Much of what we know about Obama comes from people he sucked up to (David Remnick's biography The Bridge, for example, is unconsciously hilarious as various personages Obama has kissed up to go on and on about they told all their friends the first time they met him that he should be President). The more interesting perspectives have come from those people who observed him without being in a position to forward his glorious career, such as his Harvard Law School classmate who had been the bass player for The Runaways.
From the comments, here's another plausible sounding perspective on Obama at HLS:
I went there [Harvard Law School] one year behind Obama, had one class together. I graduated cum laude, and my measured IQ last time was 156, and I got perfect score on LSAT. But I am also a little bit ADHD-ish, and I don't think I studied as diligently as most of my peers. I mention this because (besides being defensive about not doing better) while the HLS population is quite smart, they are even more different from average in discipline and diligence, and while Obama was not the smartest guy there, he was f****** amazing in terms of discipline. Over all, I think his package of mental gifts are well superior to mine.
First of all, not all classes were blind graded. On many there were signed papers. And in my class, Obama sat in the front row every day and gazed at the professor with an adoration that Nancy Reagan would have been embarrassed to beam at Ron. He worked them incredibly assiduously. And very successfully. That helped his scores. That isn't LSAT intelligence, but it requires an interpersonal skill that is way beyond mine, and I hazard, way beyond anyone reading this. That is very demanding, and he had that ON TOP OF very respectable raw IQ.
I know that because there are a lot of classes that are blind graded, not easily gamed, and you can't be a dope in them and get magna. Even without his brilliant suck-up skills, he would make the top half of the Harvard distribution.
Steve is right to focus on his ability to paraphrase opponents' arguments to disarm them. Someone of glaringly average intelligence -- like say, Amanda Marcotte -- is a complete failure at that.
As far as his hesitation to make decisions, I don't ascribe that to lack of intelligence. It is part conscious strategy. He never gave a substantive opinion in class -- he just paraphrased others. People loved it, and thought he was brilliant. Those of us who thought that made him a pussy were few and far between. And he kept to that strategy with iron discipline. You might think of it as like the post-modern philosophy in chess: never commit until after the other guy does, and then you have the chance to decide what to do when you have learned more. I agree there are a lot of problems with that strategy for being president, but it sure does seem to work like gang-busters for getting to be president.
Though I think it is more than strategy, cause he does it even when it is stupid. I think that was his survival skill for being the only black kid in Hawaii and Indonesia. I mean think about it, that has to be terrifying, and living in that kind of fear for so long has to leave a mark. Clinton learned from his abusive alcoholic parents to lie lie lie, and do whatever feels good. Obama learned from his disinterested, abandoning parents to never let yourself be vulnerable by committing to anything.
Anyway, my main point is: I don't want this guy to be president, and I don't share his beliefs, and I think he is more than half a crook (see e.g. Michelle's bag collecting disguised as a phony baloney job at U of C hospital). But anyone is a fool who takes his talents lightly.
One thing that's fascinating about Obama is that he had such a hard time understanding that he had a Rev. Wright problem. He donated large amounts of money to Wright's church in 2005, 2006, and 2007, which appears on his publicly released tax records. He named his 2006 bestseller The Audacity of Hope after a Wright sermon. Wright was going to give the invocation at Obama's presidential kickoff rally in Springfield in February 2007 up until somebody convinced Obama to disinvite Wright the night before.
Wright understood all this better than Obama. As Wright told the NYT in 2007 about why he was disinvited, when people find out I went to Libya with Farrakhan and met with Gadaffi ...
And yet, as David Plouffe has admitted, the Obama campaign staff was blindsided by Wright videos finally appearing in the MSM on Feb. 13, 2008. They were just lucky Wright was on a cruise at the moment. When he got back and went on his media tour six weeks later, he made Obama's famous race speech look like a pack of lies.
Ultimately, Wright supposedly spent the fall campaign in email hell in Africa, which sounds like smart planning on the part of the Obama braintrust ... finally.
Posts
252 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 252 of 252It's seeing the look on the Jewish kid's faces when it wasn't one of their names called out. It's being accused of somehow cheating by the ordinary 120 IQ nerds with an axe to grind. But it's mostly wanting to be like everyone else and just have fun and be accepted. And what that means is learning how to talk to ordinary people so they can understand what you are trying to convey.
God, I remember when I had "That Moment" - when I realized that I was vastly more intelligent than mere ordinary nerds.
Frankly, I remember feeling sorry for all of them.
So we don't know she's "brilliant", unless you think the 95th percentile is "brilliant".
If it's the 95%ile of the elite population that takes the PSAT, then yes she is brilliant.
My guess is that, on average, the PR people of the white house are smarter than the press that reports on the white house, and that they also have much better resources, including information gathered from illegal domestic surveillance. The way the US press was played w.r.t. the Iraq war was just amazing.
The press wasn't played; they knowingly supported the Iraq war because the press (especially the New York press) is in the tank for Israel either because it's in their ethnic-genetic interest, or in their career interest to stay on the good side of powerful pro-Israel people who run the media.
It was the soldiers and the American tax payers who were lied to, because they sacraficed thinking Sudam Hussien was a threat to America, when really he was primarily a problem for a country most Americans have no ethnic link to.
The point of the second sentence is that you can’t use LSAT scores to estimate the average IQ at Harvard law because they were SELECTED by the LSAT. Anytime a group is selected based on their scores on a given test, that test overestimates the group’s ability.
Some of your comments have been inane, but this is a very good point.
As La Griffe du Lion has explained, it's a reason why blacks' SAT scores tend to overpredict their college performance. If you use the same SAT requirement for blacks and non-blacks, you are in fact discriminating in favor of blacks.
Whiskey, it's commonly believed that Hitler attacked Stalin because he thought Stalin was about to attack Hitler. The idea was to take Moscow and knock the USSR out of the war. The German experience in WWI had been "we can kick their asses"...hindsight is 20/20 of course
Frankly, I wouldn't hire anyone who bragged about such a thing. I would consider him either a baldfaced liar or a reckless fool.
You wouldn't hire someone based on whether they prepped for a test at age 17? Nothing personal but you sound foolish. I am sure you only hire A+ Great Job! workers and they would gladly take a bullet to protect your family. Do they ask for a salary or is the honor of the position enough for them?
You also maybe overrate the importance of being a striver and putting yourself in hock for a college degree.
FWIW, I attended HLS in the mid-90s. My LSAT score was exactly average for admitted students. HLS does not publish class rankings, so you have to go by folklore and hints from professors to get any idea of where your GPA sits relative to your classmates'. I worked my butt off the first two years (not so much the third year), and AFAICT wound up on the edge between the top third and the middle third.
What the poster above says about grade inflation and 30% of graduates getting magna until reforms in 1998-99 is true. (Fortunately for me, I graduated before those reforms. ;-))
My guess is that almost all HLS students are between 130 and 140 in IQ. I think anyone with an IQ above the 140s doesn't find law a sufficiently challenging subject to interest him.
"...people who boast about how they went in cold and/or hung-over to take the SAT/GMAT/MCAT/LSAT are full of shit and just make themselves look ridiculous."
I went in cold to take the SAT. I am a NMS. I work well under pressure generally and test extremely well. Prepping would only have distracted me and made me anxious. Some people consistently do better when they wing it and I'm one of them. Better still, I know what works for me so that's what I do.
"Not prepping for something so important isn't something to brag about. Frankly, I wouldn't hire anyone who bragged about such a thing. I would consider him either a baldfaced liar or a reckless fool."
If in your stupidly rigid way, you are trying to say that you don't respect people who don't take serious subjects seriously, then finally you and I can agree on something. In any event, I wouldn't want you to be in a position to hire anyone. Your ignorance of human psychology and arrogance in assuming you do know something about it indicate you wouldn't do that job well, no matter how much you prepped for it.
"Forget the smarts, where is he hiding the charisma?
A lot of people got fooled. And they can't seem to admit it."
Yeah.
This is just me, but I was turned OFF by the chin-tilted, lids-lowered, gently smiling, beatific expression he donned during the campaign season.
My impression was not of a halo-bestowed Post-Racial Messiah sent from On High, but of an arrogant, self-important ass, and a ham actor, to boot.
So I can't figure out: Just how DID people get fooled?
re: "Nor was [Hitler] attacking Russia [smart]" Whiskey
You may change your mind if you read these two books:
1) Hitler's Panzers East by R. H. S. Stolfi: http://tinyurl.com/3at5s6h
This review sums very well Stolfi's case:
http://tinyurl.com/44r7vpw
2) Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War? [Hardcover]
Viktor Suvorov (Author), Thomas B. Beattie (Translator): http://tinyurl.com/43rur25
As good as this book is, and it is simply amazingly great, apparently there is two thirds more that was not translated from the Russian!
re: "while leaving England in the fight (quite likely to bailed out by the US) [was not smart]. Hitler was an effective speechifyer, and emotional manipulator of crowds. But mostly stupid." Whiskey
This book turns the story of Hitler as it is generally known on its head:
Hitler Was a British Agent [Paperback]
Greg Hallett & Spymaster, http://tinyurl.com/3t386zv
The book sure explains why Hitler blundered at critical times during WWI and claims Hitler was secreted out of Berlin by Ian Fleming. Don't laugh.
Dan Kurt
"Same with Obama. Wright was sure to be poison. He just figured the media would fly support missions for him (they did) and he'd glide through with Black Privilege. Which he did. But that only takes you so far."
Yeah, so far like to PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, dumbass.
"Not only did I not bother studying, but I smoked a bowl on the drive to the test and then broke 1500."
Do you guys realize what jaggoffs you sound like?:
"I scored 98 percentile on a test in the 10th grade, I didn't even bother to study!"
"And what did you turn that world class intellect into as an adult?"
"(crickets)"
The IQ arguments here are always interesting, but also always slightly daffy. Here's something I'd appreciate, since I don't know much about IQ taxonomy...
Can someone give us examples of famous people who exemplify say, a 115, a 125, a 135, so we can make a mental benchmark of what the comparisons are? What's the practical difference between 130 and 135? Can it be illustrated (even roughly) by well-known people?
Is, say, 125 comparable to Thomas Friedman, Antonin Scalia, Steve Jobs, a senior NASA engineer, Garrison Keillor, Stephen Hawking? Give us names and faces and relative achievements to peg these numbers to.
Also, whilst I understand that IQ tests measure something definitely real, I'm also a walking textbook illustration that there are lots of different "types" of intelligence.
Consider a contrast between me and one of my close childhood friends: same ethnic-religious background (white-ethnic Catholic), same class (lower-middle, urban, large East Coast city), same early schooling, same family structure (stable two-parent home with stay-at-home moms; this was the 70s!), same lots of things.
A big difference: I sort of happened to like schools and libraries and books, and he just didn't.
Me: Elite high school and Ivy League honors degree (scholarship kid), stellar SATs, lots of smartypants awards, rather successful but not massively brilliant in a very competitive profession, but not a career that depends on parroting left-liberal shibboleths. I'd say I'm well above average IQ but not insanely brilliant(never took an actual IQ test). Any reasonably smart teenager can kick my ass at chess, and I'm sort of mediocre at brain-teasers that depend on math or abstract reasoning. I get by through having a formidable natural memory, a knack for being a loose-associator (from a pretty large database), and a creative talent for selecting associations and combinations of things and ideas which most people wouldn't group together. In other words, I'm not always right, but I'm always interesting. It's not a stupid man's game, but then it's not remotely Heisenberg's either; it's more like a very advanced card trick I happen to know. I suspect Obama has similar (but not identical) talents in this regard.
My friend: neglected early schoolwork and so went to a shitty high school. No B.A. degree. Finally got an associate's degree from a technical school after years of doing everything the hard way. Hasn't read a book from start to finish in years. But, he's an accomplished, sophisticated electrician and auto mechanic, a master of the main building trades, a homeowner and family man with a stable occupation, and the most nimble, skillful driver I've ever seen.
Society says I'm "smart" and he's "just a working stiff". But he can do all sorts of things I could never get a grasp of, and if the Zombie Apocalypse happened tomorrow you'd all bid wildly to have my friend on your team, but me? You'd throw me to the zombies in a heartbeat as a useless mouth to feed -- and rightly so.
What IQ or HBD conclusions can be drawn from such a contrast? (remember how similar in early social constructs both subjects are).
Obama’s humility prevents him from ostentatiously displaying his super-genius:
[T]eaching is not what the Chicago School is about. What matters here is hatching the Next Big Idea, and often these new ideas are auditioned at what has become one of the Chicago School's most hallowed institutions: the workshop. There are scores of these workshops each year. Generally open only to the economics community, they are where Nobel laureates, junior faculty or those from other universities hoping for appointment to the Chicago faculty come to present and defend what is expected to be cutting-edge thinking of the highest order. The cross-examination can be merciless. A European academic who recently attended a workshop was taken aback by what he described as the "intellectual bloodthirstiness" of the session.
But Obama skipped the workshops and, to Richard Epstein, this is a disappointment. Epstein, an expert on corporate law at the university and a formidable inquisitor, says the workshops are valuable because they guard against intellectual complacency…"You have to sit there and listen to papers good and bad on every kind of discipline . . . and then you have to ask questions about things you don't know about…And Obama never did that," he says.
Indeed, Obama made clear from the start of his employment at the university that he would not be spending time in workshops. "That was always the deal," says Baird, who notes that Obama absorbed the unique culture of the Chicago School in other ways.
Brilliant Barry unable to comprehend the difference between collision and liability insurance:
When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance. I had a beat-up old car. And I won't name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company -- let's call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended and I called up Acme and said, I'd like to see if I can get my car repaired, and they laughed at me over the phone because really this was set up not to actually provide insurance; what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn't serious insurance.
"This is just me, but I was turned OFF by the chin-tilted, lids-lowered, gently smiling, beatific expression he[Obama] donned during the campaign season."
No, it's not just you.
I was totally turned off by how openly he basked in the admiration, adoration and adulation of his crowds, accepting it all as his just due. His demeanor made it clear he shared his public's stratospherically high opinion of him. And he seemed to need it as well as enjoy it. If there's anything worse than a narcissist, it's a dependent narcissist.
"So I can't figure out: Just how DID people get fooled?"
Have you seen The Prestige?
Here are the last lines from it, describing the psychology behind an audience's response to a magician and his trick:
"Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled."
Obama, said his colleagues at Chicago, skipped every chance to exchange ideas/debate with them.
This is not the description of one who loves intellectual discourse/argumentation; this is not the description of one who loves pursuing an investigation into his field (Constitutional Law); this is not the description of one who is sure of himself; this is not the description of one who has confidence in his grasp of his subject; this is not the description of one who enjoys give and take; this is not the description of one who enjoys learning.
This is a description of a fearful politician.
A politician, not a statesman, not a leader... a politician, through and through--so why should his past this surprise anyone?
Anonymous says:
"Mussolini was very smart"
I really enjoyed reading the diaries of the WWII Italian foreign minister, Count Ciano.
He was also "El Duce"'s son in law, and was eventually executed on his orders.
Mussolini does not come across as smart.
Is, say, 125 comparable to Thomas Friedman, Antonin Scalia, Steve Jobs, a senior NASA engineer, Garrison Keillor, Stephen Hawking? Give us names and faces and relative achievements to peg these numbers to.
The easiest to judge are people who've been to law school without affirmative action. If you're at one of the top five law schools, you have to score at least two standard deviations on the LSAT which is taken by only college graduates. Most who make the Supreme Court distinguish themselves as judges in an environment where everybody is over the 99th percentile. For example, Chief Justice Renquist was first in his class at Stanford and Sandra Day O'Connor was second the same year. They and Scalia are 150+ easily. General rule: those who get to the top of math/science are smarter than those who do the best in law or industry. We're talking the difference between 150 and 170. 130 is considered "genius" (98th percentile) and is probably smart enough to do just about anything for anyone with a normal amount of ambition (ie, anything but string theory or getting into the most competitive institutions in the country that you must attend) in order to join the elite).
Basically, the starting point from which to determine IQ for most people is the standardized tests they needed to pass in order to get where they are. The typical standardized test scores for different universities, law schools and medical schools are available online. Figure out what the average score is on these tests, see who's taking them, know what the standard deviation is and you'll get an idea.
IQ correlates with performing well at every single profession, but how much depends on the job. Some anonymous idiot above tried to prove that Hillary Clinton was stupid because she couldn't pass health care reform, though a moment's reflection would show that politics is probably the least g-loaded white collar profession there is. Much depends on your personality, your ideology, your willingness to match your beliefs to those of power makers and the voters, looks, unexpected current events, etc.
"A big difference: I sort of happened to like schools and libraries and books, and he just didn't.
Me: Elite high school and Ivy League honors degree (scholarship kid), stellar SATs, lots of smartypants awards, rather successful but not massively brilliant in a very competitive profession"
"My friend: neglected early schoolwork and so went to a shitty high school. No B.A. degree. Finally got an associate's degree from a technical school after years of doing everything the hard way. Hasn't read a book from start to finish in years."
I think you're trying to imply that because you "just happened" to like libraries, and he "just happened" not to, that's the reason you're academically successful and he's a working stiff.
No. It was your IQ that MADE you intellectually curious, that MADE you like libraries. It was his lower IQ that MADE him run away from reading.
So you've got the arrow of causation wrong. It wasn't your love of books that made you smart. It was your inborn smarts that made you love books.
You wouldn't hire someone based on whether they prepped for a test at age 17?
I wouldn't hire a grown man who bragged about blowing off an important test in hopes that I'd be impressed with how cool and supersmart he must be.
I went in cold to take the SAT.
But do you go around casually bragging to people about it, like a certain commenter above? That's the catch. Even if you're one of those extremely rare people who can ace the LSAT or GMAT with no prep at all (and I knew only one such person--an honors math student from Princeton who was genuinely brilliant), you'd be secure enough not to keep dropping that little tidbit to all and sundry. I've met too many third-rate lawyers who love to "let slip" that they were such cognitive badasses that they never prepped and got drunk the night before the LSAT and still scored stratospherically high. Yeah, right. Sure you did. It's the opposite of impressive.
So I can't figure out: Just how DID people get fooled?
Don't know. Out here in Dallas, I don't know anyone who voted for him who didn't vote for Gore and Kerry.
"Mussolini does not come across as smart."
Smart people often do stupid things, especially if their ego gets out of hand. And Mussolini had an ego.
"Obama, said his colleagues at Chicago, skipped every chance to exchange ideas/debate with them."
He didn't want to give himself away. Remember the movie EUROPA EUROPA where the Jewish kid didn't wanna show his pud out of fear that others would know he's a Jew? Obama didn't wanna show the tribal mark on his pud.
The way I see it, Obama is an angry mulatto supremacist above all else. After that, he's a black power-ist and an Afromanticist. He has much in common with Cornel West and Henry Louis Gates.
But he knew he had to play to the Jews to gain power. He knew he had to play to whites to gain white votes. So, even among liberals, he didn't say much since things might eventually leak out. And of course, enough did--in NPR interviews and the like--to reveal the real Obama. Even so, they were few and far between. Suppose Obama had written entire books and given impassioned lectures on what he really felt. If he had chosen the field of academics, he might have done as West, Gates, Dyson, and others have done. But he chose politics--not just local politics but national politics--, and he knew he simply could not blow his intellectual wad. He had to save it so that he could be 'the kinda guy you would want your daughter to marry'. And this is indeed why he's now in a position to screw all of us.
Of course, he could have chosen to take part in discussions and lie through his teeth, but while it's easy to tell a political lie, it's not easy to tell an intellectual lie. It's one thing to say you're for the second amendment when you're really for gun control, but it's quite another to speak at length in favor of an issue you oppose.
Suppose we had to say, 'race doesn't exist' at work to keep our job. Easily done. But suppose we had to explain why race doesn't exist at great length when, in the heart of hearts, we believe it does exist. That would be too much. If I had to write an entire book on why race doesn't exist, I'd rather kill myself. I can lie for a paragraph, not for an entire book.
A man's mouth is his greatest trap.
"My impression was not of a halo-bestowed Post-Racial Messiah sent from On High, but of an arrogant, self-important ass, and a ham actor, to boot.
So I can't figure out: Just how DID people get fooled?"
Same reason AVATAR is the biggest hit of all time. Wow, that sucked donkey d....
"'I went in cold to take the SAT.' [quoting me]
But do you go around casually bragging to people about it, like a certain commenter above?"
No. I also don't go around making absolutist statements like "Never believe anyone who says he didn't bother studying for the SAT or LSAT". I thought the person who made that stupid statement would give it a rest but no luck. So I finally piped up with my experience.
"Obama, said his colleagues at Chicago, skipped every chance to exchange ideas/debate with them.
This is not the description of one who loves intellectual discourse/argumentation; this is not the description of one who loves pursuing an investigation into his field (Constitutional Law); this is not the description of one who is sure of himself; this is not the description of one who has confidence in his grasp of his subject; this is not the description of one who enjoys give and take; this is not the description of one who enjoys learning."
I don't know about Obama's IQ, but let me tell you something a Jewish girl I knew. I mean she was smart, supersmart with very high IQ. But she wasn't one of those pushy Jews. In fact, she didn't say much around people. She preferred to listen to others; while others were going at it, pulling at hairs and going for eachother throats, she remained aloof, cool, calm, and collected. Her demeanor was friendly but condescending, as if we we silly little children getting all worked up about stuff she stood above or saw right through.
Now, it could be Obama is really smart and amused by others with their silly little tantrums or he knows the art of appearing smart by acting aloof in the company of childish egos.
So, maybe Obama is really smart but don't wanna show off and come across as a jerk. Very high intelligence can even be a turn-off to many Americans. In highschool, who likes geeks? And though we buy and use the products of the likes of Gates and Brin and Zuckerburg, who really LIKES or TRUSTS them?
The risk of concealment is people might start wondering if the emperor has no clothes. But then, it also adds to the mystique.
So, if we were to use the analogy of a boxer, did Obama choose not to intellectually mix it up with others cuz he feared losing or because he feared winning? If he lost, he would be exposed as a hype and phony. But if he won, he might be resented as 'not one of us' but a superegghead geek.
So, Obama preferred to wrap himself with superiority suggested by mystique than by material facts. This way, he could play it both ways. He could be both god and man. Gee, maybe he is smarter than all of us AND maybe he's just a cool dude you can hang around with. No solid evidence either way.
So I can't figure out: Just how DID people get fooled?
The Derb nailed it, back in the day:
Obama’s Black Edge
John Derbyshire
June 19, 2008 6:00 A.M.
nationalreview.com
...He’s black, and so is God. Working in combination with other factors that I’ll get to, Obama’s négritude will help him with a lot of politically vague types who are neither black nor distinctively liberal, but who have been oriented the Obama way by decades of watching Numinous Negro types saving the world, or defying it with a supernatural level of dignity and gravitas, in the movies and on TV: characters played by Will Smith, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Michael Clarke Duncan, Denzel Washington, and of course the numinousest of them all, Morgan Freeman. There is probably now an entire demographic cohort of young Americans whose mental image of God is Morgan Freeman...
If you're at one of the top five law schools, you have to score at least two standard deviations on the LSAT which is taken by only college graduates. Most who make the Supreme Court distinguish themselves as judges in an environment where everybody is over the 99th percentile. For example, Chief Justice Renquist was first in his class at Stanford and Sandra Day O'Connor was second the same year. They and Scalia are 150+ easily.
I strongly disagree. There's no evidence that anyone on the Supreme court has an IQ above 150. The LSAT is just a rough measure of only the verbal component of intelligence, and probably way too easy to reliabley discriminate above IQ 140. Grades in law school are even less g loaded than the LSAT. Just because someone scored high on the LSAT and did well at an elite law school, does mean they can score 150 on a real comprehensive IQ test like the WAIS-IV which measures a far broader range of cognitive skills. Authentic IQ scores of 150 on up to date professionally administered IQ tests are extremely rare and beyond the ability of even the top achievers in law.
General rule: those who get to the top of math/science are smarter than those who do the best in law or industry. We're talking the difference between 150 and 170.
I agree that math/science people are smarter, but we're talking the difference between 135 and 145.
politics is probably the least g-loaded white collar profession there is. Much depends on your personality, your ideology, your willingness to match your beliefs to those of power makers and the voters, looks, unexpected current events, etc.
True. It also depends on your demographics. Bill Clinton got elected partly because he was a white southern Democrat, allowing him to reach rednecks, liberals and minorities.
Truth said:
"Not only did I not bother studying, but I smoked a bowl on the drive to the test and then broke 1500."
Do you guys realize what jaggoffs you sound like?:
I was only being honest. And the weather didn't allow gardening today, so also trying to entertain myself.
"And what did you turn that world class intellect into as an adult?"
Admittedly, I'm a bit of an underachiever. But, I'm gainfully employed in a high-tech industry where I'm very, very good at what I do. I'm usually sober, honest, trustworthy, and will always help the little old lady cross the road.
But I'll shoot a vicious dog if I feel I need to. 'Cause that weed made me craaaazy!
I wouldn't hire a grown man who bragged about blowing off an important test in hopes that I'd be impressed with how cool and supersmart he must be.
You sound weirdly insecure about it. Some people might not be trying to impress you, they might just be telling you the truth--they didn't prep for the test and scored well. Millions have taken the SAT without prepping. Certainly before prep became the industry it is today--I had never heard of prepping until years after I had taken the SAT. If I tell you that, am I bragging?
You do realize that prepping is an attempt to game the system--to get a better score than you would get cold, through cramming and memorizing question sets? I know cramming is pretty well embedded in student culture, even valorized, but it leads to people who think they are smart but have forgotten nearly all the proof of it. I know I've met my share of people who crammed through school, crammed for their certifications, cram for work assignments, and it shows in their sloppy, erratic output. Maybe the point is if you study hard and actually learn something, you don't need to "test prep" for everything. I know it's not what all the Tiger Moms think.
Udolpho is right. I think people keep popping up with these anecdotes of "I aced the SAT without studying (for *it*, not without studying *ever*)" not to boast, but to put to bed this annoying meme that "iSteve readers are bitter and insecure b/c they talk about these things and lie about them." Just not generally true from what I can see. There's the small but regular camp here with the zany Harvard-envy fixation, but the general spirit is one of inquiry contra present-day shibboleths.
Insofar as the SAT is ostensibly a proxy for intellectual and educational ability/attainment, it shouldn't be all that necessary to study a lot for it, in itself, other than to familiarize yourself with the general test format and its way of asking questions so you aren't surprised or thrown. If you're going to a good high school and getting A's in reasonably challenging math classes, then absent test-taking pathologies you're liable to have a high SAT math score without lots of hours spent cramming for the SAT qua SAT, because you can already literally "do the math".
I can understand the due-diligence aspect of taking some prep-study time to be optimally ready to meet the challenge; or I can see doing a lot of cramming to compensate, if say you're a smart kid being badly taught in a lousy school. But massive-level cramming really is a species of gaming the system, and in the past not everybody went that way, or even felt. they should. Whether the erosion of that manner of being is a net loss to our society is of course the political subtext of these discussions. (SAT-style question: what's the key word in that last sentence? Answer: to average readers it'd be "political" or "society"; to iSteve readers though, it's "our".)
So, more annoying personal evidence (wow, it's sorta piling up, innit): I went to a good high school, did my homework and liked learning the stuff. (Early 80s.) I probably spent about the man-hours equivalent of a weekend in total studying specifically for the SAT, mostly just becoming familiar with its format and style. And that was it. But as you might guess (otherwise why am I telling you, right?), I did rather well. Not because I'm some wiz kid -- all the other kids in my class who cared enough about general schoolwork did well too, though there were variations. I did adequately at math because -- wait for it -- I'm merely adequate at math. I smoked the verbal because that's what I cared about. If you're a kid who reads Shaw and Turgenev in his spare time after finishing the bloody assigned Harper Lee, then yes, you don't need countless hours of practice SATs, and in fact... you shouldn't.
There's an SAT-style analogy hiding somewhere in all this, with implications for politics and public policy. See if you can guess what it is.
I strongly disagree. There's no evidence that anyone on the Supreme court has an IQ above 150. The LSAT is just a rough measure of only the verbal component of intelligence, and probably way too easy to reliabley discriminate above IQ 140.
I could be wrong, but the analytic reasoning portion seems to rely on the same skills one uses in math.
Authentic IQ scores of 150 on up to date professionally administered IQ tests are extremely rare and beyond the ability of even the top achievers in law.
They're not that rare. It's more than one in a thousand people. There's no reason the smartest most ambitious people wouldn't go into law. Over a lifetime Supreme Court justices are the most powerful people on earth. They get one out of nine votes to decide things like abortion for generations. Law is also a launching pad into politics, as we see by the number of congressmen/presidents who have had JDs.
I agree that math/science people are smarter, but we're talking the difference between 135 and 145.
You really think that Steven Hawking, Steven Pinker and Steve Jobs are only 145, with a measly one in 700 IQ? If so, what are the hundreds of thousands of people in the US smarter than these guys doing? They can't all be like that bouncer in Wyoming.
You sound weirdly insecure about it.
Nope. I scored in the 99th percentile on both the SAT and LSAT.
You do realize that prepping is an attempt to game the system--to get a better score than you would get cold, through cramming and memorizing question sets?
Practicing until you get very good at something that can affect your entire future is "gaming the system"? Sounds like common sense and conscientiousness to me. The LSAT, one 4-hour test, counts twice as much as your undergraduate GPA for admission to law school. Would you really leave something like that to chance just so you could have bragging rights to being a "natural"? Above a certain intelligence threshold, what matters most in the legal profession isn't "genius". It's tediously painstaking effort--lots and lots of research and making sure you haven't overlooked even the smallest detail or remotest contingency. It's practicing and rehearsing every argument with your client so you won't get caught unaware. It's how Vincent Bugliosi, a smart man but no prodigy, became the most successful prosecutor in U.S. legal history: by "gaming the system" and being a "grind" in every single case he prosecuted.
So, if I had to choose between hiring a guy who told me he blew off the LSAT because he was such a stud he didn't need to prepare for it or a bright but not brilliant guy who worked his ass off to get a great score and great grades, I'd probably go with the latter. But that's just me. Maybe a less hard-working but more "brilliant" guy is what you're looking for in the lawyer who handles your case.
Yeah, I'm a "striver". So sue me.
I could be wrong, but the analytic reasoning portion seems to rely on the same skills one uses in math.
I think that it would be more accurate to say that "the analytic reasoning portion relies on the same skills that mathematicians use in math".
But lay people - of much lower inteligence - can memorize the basic algorithms and regurgitate them for purposes of test-taking on mathematics exams.
E.g. it's conceivable that you could put an IQ 95 to IQ 105 teenager through some very intensive drilling, so that they could perform "quadratic formula" problems on a standardized test - although they would never really understand what it was that they were doing, and even the Pavlovian conditioning would quickly disappear withing a few months [or even just a few weeks?] after the drilling ceased - but for a very brief period, it would appear as though they were capable of "quadratic formula" problem-solving [at least for purposes of test-taking].
"There's no evidence that anyone on the Supreme court has an IQ above 150."
I tend toward the same view, although I have no hard evidence. My gut sense is that the smartest judges (Richard Posner, for example) are in the 140s. The super-brilliant just don't find soft sciences such as law interesting. Plus they're usually too socially careless to make it as judges.
They're not that rare. It's more than one in a thousand people.
An IQ of 150 in less than one in 2000 on the WAIS-IV (remember the SD is set at only 15). It's probably even more rare than that, because the WAIS-IV norming sample excludes people with impairments (psychotics, people who consume several alcoholic beverages more than twice a week, people who were ever hospitalized for a head injury etc). Also, those who live on the margins of society are almost never represented in the norms.
There's no reason the smartest most ambitious people wouldn't go into law.
They might find it boring, not creative enough, not lucrative enough, not ethical enough, not math or sciencey enough or unrelated to their passion.
Over a lifetime Supreme Court justices are the most powerful people on earth. They get one out of nine votes to decide things like abortion for generations.
I would say media moguls, especially super rich ones are the most powerful people in society longterm. They get to shape the culture and opinions for decades, decide what politicians get good media coverage, buy politicians through lobby efforts etc.
You really think that Steven Hawking, Steven Pinker and Steve Jobs are only 145, with a measly one in 700 IQ?
Hard to comment on specific individuals I know little about, but I think the math/science elite averages 145 at the most. For example a 1967 study of 20 physics professors at Cambridge found their IQ's ranged from 112 to 136; now there was probably a ceiling effect that depressed the IQ's at the high end, but not by much if the low end went down to 112:
http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/grady/emptypromise.html
Now it might be different in 21st century America, but the point is you can do a lot with a mediocre IQ if your have special talents and exceptional passion for learning. I don't know deny that high IQ is a major advantage, however high IQ people are vastly outnumbered by mediocre people, so there will be more mediocre achievers than brilliant ones even a field as g loaded as math, even though on a per capita basis, geniuses achieve far more.
If so, what are the hundreds of thousands of people in the US smarter than these guys doing?
They're out making money (Jobs to his credit, is making money), working in the arts, working in media, or they're simply enjoying a simple boring life. It's like asking where are all the hundreds of thousands of people taller than Michael Jordan if they're not in the NBA. The answer is there's more to Jordan's achievements than just his height.
"Convincing yourself that Obama isn't smart may make you feel good about yourself but it doesn't help the country and it won't wind the next election."
You reveal your real intent in the first words of this statement,
"Convincing yourself..."
As if we needed convincing.
His dimly lit bulb is as apparent as the noonday sun. Some of us have always seen this.
More and more people are taking off their visors.
I tend toward the same view, although I have no hard evidence. My gut sense is that the smartest judges (Richard Posner, for example) are in the 140s. The super-brilliant just don't find soft sciences such as law interesting.
What a ludicrous generalization! Some super-brilliant people find the organization of human societies to be absolutely fascinating.
The LSAT, one 4-hour test, counts twice as much as your undergraduate GPA for admission to law school. Would you really leave something like that to chance just so you could have bragging rights to being a "natural"?
Your reading comprehension is pretty poor. You've received several responses (including mine) from people for whom preparing for the SAT -- beyond going to bed early the night before -- simply WAS NOT POSSIBLE. Your argument is anachronistic.
OT
Bogdan has a blog.
http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich
Your reading comprehension is pretty poor. You've received several responses (including mine) from people for whom preparing for the SAT -- beyond going to bed early the night before -- simply WAS NOT POSSIBLE. Your argument is anachronistic.
Fine, gramps. Back in your day, when nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em, you couldn't do anything to prepare for the SAT. Now can we live in the present, please?
"There is probably now an entire demographic cohort of young Americans whose mental image of God is Morgan Freeman..."
The Derb at his best. Funny (in a bad way) what Hollywood can do.
"Fine, gramps."
Point is missed again and again and again and again...
Why it's almost like say, a knitted sweater, that keeps unravelling, and unravelling, and UNRAVELLING... (h/t the late great Phil Hartman)
Reading comprehension FAIL. Everyone who takes this side of the argument gets a retroactive Zero on their verbals.
Back to junior high, munchkins. Like Mick Jones once said, "Start all over agaaaiin..."
*sigh*
Yes, yes, we understand that you were such a whiz kid that you didn't need to prep for the SAT, and that others are so old that there wasn't any practical way for them to do so back then. Congratulations or condolences, as the case may be.
Even if he was not top 10% when he graduated, magna at that time was top 25%. Not too shabby. Also, getting appointed to Pres of Law Review is absolutely impossible just on the basis of Affirmative Action. The Pres of HLR is always thought of as one of the smartest guys in the room, and sometimes, he/she actually is. It would be too insulting and disingenuous for the class to put up with an Aff Action Pres. I am not a lawyer, but my brother is an HLS grad with a 179 LSAT and ridiculous college accomplishments.
Yes, yes, we understand that you were such a whiz kid that you didn't need to prep for the SAT, and that others are so old that there wasn't any practical way for them to do so back then.
We're talking about people in their mid-40's.
We're talking about people in their mid-40's.
Dude, that's like so old.
Practicing until you get very good at something that can affect your entire future is "gaming the system"?
lol you're a dumbass who refuses to understand what other people are saying so you can "win" the discussion...tests are supposed to have predictive value and when you CRAM for them it suppresses that predictive value...are you a total fucking jackass not to see this? I suspect those tests way overpredict your IQ
tests are supposed to have predictive value and when you CRAM for them it suppresses that predictive value
And we're supposed to care? First of all, you don't "cram" for the LSAT. You practice taking those tests extensively, for months, until you have learned how the test-makers think. That's actually a bloody useful skill for a lawyer.
Look, for the legal profession, the kind and amount of effort needed to "game" the LSAT is just as necessary for career success as whatever it's supposed to test for--probably even more so. Do you really expect people to abjure prepping for a make-or-break test just so you can perserve your touching faith in the purity of the standardized-testing industry? LOL yourself. Once upon a time, before the whole law-school racket took over, law was a trade you apprenticed in. I think it would be a good thing if we went back to such a system. But those days are long gone and they ain't comin' back. I didn't create the world we live in: I merely adapt myself to it.
Oh, and by the way, I graduated above the median at a top 14 school and paid off my student loans in 5 years.
Also, getting appointed to Pres of Law Review is absolutely impossible just on the basis of Affirmative Action.
That's nonsense. A description of the process, which has ample room from racial gaming, is below. Just as a hypothetical, imagine Obama submitting an essay to the writing competition that discussed being black at HLS. Mirable dictu, it wins the writing competition! He goes into the pool of applicants that can be selected. And then, another miracle--at this point AA kicks in and the voters decide to make him president of the HLR, and his essay is destroyed. Hey, it could happen. Say, if the Law School was at the time tied up in race issues, as HLS happened to be.
The selection process:
The Selection Committee first identifies the group of candidates whose excellent performance, either in the classroom or on the writing competition, sets them apart. (Approximately half of this first batch is chosen solely on their performance on the writing competition; the other half are selected on a weighted formula of 70 percent grades and 30 percent writing competition.) The Selection Committee must then choose the remaining editors from a pool of qualified candidates whose grades or writing competition scores do not significantly differ. It is at this stage that the Law Review as for several years instituted an affirmative action policy for historically underrepresented groups: out of this pool, the Selection Committee may take race or physical handicap into account in making their final decision, if the Selection Committee believes that such affirmative action will enhance the representativeness of the incoming class. On the other hand, the Selection Committee may find that given the make-up of the first batch of candidates, such considerations are unnecessary. In no event is the Selection Committee required to meet any set quotas.
Once final selections are made, all writing competition material is destroyed. No editors on the Review will ever know whether any given editor was selected on the basis of grades, writing competition, or affirmative action, and no editors who were selected with affirmative action in mind.
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