concede that there is a smattering of truth to some of your comments I am quite sure they are much overblown, especially as I said, if you eliminate the 180 IQ weirdos. I'm guessing the members of the Forbes 400 who didn't inherit their money are way above average in intelligence. Which only makes sense. You somehow think that a guy who can quickly solve a three move checkmate problem even though he hasn't studied the game much, automatically packs negative baggage?

And even if it was true that there is a small inclination for smart people to be inherntly weak at some things, you forget that those poeple are much better at learning how to shore up those weaknesses. Meanwhile if they are much smarter, those weaknesses are usually more than made up by the strengths their smartness gives them.

Finally, keep in mind that one endeavor where being smarter is clearly better is the evaluation of evidence of uncertain things. And the evalustion as to whether arguments for and against have logical flaws. Religion for instance . Which is where all this started.

jester710

09-01-2005, 03:58 AM

I think the only scientific way we know of to thwart nature is to just nuke the living hell out of it.

Of course, I get most of my science from Michael Bay movies, so maybe I'm not the most trustworthy person on this subject....

Lestat

09-01-2005, 04:03 AM

I was trying to get you to agree that there are different aptitudes concerning intelligence. You seem (or it seems to me), that you group people as either smart or not smart. Of course the forbes list is going to be above average in intelligence, but I'd be willing to bet there are very few among them who do not have someone who's even SMARTER working for them!

Lestat

09-01-2005, 04:18 AM

Again an incredibly dumb statement. You have absolutely no statistical evidence to back this up either. 

And you have none to disprove it. What I have is experience. I can assure you that the majority of people with exceptional math aptitudes make lousy sales people. In fact, they make lousy anything when it comes to people skills. This includes managers, supervisors, etc. There are exceptions, but it is still the norm. I'm sorry if I'm offending you math geeks, but it's just the way it is. At least it's been my absolute experience.

My point was that there are different aptitudes of intelligence.

 Many people with above average intelligence, however, are extremely adept at social skills and handling other social problems. 

Ever go to high school? It's true that some brainiacs will go on to develop better social skills as they get older, but they rarely master the art of people skills and socialization. Again, I'm going from experience and I admit I'm generalizing.

David Sklansky

09-01-2005, 04:25 AM

"Of course the forbes list is going to be above average in intelligence, but I'd be willing to bet there are very few among them who do not have someone who's even SMARTER working for them!"

Since you seem to want to learn, I will go out of my way to explain something to you. And to avoid your biases I will change intelligence to 100 yard dash speed.

I contend that in almost any sport, given no other information, the person with the higher 100 yard dash speed, will be favored to do better at that sport than the slower guy.

Now you point to baseball and point out that while the average speed of professional baseball players is much faster than average, rarely is the fastest player the best player. And that seems to negate my point. Or at least imply that once you get to a certain speed, anything faster hardly helps. Or that somehow the fastest players are weak at other skills DUE TO THEIR FASTNESS. But NONE of that is true.

The reason that the fastest player is almost never the best player stems from two facts.

1. Speed is only one attribute necessarry to succeed in baseball.

2. Super speedsters are MUCH RARER than merely fast players.

This second point is the key. If somehow there was just as many nine flat hundred men in the US as there were 9.8 hundred men (nothing in between and baseball paid more than any other sport) then almost every team's best player would be a 9.0 guy. Because it would be a rarity to find a 9.8 guy whose other skills were sufficiently better than all the 9.0 competion to turn him into the best overall player on the team. But if there is only one 9.0 guy on each team it is likely that among the other 24 guys on the roster, at least one will be able to overcome his speed disadvantage with other skills.

Do I need to explain further?

Lestat

09-01-2005, 04:26 AM

Also, I am not talking about "above average" intelligence. I am talking about people with "exceptional" mathematical aptitude. Of course, a good sales person, negotiator, business person has to be good (above average) with basic math skills AND be above average in intelligence with other things. But I don't think these are the levels of intelligence David is talking about.

JackThree

09-01-2005, 04:27 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Or that somehow the fastest players are weak at other skills DUE TO THEIR FASTNESS.

[/ QUOTE ]
nh

einbert

09-01-2005, 04:30 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I admit I'm generalizing and spouting idiotic stereotypes which aren't really true and are based on quite a few false premises, compounded by illogical reasoning

[/ QUOTE ]

Have you ever thought that you might have a sample bias?

Or maybe that the fact that you aren't really that smart leads you to make poor judgements concerning a person's intellectual ability? Because you basically admitted in a recent post that you don't think you are very smart at all.

[ QUOTE ]
Ever go to high school? It's true that some brainiacs will go on to develop better social skills as they get older, but they rarely master the art of people skills.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes I have noticed that people in adolescence generally have trouble dealing with other people well. I don't think this discovery is likely to net you a nobel prize.

[ QUOTE ]
In fact, they make lousy anything when it comes to people skills. This includes managers, supervisors, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is totally wrong again.

Your entire concept of an "intelligent person" is so far off. The thing that distinguishes an intelligent person from a not so intelligent person is his ability to better adapt to different situations and solve various problems, including problems that come up in social circles, internal problems such as conflicting belief structures, and logic problems with math being the primary focus.

Cyrus

09-01-2005, 05:30 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I think most will agree that the percentage of religious Christians who have a clue about the difficult science and math necessary to one day stop or divert hurricanes and thus save millions of lives is smaller than the percentage of people not in that category who have that knowledge.

[/ QUOTE ]

I do not think that this is as probable as you think it is.

The reason is that the attributes necessary to conduct "a good Christian life" (in other words, "be a religious Christian") are not necessarily impending the expansion of one's understanding of things nor the capability of one's brain to illuminate them and move beyond.

While myself I am not a believer, I cannot ignore the historical precedent of numerous scientists who have been the cause of "paradigm shifts" and were religious Christians (or Muslims) to boot. Until relatively recently, they were the majority, too.

baggins

09-01-2005, 11:22 AM

some very horrible and untrue assumptions here.

not just in the original post, but the thread (and forum)

why does Science = Darwin?
why do you assume that the Christians you see on TV represent ALL followers of Christ in mindset and behavior?
why is Evolution vs. Creation an either/or debate?
why are Christians assumed to be stupid Luddites who smell funny and fear thought?

from sklansky's post:
"Also I think most will agree that the percentage of religious Christians who have a clue about the difficult science and math necessary to one day stop or divert hurricanes and thus save millions of lives is smaller than the percentage of people not in that category who have that knowledge. Why is that?"

perhaps because there are more people who are not 'religious christians' than people who are. i think we've learned this scientific principle before. what are you insinuating, Mr. Sklansky?

also, you assume it will be a man who stops hurricanes. why is that?

i think there are some major false assumptions being made about Christianity and those of us who follow Christ. and i think those assumptions are made by people being just as ignorant as they are accusing me and some very smart christians of being. you people watch too much television. i know there are some real douchebags that often thrust their way into being a mouthpiece for Christianity. that doesn't mean we're all like that.

look at it this way:
an uninformed 'religious christian' sees the poker boom, and lumps poker in with all those other evil gambling games they play in 'sin city' and dismisses poker players as degenerate gamblers. they see poker on tv and assume it's always played for millions of dollars by people who should be more responsible with their money than to gamble on games of luck. obviously, for those of us who have studied and played the game for a long time know, there is a LOT more to the game than that. and although there sure are a lot of deadbeat degenerate gamblers who run in poker circles, that's not what the game is about. right?

you uninformed poker players, on the other hand, have bought into the idea that religious christians have no regard for rational thought, that all we want to do is pray to some mystical God-figure and shun learning and tell other people how to live their lives. you see 'religious christians' on television portrayed by people asking for donations so they can buy gold-plated rims for their cadillacs and private jets and such. you've maybe even heard other people who pride themselves on their intellect call religious people stupid, and expound on how stupid we are for believing that some supernatural God had a hand in this universe coming into being (this smart person just took a class in ancient and medieval philosophy, too. so they must be smart). those of us who have studied the bible and Christianity, and have lived a life of faith, and know a little more about the whole 'religious' world from firsthand experience know that there is a lot more to it than that. sure, there may be some close-minded fundamentalists who refuse to question what they've been taught and think the earth is roughly 4000 years old. sure, there may be some greedy people who use the name of Christ to pilfer money from unsuspecting people. sure, there may be some people who hold tightly to a different moral code than you. but that's not what it's all about.

i just think that if some of you would realize how diverse the 'religious christian' community is, you would realize that you've been assuming many many things about Christians in general that just aren't true. or aren't ture enough to make the generalization about, anyway.

the sad thing is, you people pride yourselves on being smart and educated and rational and having superior intellects to Christians. half of your arguments/accusations are from a position of assumed academic/rational/scientific superiority. but most of you are just quoting some other anti-religious hack, and haven't done your own research.

09-01-2005, 11:38 AM

I don't agree with your idea that higher intelligence hurts you in sales and negotiation (or just about anything for that matter). You seem fixated on the fact that math brains are not generally good at social skills and this is true. But this still doesn't prove your point. Someone who is exceptional at math probably got that way because he took his naturally given smarts, stuck his head in a math book with his hands on a calculator and a pencil and became a numbers whiz. All this time spent pursuing math was time that he didn't spend pursuing developing social skills so they suffered from neglect. Meanwhile, we have another equally smart person to begin with who applies all his efforts to developing social skills. He has a beer in his hand and a warm handshake among friends for the other hand and develops social skills at the expense of math skills he could've developed had he applied his smarts to that path.

So now you notice that math whizzes lack social skills and social smoothies lack math skills and assume that smarts negates social skills.

Also by your logic, if you are the manager of the sales department and you need to fill 50 sales jobs and all you are allowed to do is give people an IQ test, and you have 100 applicants, you will choose to hire the lowest performing half on the test. I guarantee you that your competing company where their sales managers take your reject sales hires will slaughter your companies sales figures.

Now having said that, I agree with Sklansky's concession that maybe for the "180 IQ weirdos" you may have a point that there is something social defective about them. That would be the only exception.

I think you may have also come to the conclusions that you make because you are surrounded by people with high social skills who don't seem to be members of the high IQ club. But don't forget that there are also multitudes of members of the low IQ club who also have horrible social skills. Most dummies are not the life of the party, social and business leaders. They are also often outcasts and miserable social misfits who you don't see in your successful sales world because they lead quiet out of the limelight lives often in manual labor or unskilled factory lines which you don't probably frequent very often.

09-01-2005, 11:59 AM

I don't know why you're fixated on the Robert McNamara example. Yes, an intelligent person can make horrible decisions and mistakes. I don't think anyone would argue with that. All Sklansky is saying is that, all things being equal, given the choice you'd much rather have the smarter person making the decisions than the less smarter person. Now if you add arrogance into the equation then that could change things. If someone was smart but incredibly arrogant to the point of ignoring looking at things that he should look at and you compared him to someone who wasn't arrogant but a little less smart, then you could argue that the little bit less smart person was better equipped to make these decisions. But that was never the question. It was simply, all things being equal would you want a smart person or a less smart person.

Maybe you can see things more clearly with Iraq. Right now, today. If Bush was going to fire Rumsfeld and hire one of two unknown people to take his place and you knew nothing about either one except that one had a 125 IQ and the other had a 124 IQ would you choose the 124 guy just because of what McNamara did.

Are you serious?

andyfox

09-01-2005, 12:31 PM

I saw the word favored. I still think your confidence in the ability of excellence in "pure thinking" misses the real world consequences of devotion to pure thinking at the expense of metis and other elements.

"if two randomly chosen people had a fairly big IQ disparity, the smarter one would make the better comedian.)"

Having a bigger IQ has absolutely no relationship, none whatsoever, with being a better comedian. "Better" is clearly a subjective judgment. If you cannot see that if you decided to be a professional comedian, and devoted the same diligence and time and energy to it that George Carlin or Woody Allen (in his younger, stand-up days) did, that you would not be better, that is a cause for concern.

andyfox

09-01-2005, 12:40 PM

A smarter person, when out of his area of expertise, is favored to let his confidence in his own smartness get in the way of being right. Rumsfeld is a good example.

My point is that smartness, or IQ, or poor thinking, in and of itself, is not as important in many areas as David thinks it is. It is more important than most people think it is.

"If Bush was going to fire Rumsfeld and hire one of two unknown people to take his place and you knew nothing about either one except that one had a 125 IQ and the other had a 124 IQ would you choose the 124 guy just because of what McNamara did."

No. All things being equal, go with the smarter guy. In real life, all things are rarely equal.

Lestat

09-01-2005, 12:53 PM

You are absolutely correct and I thank you for taking the time for a well thought out response pointing to my erroneous leaps in judgement on this matter.

However, I also want to re-iterate that I didn't necessarily mean "dumber" people inherently do better in these positions. What I failed to get across is that intelligence is present in different aptitudes. You make an excellent point concerning certain math whizzes who simply never took the time to develop social skills. Yet lacking social skills is so prevelant among those with exceptional math aptitudes that I can't help but wonder if "geekiness" isn't somehow hard wired into their brains. I do NOT mean this in a derogatory way. It's just that I don't know how else to make the point.

Sklansky's and your response sets me straight (I hope) and I do agree that intelligent people have a greater chance of success at most endeavors (I'm not sure I ever disagreed with that). But I wasn't talking about someone who is merely intelligent, but who borders on genius when it comes to math. I also think there are different types of intelligence and that having or not having a math aptitude is not necessarily an indication of how well someone will do in a particular endeavor that is NOT math related.

What bugged me and started me on this whole thing was that I thought David was trying to say that math people (I do not know this, but would guess that math people generally score higher on IQ tests), have a better chance of out performing those whose intelligence lie in other areas in ANY field. I was just trying to point out that this is not the case. I'm very bad at explaining myself through the written word which is part of my problem on here. But again, I'd like to thank you for setting me straight on certain things.

09-01-2005, 02:01 PM

Lestat, after hashing this out some more I think we are coming to some agreement here. Now I'm going to surprise you and move a bit toward your argument as well. I have a friend who is an occupational therapist and I remember one time that he was talking about some kind of sydrome I think it was called something like aspirgers. I may be way off here, but anyway I think it may possibly have some relation to autism. Some very smart people are believed to often have this condition and depending on the spectrum on which you are on this it can really affect your social skills. This is what you may be observing in these people as being "wired" into them. My friend and his colleagues believe that Bill Gates has a mild case of this. This may also relate to what Sklansky calls his 180 IQ weirdos. If you are observing some of these types at your work then you are probably making a possibly solid observation. I'm still sticking by my points but also allowing for this subset of people who if they really do exist certainly need to be factored into the equation.

09-01-2005, 02:26 PM

andyfox, I'm glad you at least see my point about IF all things are equal, you should pick the 125 IQ over the 124 IQ. I was starting to worry that you weren't even on board with that.

About smart people when they are out of their element being dangerous, I think that it a very important point. I'm glad you pointed it out because I think it is very underestimated. My guess though is that you may go a bit too extreme to the other side and overestimate it.

About Sklansky overestimating intelligence, that may very well be true. I haven't read enough of his thoughts on the subject to give my two-cents-worth estimate of him on this.

Here's what I do feel comfortable giving my two-cents-worth guest on. I think you underestimate it. The reason I say this is because of your claim that IQ has "no relationship, none whatsoever" to being a comedian. It doesn't have anywhere near as much as it does to being a rocket scientist, but it definitely has some relationship. I'll go back to my pick two random people question. If one has a 100 IQ and the other a 110 IQ and you tell them to come up with a 5 minute set that they can work on for a month and then have America judge them on Last IQ Comic Standing tv show, the higher IQ person will win more times than the lower one. It may not be dramatically more but it will at least be slightly more. At least.

If you still disagree and steadfastedly stick to your belief that they have the exact same chance of winning, I will point on some of the many reasons why intelligence can affect the ability of a comedian. At least if I still feel in the mood to continue trying to persuade you instead of just turning on Comedy Central and enjoying some good stand-up comedy instead. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Lestat

09-01-2005, 03:31 PM

I think what you (and Sklansky) seem to be saying is that above average intelligence certainly won't be a hinderance in any field and that if you were to pick a person at random from two groups; one of above average intelligence and one below, that the chance to choose someone competent would come from the above average intelligence. If so, I won't dispute this.

I think what we are all talking about is that there are different subsets of intelligence. A comedic mind can be quite dysfuntional when it comes to math and visa~versa. Few people realize how much math there is in music, yet if you don't have a musical mind, a good ear, and coordination, you will never be more than a mediocre musician no matter how high your IQ is. In fact, I myself am very illiterate at math, yet I have a natural talent when it comes to music. Now granted, I might be a BETTER musician or at least have a better understanding of music theory if I were also good at math. But this doesn't change the fact that many people with +150 IQ's will never play music as well as I can.

My point is, I consider myself intelligent, so to that extent intelligence may be a prerequisite for having a good ear and being a good musician. However, I believe my IQ is only slightly above average. So clearly having a high IQ is not a prerequisite for playing music, being a stand-up comic, or any one of a myriad of other endeavors that require a special intelligence of the brain.

Again, my biggest disagreement with Sklansky is that he seems to take math aptitude, equate that with being the definitive barametor for intelligence, and base everything from there. I just don't agree with this. In fact, I contend that many people with very high math abilities tend to struggle in other areas which require a different kind of inteliigence.

baggins

09-01-2005, 04:57 PM

i think many of you are missing something drastic. intelligence doesn't imply 'better with numbers' or 'remembers dates and facts well' or 'applies scientific method better'. intelligence can manifest itself in many forms. some people are just better at music, or driving, or reading poker opponents, or negotiating profitable deals.

someone with a high degree of relational intelligence may be able to negotiate a sale with a higher percentage of profit and still have their customer walk away happy with everything they bought than someone with a lot of math skills. some people may be able to pack a year's worth of stuff into a small car for the return trip to college better than somebody who has a real creative mind for music. the problem isn't intelligence. it's applied practice, and it is a skill set born of a natural aptitude for a certain kind of 'intelligence'.

"A smarter person, when out of his area of expertise, is favored to let his confidence in his own smartness get in the way of being right. Rumsfeld is a good example. "

and yet, a smarter person still would realize that he was out of his area of expertise and make the best decisions he knows how to make - including: admitting an inadequate skill set to deal with things outside of one's area of expertise and enlisting the help of those better equipped to handle the situation.

a truly smart person understands the limitations on his or her intelligence and skill set(s) and works within and/or around those limitations successfully.

Lestat

09-01-2005, 05:25 PM

a truly smart person understands the limitations on his or her intelligence and skill set(s) and works within and/or around those limitations successfully. 

Are you implying that intelligence and common sense are intrinsically linked? Or... That intelligence and sense of self (such as ego, self-centeredness, or personality disorders), are?

andyfox

09-01-2005, 05:32 PM

"If one has a 100 IQ and the other a 110 IQ and you tell them to come up with a 5 minute set that they can work on for a month and then have America judge them on Last IQ Comic Standing tv show, the higher IQ person will win more times than the lower one."

I really doubt it. You may well be correct when you say I underestimate the importance of pure thinking to success in many fields, and whether it's true in comedy is certainly not an earth-shattering issue. But, if you have the time (and if you don't, or you're not interested in carrying on, OK), I'd be interested to read some of the reasons that intelligence can affect the ability of the comedian.

Lestat

09-01-2005, 05:38 PM

What about the most obvious? Almost all comics are quick-witted. That is, they have an inherent ability to think on their feet. Wouldn't you say this alone is a sign of above average intelligence?

BluffTHIS!

09-01-2005, 05:53 PM

[ QUOTE ]
But the person who stops hurricanes will almast certainly disagree with you so why should we believe you rather than him? You just don't get my point. Which has nothing to do with man's pride. Change it to martians.

The point simply is:

If a martian is more likely to figure out how to stop hurricanes than you, he is more likely to be correct if he disagrees with you about any subject assuming you have spent the same time and effort investigating it. Religion baseball, tuning a piano, or even coming up with a good joke. He has the same type of advantage over you that you have over a retarded person. Even if that advantage came from Stephen Hawking's God that has nothing to do with Jesus.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually David, pride has a lot to do with all this, since this thread like so many of your other ones, is simply a restatement of your belief that the conclusions of the most intelligent people in society (whatever level you might specify) regarding the truth or falisity of various religious beliefs, must be more likely to be true, and by a great margin. And this is despite the fact that conclusive evidence one way or the other cannot be shown.

Now to restate for the benefit of others who may not have followed all the religion threads: I am a Catholic who as admitted that the evidence for the truth of Christianity that I find convincing would not necessarily be convincing to outside expert evidence evaluators. And David has admitted that some of us believers might weigh additional personal evidence that cannot be proved to others, i.e. the experience of our own personal faith and that of fellow believers.

In almost every major religion, that religion's theology and religious texts assert that God puts very great emphasis on humility, and in fact often punishes the proud. So who then if that religion be true, will be the recipients of such extra evidence? The humble (who granted might have lots to be humble about), or the super intelligent, who are more likely than anyone to have an extreme self-pride in their intelligence which is inherited and not a result of their own efforts?

All I can say David, is that if Christianity is true, then you had better hope that it is my more lenient to non-believer theological beliefs on same that are more true than NotReady's.

andyfox

09-01-2005, 06:15 PM

Almost all comics are not quick-witted. Many are slow and plodding and cannot adjust quickly to changing situations. Many famous comics have been quite dull-witted. A number of famous and successful comedians I knew from the Friars Club here in Los Angeles, including one who for years had the top-rated show on TV, couldn't do a thing unless it was planned and plotted out to the nth degree.

andyfox

09-01-2005, 06:18 PM

"a truly smart person understands the limitations on his or her intelligence and skill set(s) and works within and/or around those limitations successfully."

But does this happen very often in the real world? Or does, more often, a truly smart person consider that his brilliance in pure thinking can transcend those limitations?

Lestat

09-01-2005, 06:30 PM

Hmm. I find that very interesting. Could you name of few examples of slow-witted comics I might know?

I see what you're saying that some people are not very good at improvisation. This is true in music as well. I know people who can play very complicated pieces of music, yet could not improvise well to "Smoke on the Water" when placed in a band setting, etc.

Still, most funny people I know personally are very quick witted and able to adapt in conversational repartee in a split second. Off hand, I cannot think of a famous comedian off hand, who is slow witted. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'd just like an example to see if I agree.

David Sklansky

09-01-2005, 08:01 PM

"Having a bigger IQ has absolutely no relationship, none whatsoever, with being a better comedian. "Better" is clearly a subjective judgment. If you cannot see that if you decided to be a professional comedian, and devoted the same diligence and time and energy to it that George Carlin or Woody Allen (in his younger, stand-up days) did, that you would not be better, that is a cause for concern.

It truly pains me to say it, but for reasons I choose not to spell out, I can never debate with you again.

David Sklansky

09-01-2005, 08:08 PM

"While myself I am not a believer, I cannot ignore the historical precedent of numerous scientists who have been the cause of "paradigm shifts" and were religious Christians (or Muslims) to boot. Until relatively recently, they were the majority, too."

I guess you missed previous posts of mine where I pointed out that it is only in the last fifty to 100 years where science, and magicians, and probability experts have learned enough stuff to make specific religious beliefs farfetched. (Also I'm betting that the so called religious people in the past who produced scientific breakthroughs were in their heart of hearts, sceptical of many of the teachings they claimed to believe in.)

David Sklansky

09-01-2005, 08:17 PM

from sklansky's post:
"Also I think most will agree that the percentage of religious Christians who have a clue about the difficult science and math necessary to one day stop or divert hurricanes and thus save millions of lives is smaller than the percentage of people not in that category who have that knowledge. Why is that?"

"perhaps because there are more people who are not 'religious christians' than people who are."

I stopped reading here.

maurile

09-01-2005, 10:25 PM

[ QUOTE ]
If you cannot see that if you decided to be a professional comedian, and devoted the same diligence and time and energy to it that George Carlin or Woody Allen (in his younger, stand-up days) did, that you would not be better, that is a cause for concern.

[/ QUOTE ]
For purposes of making this point, did you select George Carlin and Woody Allen from the population randomly? If so, you got pretty lucky to land on two successful, professional comedians. What were the odds of that? (Still, however, your sample size is too small.)

If you didn't pick them randomly, your point has nothing to do with David's.

baggins

09-02-2005, 02:14 AM

[ QUOTE ]
"a truly smart person understands the limitations on his or her intelligence and skill set(s) and works within and/or around those limitations successfully."

But does this happen very often in the real world? Or does, more often, a truly smart person consider that his brilliance in pure thinking can transcend those limitations?

[/ QUOTE ]

i'd say this applies directly to Mr. Sklansky's reply to my post.

seriously. is it a forest/trees thing? are you that arrogant David? in my absence from this board, did it change to the place where you don't take the time to address serious posts directly responding to your serious posts? instead, you insult and dismiss these things without a reason, without an argument, without the simple respect serious posters around here reserve for you. but i guess since it's your site, you can do whatever you want. thanks. what a gentleman you've proven to be.

Cyrus

09-02-2005, 03:05 AM

[ QUOTE ]
It is only in the last fifty to 100 years where science, and magicians, and probability experts have learned enough stuff to make specific religious beliefs farfetched. (Also I'm betting that the so called religious people in the past who produced scientific breakthroughs were in their heart of hearts, sceptical of many of the teachings they claimed to believe in.)

[/ QUOTE ]

There is a huge gap in your premises about religion and humans - and it does not have to do with the social aspect of religion. It has to do with fear.

Getting beyond religion means facing up to Man's fate/status in the cosmos. It means taking a path that unavoidably leads, if one remains consistent and honest in his quest, to the realization of some colossally unbearable facts (Skip the next two paragraphs if you're David Sklansky or easily scared) : 

We are animals. We are no different than the rest of the fauna. We live in a planet that came to exist out of the purest of accidental circumstances, a planet that is inhabited by myriads of creatures all hunting to devour each other and then excrete waste, a ululating mass of agony. We are here, as the human species and as individual humans, without any design, "meaning" or objective. Our being here is the result of randomness. This randomness is so big that it goes far beyond any probabilistic notion that we can understand in our world. The cosmos is totally uninterested and unresponsive to our presence here.

Then we're all gonna die - with probability 1.0 . And our death will not lead us to an afterlife but to nothingness, to non-life. Which renders all our acts here pretty much meaningless - which, in turn, render human morality as heavy as a feather in the wind. We are conscious of our fate - which is the only thing that separates us from the other inhabitants of our world. A conscience facing up the world and realizing the full extent of its horror. 

...Now, it should be clear that being a religious person, which means first and foremost avoiding (read : suppressing) all that agony stuff and finding comfort in prescribed Answers about this life and the afterlife, is NOT an indicator of "weak thinking" but rather of a "weak soul". We can speculate whether or not Newton "truly believed in a Christian God" but, even if he did, this would not make him any less clever; only of typical human courage.

However, the vast majority of humans (including a lot of atheists, agnosticists and the like) are weak, in this context. They take refuge in religion or other belief systems on account of being weak. (And I do not claim to be anything but!)

Nietzsche spoke of Superman. He was not referring to some new "Master Race" but to the New Human who, freed on his own volition from the prejudices of his ancestors, would face up to Reality and acknowledge his Condition and move on from there, as the ultimate Hero.

--Cyrus

NotReady

09-02-2005, 10:24 AM

[ QUOTE ]

would face up to Reality and acknowledge his Condition and move on from there, as the ultimate Hero.

[/ QUOTE ]

You ruined a great post with this last line. All of your explanations about the absurdity and meaninglessness of the universe if God doesn't exist are what I and others have been pounding on in these threads and you stated it very well.

I will point out that I have maintained that no one lives up to the Ideal of the Absurd. No one can bear to believe that all he thinks, does, feels, loves and builds is totally laughable. So like Nietchze and Sartre and all the other priests of absurdity, in the end you grasp at some sliver of hope, some tiny bit of purpose. Because what can the word "hero" mean in a universe that has no meaning?

God created us in His image. No matter how we try to erase that image we still remain His creature. He gave us the gift of reason by which we try to pretend His universe is meaningless. He gave us the heart we use to deny hope. And He gave us the common sense which refuses to allow us to live consistently with our philosophies of despair and doom.

09-02-2005, 11:56 AM

andyfox, for what it's worth, I'm still more than happy to debate with you even if we never saw eye to eye on anything. But maybe I'll be able to show you some reasons why intelligence could help a comedian. These are just reasons that are rolling off the top of my head. There may be many others. You may not agree that all of them relate to whatever your definition of intelligence is but I hope that you'll see that at least some of them do.

First, I will not argue that intelligence is responsible for that initial creative magical spark that creates a joke although I think that is true but it might take me too much effort to write a post about it. So here are some other, to me at least, more obvious reasons.

-Don't you think that verbal facility is at least partially based on intelligence. Is Shakespeare not more likely to have some higher than random intelligence to do what he did? Comedians are in the same ballpark as poets if you really break it down to its essense. The word choice, the pace, the lyrical delivery, etc.
-Great comedians experiement with jokes like a scientist experiments with a hypothesis. They test it in front of an audience to see if it holds up. So let's say he tries out a fat joke 10 nights in a row. Half of the time it elicits laughs and the other half it bombs. A dumb comic might scratch his head wondering what's going on. A smart comic will take notice of all the evidence and variables before him and they are many. Through his intelligence he may discern that when the house lights are a little brighter, people feel self-conscious to laugh at fat jokes because an overweight person may be around. In the dark, they don't have these inhibitions. "Aha," says the smart comedian. "I've got to only use this joke in dark clubs." The dumb comedian might never figure it out. This is a miniscule scratching of the surface of how intelligence could help a comic interpret feedback and refine an act.
-A comic needs to play to the particular crowd. Let's say there is a slightly taboo joke about Jesus in his act. The dumb comic might correctly reason that this joke doesn't play so well in the bible belt and drop it from his act in those cities. A smart comic might have done some reasearch or just remembered a fact he read once in a magazine about the demographic break-up of a particular bible belt big city. He realizes that this city is a little different from the rest and leaves the joke in for this city and it kills, just as the smart comid predicted.
-Would you not acknowledge that intelligence enhances reading comprehension. Many top comics greatly benefit from the fact that they are voracious readers especially of newspapers and popular magazines. The information they get is often the basis for a joke. And the memory of this information might come into play for a joke they come up with ten years from now. And this does not just have to be current event type comedians like Leno and Bill Maher. Even Jeff Foxworthy might read an article once in some NY Times profile of poverty in American and read a description of someone's frontyard that gives his an idea for a "you might be a redneck if" joke.
-Gaining experience in front of an audience is key toward a comic developing a polished act. A dumb comic might walk by a club that has an open mike night and decide that this is the place and so every tuesday night he tries out more material there. A smart comic knows how to utilize information, internet resources, library leads, the power of networking with other comics, etc. He can uncover some underground comedy clubs nearby because he knows how to look for this kind of hard to find info and now he gets up 5 nights a week. This added expereience will make him more successful.
-If he travels the country, he'll be smart enough to gather information, contact names of club managers. Figure out the booking proceedures so he has a better chance of getting booked. More bookings equals more experience which equals a more refined act which equals funnier. Not to mention just more successful moneywise. Even if both the dumb and smart comic have the same agent, the smart one will gather supplemental info to help his agent help him.
-Back to playing to the crowd. I once read an article about Dennis Miller where he was talking about the demographic and socio-psychological makeup of Vegas audiences and the implications this had for his performance choices. It seemed like a very intelligent take to me and I can't imagine that this hasn't been helpful to him in achieving his Vegas marquee visitor status.
-Last point. A comic needs great memorization skills. If he stumbles on a line or forgets a transition to the next joke, it's a major hurdle toward getting laughs. A dumb comic might conclude that he's just too stupid to remember all this stuff for a whole act. A smart comic might devise some mnemonic techniques, or maybe a clever way to hide reminder notes behind stage props or on his inside sleeve. Or maybe memory and intelligence are related in the first place.

I'll stop now because although I'm sure I could keep coming up with reasons, if I haven't convinced you yet, I probably never will.

Jcrew

09-02-2005, 06:20 PM

"The reason that the fastest player is almost never the best player stems from two facts.
1. Speed is only one attribute necessarry to succeed in baseball.
2. Super speedsters are MUCH RARER than merely fast players."

There is room for a 3rd reason. Once a certain speed threshold is reached, there could be diminished returns for additional speed to the overall effectiveness of the player.

spaminator101

09-02-2005, 08:00 PM

What exactly do you mean by "Stops the Hurricanes"

Cyrus

09-03-2005, 03:20 AM

[ QUOTE ]
No one lives up to the Ideal of the Absurd. No one can bear to believe that all he thinks, does, feels, loves and builds is totally laughable.

[/ QUOTE ]Well, not "no one", but almost no one.

(You used the word "laughable". I find that quite poetic. I was saying "meaningless" but yours is more human.)

[ QUOTE ]
So like Nietchze and Sartre and all the other priests of absurdity, in the end you grasp at some sliver of hope, some tiny bit of purpose. Because what can the word "hero" mean in a universe that has no meaning?

[/ QUOTE ] It denotes, quite sprecifically, the ultimate act of herosim.

Above taking a hill with your comrades-in-arms under lethal fire from the enemy; above plunging into the flooded water to save a drowning baby; above sacrificing yourself for your religious god. It is about two things

(a) totally and lucidly recognizing your condition in the cosmos and
(b) not committing suicide. *

That would be the Hero. Ecce homo!.

As Spinoza put it, Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere. (Not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.)

[ QUOTE ]
God...

[/ QUOTE ]
Whatever.

West

09-03-2005, 09:39 AM

[ QUOTE ]
 We are animals. We are no different than the rest of the fauna. We live in a planet that came to exist out of the purest of accidental circumstances, a planet that is inhabited by myriads of creatures all hunting to devour each other and then excrete waste, a ululating mass of agony. We are here, as the human species and as individual humans, without any design, "meaning" or objective. Our being here is the result of randomness. This randomness is so big that it goes far beyond any probabilistic notion that we can understand in our world. The cosmos is totally uninterested and unresponsive to our presence here.

Then we're all gonna die - with probability 1.0 . And our death will not lead us to an afterlife but to nothingness, to non-life. Which renders all our acts here pretty much meaningless - which, in turn, render human morality as heavy as a feather in the wind. We are conscious of our fate - which is the only thing that separates us from the other inhabitants of our world. A conscience facing up the world and realizing the full extent of its horror. 

[/ QUOTE ]

You called all of the above facts. Would you elaborate on what makes you so certain about them?

[ QUOTE ]
However, the vast majority of humans (including a lot of atheists, agnosticists and the like) are weak, in this context. They take refuge in religion or other belief systems on account of being weak.

[/ QUOTE ]

Also, I'm confused about atheists taking refuge in belief systems other than the above...can you give some examples of what you mean?

[ QUOTE ]
(And I do not claim to be anything but!)

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you one of the aforementioned atheists? What belief system is it that you take refuge in (given your realization of the above)?

mackthefork

09-03-2005, 12:03 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
 We are animals. We are no different than the rest of the fauna. We live in a planet that came to exist out of the purest of accidental circumstances, a planet that is inhabited by myriads of creatures all hunting to devour each other and then excrete waste, a ululating mass of agony. We are here, as the human species and as individual humans, without any design, "meaning" or objective. Our being here is the result of randomness. This randomness is so big that it goes far beyond any probabilistic notion that we can understand in our world. The cosmos is totally uninterested and unresponsive to our presence here.

Then we're all gonna die - with probability 1.0 . And our death will not lead us to an afterlife but to nothingness, to non-life. Which renders all our acts here pretty much meaningless - which, in turn, render human morality as heavy as a feather in the wind. We are conscious of our fate - which is the only thing that separates us from the other inhabitants of our world. A conscience facing up the world and realizing the full extent of its horror. 

[/ QUOTE ]

You called all of the above facts. Would you elaborate on what makes you so certain about them?

[ QUOTE ]
However, the vast majority of humans (including a lot of atheists, agnosticists and the like) are weak, in this context. They take refuge in religion or other belief systems on account of being weak.

[/ QUOTE ]

Also, I'm confused about atheists taking refuge in belief systems other than the above...can you give some examples of what you mean?

[ QUOTE ]
(And I do not claim to be anything but!)

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you one of the aforementioned atheists? What belief system is it that you take refuge in (given your realization of the above)?

[/ QUOTE ]

He's right, except that we will all die with a probability of 1.0. Other than that small and forgivable inaccuracy he just made one of the best most insightful posts I have seen on these boards. The universe conains 50-100 billion galaxies, each contains 50-100 billion stars, add that there may be more universes, an infinite number possibly and it adds up that we are nothing and nothing we do matters in the big picture.

Mack