Here: "House pushes toward historic change in voting procedures as pandemic sidelines Congress."
Such an unpleasant look for him. Either wear the mask or don't. And why are these people using the medical supplies and not the washable cloth mask they tell us to wear? And how inept is it to put your finger on the inside? That's actually quite gross even in times of plentiful supplies.
I've already been thinking that much of this mask business is theater, but they're not even getting the theater right.
I've saved the image — a photo by Patrick Semansky/AP — in case WaPo thinks better of its choice and replaces it.
I'm not going to call Schumer an idiot — the way Trump haters call Trump an idiot — because I happen to know that he scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT and was his high school's valedictorian. He went to Harvard undergrad and for law school. I'm seeing his IQ estimated at 170. He's super-smart. There's no doubt about it. I'm watching what he does, and he's not taking the risk of contagion too seriously. He's in a vulnerable group too — he's 69 years old (the same as me).
Having written that, I wanted to see what IQ people assign to Donald Trump. Of course, it's all over the place. He's an idiot! He's a genius! But at Quora, I found this interesting answer — by Tony Reno in June 2017 — to the question "To all those with IQ above 135, how high do you suspect Donald Trump’s IQ to be?"
When I took the test for Mensa I scored at 152, and best I can tell he’s got a higher IQ than I do.
Here’s the thing, When an IQ differs from yours by more than 20 points, much of what the other person is doing, either direction, is unfathomable to you. It’s as if you are speaking different languages.
I see so much that candidate Trump did and that President Trump is doing that seems to be to be over the head of a lot of people viewing him. They also confuse the reports by his enemies with what he’s really done and said.
A high IQ doesn’t make you perfect, but he just expertly navigated a minefield like I’ve never seen done before....
Back away from your biases and ask yourself, would you want to be president if you had a billion dollars, a penthouse apartment overlooking central park and a supermodel wife?
Every assumption about his motives is vacuous at best. “Putin blackmailed him to run the most amazing upset in political history?” Give me a break.
What he did and is doing while single handedly battling every media outlet (believe me, Fox News was not his friend during the campaign) the active campaigning of a sitting president (unprecedented in the history of our democracy), the non-stop criticism of the Hollywood stars and professional comedians.
Who in power was on Donald Trump’s side this election season? The Koch brothers didn’t fund him. People in his own party worked against him as late as the last month of the campaign.
Saying his IQ is anything but extraordinary would be like watching a football player repeatedly score the winning touchdowns despite the efforts of half his own team and most of the referees on the field, and then say that player’s not much of an athlete.
The man is brilliant on levels I’ve never seen.
Let me clue you into his so-called craziness in tweets and other communication. Every “outrageous” statement has a very clear purpose. It is to get someone to look where the media don’t want them to look. Everytime someone looks they find out that they are being lied to. Most of the time people won’t look because the tweet will be about something they don’t care about and the surface analysis, “another crazy tweet,” will hold sway. But every now and then they’ll look deeper. With each deep look a few more people are converted from “Trump’s crazy” to, “The media and most of our leadership are lying, and Trump’s exposing it.” Every move over because a new part of the higher, permanent, un-moveable base.
President Trump’s strategy is incredibly patient, incredibly long term. He’s not trying to win over every person every day. He’s trying to build a loyal following one voter and one issue at a time. All of his strategies are ratchet strategies. If you followed the whole election season the phrase that kept coming out over and over again is
“He’s got this loyal base that is with him for the distance, no matter what.”
But no one bothered to look into why that was so, or why it was such a one-way move. Despite media outcries to the contrary there are almost no, former Trump supporters. This was a very carefully planned strategy, not to go for a broad win by saying it's easy to accept things, but to go for permanent loyalty by exposing what’s really happening to the country one complex issue at a time.
When I first started watching the debates I thought he was wrong on almost every issue, but issue after issue the more I looked the more sense he made....
President Trump is definitely the brightest president I’ve seen in my lifetime. If you’re fooled by his simple-speak, his, “The best words” you’ve never run a company or sold a product. Simple speak is command speech. Simple speak gives clarity where big words only confuse people. The majority of big words exist to equivocate, hedge your bets. That’s not how a commander gets reliable action because it has people afraid to act out of fear that they got the commander’s will wrong. President Trump is way, way above 150 by the standards that were in play for testing when I took the test in 1988. So even given adjustments both for the Flynn effect and the way IQ switched to a statistical rather than age-ratio scoring standard, he’s still above 140 today.
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1 – 200 of 340 Newer› Newest»IQ is of limited predictive value in measuring intelligent people, but anyone who says Trump has a low IQ reveals either that they themselves are low IQ or that IQ is of limited predictive value in measuring intelligent people. IQ is pretty good in terms of predictive value on the low end, though.
Saying his IQ is anything but extraordinary would be like watching a football player repeatedly score the winning touchdowns despite the efforts of half his own team and most of the referees on the field, and then say that player’s not much of an athlete.
That describes more/not just his IQ. That is his 24/7.
I ran across a box of 3M N94 masks in my garage that I'd purchased some years ago from Home Depot for use during Texas' oak pollen allergy season. Used two out of the twenty in the box. Hadn't used any in years, yet there they were. Eighteen masks, each may be deconned twenty times via low heat in my oven and reused.
Again, I've proved that frequently it's better to be lucky than smart.
Very interesting analysis. It's probably showing my bias to say this resonates as truth for me. Most telling, and I think true, is this: there are no former Trump supporters.
As for Schumer and his super high IQ, I never would have guessed that was true. He's not my senator so my exposure to him is very limited. He doesn't seem particularly bright, not even overly competent at his job in politics. Again, though, I am biased against him.
Trump is using lasers to herd cats. Lasers that he made himself.
Seriously: the cats have no idea what’s going on here.
But WE are supposed to take it seriously. Government theatre is the worst kind of theater.
That was good analysis, except that Trump's simple-speak is way more sophisticated than standard corporate leader speak. Trump manages to conduct several simultaneous dialogues depending on the intelligence and knowledge level of who's listening. Scott Adams was on point when he characterized it all those years ago as hypnosis.
Stevew @ 9:56: “ Most telling, and I think true, is this: there are no former Trump supporters.” Exactly.
IQ doesn't tell you that much about how smart a person is if what you're really judging him on is life skills. I joined MENSA years ago for the fun of it. It wasn't all that fun. Like me, most MENSA members lead pretty average lives.
Is Trump a genius? Trump HAS a genius. Only a fool would deny that. But is his IQ exceptional? I have no idea. Same with Schumer--he is a great representative of his constituents (I also think he's more or less of a decent human being). But does he have a genius IQ? I have no idea.
You're late to the Schumer mask gravy train, Ann.
Click here to see how he actually WEARS the mask when he puts it on.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/fwuu9m/chuck_schumer_wasting_a_mask_by_wearing_it/
Yep, he's super smart!
Every time I think of Trump and Schumer I remember that Trump was one of the earliest financial supporters of Schmer when he was running for the Senate. So do high IQ people readily recognize each other? Some sort of identical twins syndrome? Or was Trump just hoping to buy some influence, as the NeverT's would likely say?
I've already been thinking that much of this mask business is theater, but they're not even getting the theater right.
Performers wear masks in Noh theater.
911 introduced us to security theater at airports. Covid-19 has ushered in public health theater, and we're all the performers.
Great Post. Needs quotes around the extract from Reno's answer to make it clear this is not Althouse's opinion.
I'm not going to call Schumer an idiot — the way Trump haters call Trump an idiot — because I happen to know that he scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT and was his high school's valedictorian. He went to Harvard undergrad and for college. I'm seeing his IQ estimated at 170. He's super-smart. There's no doubt about it. I'm watching what he does, and he's not taking the risk of contagion too seriously. He's in a vulnerable group too — he's 69 years old (the same as me).
Of course he's an idiot.
"Same with Schumer--he is a great representative of his constituents (I also think he's more or less of a decent human being)"
Interesting. My impression is that he is a cynical manipulator. I suppose that may be an accurate representation of his constituents, or at least, of the people who vote for him.
Its never clear whether Trump's critics are playing dumb or really are stupid. Do they *Really* think Trump is an idiot? Or it just part of their propaganda?
As for Trump doing things deliberately, you only need to look at his misspellings. To his critics this is evidence that Trump is "dumb". But trump doesn't type into the computer, and he could easily get someone to spellcheck everything he writes. But he doesn't. So, that means its deliberate. Adams speculates that's to get a wider audience for the tweet, which I believe is correct.
Charles Murray always wins in the end. Anyone who is extremely successful in his field has a high IQ, whichever field it is. Trump has been extremely successful in at least three very different fields. Builder and reality show host and politician... Just shows up at the top and takes over. That's not something normal people can even imagine.
Don't confuse IQ with being smart.
He's also a baby.
You can have a high IQ and still be acting like an idiot. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Some very smart people, do the dumbest things.
There area many kinds of "smart". Book Smart vs Street Smart.
Intelligent and still naive.
Smart and totally unobservant of human nature.
Intelligent and unable to focus outside of your own area of expertise.
Then there is the "evil quotient" which I wouldn't rule out in Schumer's case.
My observation is that Trump is both Intelligent (IQ) AND has the Street Smarts. This is why he is beating the snot out of the media and always surprising the self anointed experts.
The theory of the masks, as I understand it, is that they mostly protect others from the wearer. Therefore, there is no point in wearing them if you aren't contagious. But you can be contagious without knowing it. So, participating in the mask theater shows a concern for others.
But if that's the case, there is no reason not to reuse them. They are there to block your exhalations, not to provide a virus-free surface for others to eat off of.
I think Trump is plenty bright and enjoy having a smart president after Bush and Obama. What makes me nervous is that he often plays near the edge, I wouldn't trust many to pull that off. I won't try to guess an IQ, once it is above maybe 125 talent is more interesting than IQ. I've known several people with IQ > 170 who have marginal talent for algebra, and let's not talk about who can draw or carry a tune.
One thing Trump has in abundance is life experience. The two other presidents in my lifetime who win in that category are Eisenhower and Reagan.
I think Mr Reno laid it on a bit thick. But mostly I agree. Any reasonable assessment of Donald Trump has to be that he is one very bright guy on multiple levels.
Thanks for posting that.
It's not just that there are now "no former Trump supporters".
It's that before he entered the race there were no Trump supporters at all!
He may have had fans based on his TV shows and appearances, or even based on his business books and so on.
But there were no people supporting him to be President of the United States.
He created his base out of nothing - nothing, that is, except the recognition of what was wrong with the United States and that there were many many people who also saw it and would support someone who would change it.
BTW, when did the MSM start using - on a regular basis - labels like "smart" and "dumb" and quoting IQ's to praise or attack people? You don't need to go to Harvard to know you shouldn't stick you finger in your mask. And there are plenty of high IQ people who are drunks, drug addicts, perverts, crooks, or believe insane, ridiculous things. How many Nazis and Communists have high IQ?
Bill Clinton was "super smart" but that didn't keep him from lying under oath, sexually harassing interns and employees, pardoning marc rich and having sex with Lewinsky in the oval office.
Further, once you get past a certain point, having a high IQ is meaningless. Does someone with an IQ of 150 change a tire faster than someone with an IQ of 100? Does a 150 IQ mean you can do your income tax return better than a CPA? Sununnu constantly bragged about his high IQ, and you gave us Souter and got fired as Bush's Chief of Staff. Maybe, a dumber, wiser chief of staff would've served Trump better.
My friends and I like to put 2 of his tweets together when he does something we like.
"he's a stable genius with great and unmatched wisdom"
He is smart enough to know he is not going to catch C19 by walking down the hall.
My mask is safe on the floor of my car, which keeps the dogs from sitting on it because I would hate to breathe dog hair. I wear it when I shop, putting it onwhen I enter the door and taking it off as soon as I get back outside. It's not like I'm going in to manage someone's ventalator in an ICU and have to worry about my mask filling up with CV.
Besides, I only have this one mask.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EU-D2bSUEAA4Pi2?format=jpg&name=small
Yea, he's a genius.
People with a high IQ are still capable of doing and saying stupid things. In fact, highly intelligent people can at times be more likely to believe in nonsense than less intelligent people for complicated reasons. High IQ doesn't guarantee that an individual will regularly practice critical thinking, though the individual has the capcity to do so.
Agree 100% with Tony Reno re: Trump's IQ and manner of speaking.
A caller to Rush yesterday theorized that the masks were theater. I watched the NBC Nightly News yesterday and most of the field reporters were wearing masks. That was to keep the panic going.
If Schumer is doing what he's doing, and he's not an idiot, then the only other option is as an Evil/Hostile actor.
Its extremely odd how dumb liberals, who do nothing but parrot the party-line put out by the MSM, the Entertainment Industry, the Publishing industry, etc. think they're smarter than those "dumb conservatives" or people like Trump.
They seem to think that because they are conformists, who swallow everything put out by the Establishment, that makes them "smart" and anyone who disagrees is "stupid" when its the other way round!
Great question. My IQ is either 135 or 145; I was told on-the-QT by my wonderful high school Chem teacher that I had the highest IQ in my class and that it was 145 (she was frustrated because I didn't do well with the math). Then, a few years ago I had the chance to speak with a top expert on IQ evaluation and he told me that my IQ was probably more like 135, based on how they were testing in schools back in the 70's. My impression of Trump is that he probably has a higher IQ than mine but probably not in the 150+ category. People whose IQs are at that super-genius level high have an odd way about them. Anyone who thinks that he's dumb or even average-bright are either not bright themselves or are blinded by TDS. Just look at his post-graduate education, for starters. Trump got into an Ivy league school back when his father was just another wealthy businessman, like thousands upon thousands of other successful and influential people who all would have liked to have their kids be accepted into an Ivy.
And why are these people using the medical supplies and not the washable cloth mask they tell us to wear?
N-95 masks can be sanitized by baking them at 167⁰ F for 30 minutes. I do mine at 175⁰ F for 40 minutes to be safe. Use the real thing instead of a fake cloth knock-off made of unknown materials and of dubious quality.
My husband used to tell people, "Until I met Openidname, I didn't understand that smart people can do stupid things."
Oh, I should have said, my ex-husband.
Jupiter @ 10:09: “... But if that's the case, there is no reason not to reuse them. They are there to block your exhalations, not to provide a virus-free surface for others to eat off of.”
Excellent point. For all of us extras in the Social Distancing Epic Theatrical Production, masks are props. No way can we confidently use them to protect (p > .99) ourselves from others or vice versa. For those actually in the trenches caring all day long for the confirmed sick, it’s a different story and a different level of discipline. But some cowboy wearing a bandanna, or Schumer mis-handling his N95, are just acting their parts in a play.
It's wrong to judge strictly by IQ. See Scott Adams discussing of talent stacks and Trump's specifically:
As I explained in my book, there are two ways to make yourself valuable. The first way is to become the best at some specific skill, the way Tiger Woods dominated golf. But not many of us can be Tiger Woods. So that path is unavailable to 99% of the world.
I recommend a different approach. Most people can – with practice – develop a variety of skills that work well together. I call this idea the Talent Stack.
For example, I’m a famous syndicated cartoonist who doesn’t have much artistic talent, and I’ve never taken a college-level writing class. But few people are good at both drawing and writing. When you add in my ordinary business skills, my strong work ethic, my risk tolerance, and my reasonably good sense of humor, I’m fairly unique. And in this case that uniqueness has commercial value.
Now consider president-elect Trump. He doesn’t have one talent that is best-in-the-world, but he does have one of the best talent stacks I have ever seen. Consider all the ways in which Trump is better than average, but not best-in-the-world. I’ll list the obvious ones.
Public Speaking: Trump is an engaging speaker, and he knows how to entertain a crowd. But no one would say he’s one of the best speakers in the world.
Humor: Trump is funny. But he isn’t Seinfeld funny. He’s just funnier than most people. That’s all he needs.
Intelligence: Trump is smart. He probably wouldn’t beat Hillary Clinton on a standardized IQ test, but he’s smarter than 90% of the world, and probably far more. That’s good enough for a talent stack.
Knowledge of Politics: Compared to career politicians and political pundits, Trump looks under-informed. But he probably knows more about politics than 95% of the public. And that seems to be enough. Advisors will fill in the knowledge gap.
Branding: Trump is a world-class marketer and brander. He probably isn’t the best in the world at those things. But he’s very, very good.
Hiring and Firing: One of the most important skills a president needs is the ability to hire good advisors and – equally important – fire the mistakes. Trump has plenty of experience doing both. He probably isn’t the best in the world at hiring and firing, but I’ll bet he’s in the top 10% just from practice.
Strategy: Trump won the presidency in large part because his non-standard strategy worked great. He focused on free media, big rallies, and the key swing states. That was good enough to win. Trump probably isn’t the best strategist in the world, but he’s very good.
Social Media: Trump understands social media in a way that people of his generation usually don’t. Trump might not be the most Internet-savvy politician of all time, but he’s definitely in the top 10%.
Persuasion: Trump might be the most persuasive person I have ever observed in the act of persuading. But keep in mind that persuasion requires a talent stack too. Trump is persuasive because he combines a bunch of minor skills into one big persuasive toolbox. For example, Trump is good at reading people, good at being provocative to attract energy, and good at sales technique. He probably isn’t the best in the world at any of those minor skills, but when you add them together, along with lots of other subsidiary persuasion skills, and now the Office of the President – Trump might be the most persuasive person on Earth.
Risk management: Trump understands risk. We see it in his business dealings as he isolates different lines of business in their own corporate structures so they can fail without bringing down the rest. We also know that Trump enters businesses that have an unlimited upside potential with limited risk. And he prefers gambling with other people’s money. Trump probably understands risk management better than 90% of the public.
with his middle finger inside
Gotta keep his nose pickin' finger safe!!
!Q measures the ability to learn and problem-solve; it does not measure whether a person actually uses this ability, nor, more importantly, does it measure a person’s character.
Ann keeps revisiting a common theme... there are VERY smart people you would not want to be in charge of anything.
Schumer may well be one. Trump may be the exception that proves the rule.
"I've already been thinking that much of this mask business is theater"
In the short run, to keep The Panic of 2020 going.
In the longer run, as protection against the Karens in the stores.
As for Schumer and his disdain for masks -- which I share unless I were in a crowd -- it's pretty clear he's no different from Chris Cuomo or George Stephanopolous or Nancy "Chinatown" Pelosi or any other celebrity who cavalierly flaunts their immortality. They don't believe their own propaganda about COVID-19. They don't really view it as a serious threat any more than Wolfgang Wodarg or some commenters on this blog.
Rick T @ 10:25: Thanks for the excerpt from Scott Adams on “talent stack.” A very useful way to analyze DJT —or anyone.
"highly intelligent people can at times be more likely to believe in nonsense than less intelligent people for complicated reasons"
I happen to know a former law prof who does that sometimes. Always an odd spectacle.
Either wear the mask or don't. And why are these people using the medical supplies and not the washable cloth mask they tell us to wear? And how inept is it to put your finger on the inside? That's actually quite gross even in times of plentiful supplies.
It's just a specific example of a general social principle -- our betters think the rules don't apply to them. That's one very big reason they aren't really our betters.
We were just discussing the masks issue at home. The daughters are texting in anticipation that the Houston Mayor / Harris County Judge will order the use of masks in public. I was actually perusing Amazon via the Althouse link. I didn't buy any. Wife is a nurse. She's the only one us that has to go out, and she is handed a mask before entering the building. She has more inside and can order more for her department. She thought the prices at Amazon were ridiculous. We went to the local Sam's Club on Sunday, as they had special hours for medical professionals. Sam's Club handed out masks at the door. All that to say, I think most of it is theater, but if you want me to wear one to enter your establishment, then I will if I want to enter.
People whose IQs are at that super-genius level high have an odd way about them.
So Trump does not have an odd way about him? LOL he's a huge weirdo.
What a fascinating link. Those comments are illuminating. Thank you, Ann.
Much Higher than Pelosi's.
"I'm not going to call Schumer an idiot — the way Trump haters call Trump an idiot — because I happen to know that he scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT and was his high school's valedictorian. He went to Harvard undergrad and for college. I'm seeing his IQ estimated at 170. He's super-smart."
And yet he believes that, despite all historical evidence (including, and perhaps especially, the Democide statistics) that the State is our best buddy and the more power it takes the better off we'll all be. Okay, so he's not stupid--he's evil.
Further, once you get past a certain point, having a high IQ is meaningless.
That is incorrect. Poke through Hsu's IQ posts, especially "Nature, Nurture, and Invention: analysis of Finnish data" and "Feynman, Schwinger, and Psychometrics".
Does someone with an IQ of 150 change a tire faster than someone with an IQ of 100?
Probably yes. Does someone with an IQ of 100 make discoveries and inventions in physics, medicine or engineering? No.
IQ tests and SATs measure very different things. SATs test how well you've learned what you've been taught. A solid concrete thinker with a good memory can do very well on the SATs. In some schools that can also get you the position of valedictorian if what is measured is learning and not reasoning. An IQ test is based on pattern recognition, the ability to reason, and problem solving skills. Very often the kids with the highest IQs in the class are not the "best students". IQ has nothing to do with how many vocabulary words you've learned. I have no trouble believing Schumer could have got 1600s on his SATs and been valedictorian with an IQ of 130 or so. I also would have no trouble believing someone could score !250 and been in the top 20% of the class of the class with an IQ of 150 or higher. Some of the kids I taught who had the highest IQs dropped out of school.
I agree with the analysis of Trump's intelligence, and with the follow-up of most commenters. Trump is a political force the likes of which I've never seen. He's Reagan, but dialed up to 11. There's no question that he's brilliant, Plus he has a wicked sense of humor. What makes so many people angry is that he is giving them a little taste of their own medicine, and they're not used to it.
But I'm concerned when I hear there are no former Trump supporters. That's wishful thinking. I brought this point up on a different thread, and was accused of being a word thinker and even a closet liberal. Nope, I've been supportive of him all along. I've been a conservative since the late 80's. I have enjoyed his tweets, and at least sometimes can perceive the strategy behind it. (My favorite is the Trump hotel in Greenland.)
My problem with him is that he sometimes gives too much ammo to the enemy. He does things that can be reckless, or unnecessarily provocative. That's why I believed that his "liberate" tweets went too far. I think he is adding fuel to the fire, when he should be alleviating conflict. Again, for saying this on a different Althouse post, I was accused of giving the game away, that I'm actually not a Trump supporter. I am a supporter, and want him to win again. But I'm not a loyalist. I believe in constructive criticism. And here in Ohio, I can tell you that I've met former Trump supporters. They're still likely to vote for him, but they think he's doing more harm than good right now.
I've worked for bosses who were a lot like Trump, although not nearly at his level of skill, talent, or significance. But what I noticed is they can start treating everyone like an enemy, and every difficult situation as a battle to be won. That can be counterproductive. Sometimes honey is better than vinegar. Trump is a genius, although in my opinion not very stable. No doubt sometimes even his instability is strategic. But up against a virus, I'd like him to stop sounding an uncertain trumpet. Chaos is not always desirable. In my opinion, encouraging people to liberate their states is a risky maneuver, and possibly a deadly one. (Are the protesters wearing masks? Did the virus just disappear?) I think this is a case where Trump should be treating the governors as allies against a common enemy, rather than undermining them. Even geniuses need to be told "No" once in awhile.
No, SATs are pretty much IQ tests by another name, and historical SAT scores can quite reliably be converted by formula to IQ scores. You may be thinking of the achievement tests which measure subject matter expertise.
Schumer's problem is not a low IQ. His high IQ helped him figure out early that life as a leech, sucking on the blood of commerce from within the govt, was a comfier path to wealth and power and fame than actually working for a living. And no doubt his IQ has helped him to succeed in this endeavor. Schumer's vain and shameless and probably also quite crooked since he runs a state party machine, and he may not be a very good person, but he's no dummy.
Jupiter said...
"Same with Schumer--he is a great representative of his constituents (I also think he's more or less of a decent human being)"
Interesting. My impression is that he is a cynical manipulator.
Maybe. My impression of him is based on having lived near him back when he first made the jump to the Senate. We weren't buddies or anything, but I feel like I have a perspective beyond what you might get from TV coverage. I also know the things he does that drive conservatives nuts are things his constituents want him to do. Like how so many of the things liberals use as evidence that Trump is unhinged are actually just Trump fulfilling campaign promises.
And I also know it's not personal--Schumer is an old-school politician who will beat you up all day on the Senate floor and then go out for drinks with you after the vote.
IQ is based on how well you take tests, when I went into the Air Force, I realized I was good at taking tests but common sense is what's important and I'd say Trump has a good IQ and has good common sense too based on his overall success. Regardless of their respective IQs, when it comes to achieving their goals, Trump is clearly smarter.
911 introduced us to security theater at airports. Covid-19 has ushered in public health theater, and we're all the performers.
Exactly. TSA fails 85% of the tests run by others. I see all these people wearing masks and wonder if they know why they are doing it. My next door neighbor lady, who is sort of a recluse, drove by me the other day with her mask on in her car,
There are lots of high IQ people in Silicon Valley. I rest my case.
Back when I took the SAT, there was no way to learn your score. No prep and no retakes.
I am interested in the assumption of IQ scores when the person has not been formally tested. They have little basis for their assumptions.
GRE and SAT scores highly correlate with IQ, but so does EVERY test of cognitive ability. Motivation and test taking ability is more of a factor in the GRE and SATs, IMO.
Another interesting aspect of the public discussion of IQ scores is that they use numbers up to 200. The vast majority of IQ testing has been done with the Wechsler tests which only go up to 150. The Stanford-Binet goes up to 200, but is rarely used with adults today.
Andrew @ 10:41: “... My problem with him is that he sometimes gives too much ammo to the enemy. He does things that can be reckless, or unnecessarily provocative.”. Fair point. I think some of that is ego, some of it is the heat of the moment, some of it is his (multitudinous) enemies seizing on every last thing as proof of his ignorance and cruelty etc. I also think that because he is pretty much a solo act, he has to play all the parts himself. If he had an enforcer to hand out the wilder and spicier bits, it would spare him some of the problems you rightly point out. But he is who he is. And his intelligence is fused with his character; it’s a package, and mostly —luckily for us— it is working well.
My problem with him is that he sometimes gives too much ammo to the enemy. He does things that can be reckless, or unnecessarily provocative.
I think what you see from Trump is stream of consciousness. My wife accuses me of having a nanosecond between thought and speech. He is that way in public.
Both Rick T. and DBQ'a analyses are interesting and, dare I say, persuasive.
Like Fredo Corleone, "I'm smart, I can do things"---in my case that meant I routinely scored 99+ percentile on all the standardized tests I took in high school, was always the first to finish exams in every class in college, and was Law Review and Order of the Coif at a top 8 law school.
So book smart and quick yes. But there are all kinds of intelligence in life. The most street smart person I ever met was a woman who had dropped out of the tenth grade in a small town in Tennessee back in the late 1940s. She could and did read people extremely well. And in the course of practicing law for 40 years I met a number of very highly educated ("credentialed" is the best term) fools. And what the heck, like almost everyone of us, I can look back and see when I did foolish things.
You can argue about how many different "intelligences" there are. There are at least several kinds of "intelligence" and that which is measured by IQ tests is just one of them. I'm not denying that having a high IQ is an asset (easy to say when you have one yourself) but at the end of the day it is just a number. It is important for some activities and things in life, but it is not dispositive of life outcomes.
"He went to Harvard"
Just like David Hogg!
I consider myself a hardened Trump stan, and even I think that assigning him a 170+ IQ is a bit much. Previous commenters have claimed that the President has "life skills" that replace raw intelligence, but I think even that is off the mark. Life skills and intelligence are basic qualifications for the Presidency, not how to explain exceptional success in the face of overwhelming odds and an all-out legal attack.
What Donald Trump has is intense experience. Most people couldn't hack a week as an investment banker, never mind a year. And investment bankers wouldn't want to swim with the sharks of New York real estate for any length of time. The people who do handle high finance and CEO positions usually don't stay for all that long, just because of the intense stress and expectations. But fighting the entire Uniparty machine, the interconnected media, China + the EU, and quite a bit of the country's business elite? Couldn't be done, they said. We were assured in October 2016 that Trump was in total meltdown, and that Hillary would take more than 322 EC votes. I challenged that and did rather well out of it. There were lots of reasons, of course, but the main one was that Donald Trump does very well in ultra-high pressure environments and is still alive after swimming with the sharks. Under those circumstances, it's no wonder that he's looking fitter when the vast majority of men age rapidly in the presidency.
But getting the Presidency was just the start for Donald Trump: we'll be able to look at his administration and decide if he's done a good job or not. Economic nationalists will generally be happy: Paulian anti-militarists will find themselves left cold. Hopefully not cold enough to vote for Biden, who is a senile placeholder. Even with an all-out legal assault against Cambridge Analytica- while Facebook tries to cover up its systematic spying against Labour party activists in Britain- the KAG team is more than ready to have the debate that Team Obama sought to dodge 4 years ago. Results matter. Policies matter. And the Dems are going back to an empty well in response.
Guessed wrong, Muzzled. I live near Schumer in Brooklyn and love NYC.
"Every time I think of Trump and Schumer I remember that Trump was one of the earliest financial supporters of Schmer when he was running for the Senate."
Yes, hardly surprising- you are big wig in New York City and need a Senator in your pocket, you aren't going to be buying a Republican- that would just be wasting money.
You can be book smart and have no common sense...hence the picture.
rcocean said ... Does someone with an IQ of 150 change a tire faster than someone with an IQ of 100?
The higher IQ person is likely to figure out how to change the tire faster.
But if both are experienced at tire changing, I would bet on the lower IQ person.
People who think Trump is being "too provocative" and needs to "Tone it down" are criticizing him for not being perfect. How much is to much is a value judgement and changes constantly.
Some people make that criticism because they are fakes, who don't want Trump to fight back or tweet at all. The prefer the Jeb Bush "always be a Gentlemen - be above it" approach, but for some reason refuse to say that.
Michael K said, "My next door neighbor lady, who is sort of a recluse, drove by me the other day with her mask on in her car."
I see that all the time here in SoCal. And variations as well, like the mask wrapped around the chin so the wearer can drink and talk better.
I asked a clerk in Walmart a question about where some merchandise was. She, in her mask, had to stand quite close to me in my mask just so we could hear each other.
I see all too many noses showing above those masks!
Schumer took his high IQ and Ivy League pedigree right into politics, avoiding for his entire life any work in the productive sector of the economy. I don't see how looking askance at that path makes one a wealth-hater or a NYC-hater or a hater of places where wealth is created. More accurate would be say a DC-hater: they don't create wealth in DC, they repatriate it from the people who create it, then skim some off and redistribute it. Trump opened casinos, which are still a gamble, as his experience shows. Schumer is the house, and the govt doesn't have risk.
It's not just that there are now "no former Trump supporters".
It's that before he entered the race there were no Trump supporters at all!
He may have had fans based on his TV shows and appearances, or even based on his business books and so on.
But there were no people supporting him to be President of the United States.
I am a conservative, and I was rooting for Ted Cruz. I wasn't a Trump supporter then....but with all of the great things he has accomplished that the Politicians for life haven't ever gotten to (and never will) I am proudly going to vote for him again...even if I have to walk 10 miles through Coronavirus zombies. The other option will end America as we know it.
I suspect that Shumer is both smart enough and has enough inside knowledge to know that the overreaction to the Kung Flu is a scam.
That's why he doesn't wear a mask. He knows it is kabuki.
More and more regular people are realizing that too.
John Henry
"The higher IQ person is likely to figure out how to change the tire faster."
Really? I doubt that. In any case, do we give people prizes for changing a tire in 6 minutes instead of five? That just proves my point.
BTW, the IQ test doesn't test for mechanical ability. Nor does it - obviously - test for the hand dexterity or strength. If I need my tire changed -I'll take a 20 y/o male mechanic over Ruth Bader Ginsberg or Bill Maher.
" He's super-smart. There's no doubt about it."
Oh, that's not a good thing. If I can't assign his incompetence and foolish ideas to stupidity then all there is left is pure evil. Oh well, it is what it is.
I was tested in college and my IQ was also 152. We're like twins or something. Unfortunately, in my opinion, my IQ has dropped "exponentially" since then. Maybe that's why your thinking sometimes makes no sense to me. Not all the time. So maybe I get you only when I take my vitamins, or get a good night's sleep.
wendybar said...
It's not just that there are now "no former Trump supporters".
It's that before he entered the race there were no Trump supporters at all!
He may have had fans based on his TV shows and appearances, or even based on his business books and so on.
But there were no people supporting him to be President of the United States.
4/22/20, 11:05 AM
This isn't perfectly accurate: even as far back as 2012 Donald Trump was setting himself up to be a power player in the Republican Party, to the point Mitt Romney had to go to him, hat in hand. But he wasn't treated as a serious candidate. I don't think Ann Coulter would have been permitted to offer him early support if the media didn't think Trump would be the easiest candidate for Hillary to defeat. But people who were paying attention could have observed Trump's positioning in 2012, much as people who wanted to know what continental Europe in 1941 would have looked like if they had read Mein Kampf.
Now, of course, it's far too late. The Democrats have never been in a worse policy position, and economic nationalism has never had as much credibility.
Blogger Skeptical Voter said...
So book smart and quick yes. But there are all kinds of intelligence in life. The most street smart person I ever met was a woman who had dropped out of the tenth grade
I just finished reading Freedom's Forge about the production buildup for WWII. A lot of the book was wrapped around 2 men, William Knudsen, who had worked his way up from the patternmaker shop at Ford and became president of GM before taking over coordination of war industries.
The other was Henry Kaiser who after a couple false starts got into contracting and road building along with Hoover, Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams. He is perhaps best known for developing the shipyards and practices that allowed liberty ships to be built in a week or two instead of a year or two.
Neither of these men had much education.
John Henry
In Puerto Rico we are supposed to wear masks when driving, alone, windows up, in our car.
Not sure if that is the law or a recommendation. I have a mask that I wear when I go in the Post Office or stores. No other times.
Right now my wife is watching state legislature hearing. All the senators are wearing masks, even when they speak. It is hard to tell what they are saying.
John Henry
If Schumer wore the mask properly, it would probably fog his glasses and he could fall on his face. Where's the mask police?
The mask situation has served to remind me just how much my hearing has deteriorated and just how much I've come to rely on lipreading to know what the hell people are talking about.
Blogger rcocean said...
In any case, do we give people prizes for changing a tire in 6 minutes instead of five? That just proves my point.
NASCAR teams do give people prizes for being able to change a tire in 5 seconds instead of 6.
And they pay very well. Don't know the current amounts but 4-5 years ago when I did, tire changers were making $250,000/yr. A jackman on a top team made $350,000. Plus win bonuses for fast pitstops.
The are recruited from the same college pool that NFL etc recruits from.
John Henry
Isn't Scott Adams super smart too? Interesting.
A 170 IQ person won't be changing the tire- that is what 100 IQ people working for AAA is for.
I'm not aware of ever having an IQ test. I don't know what my IQ is, but I have a feeling I'm merely average. I mean, my intellect does not impress me. I make too many mistakes and am easily confused by simple shit. It is what it is, I guess.
Just to be serious for a moment- I have watched the highest IQ person I have ever known (IQ well above that of Chuck Schumer) take down an interior door by trying to remove the hinge plates from the door frame.
My three younger brothers and I all have 150+ IQs, tested in the 50-60s.
Let's see, all of us are little crazy. Two of us, the manic depressives under care, had successful careers and families. The youngest is a paranoid recluse with like 4 quarters in for Social Security. My father supported him his entire life. The last one is a serious alcoholic with major anger issues, including trying to kill me with a tomahawk nine years ago. Dad mostly supported him and he was a hobo for 10 years when he was young.
But we're all well-read, so there's that.
"Ann keeps revisiting a common theme... there are VERY smart people you would not want to be in charge of anything."
Heh heh. Thanks for noticing.
I've had the chance to know a quite few people who I pretty much know for a fact have a very high IQ and NONE of them were people I would trust to run anything that actually had an effect on real people. The mere idea scares me. They could be amusing to talk to for a while... but you were unlikely to feel terribly good about it in the long run.
Careful, Roughcoat. Your comment suggests a higher IQ than average, so wield your super brain with care and responsibility. Dunning-Krueger would predict that your IQ is higher than you presume, since it's a sign of higher than average intelligence to be aware of one's limitations and to assume competence in others.
That Schumer once scored 170 on an IQ test, which is questionable in the extreme, does not imply, much less guarantee, that he has enough common sense to pour piss from a boot, with instructions written on the heel. All his high IQ means is he can remember things like series of numbers or random items very well, do math in his head, has a large vocabulary, and so on.
Schumer's political ideology told us decades ago that he was wrong, despite supposedly being smart. Misusing his safety gear tells us he is using the masks as a stage prop, not for his own, very real, safety. How smart is that?
@rocean - I was in my garage wrestling a tube/tire off/on the rear wheel of my motorcyle. I got it done in a world record three hours.
A smarter person would have had the local Kawasaki dealer do it.
-XC
I have watched the highest IQ person I have ever known (IQ well above that of Chuck Schumer) take down an interior door by trying to remove the hinge plates from the door frame.
You know the dude?
Half-assed IQ test: at one point in this set piece do you get the joke?
The cowardly totalitarian censors running this bullshit blog have taken to disappearing even the remnants of the comment - that's how scared they are of an avatar that accurately depicts and describes them for what they are. They are responsible for exactly the same kind of deaths and misinformation that those Chinese communists who killed Li Wenliang are. Actually many more, at this point.
There will be massive protests by healthcare workers from the summer all through November, illustrating exactly what Trump and his goons (including Ann and Meade and their followers) have done to American lives and those caring for them. It will be interesting to see how the muzzlers here try to cope with that.
Until then, I wish you two losers a speedy exit from this world that you've done so much to screw up, and an eternal stay in hell after that. May your crispy, burnt remains be depicted by Lucifer in a most interesting and artistic way.
I remember how you both treated Palladian, as do many other commenters at the time. Enjoy feigning a sense of decency to your remaining followers for as long as they last, as this blog sinks ever further into irrelevance, infamy and the lunacy of its proprietors.
rcocean said... the IQ test doesn't test for mechanical ability.
The WAIS IQ tests for abstract spatial relations ability.
This isn't perfectly accurate: even as far back as 2012 Donald Trump was setting himself up to be a power player in the Republican Party,
Diplomad 2.0 wrote an eulogy for his father. Back in about 2004 his father asserted that Trump was destined for the presidency. The eulogy is worth a read, his father was an interesting character.
I feel like I get dumber every year, but I also notice that lots of people are staying way ahead of me on that, so I generally end up supporting them financially and otherwise. I want to get to front in this race. It seems like a way easier place to live. No pressure, no worries.
Why do I wear surgical masks instead of cotton masks? Because my wife suffers from asthma and we have had the stupid surgical masks among our medical supplies for years. Besides - have you inquired into the availability and price of relatively useless cotton masks?
Even surgical masks with multiple filters need to be taped across your nose and face to improve efficacy.
Above a certain measured level, IQ tests tell us nothing useful.
Saying somebody has a 170 IQ is the same as saying somebody has a 145 IQ.
All that can be said is they are in the tail.
The problem with people like Schumer is not native intelligence but rather believing his native intelligence makes him smarter than the collective wisdom of people with average IQs.
IQ - eh. Smartest thing I ever did was marry a man who, on paper and via testing, is not as intelligent as I am. Because it turns out that his intelligence is much, much more functional than mine. Hence I have been free to pursue whatever interest has struck my fancy for almost thirty years, because he, with his highly functional intelligence, especially his ability to see the gestalt of things and to make good decisions on the basis of insufficient information, has secured our future.
Smarts ain't everything. The worst people I know are the ones who Know The Are Smart.
I decided a long time ago that in my field, and perhaps in a lot of others, there's a certain threshold of intelligence required to be able to get by. Once you're over that threshold, how far you are over it does not correlate with success in any way I can discern. I see merely smart people who have succeeded, and scary-freaking-brilliant people who've floundered.
Ah, and, Birkel beat me to it.
"I suspect that Shumer is both smart enough and has enough inside knowledge to know that the overreaction to the Kung Flu is a scam."
Not a scam. There is something peculiar going on. Obviously, in Wuhan, and in NYC, C19 is a scourge. But here in Oregon, it's the flu. I think it must depend on the initial dose. If you breathe infectious air at close range for 5 minutes, you get a huge dose, and a bad case. If you catch a few virons passing someone on the sidewalk, you may not even get symptoms. So, the subway is a death trap.
"A 170 IQ person won't be changing the tire- that is what 100 IQ people working for AAA is for."
One time in Louisville I had a flat tire and I pulled over to an old abandoned service station close to the road to change my tire. I was struggling with the lock nut on my wheel when a young guy, who looked to be an obvious weight lifter stopped and ask if he could help. He clearly considered it an opportunity to help and he very efficiently changed my tire. Whatever his IQ, I knew which one of us had the better common sense and I didn't care, my tire had been changed and I was back in my car on my way home.
IQ is processing speed.
Is processing speed the only quality you use in a computer?
The personal interface counts. the memory counts. the graphics card counts.
Similarly, beyond a certain point, especially in a non-technical field like politics, improvements in processing speed are unnecessary.
I was saying just the other day that politicians don't release their test scores because there's nothing in it for them. Schumer may be the exception, or maybe he talked about it way back then and it became part of his legend. In general, though, letting people know that you got high scores just brings down envy in others, and schadenfreude when you mess up.
By seventy, people get into routines and fall into roles. Schumer may not be using whatever brains he has everyday and applying them to every situation, but just doing what he always does and what he is expected to do. It's clear, though, that he is more judicious and less impulsive than Pelosi, or Trump for that matter.
Trump is using his strength by appearing everyday and answering questions. He is very quick on his feet and therefore, brighter than his critics think. Whether he shows the same quickness in other situations is harder to say. But in politics, a lot of the thinking is done in group sessions. What presidents do is hashed out with the staff. It may not be a matter of achieving solutions through intensive brainwork on one's own, but in following what's going on at the meetings, holding one's own, weighing the different options and bouncing tentative decisions off advisors, so the ability to read people and situations goes a long way.
"The higher IQ person is likely to figure out how to change the tire faster."
Really? I doubt that. In any case, do we give people prizes for changing a tire in 6 minutes instead of five? That just proves my point.
It doesn't prove anything.
A higher-IQ person will generally do a better job at dumb tasks like changing a tire than a lower-IQ person would, if other things are held constant (they can both lift a tire, have the same tools, etc).
BTW, the IQ test doesn't test for mechanical ability.
There isn't a "the IQ test", there are a lot of them. You're demonstrating that you're not very familiar with the subject, like a great many of the other people posting in this thread.
"My father supported him his entire life. The last one is a serious alcoholic with major anger issues, including trying to kill me with a tomahawk nine years ago."
Yes, nice try Milwaukee guy. We are smart enough see through your attempt to hide your suicide attempt by tomahawk.😛
Masks should be an essential part of the effort going forward to open up the economy. They should have been a part of the effort during the early stages of the outbreak.
Given the potential amount of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread of the virus, it makes sense to include wearing a face covering part of the overall strategy.
Common sense sometimes trumps high, but useless IQ.
Not a single poster (or Ms. Althouse) expressed any skepticism about Schumer having a perfect score on the SAT.
Biden claimed a law school class rank far above his actual ranking. AFAIK, SAT scores are confidential. How would anyone other than Harvard admissions (fellow travelers to Schumer) and a few others know Schumer's actual score?
Padding their resumes, with facts that cannot be confirmed, is certainly a skill at which politicians excel!
BTW, the IQ test doesn't test for mechanical ability. Nor does it - obviously - test for the hand dexterity or strength.
True. Since we're all anonymous, I can mention Asians. Smart people. Lousy drivers.
As someone who has had access to thousands of school records that contain both a student's SAT scores and his IQ test scores, I can assure you that there isn't as much correlation between the two as the people with the high SAT scores think there is. The kid in the class with highest IQ is seldom the one with the highest SAT score, but is often a "certified underachiever". Occasionally, a kid with a high IQ figures out the way to get what he wants is to jump through all of the teachers' hoops and does it because it gets him what he wants, but more often than not a kid with a high IQ finds a lot of schoolwork too boring to bother with.
The SAT is called an "aptitude test", and it measures vocabulary skills, the ability to read and dissect a paragraph, and math skills that are taught, not ones that are intrinsic. A writing sample section of the SAT is judged on paragraph construction, vocabulary, and grammar, but not on having anything interesting to say. High SAT scores correlate to success in college in some fields of study, but are meaningless in others. A high verbal score won't get you very far in engineering school if you have no problem solving skills. How many lawyers can solve a partial differential equation? Who cares if they can't? But the ability to write is essential. IQ tests are really good measures of whether a student is not being challenged enough or if expectations have been set too high, but they don't tell us much about what a kid "should be when he grows up". That's aptitude. Good at some things, but maybe not others.
Good to see a university professor -- or even a Professor Emerita -- acknowledge that Donald Trump is no dummy.
Barack Obama taught me to evaluate a President based on what he accomplishes, not on what he says. Trump is confirming that.
Birkel said...
Above a certain measured level, IQ tests tell us nothing useful.
Saying somebody has a 170 IQ is the same as saying somebody has a 145 IQ.
All that can be said is they are in the tail.
The problem with people like Schumer is not native intelligence but rather believing his native intelligence makes him smarter than the collective wisdom of people with average IQs.
This gets to the heart of the issue.
The collectivists and technocrats push the importance of IQ.
But no matter how smart 1 person is they will not make better decisions for 1000 people than the 1000 people will make for themselves individually.
The Coronavirus panic is a perfect demonstration of this. The Experts have been woefully wrong.
We would have been infinitely better off letting everyone make their own decisions.
Top down government intervention is almost always a failure. It can organize and direct but decision making should be allowed to be organic.
They could be amusing to talk to for a while...
My Dinner with Benito.
He went to Harvard undergrad and for law school. I'm seeing his IQ estimated at 170. He's super-smart.
The fallacy and hubris of the "smart" folks.
Some of the biggest idiots are the "smart" people. Their "smartness" blinds them to what they do not know and to the errors they make.
Lurker21 said...
BTW, the IQ test doesn't test for mechanical ability. Nor does it - obviously - test for the hand dexterity or strength.
True. Since we're all anonymous, I can mention Asians. Smart people. Lousy drivers.
I had a friend that was in a lot of accidents. But not because he was a lousy driver. It was his constant driving around like a formula 1 racer.
Asians are not bad drivers. Actually many are better skill wise.
They just drive faster and take more risk in general.
The tomahawk incident was my first ambulance ride. As the EMT was calling it into the ER, he said it was a hatchet. I told them to correct it to tomahawk. They asked why and I said I will get great service. Sure enough, most everyone in the ER stopped by to check me out.
It depends on what your definition of a "good" driver is.
IQ Tests really aren't all that important.
Probably gonna sound like humble brag....but....when I was in school, I was a pretty good student. Nothing spectacular. Got good grades. Rarely had to study. It just wasn't very challenging or interesting (except for chemistry, biology and physics classes.) So..I just muddled along until I took the PSAT.
Suddenly, I was of interest. Had the District Psychologist come and give me a test. Asked me a lot of questions. Bunch of hypothetical questions like...if you have a box with a box inside it and two more boxes etc etc how many boxes....until I told her I was irritated and bored and didn't want to answer that stupid question or think about boxes. Give me something else. Word associations, meanings and so on. They told my parents that I did VERY well, but didn't want to tell me or them how well because they thought I might get uppity. (not their term but probably correct). We never pursued it because ...so what. No one cared. I would rather play my guitar and sing.
I guess I did well on the PSAT and got a very high score on the SAT...1570 I think. None of which really means that much in the big scheme of things. There are some things that I excel at and many other things that people who never graduated from high school are better at than I am.
Took another test in high school, Military testing, and did very well on spacial skills and mechanical. The military wanted me, Air Force in particular, until the found out I was an icky girl. Too bad. I was ready to join and become a navigator(or airplane mechanic 😉
Know your limits and appreciate other's skills. It is what you DO with your "smarts" that counts.
Re: masks, here's a little anecdote: I went to the grocery store today, the first time my car had left the driveway in 11 days. The last time was also a grocery store trip, and just about everyone was wearing a mask of some sort on the 11th. Today, while all the store personnel were wearing masks, I'd estimate that perhaps only 50% of the customers were today. I was wearing a cloth tube-mask (the real cloth ones with earloops that I ordered from Nine Line Apparel are on the way but haven't arrived yet). Compliance seems to be way down. Not sure whether that indicates a coming spike in infections if that's the case all over the area and not just at the particular store where I was shopping.
"All the senators are wearing masks, even when they speak. It is hard to tell what they are saying."
Oh, may it always be so. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's listening to senators bloviate while playing to the cameras. Especially when they get all dramatic, but are the only ones in the chamber.
"I've had the chance to know a quite few people who I pretty much know for a fact have a very high IQ and NONE of them were people I would trust to run anything that actually had an effect on real people."
Hence this famous comment from Buckley:
"I am obliged to confess that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University. Not, heaven knows, because I hold lightly the brainpower or knowledge or generosity or even the affability of the Harvard faculty: but because I greatly fear intellectual arrogance, and that is a distinguishing characteristic of the university which refuses to accept any common premise."
John Henry @ 11:12 "...Freedom's Forge." Great book. It taught me a lot about character --both Knudsen and Kaiser were very special people-- and also a bit about the lead-time needed to switch a national economy like ours from peace to war. FDR went to Knudsen in, IIRC, 1938 or maybe early 1939: because he could see what was coming. Knudsen spent the next several YEARS jawboning and recruiting talent in key industrial positions. Which were not the guys who would be making tanks and planes. Not even the guys who would be making the tools with which to make the tanks and planes. But the guys who would be making the tools that made the tools.
In some respects we have moved with supernatural speed on the problem presented by Wu Flu, but we are paying a terrible price. And "demobilization" after this "war" is over? Going to be expensive as well.
Every second lieutenant in the army thinks he's the smartest one in the room. One used to show up at drill weekend toting a copy of Nietzsche (or Nitschke as Howard calls him) conspicuously showing for all to see. Never had much to say about it when I would strike up a conversation with him.
People whose IQs are at that super-genius level high have an odd way about them.
So Trump does not have an odd way about him? LOL he's a huge weirdo.}}
Yeah, I said the uber-genius are "odd" and my brain isn't coming up with the specific adjectives that would elaborate on that. Trump is unique and odd in many ways, but not in the same "odd" way that I was envisioning.
There is this scene in the movie Black Robe, set in Quebec in 1634, where a group of indigenous Algonquins agree to take a missionary priest on a 1000-mile trip to assist another priest at a Huron village mission. If you know the real history of the North American missionaries, you know that it involved hardship, capture, torture, etc.
Anyway, the natives are laughing amongst themselves at how stupid this missionary priest is because he doesn't know anything about how to live there. And the educated missionary looks upon them with condescension because he believes them to be backward.
Achilles @ 12:02: "...This gets to the heart of the issue. The collectivists and technocrats push the importance of IQ. But no matter how smart 1 person is they will not make better decisions for 1000 people than the 1000 people will make for themselves individually. The Coronavirus panic is a perfect demonstration of this. The Experts have been woefully wrong. We would have been infinitely better off letting everyone make their own decisions."
Your comment makes me think of Richard Feynman's definition of science. "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
To those who followed up on my comment re Trump, just a quick response. I agree with your praise of Trump. He really is a one man show, fighting against tremendous forces. It is near miraculous that he has gotten as far as he has. Usually I do not want him to tone it down. I don't care if he takes a flame thrower to the press, or Nancy Pelosi.
Let's just say that I wish he had another talent in his stack, and maybe that's too much to hope for. Something along the lines of a conciliatory style of communication that doesn't undermine the people next to him, or those potentially allied with him.
I've heard the phrase many time about Trump, "He fights." Boy, is that the truth. And Trump makes his mistakes while he fights, which is better than not fighting at all. He's the proverbial Man in the Arena. What Lincoln said about Grant applies to Trump, but the difference is Grant didn't start shooting everyone on his own side. When you encourage people to protest during an epidemic, and not take the health risks seriously, that's dangerous. I would rather him muster the country's forces against the virus (which is not an f'g flu) more consistently and deliberately.
And that's all I have to say about that...
By the way, I think progs ought to want to be very, very careful about touting IQ as a mark of superiority, and more specifically about identifying politicos by their IQ. That could get, umm, unpleasant.
People whose IQs are at that super-genius level high have an odd way about them.
So Trump does not have an odd way about him? LOL he's a huge weirdo. South Korea says Kim Jong Un in grave danger after heart surgery???
I've listened to Schumer for years. Though I have disagreed with him for years and thought that he was a disgusting manipulator of the facts, I've always thought he was smart. Devious, but smart. Would have made a very good lawyer. But 170 IQ material? Nah. That sentence, "I'm seeing his IQ estimated at 170." Who does this IQ estimating?
I remember when historian Michael Beschloss told Don Imus (and the nation) that Obama had the highest IQ of any man who has held the Presidency. Imus asked him the simple question: "What is his IQ?". Of course, Beschloss said that in his breathless enthusiasm that was the contagion of that day among our media and academic thinkers. He had no facts to back it up. Beschloss hemmed, stuttered, and hawed before he said, we'll I really don't know his IQ, but he's very very smart.
It was their narrative. That same narrative says Trump is low IQ and anyone who follows him, or any other Republican is also low IQ. Schumer, being the Majority Leader, then Minority Leader for the Dems, has to be high IQ, right? I mean, he's a Dem and he's a leader. So, not just decent IQ. Not just high IQ, but I'll estimate that, well...he's gotta be somewhere around 170! I mean...have you heard this guy?
We have heard him. Whatever Schumer is, he's not a 170.
I have always tested very well, but have always been lazy. This would qualify me for high rank in the German Army.
Mr. Reno writing in 2017 left out Trump defending himself against and overcoming an illegal dirty tricks campaign coordinated against him at the highest levels of power between the national security establishment, the FBI, the CIA, the Clinton Campaign and Russian bad actors.
Sorry about bad memory on the "Freedom's Forge" point. Bill Knudsen spent 1940 and 1941 (not 1938-9) getting us ready for WW2. Impossible to describe the value of that service. I think he burned himself out in the effort: died in 1946.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Knudsen
By the way, one analogy I haven't seen or heard used yet, which surprises me, is Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Now I personally think the masks and social distancing are legitimate under the circumstances. But what some people are describing (I.e. non compliance with masking requirements) reminds me of this scene:
https://youtu.be/n_rvE_8naJI
"There's nothing wrong with the air!"
IQ 150 - Spends 10 minutes figuring out how to change tire in 5 minutes
IQ 120 - Changes tire in 6 minutes
IQ 105 - Calls AAA - has a cup of coffee.
The complex systems thinkers I like and have posted about here (Taleb, Crane, Norma, Bar Yam, etc) all HATE IQ and even the people who talk about IQ and especially Quillette, criticizing it all as pseudo-scientific racist claptrap, focusing their wrath mostly on people studying group IQ differences. Despite the ferocity of the debate, the only strong points of criticism I took away was that IQ is limited in what it measures, that studies which show correlations with life outcomes have insurmountable biases in the way they are constructed and what is defined as success and that the predictive power of IQ is still pretty weak even according to these studies. Using IQ to understand an individual rather than a population is even more likely to lead one astray. In my own life, I've observed that there's probably an IQ ceiling, somewhere in the 130-140 range, where IQ points above that actually reduce one's chances of success as defined by most of the studies. At that point, you are speaking a different natural language even than most other highly intelligent people, which is lonely and upsetting and compels one to learn a different lanuguage to express one's thoughts than their original form. I've also noticed that as IQ goes up so does a strong tendency towards risk aversion: the rarest duck is a very high IQ person who finds a way to develop an appetite for risk and for operating effectively under conditions of loneliness and uncertainty. Watch out for those dudes, that's a superpower.
1600 SAT shows a high IQ person that has applied his intelligence. But as a practical matter, the difference between a SAT score of 1600 and 1500 is immaterial in the real world. BTW, if you look at US Army Generals in the Civil War and WW 2, you'll see the most successful were almost never West Point or VMI class valedictorian. The only exception I can think of was R.E. Lee.
You forgetting EQ? Measure that instead. https://www.iq-test.net/eq-test.html
I don't know what Trump's IQ is, but I know the IQ of the people who call him dumb: below 100.
Nonapod: 911 introduced us to security theater at airports. Covid-19 has ushered in public health theater, and we're all the performers.
Methinks we are not the performers. We are unpaid extras: the pedestrians who were doing their own things on the sidewalk and were captured by a movie camera filming a sidewalk scene.
MacArthur was also No. 1 in his class and barely beat out the son of US Grant. Who no one has heard of. MacArthur was a fine engineer and amazingly enough a demolitions expert. He didn't go into the infantry till WW I.
You can't really correlate IQ to the modern SAT anymore: the recentering and then the essay ruined it. But from the 90s and before, psychomatricians amateur and pro have shown the correlation approaches 1, with the military's aptitude test the only one that I've seen having a stronger correlation to measured IQ.
George Marshall, Omar Bradley, Ike, US Grant, Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, Pershing. None were at the top of their class.
daskol @ 12:34. Wow. Awesome insight. I don't know or care what Trump's IQ is, but between his demonstrated ability and the role for which he volunteered, I have to think that, yes, he is "operating effectively under conditions of loneliness and uncertainty."
I imagine his family's support is very important. So too, his sense of humor. He has the world's most serious job but the best way to do it, is not to take himself or others too seriously.
Note: "not seriously" in this context does not mean "lightly, frivolously, casually." More like the warrior's joy in battle?
The estimates I've seen of US Grant's IQ, all very low, do not accord with the picture of him that emerges from reading his memoirs or from contemporaneous accounts of his mathematical/engineering abilities. He was a math whiz who went from math professor to brilliant military strategist and he wrote a very compelling memoir, yet he is consistently estimated to be our lowest or among our lowest IQ presidents. That's deeply unlikely.
Those of you who read THE FOUNTAINHEAD will remember the characters Ellsworth Toohey and Peter Keating. Toohey is a super-smart guy, possibly a genius, who promulgates collectivism. He's too smart to believe the bushwa that he peddles; but dumb guys like Peter Keating hang on his every word. Or, if they can't understand Toohey's intellectual flights of fancy, they go along with it to be in the in-crowd. The Keatings of the world are the Tooheys' "useful idiots." I've heard Toohey called a socialist, a fascist, a communist, etc., but actually Toohey uses such people to further his own ambition. Listening to "liberals" and other State-fellators peddle their snake-oil, I sometimes wonder, "Does he really believe such drivel?" Or: is he a Toohey or a Keating? Both types can go jump off a cliff for all I care, so I guess for me the question is academic.
Daskol @ 12:44: I was impressed by Grant's communiqués. Not a wasted word. That right there is a strong indicator of intelligence.
Let's be clear: intelligence is context-driven. I have seen Inuit mechanics tear down complex machinery and fix it and reassemble it after the briefest exposure. They also can navigate hundreds of miles across ice in the middle of winter. Spatial intelligence.
We see (or hear) the poets who recited the Odyssey and Iliad, and Beowulf, down the centuries: done without written support. Verbal intelligence.
Outside their context these people might be quite unremarkable. When we argue SAT or IQ or "Did you make Mensa" we are playing with only half the deck. What is the world, the society, the task, within which these people are acting?
Trump's IQ is probably exceptionally high, I would guess at least 140 and probably even 150, but Scott Adams talent-stack analysis notwithstanding, what is remarkable about him is the combination of high intelligence with a zest for calculated risk-taking.
I know a lot of people with IQs around 150. I also know a lot of people with IQs around 110-125. IQ isn't the same as wisdom. I'd prefer to have none of them in charge, but if we have to have people in charge, I'd prefer people who are sticklers for the Constitution and original intent, regardless of IQ. That would be, at least, predictable.
Of the five living adults closest to me with 150 IQs, three of them didn't graduate from college. One of those didn't graduate from high school. All have been professionally successful. Liking school is almost a different thing entirely. (I write "almost" because I don't think someone who was incapable of school work would enjoy it very much.)
Yes, Grant's economy with language, both in his storytelling and his professional communications, is remarkable. He was naive about certain things, and his personal loyalty and naivete were exploited by several unscrupulous people very close to him, but IQ was not Grant's problem. Maybe more a matter of lacking emotional intelligence.
Trump's only exceptional ability is the ability to deal with all the stress that his endless mistakes create. Whether it was the multiple bankruptcies, his failed marriages or his botched response to this virus, Trump has an ego like few others to shield him from his own failures. An ego composed of a unique combination of Vibranium, steel alloy and a unknown third catalyst, that has never been duplicated, called Proto-Adamantium. It is virtually indestructible.
Everyone thought Grant was a dummy, because he got taken in by some financial charlatans, or because he was a quiet and imperturbable and not the least bit showy. Everyone knows Trump must be an idiot. Yet these are two the of the most accomplished men ever to hold the presidency, having achieved far more than any other men in their professional lives prior to the presidency. Both regarded by our mainstream as men of low intelligence.
If I had to estimate the IQ of the person I know who asks the most insightful questions,I would estimate 120. I think that's interesting. I also know two women who might be called best friends who probably have at least a thirty point IQ spread.
I also know people with extremely high IQs who think they need to surround themselves only with other people who also have extremely high IQs. I think that's silly.
Schumer took his high IQ and Ivy League pedigree right into politics, avoiding for his entire life any work in the productive sector of the economy.
Yes and attached himself to the federal nipple. Academics is like that, too.
Having been both an engineer and a physician, I have noticed the difference in what is required. Engineers are more into problem solving and calculation. Medicine is about pattern recognition. Quite different skills.
Everyone thought Grant was a dummy, because he got taken in by some financial charlatans
Sherman had been a banker and his great skill at logistics was a significant factor in his success.
IQ isn't correlated with metaphorical testicle size.
n another body blow to Beijing Boy ARM and the rest of the ChiCom propagandists, we have this:
neontaster@neontaster 3h
Israel suspends all COVID testing due to shipment of defective cotton swabs from China.
Quote Tweet
החדשות - N12@N12News · 5h
פרסום ראשון: בגלל תקלה במטושים - מד"א הפסיק לגמרי את בדיקות הקורונה בכל הארץ
@yollancohen
ARM, I didn't think it was possible for you to embarrass yourself more than when you went all in on the ChiCom global "Generosity" propaganda effort, but now the evidence against the ChiCom propaganda has turned into a tsunami.
Tell us ARM, how does that make you feel?
The entire world is now wise to the BS you and the ChiComs were pushing. The entire world.
Did you happen to catch what the Chief Editor of Germany's largest daily (Bild) wrote just 2 days ago? She ripped your "heroic" Xi Jinping a new arse hole in the most blistering fashion....right when you were still pushing lies from Beijing.
You know, I'm surprised you still have nerve to show up here after your "performance" for the last several months.....but then I remember all your other lies and I have to admit, if having those lies exposed didn't drive you away, then why would the exposure of your pro-ChiCom lies drive you away?
Michael K: "Sherman had been a banker and his great skill at logistics was a significant factor in his success."
His great skill at Total War doctrine and denying the other guys even the possibility of having a supply chain....as citizens of Georgia, North and South Carolina can attest.
"I also know people with extremely high IQs who think they need to surround themselves only with other people who also have extremely high IQs. I think that's silly."
Thank you, Freeman, for deigning to hank out with us here at Althouse.😃
Sherman was a lawyer, a banker and a ruthless and brilliant general who better fit the high IQ stereotypes: better bred, better read and sharp and ornery in his communication. Grant's phlegmatic way seems to have confused people about the alacrity of his intelligence, despite his enormous accomplishments.
"By the way, one analogy I haven't seen or heard used yet, which surprises me, is Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
I actually thought about that scene a few days ago while reading about mask use on another blog.
Definitely not a medical genius:
Coronavirus patients treated with malaria drug hydroxychloroquine touted by Trump are MORE likely to die, new trial finds, but the president says he is unaware of the new study
That unique combination of Vibranium, steel alloy and a unknown third catalyst, must be working overtime right now.
Asians are not bad drivers. Actually many are better skill wise.
I have driven in Japan and Korea. Almost all Asians are good drivers, because natural selection has taken the bad ones.
"Hang out"- damned autozone.
Fox News falls out of love with hydroxychloroquine
My parents spent my whole childhood telling me and my siblings how "smart" we were and that we could do anything we wanted in the world. The latter was a lie; the former was irrelevant. None of us has done anything of special note in the world. By contrast, my husband, raised by a single mom who was and is an fearsome scrapper, grew up aware of his own intelligence (because, as noted up-thread, you generally know if you're smart without being told - and likewise you know your own limitations, unless, as in my case, your well-meaning parents do their best to maximize your self-esteem at the cost of your good judgment and observational skills) but much more focused on setting goals for himself and figuring out how to achieve them.
We've spent our own kids' childhoods telling them, "Yeah, yeah, so you're 'smart.' That will literally get you nowhere unless you also aim at something and work to achieve it." I am their object lesson in what happens if you don't do those things; my husband is their object lesson in what happens if you do. This is why I hate the recent Leftist covering of calling anything they approve of "smart." It's a tautology.
Drago wrote:
"ARM, I didn't think it was possible for you to embarrass yourself more"
ARM has a lot of beers for people to hold, Drago.
"Thank you, Freeman, for deigning to hank out with us here at Althouse."
Maybe you're deigning to hang out with me!
Sherman had been a banker and his great skill at logistics was a significant factor in his success.
https://www.military-quotes.com/forum/logistics-quotes-t511.html
Andrew said: My problem with him is that he sometimes gives too much ammo to the enemy.
Just change "sometimes" to "always".
Aren't you sweet, Freeman! I'm the guy for whom the "square peg/round hole" was first written 49 years ago. You can google it if you think I am joking.
I'm not going to call Schumer an idiot — the way Trump haters call Trump an idiot — because I happen to know that he scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT and was his high school's valedictorian. He went to Harvard undergrad and for college. I'm seeing his IQ estimated at 170. He's super-smart.
He scored a 1600 on the SAT because he cheated. At the time he was working for one of those test prep outfits which was exploiting timezone differences to get questions ahead of the test. And that same 1600 probably explains his entrance into Harvard. I assume he's not stupid - nobody who gets to the top of his profession and stays there is an idiot. But there isn't much evidence of "super smart".
"My logisticians are a humorless lot ... they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay."
- Alexander
So, who is going to tell ARM about his latest "study" faceplant?......
You have to give credit to Trump for knowing that you can't lose money investing in oil and the stock market, or buying a casino.
Probably should tell Fox News about their 'faceplant' first.
Oh God, the credentialism... IQ and test scores are just ways for credentialists to get around the "snob" problem, since in theory anyone can have a high IQ or a perfect SAT.
It's not as good a read as Grant's memoirs, but Sherman's account of his campaign is fascinating to read, and yes, he plays up the discovery that he could feed his men off the land as his Eureka! moment in terms of redefining military doctrine. He spends a lot of time talking about how he handled scavenging on the March, as he knew that was the major innovation of his campaign.
And who is going to explain to ARM about the NeverTrumpers at Fox News?
ARM: "Probably should tell Fox News about their 'faceplant' first."
They've been faceplanting alot since the Murdoch boys took over and brought NeverTrumper Ryan onto their board....empowering NeverTrumpers Wallace, Stirewalt, Baier (did you know that NeverTrumper Steven Hayes was Baier's roommate in college?), Jonah Goldberg, etc.
Its about time you woke up from your ChiCom-induced slumber.
wendybar said...
It's not just that there are now "no former Trump supporters".
It's that before he entered the race there were no Trump supporters at all!
He may have had fans based on his TV shows and appearances, or even based on his business books and so on.
But there were no people supporting him to be President of the United States.
I am a conservative, and I was rooting for Ted Cruz. I wasn't a Trump supporter then....but with all of the great things he has accomplished that the Politicians for life haven't ever gotten to (and never will) I am proudly going to vote for him again...even if I have to walk 10 miles through Coronavirus zombies. The other option will end America as we know it.
In a single word of fans of someone else----Ditto.
In commenting on high IQ scores, I have this say- there's a whole lot of people with high IQs who think communism works. What does that say about their actual intelligence?
ARM, did you read the whole Daily Mail article? Because you keep using that word... I do no' think it means what you think it means.
"Its about time you woke up from your ChiCom-induced slumber."
It is almost like you expect ARM to have Chuck Schumer level intelligence, Drago. Ain't nobody that smart.
Blogger tcrosse said...
I have always tested very well, but have always been lazy. This would qualify me for high rank in the German Army.
————————-
The von Moltke grid! Brought it up last year at the start of a project to move a hundred jobs to Nashville via new hires. The core team thought it insightful but ultimately reverted to standard resume and interview techniques.
“...it helps to be familiar with Gen. Helmuth von Moltke, who from 1858 until 1888 was the chief of the German General Staff, which would become, under his leadership, the standard for all modern armies.
“He developed the von Moltke Grid, under which he divided his entire office corps into one of four categories: 1) the mentally dull and the physically lazy, 2) the Mentally Dull and the Physically Energetic, 3) the Mentally Bright and the Physically Energetic and 4) the Mentally Bright and the Physically Lazy.
“The officers assigned to the first group, the Mentally Dull and the Physically Lazy, were obviously not candidates for the general staff. But there are in any organization repetitive tasks to be performed to which members of this subdivision could be assigned.
“The single most dangerous category in the military, or any other major organization, is the Mentally Dull and the Physically Energetic. He is both feckless and tireless. Having fouled up three assignments long before noon, he is cheerfully seeking new challenges to fail. This type who requires constant and vigilant adult supervision is not really a possibility for retention, let alone promotion.
“The Mentally Bright and the Physically Energetic would not, under the von Moltke test, qualify to become a commanding officer. Instead, they were picked to become the staff officers who, while capable of seeing the sixth side of a four-sided problem, were, with their total attention to detail, compulsive micro-managers.
“That left for candidates for eventual elevation to the general staff and positions of ultimate command the Mentally Bright and the Physically Lazy. These are the individuals who are so bright that they understand the problems and see what must be done, but lazy enough to figure out the easiest, least complicated way to do it. He is capable of successfully delegating.”
Has anyone explained to ARM how his "study"...uh....isn't a "study"?
LOL
ARM can't help it. He sees a headline and he's on it like Tom Arnold on drugs.
With all the prattle about IQ no one says which IQ scale they're talking about. There is more than one.
That's why the percentile one scores in on any IQ test is relevant.
Mensa, run by high IQs, requires scores at least in the 98th percentile on an acceptable test.
The only exception I can think of was R.E. Lee.
I believe he was second in the class. Colleges were very small back then.
Watching ARM post is like watching a boxer who has had his a** kicked, eyes swollen shut, bleeding from both ears, staggering about and throwing weak punches in every direction because he can't even see his opponent.
ARM is sort of a Punchdrunk Plodding Political Pugilist.
"I actually thought about that scene a few days ago while reading about mask use on another blog."
Yes. Your IQ may be higher, but I took the risk of posting the scene.
Lol, jk.
On the VA "study", you can find this part in pretty much all the articles that are on-line describing the results:
"Of the veterans included in the study, 13.3 percent who were treated with hydroxychloroquine as well as the standard supportive care (primarily, providing oxygen, IV fluids and preventing sepsis) had to be placed on ventilators.
That was little different from the 14.4 percent of patients who did not receive hydroxychloroquine, and still needed mechanical ventilation.
However, 6.9 percent of patient who got hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin wound up on ventilators.
The group that received the experimental drug, supportive care and the antibiotic were also less likely to die of coronavirus and its complications.
With nearly twice as many deaths among the group that only received hydroxychloroquine, however, the researchers advised caution and underscored 'the importance of awaiting results' of larger, more thorough studies."
(Yancey again) Now, I don't know how the study was conducted, but this description of the results tells me something that appears the writers the article, and perhaps the doctors involved, went to a great deal of effort to hide. This might be a good intelligence test for the readers if I am right. So, can you decipher this- I would like to see if I am just misunderstanding this or not. What do you get from this section of the description?
rcocean said...
IQ 150 - Spends 10 minutes figuring out how to change tire in 5 minutes
IQ 120 - Changes tire in 6 minutes
IQ 105 - Calls AAA - has a cup of coffee.
Fun story; back when my sister was working at GM ElectroMotive Division as a mechanical engineer (BS mech eng Northwestern, MS mech eng Univ Wisc), she was on her way home; and had a flat tire.
She pulled over, and started getting out the jack, spare, etc; and some guy pulls over, and says: "out of the way, lady, I'll Save you!" and starts changing her tire.
And my sister (in her white collar engineer clothes) stood there and watched him.
When he was done, he congratulated himself; and drove off.
My sister double checked the torques on the lug nuts, and drove home.
When she told us about it; i was OFFENDED, and wondered why she didn't DEMAND to to it herself?
and she said: "WHY WOULD I? i watched him, he did an okay job, and i didn't get dirty :) "
I was about THEN, that i realized my sister was WAY smarter than me
[she's not an engineer anymore, she's a director of engineering]
Michael K @ 1:07: "...[Sherman's] great skill at logistics was a significant factor in his success." Yes. As the old saw goes, junior officers study tactics; generals study logistics.
I wonder if that was part of Grant's success as well? Not only that --"fingerspitzengefühl" also factored into things enormously-- but a deep internal sense of how far he could push how much force, how quickly over what terrain, with a burn rate X of food for men and Y for horses and Z for ammunition? Without losing coherence? I am guessing it would be like composing a symphony in thin air.
How could anyone succeed at such a task without enormous intelligence?
As for Grant's possible lack of "emotional intelligence," yes, I guess he trusted too much in a few very bad players. But when a general is trying to read his adversary's intentions, does that not require emotional intelligence: about the adversary's ambitions, past success and failure, emotional (im)balance, preference for risk or surprise or safety? As much as terrain and technology and numbers, victory or failure on the battlefield and in the campaign depends on knowing (and breaking) the enemy's mind.
IMHO.
"Yes. Your IQ may be higher, but I took the risk of posting the scene."
Andrew, I am so smart and lazy, I found a way to get you to do it for me. Prove me wrong!
Posted for ARM's benefit from the First Amendment thread:
Charlie Currie: "Veterans Affairs’ Robert Wilkie on yesterday’s hydroxychloroquine study: "That’s an observational study. It’s not a clinical study ... We know the drug has been working on middle-age and younger veterans. And the gov of NY was just in the Oval Office yesterday asking for more" MSNBC
4/22/20, 1:11 PM
Poor, poor, pathetic ARM. ARM is covered in buttons and his "betters" always know just which ones to push....
you can't lose money investing in oil
I'm PRETTY SURE that there are some people whose contracts came due yesterday that would debate that
Who or what is ARM?
Either I can't scan correctly or he/she is using another name or simply isn't on this thread.
Grant was clearly highly intelligent, results and his memoirs demonstrate this beyond all doubt. I think, though, Grant's main advantage over his predecessors was his courage to stick with a winning strategy in the face of the losses suffered during the battles of 1864. Lee beat Grant more than the reverse during that campaign if you just count up the casualties, and a lesser man than Grant might have stopped the advance in face of those losses, but he didn't.
James Graham: "Who or what is ARM?"
He's the moron who posts as "Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan".
Yancey @ 1:42: Regarding your question on what is shown, or hidden in the HCQ report. It looks as if azithromycin makes a positive difference. I don't know how many arms there were in the trial and exactly what was given/withheld from patients in each. I also have to trust that the patients on each arm of the trial were "same/similar" in terms of health/comorbodity and (for me importantly) EXACTLY WHERE IN THE COURSE OF THE INFECTION THEY WERE WHEN THE INTERVENTION OCCURRED. I have read that HCQ/AZ is best given early in the infection, so it can knock down viral replication and forestall the cytokine storm that destroys lung structure and function, compels resort to the ventilator, and thus a very bad prognosis.
Anyway: azithromycin may help fight off the opportunistic infections that may accompany the damned Wu Flu proper. I am no MD or virologist but like everybody I am playing one on the internet.
But to answer your question, HCQ alone may do little. HCQ/AZ may make a positive difference. Seems to me that reducing ventilator usage by 50% (from 14% of the patients to 7%) is a good and statistically significant thing.
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