Chief or Shaman?
Dec. 22nd, 2007 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dickensOver on a friend's journal there was an interesting discussion of intelligence. The topics ranged from just what IQ tests measure and whether those are valuable, (or were valuable to our evolutionary forebears) to the stereotypes of the smart kids as the same kids who lacked social skills.
I want to ramble about those ideas a bit. And eventually, I may get to the subject line.
Thanks to a well written, if verbose, textbook IQ and Human Intelligence by N.J. Mackintosh, I'm fairly confident that IQ tests are measuring something valid and usable. So I'm not going to get into that here. (I'll loan the book out if anyone is interested, just don't move any of my many bookmarks...)
Okay, what is different between us and the hunter-gatherers we evolved from? (And what does that mean for intelligence?) Writing. We evolved to look, listen and speak. Your brain translates written words into sounds while you read. (The brain teaser that asks you to count the F's in a sentence takes advantage of this, most people ignore the F in of). More if you're interested.
But many intelligence tests, the official, long, one-on-one tests like Raven's Matrices, don't involve reading. They look at things like pattern recognition, problem solving, and working memory.
All of those things would be just as useful (if not more so) to someone living 10,000 years ago. The point, which is perhaps trivial, is that we aren't smarter than our ancestors (and probably don't think much differently than they did, same hardware after all.)
Okay, switching from primitive tribal life to high school (not much of a stretch?)
In my school, there were several things you knew about everyone (small school, we really did know everyone, most of us for all 13 years of school). How smart they were, how athletic, and how friendly they were, whether they were 'good' or 'bad', and how well they dressed. I'm mostly going to talk about smart and athletic with a bit of friendly thrown in.
Over time, people gravitated to groups and activities, and their choices were highly influenced by the characteristics above. Jocks, geeks and the rest of the cliques I'm sure you all knew and loved.
It almost seems too easy to compare the geeks to shamans. A tribe doesn't need lots of shamans, it needs a lot of people who can acquire food. So the shaman (geek) is rare - respected for knowledge others don't have, but disdained because he or she doesn't fit in (or contribute the way everyone else does).
We got where we are by being smart monkeys, but maybe super-smart monkeys don't spend enough time thinking about what life is really all about.
Okay, where to chiefs come in? Back to high school.
The thing that surprised me the most my senior year, was who got voted homecoming royalty, M and G. They were two intelligent, athletic, super-friendly people and were unquestionably popular and well-liked (different things, at least in my school). The same thing (nice, talented people were the MOST popular) happened in the two classes ahead of me, and the class behind me.
Put about one-hundred kids together from the age of 5 to 18 and the cream really did rise to the top. People I could respect were leaders. At 13, knowing my peers, I wouldn't have believed it.
Back to the stereotypes of smart = poor social skills. Let's talk about Confirmation Bias.
M and G were smart, but that wasn't the first thing people noticed about them. Their other abilities, making them obvious 'non-geeks' kept people from noticing there's a continuum of social skills for the smart kids just like everyone else. Someone is athletic and social, popular even, so they aren't a geek, ergo, they aren't super-smart. Hah.
Enough rambling, time to feed the cat.
I want to ramble about those ideas a bit. And eventually, I may get to the subject line.
Thanks to a well written, if verbose, textbook IQ and Human Intelligence by N.J. Mackintosh, I'm fairly confident that IQ tests are measuring something valid and usable. So I'm not going to get into that here. (I'll loan the book out if anyone is interested, just don't move any of my many bookmarks...)
Okay, what is different between us and the hunter-gatherers we evolved from? (And what does that mean for intelligence?) Writing. We evolved to look, listen and speak. Your brain translates written words into sounds while you read. (The brain teaser that asks you to count the F's in a sentence takes advantage of this, most people ignore the F in of). More if you're interested.
But many intelligence tests, the official, long, one-on-one tests like Raven's Matrices, don't involve reading. They look at things like pattern recognition, problem solving, and working memory.
All of those things would be just as useful (if not more so) to someone living 10,000 years ago. The point, which is perhaps trivial, is that we aren't smarter than our ancestors (and probably don't think much differently than they did, same hardware after all.)
Okay, switching from primitive tribal life to high school (not much of a stretch?)
In my school, there were several things you knew about everyone (small school, we really did know everyone, most of us for all 13 years of school). How smart they were, how athletic, and how friendly they were, whether they were 'good' or 'bad', and how well they dressed. I'm mostly going to talk about smart and athletic with a bit of friendly thrown in.
Over time, people gravitated to groups and activities, and their choices were highly influenced by the characteristics above. Jocks, geeks and the rest of the cliques I'm sure you all knew and loved.
It almost seems too easy to compare the geeks to shamans. A tribe doesn't need lots of shamans, it needs a lot of people who can acquire food. So the shaman (geek) is rare - respected for knowledge others don't have, but disdained because he or she doesn't fit in (or contribute the way everyone else does).
We got where we are by being smart monkeys, but maybe super-smart monkeys don't spend enough time thinking about what life is really all about.
Okay, where to chiefs come in? Back to high school.
The thing that surprised me the most my senior year, was who got voted homecoming royalty, M and G. They were two intelligent, athletic, super-friendly people and were unquestionably popular and well-liked (different things, at least in my school). The same thing (nice, talented people were the MOST popular) happened in the two classes ahead of me, and the class behind me.
Put about one-hundred kids together from the age of 5 to 18 and the cream really did rise to the top. People I could respect were leaders. At 13, knowing my peers, I wouldn't have believed it.
Back to the stereotypes of smart = poor social skills. Let's talk about Confirmation Bias.
M and G were smart, but that wasn't the first thing people noticed about them. Their other abilities, making them obvious 'non-geeks' kept people from noticing there's a continuum of social skills for the smart kids just like everyone else. Someone is athletic and social, popular even, so they aren't a geek, ergo, they aren't super-smart. Hah.
Enough rambling, time to feed the cat.
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 11:21 am (UTC)I would not describe him as outstandingly smart, merely moderately smart, but there were a few others who fit what you're talking about: smart and athletic and popular and therefore not a geek. The other side of confirmation bias showed up for me on the French Club trip to France after we graduated: some of the people I went with were absolutely floored to discover that I could make them laugh pretty much constantly and not always cleanly. They had just assumed that because I was a geek, I wouldn't be a nice person whose company they might enjoy, so they had been automatically nasty to me when I was a freshman and they were sophomores (I skipped in the middle there), and I'd steered clear of them until we had some reason to be thrown together. They'd decided I was a snotty little goody-goody before they ever met me, because I had a reputation for being smart. It wasn't until we were in very close quarters in a very different situation that they were willing to accept any data to the contrary.