An Important Point I Made In Another Thread

[PLOlover]

[ QUOTE ]
Put another way, what he is saying is this: assume you have two people. They are equal in all respects. Now assume one is better than the other in one respect. Which one is more likely to be successful?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I think he's using 100 dash for athletic ability the same as general intelligence as measured by iq test for intelligence.

[tek]

Many of the people on the Forbes list over the years have proven their intelligence in the choice of parents they were conceived by...

intelligence doesnt neccessarily equal being a successful money-maker.

[Subfallen]

[ QUOTE ]
Many of the people on the Forbes list over the years have proven their intelligence in the choice of parents they were conceived by...

[/ QUOTE ]

Now you're thinking clearly.

[andyfox]

Believe it or not, I'm trying to learn from you too (all evidence to the contrary).

I believe your basic point here is validated by the fact that most baseball general managers tend to favor signing young position players who have good speed and young pitchers who are fireballers. Their reasoningm conscious or not, is that the great physical ability cannot be taught, whereas if the athlete already has that ability, the other skills of the game can indeed be taught, and a position player with good speed or a pitcher with a good fastball will likely come equipped with other physical skills to allow them to do well at the other things needed to be a good player.

BTW, FWIW, the best player in Major League Baseball has often been the fastest player. Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle (and possibly Jackie Robinson) come to mind, and there would be many more examples (Oscar Charleston and Satchel Paige, among others) had not African-Americans been barred from the game until the late 1940s.

You say this is applicable to "many other important things." I suppose our disagreement is over how many of those things to which it is indeed applicable.

[andyfox]

How about if he changed "fastest dash time" to "best hand-eye coordination"? Would you agree with this?:

I contend that in almost any sport, given no other information, the person with the best hand-eye coordination will be favored to do better at that sport than a person with slower hand-eye coordination.

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

The reason that the player with the best hand-eye coordination is almost never the best player stems from two facts.

1. Hand-eye coordination is only one attribute necessary to succeed in baseball.

2. People with Super hand-eye coordination are MUCH RARER than players with merely excellent hand-eye coordination.

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

[Georgia Avenue]

I'm not sure this is the same since hand-eye-coodn isn’t a quantifiable measurement. Or is it? If there is a standard test for measuring h-e-c which is commonly sited by scientist/sports statisticians, then I stand corrected--it’s a perfect example. Barring that, the reason your re-phrasing sounds more convincing is that it is a fundamental *trait* of sports rather than a single quantifiable component, LIKE THE IQ TEST. The David’s contention was (pardon the ratios):

40 yrd.dash:Baseball::IQ TEST:Intellectual Activities
So you CAN be a good baseball player if you are a fat slob (low 40y.d.), it’s just not very likely.
Therefore: You CAN be a good XXXX* if you don’t have a high IQ, it’s just not very likely.
Also: IF you have a VERY high 40, THEN you COULD be a good baseball player.
THEREFORE: IF you have a VERY high IQ, THEN you COULD be a good XXXX.

However I don’t think this analogy expresses the truth of the David’s position. In most of his posts and writing it sounds to me more like he thinks that logic-based reasoning as tested by the IQ test is fundamental to all rational thought, and hence to all activity that employs the mind, including writing jokes! Take some dumb pizza delivery boy from Baltimore and Bill Gates (or whoever) and give them 3 years to write a sitcom pilot. HIIQ would at least be able to logically figure out the rules and tropes of comedy and come up with some passable jokes, while (MOST LIKELY) the pizzaboy wouldn’t, and his sitcom would just be a collection of fart noises.

I think the real If/Then statements look like this:

To be a good XXXX, you MOSTLY MUST have a high IQ.
IF you have a VERY HIGH IQ, you WILL be a good XXXX.

I think you can see that this wouldn’t fit the analogy:

To be a good baseball player, you MOSTLY MUST have a high 40.
IF you have a VERY HIGH 40, you WILL be a good baseball player.

Frankly, I think it is the foundation of the analogy that is incorrect, not the analogy itself. IQ is in fact like a 40yrd dash stat. But figuring stuff out like: “Why am I here? What should I do right now? What is thinking or being or time or whatnot? Is there a God? If there is a god…what is he like?” is not like baseball. When it comes to philosophical reasoning, we’re all idiots.

(Full disclosure:
My IQ is pretty low, so I MOST LIKELY am SCREWED UP somewhere in this post.
My verbal GRE score was 500 points higher than my verbal score. Beat that variance!)


*XXXX=mental activity including but not limited to answering and asking philosophical questions.

[jester710]

I don't know that I would agree that the IQ test is a valid measure of "absolute" intelligence (meaning, I'm not willing to concede that the 125 person is definitely more intelligent, whatever that means, than the 124). My point is that, until we agree on a definition of intelligence or a way to measure it, there will be disagreement over Sklansky's point. I don't know if he meant to or not, but he seems to imply that intelligence is closely related to ability in math or science; would you agree that a person who is more gifted in math and science will be more likely to be successful in ANY endeavor than a person less gifted in those fields?

Sklansky seems to say yes, all other things being equal. I think that if you make all other things equal, then the person with more ability in science and math (Person A) is such an obvious choice that it's not worth talking about. Person A has the same abilities in all other fields as Person B, but excels in one. By virtue of that alone, he would be more likely to succeed.

But if Sklansky truly believes (and I don't know that he does) that science and math skills are closely correlated to intelligence, then you have more of a gray area. For example, Person A is very gifted in science and math. Person B is equally gifted in areas like art and literature. They are equally superior to the other in those fields (meaning A is twice as good at math and B is twice as good at creative writing or whatever). Would anyone say that, given a random endeavor, Person A is more likely to be successful?

[David Sklansky]

"Sklansky's style is impetuous, his logic is impregnable, and he's just ferocious. He wants to eat your children."

Do I have permission to put that quote on the cover of all new editions of my books?