"... instead, he is drawn to 'valuable abilities that somehow involve learning and are not well captured by conventional notions of IQ.' An educable mind, he writes, can learn from books, lectures, conversations, experiences, and Zen koans—from anything, really—and notice when relevant aspects of almost forgotten knowledge reveal themselves.... To a degree, the connections, recombinations, and new applications of knowledge involved in being educable are useful precisely because they aren’t obvious.... A civil-engineering class I took in college, which focussed on the structural forces shouldered by bridges and skyscrapers, comes back to me with great regularity when I think about all sorts of things. Wind exerts its force along the length of a skyscraper, causing it to bend. Similarly, a new source of stress in your life can’t be compartmentalized; it increases the pressure everywhere. It’s interesting to see one’s mind through the lens of educability. It makes you wonder what other cross-pollinations have occurred.... Reading widely about things that don’t seem immediately or practically useful, in the hope that what you learn now may prove meaningful later—that’s pretty much the definition of a liberal-arts education. Who knew that one of its best defenders would turn out to be a computer scientist?"
Writes Joshua Rothman, in "What Does It Really Mean to Learn?/A leading computer scientist says it’s 'educability,' not intelligence, that matters most" (The New Yorker).
Valiant = Leslie Valiant, the computer scientist. His book is “The Importance of Being Educable.”
५३ टिप्पण्या:
"An educable mind, he writes, can learn from books, lectures, conversations, experiences, and Zen koans—from anything, really—and notice when relevant aspects of almost forgotten knowledge reveal themselves...."
There are the "educable" from books and the "educable" from demonstration or experience. There are tons of high-flyers that can learn from "books, lectures, conversations" that you can watch fall apart in real time when something can't be demonstrated more than once or requires them making more than one mistake doing the same thing.
I'll take demonstration/experiential "educableness" over book learning any day. Experiential learning is 80% of the picture.
Reading widely about things that don’t seem immediately or practically useful, in the hope that what you learn now may prove meaningful later
It can also mean you are vulnerable to seeing connections that don’t exist, losing yourself down rabbit holes, general daydreaming for its own sake, causing chaos and inefficiency amongst those what know what they’re doing…I know I’m missing some…
No intelligence matters. You can be educated in the "principles" but applying them correctly takes IQ. And using them to deal with novel situations, even more so.
Focussed, why did he write it with the double s?
"Thass my smart boy, Ed. Ed for Educable."
"Focussed, why did he write it with the double s?"
The New Yorker has its editing conventions. Here, I think it's to help you pronounce it right. How do you pluralize "bus"? I don't like either answer, but you've got to pick and then, having picked, you've got to be consistent. Remember, The New Yorker uses a diaeresis on the "o" in "cooperate" and the "e" in "reelection" to save you from beginning with "coop" and "reel."
"He is drawn to 'valuable abilities that somehow involve learning and are not well captured by conventional notions of IQ'" over simply saying "intelligent"?
He has a specific kind of intelligence--that kind that usually only reveals itself in statements written by committee.
"Reading widely about things that don't seem immediately or practically useful . . . ."
Like the Roman Empire, or history in general.
The g factor is prior to education as it generally and usefully, though not exclusively, predicts educational attainment. When anybody pivots from intelligence to education they are doing a bait-n-switch to an argument they think they can win.
Some people really are resistant to learning. They throw out a lot of flak, change the subject or say it's boring, implying they're superior to the subject matter.
They're known as low IQ.
That's funny you use the term rabbit hole. What's wrong with that? I'm always fascinated by your descriptions of the rabbit holes that you dive into trying to fix wrist watches
We have this mysterious word for what he describes- curiosity.
The height of an intelligent discourse is to be overly concerned with spelling and grammar while avoiding the real meaning. There is a difference between being smart being clever clever people are really good at spelling grammar and other bureaucratic errors that have zero meaning in the physical reality
The precursor to "educable" (an unwieldy word) is curiosity. It's the thing public school discourages the most. A curious child doesn't necessarily sit still in class or attend to the teacher's lesson.
Yep.
It's interesting that most of our brain power is dedicated moving the body. Joe Rogan had a very interesting conversation with Dr Andrew huberman yesterday on the Joe Rogan podcast. They talked about different types of intelligence and how scientists still don't fully understand how it works or what it means or how it can be measured there are so many different aspects and types of intelligence. People that go on about the primacy of IQ are usually very insecure pencil neck weasels.
Absolutely
Yes. Where do illiterate mechanics who diagnose engine problems with a broom handle fall on the Stanford Binet scale of brilliance?
Exactly. You perfectly describe Trump's meandering and repetitive blathering on the recent Shawn Ryan podcast.
Educable is the prerequisite. Intelligence is the outcome. Anthropogenic Intelligence is the product.
Artificial Intelligence requires a signal constellation, a Viterbi decoder, and semantic and linguistic primitives for presentation and framing to interact with an AI.
So if this "scientist" is proposing a new criterion to replace intelligence, he must have a way to measure it and to demonstrate its correlation or lack of correlation with intelligence. Not seeing it here.
Are the "educable" simply the ones who have both cognitive capabilities and high propensities toward compliance?
A Know-it-all is not educable.
Folks with average intelligence can read and retain information. It seems to me that the ability to make intuitive connections that lead to significant results (insight) is a trait of people with high IQs.
For what it's worth I've always thought that there are several different kinds of intelligence.--and not all of them involve book learning or formal education.
I don't know. Some of us may like to imagine that 'reelection' is pronounced REEEEEEEE-lek-shun, like a reading (lection) of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
AI is "educable," but it lacks the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood. The "educable" are also often the "propagandizable," if they don't have the sense to see through lies and nonsense.
can they reason, that is the fundamental question.
Rule for doubling consonants when adding a vowel suffix to two syllable words: double the consonant if the accent of the word is on the second syllable. If the accent is on the first syllable do not double.
This is an old tradition and most people today see if it “looks” right. As for focus. The accent is on the first syllable so no doubling. NYT rules be damned. It doesn’t look right!
Sorry, Howard. There's a big difference in physical reality between, (1) "What do we have to eat, Grandma?", and (2) "What, do we have to eat Grandma?" Spelling and grammar matter.
…which focussed on the structural forces shouldered by bridges and skyscrapers, comes back to me with great regularity when I think about all sorts of things.
What do old wire bras and bridges have in common? They both carry loads and must be able to swing in response to movement.
Or, you can always count on ol’ reliable- the Roman Empire.
I'm trying to relate 'educable' to my daily dose of Althouse and X, and dozens of other sites and news headlines.
Is there a name for de-educable? Can someone be made to be less educable? And if an individual can, could this be reproduced across an entire society?
Curious people want to know.
I see Narr was thinking along the same lines.
When he learns how to measure it, it will correlate strongly with IQ.
There are more important qualities than intelligence, which is particularly favored in industrial and post-industrial societies: honesty, discretion, kindness, charm, self-control... But when you are talking about cognitive skills, you are going to find that you are talking about intelligence despite yourself.
Smart is a measure of skill, intelligence is a measure of knowledge, an ensemble of deductive, inductive, and associative abilities are the gold standard of human consciousness.
I'm tired of people disparaging IQ because they dislike how some groups have higher average IQs than others.
Is educable the same as edumacated?
Smart” or “intelligence” or “IQ” to what end? I’ve observed some very intelligent and creative people that apparently don’t know how to nurture relationships with other people, and have multiple divorces and children who hate their guts. One well-known legal scholar comes to mind. While passing his his office and you’ll see piles of books on the floor around his chair. He cranks out a book a year, almost. Has he succeeded in his marriage and family relationships? Not at all apparent from the outside. Former HBS professor, the late Clayton Christensen talks about this in his book “How to Measure your Life” He said he had many HBS classmates who succeeded in business but had not had the same desired success in their family relationships.
Yes other “uneducated” people seem to know how to live a happy and peace-filled lives without having advanced degrees. One person I know, in particular, never went to college but grew up in a (then) small beach town in California in the 60s and 70s. She claims that everything the learned about life came from the water, the sun, and the sand. She is a true friend to everyone around her, is constantly sought out for advice (which usually involves astoundingly simple suggestions requiring more self-awareness and a paradoxical mix of greater self-control in minding your own business while also focusing on others and their needs.) Her children have very stable characters and revere her. She excludes peace from her heart. When you get around her you feel better about yourself and about life. She went to one semester of community college and realized it wasn’t for her. But yet all this. Can she build bridges? Not the kind you can drive over. But the kind you can rely in with others.
So, again, “intelligence” or “smart” to what end?
You're IQ must be stratospheric to be a mind reader
Someone with an 80 IQ will not find the cure for cancer. Someone with a 150 IQ many not either, but at least it would be possible.
"Similarly, a new source of stress in your life can’t be compartmentalized; it increases the pressure everywhere."
Cue the Mark Twain quote, "It isn't so much what you don't know, but what you think you know that isn't so." Compartmentalizing is a major life skill. Which, of course, doesn't always work.
So the Moon Shot is doomed to fail?
So supposedly intelligent people like JD Vance are not always educable as in the case of his invented "childless cat ladies."
The root of the uproar began in 2021 when Vance was a Senate candidate from Ohio. Vance remarked in a speech that the “childless left” lacked a “physical commitment to this country.”
“What I was basically saying is we are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchy, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.
Yesiree - there is always the corporate oligarchy composed of white folks that are 6.5 times wealthier than Blacks, 5.5 times richer than Hispanics, and 2.7 times more affluent than Asians and all others that perhaps may include Hillbillies.
But if all the "childless cat ladies" in America are added up, how many voters would that be and how many of them would be Democrats? And why are there no "cat gentlemen?" So JD is an ineducable misogynist.
Intelligence is what happens after others have taught you the best that they can. Skills like athletics, music, art, craft, and such are taught to those who can be educated in them. I was told by a great singing voice teacher, “ you are either trained, or you are not trained.” This implies a corpus of knowledge that is to be imparted.
Intelligence is the creation of new knowledge, informed by what you know. Educability is relevant only in that you need to be at the frontier of existing knowledge to go beyond, like Newton, Euler, and Von Neumann. Then raw mental power is required.
Is it correct to assume that educable excludes miseducable and maleducable?
It's seems obvious that some level of intelligence is necessary in order to be educable.
It's arguable that all who are educable are intelligent, but all who are intelligent aren't necessarily educable. However, if someone is ineducable, it would be hard to prove they are intelligent.
“She excludes peace from her heart” should be “exudes”. Interesting how one additional letter changes the entire meaning of a sentence. Good comment BTW.
"Educable" = a cowardly renaming of Intelligence (i.e., this has no bad connotations...yet). Intelligence merely means one's relative ability to solve logic puzzles, and the ability to solve them faster or slower than others. The definition is fully defined by comparisons of individuals against large groups of people...all who are variably educable.
New words cannot hope to affect outcomes or change patterns social stratification. This attempt at politeness/diplomacy follows all sorts of similar failed past efforts. See the one-time scientific usage of:
"Imbecile"
"Moron"
"Mentally retarded"
"Idiot"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/moron-idiot-imbecile-offensive-history
https://ndcpd.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2023/02/The-Rise-and-Fall-of-Mentally-Retarded-2015.pdf
Educable is a fairly pedestrian word. Able to be educated, is obviously directly related to IQ. Low IQ people could care less about the Roman Empire, Greek mythology, Marxism, Adam Smith, and so forth ad infinitum. It’s interest and curiosity that triggers the desire for knowledge.
Much more important than IQ is executive function. If you do not have the ability to implement said knowledge Into concrete results you are doomed to a life of frustration and anger.
Neurosis Is the inhibiting factor that forestalls the maturity needed to be truly educated. Stated briefly: GROW UP!!!
Howard said:
"Where do illiterate mechanics who diagnose engine problems with a broom handle fall on the Stanford Binet scale of brilliance?"
***********
Today's cars have about 70 to 150 programmable computer chips , half of which control engine , transmission and braking functions. Good luck poking a broom handle into an engine to diagnose and fix a problem.
Wow, who didn't know Gadfly is a childless cat lady.
First comes the desire to know. Then comes the knowledge.
Alas, high IQ does not give one the ability to separate truth from propaganda. If it did, all high-IQ people would vote conservative like me.
टिप्पणी पोस्ट करा