goingmeta said:There is test, as in a paper examination. Then there is test, as in a scientific experiment. It was clear he doesn't think the former is possible. Is the latter, and more general, possible?
kelvinng said:This is what Freeman Dyson thinks of Feynman's methods in "Classic Feynman":
"But the sustance of his science is conservative. He reached his insights by careful and laborious sifting of old theories and experiment, not by brilliant invention. He was not a revolutionary. He discarded as little as possible of the old theories while extending them to fit new experiments. He built his theories brick by brick on the foundations of the old. Nothing that he built was done hastily, and all of it stood the test of time. As he often said, when some new and revolutionary idea was proposed, it is more important to be right than to be brilliant. Whatever he was doing, whether he was reconstructing the basis of physics or interpreting the results of a new experiment, he took endless trouble to get the details right. He said that the job of a scientist is to listen carefully to nature, not to tell nature how to behave."
goingmeta said:Who are the revolutionaries and why? Do the revolutionaries always achieve success through a brilliant invention?
What's the point of this quote? What difference does it make how Feynman was perceived to arrive at his results? Does his method make his contributions any less significant?
It's only petty, immature, and stupid in the case of someone making a petty, immature, and stupid argument for their case.goingmeta said:I think this game people tend to play online where they argue over who the greatest genius/intellectual/visionary/whatever was is petty, immature, and stupid.
zoobyshoe said:It's only petty, immature, and stupid in the case of someone making a petty, immature, and stupid argument for their case.
It's not as if any discussion would ever settle the issue once and for all, but it is often quite interesting to read thoughtful opinions springing from questions like, "Who was greater? Einstein or Newton?"
In any event, the relevance of Kelvinng's post, which addressed a different issue, was clear to me. I don't see why it wasn't to you. Feynman says, "There are no miracle people." Dyson is pulled into corroborate that Feynman, himself, was not a miracle person. The relevance is obvious.
It's not as if any discussion would ever settle the issue once and for all, but it is often quite interesting to read thoughtful opinions springing from questions like, "Who was greater? Einstein or Newton?"
russ_watters said:Forgive me if I'm missing something, but shouldn't the answer to this question be a simple matter of correlating IQ and educational attainment? ANY statistical association would debunk the idea that all people are equally able, wouldn't it?
Probably not. Does that matter?goingmeta said:Is IQ a static measurement throughout a person's life?
russ_watters said:Probably not. Does that matter?
russ_watters said:Forgive me if I'm missing something, but shouldn't the answer to this question be a simple matter of correlating IQ and educational attainment? ANY statistical association would debunk the idea that all people are equally able, wouldn't it?
All I see in the quote is Dyson separating Feynman from a common conception of Feynman. Dyson doesn't indicate whether or not he thinks there are authentic "brilliant innovators" or what might characterize such a person.goingmeta said:To me, the quote also appeared to acknowledge the existence of these revolutionaries, of which Feynman is unlike. Does Dyson think there are such people? Would Dyson think these people would qualify as the miracle people we've been discussing? If not, then ignore everything I said.
******** questions make the best rorschach tests. You find a lot out about the person answering.I'm sorry, but I think that question is pure ********.
Feynman's claim is not that all people are equally able. He merely claims that an "ordinary" person could do what he did:russ_watters said:Forgive me if I'm missing something, but shouldn't the answer to this question be a simple matter of correlating IQ and educational attainment? ANY statistical association would debunk the idea that all people are equally able, wouldn't it?
zoobyshoe said:Feynman's claim is not that all people are equally able. He merely claims that an "ordinary" person could do what he did:
"You ask me if an ordinary person, by studying hard, would get to imagine these things like I imagine them: of course! I was an ordinary person, who studied hard."
Translated to I.Q., he'd be saying anyone with an I.Q. of about a hundred should be fit to be a physicist.
ModusPwnd said:So half the population is not normal then? Seems a little extreme. I have no idea what being Feynman is like, I'm sure he has no idea what being a "normal" person is like. Many people claim to be ordinary, but some are simply above or below (with respect to any arbitrary metric).
I think that dozens, if not hundreds or more "ordinary" people have tried to do what Feynman did, by studying hard. They did not succeed.
When I see claims like that I immediately think the claimant is engaging in humility and self deprecation. Nobody likes an arrogant ***. Better to lay on the politically correct platitudes.
I don't think any of these Feynman interview videos should be taken very seriously. What I suspect he's doing in this one is trying his best to come off as a "regular guy". That's something that always seemed important to him. He didn't like elitists, which is the point of the title story in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"ModusPwnd said:So half the population is not normal then? Seems a little extreme. I have no idea what being Feynman is like, I'm sure he has no idea what being a "normal" person is like. Many people claim to be ordinary, but some are simply above or below (with respect to any arbitrary metric).
I think that dozens, if not hundreds or more "ordinary" people have tried to do what Feynman did, by studying hard. They did not succeed.
When I see claims like that I immediately think the claimant is engaging in humility and self deprecation. Nobody likes an arrogant ***. Better to lay on the politically correct platitudes.
chiro said:Having done some practicums as a high school math teacher and having done tutoring for a range of people with different skill-sets (including year 7 to masters students with varying capabilities), I can tell you from these experiences that some people find a lot of concepts that most people in this forum would find easy, extremely difficult.
Why do you say this (not disagreeing just curious)?chiro said:This forum is an extremely biased sample and pointing this out is really vital to get an adequate answer or inference for the original question.
ModusPwnd said:I've tutored people for weeks on subjects like the number line and fractions. They simply cannot get the concept. They get one on one help from not just me, but others at the facility as well. Some people are hopeless, as unfortunate as that is. At least, hopeless when it comes to learning the number line or some other particular concept.
I worked at a school that specialized in adult re-entry, low income and new immigrants. I'm sure many could have achieved more had they been educated and nurtured as a child. Many of my students never went to school as a youth, many were African refugees missing fingers and hands. It is simply harder to learn math when you don't have fingers and hands to do it with. Couple that with a lack of education as a youth and at some point, learning the concept is hopeless. Other students I had were seemingly normal people, from the states with a high school education and no obvious mental illness. But they just couldn't get a concept such as dimensional analysis from intro to chemistry. They would certainly try, they would spend more time on it than I did in undergrad.
Of course most of my students were able to get get basic ideas like the number line or dimensional analysis, but some could not and never did.
goingmeta said:Everybody struggles at some point at their current level though. As a tutor, you probably see a lot of that. What matters more is, when you track these people, that they achieve a level higher, succeed, and progress.
Did you not think that these students nevertheless learned these difficult concepts?
IQ can be thought of as the ability to learn to solve new problems, yes.goingmeta said:Are you measuring ability with IQ?
Huh? Isn't that exactly what it says? People who are less able to learn tend to learn less, people who are more able to learn tend to learn more. Please explain what you mean.Is so, then a correlation between a low IQ and low education attainment wouldn't actually support your conclusion.
That's the "begging the question" fallacy. You're basically saying that the proposition you want to prove is not measurable so we must just assume it is true (or in this case, false). But no, you can no more say that inborn intelligence has nothing to do with attainment than I can that it does, without evidence. It just so happens that the evidence is not in your favor, so you try to attack the evidence rather than using/interpreting it to judge the hypothesis.There's also the question of whether IQ actually measures what you want to measure...
Ok...hypothesis supported, right?MarneMath said:I don't think so. There's been a few studies that have gathered results of different IQ scores, gathered an average and broke the results down into education level. Typically 125+ had a PhD, MD or JD. 115-120 have just an undergraduates, 100-110 have some college, and the rest were high school education broken down by various types with admin on top and unskilled at the bottom.
What do you mean/why does this matter? There are lots of ways to do it, it is difficult and none are perfect, but regardless of the specifics, the bottom line is, as you said, that there is a very strong correlation between IQ and educational attainment.he problem really comes when you use the word IQ. How does anyone really purpose to gather an IQ score?
What was that "different type of IQ test"? That's too vague to be useful.There was a study that attempted to correlate a relationship between IQ and GPA for college student. When giving a verbal centered IQ test, the scores correlated well, when given a second and different type of IQ test, the scores correlated poorly.
Agreed, it is not perfect. And yet the correlation is strong.Also, assuming that IQ scores give a reasonable baseline for intelligence of a certain kind, it ignores a great deal of other mental ability that may make up the difference with regards to academic success.
Right, and we know that that's not true, right? He didn't have a 100 IQ, he had more like a 125 IQ. So that statement that he was ordinary is bafflingly false.zoobyshoe said:Feynman's claim is not that all people are equally able. He merely claims that an "ordinary" person could do what he did:
"You ask me if an ordinary person, by studying hard, would get to imagine these things like I imagine them: of course! I was an ordinary person, who studied hard."
Translated to I.Q., he'd be saying anyone with an I.Q. of about a hundred should be fit to be a physicist. [emphasis added]
Agreed. I'll say it another way:I don't think any of these Feynman interview videos should be taken very seriously. What I suspect he's doing in this one is trying his best to come off as a "regular guy". That's something that always seemed important to him. He didn't like elitists, which is the point of the title story in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
russ_watters said:IQ can be thought of as the ability to solve new problems, yes.
Huh? Isn't that exactly what it says? People who are less able to learn tend to learn less, people who are more able to learn tend to learn more. Please explain what you mean.
That's the "begging the question" fallacy. You're basically saying that the proposition you want to prove is not measurable so we must just assume it is true (or in this case, false). But no, you can no more say that inborn intelligence has nothing to do with attainment than I can that it does, without evidence. It just so happens that the evidence is not in your favor, so you try to attack the evidence rather than using/interpreting it to judge the hypothesis.
IQ cannot typically be substantially improved:goingmeta said:You want to conclude that not everyone is equally able. If somebody can improve, and hence score higher later, at what point can you be sure that the person will not have the capacity to achieve a higher education?
Then I guess I don't see what your point is. Could you please clearly state your thesis.I never said anything was not measurable. I also didn't say inborn intelligence has nothing to do with attainment.
russ_watters said:It is, by definition (and shown to be valid), a measure if inborn intelligence.