What are the intellectually MOST rigorous jobs?

[zoobyshoe]

Jumbo shrimp?

You remember the French interviewer whom Mike Meyers (Austin Powers) can't forget and will never forgive: "Tell me, do your films lie at 24 frames per second?"

 

[D H]

What is "intellectual dishonesty"?

Are you intentionally trying to increase the noise-to-signal ratio in this thread?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_dishonesty
Intellectual dishonesty is dishonesty in performing intellectual activities like thought or communication.

http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Intellectual-dishonesty
Intellectual dishonesty is the creation of misleading impressions through the use of rhetoric, logical fallacy, fraud, or misrepresented evidence. It may stem from an ulterior motive, haste, sloppiness, or external pressure to reach a certain conclusion. The truth value of work may be lost as a result.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Intellectual dishonesty
ntellectual dishonesty is the advocacy of a position known to be false. An argument which is misused to advance an agenda or to reinforce one's deeply held beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence contrary.

The terms intellectually dishonest and intellectual dishonesty are often used as rhetorical devices in a debate; the label invariably frames an opponent in a negative light. It is a round about way to say "you're lying".

To add to the Urban Dictionary definition: Calling someone intellectually dishonest is is a round-about way of saying "you're lying -- and you know it."

 

[zoobyshoe]

Are you intentionally trying to increase the noise-to-signal ratio in this thread?

Hmmm...no.

To add to the Urban Dictionary definition: Calling someone intellectually dishonest is is a round-about way of saying "you're lying -- and you know it."

Thank you for the definitions. If you read them carefully you'll see that none of them effectively separates 'intellectual' dishonesty as a phenomenon from dishonesty per se. It remains an artificial sub-category.

As your Urban Dictionary says, the term is a "rhetorical device". "The label invariably frames an opponent in a negative light." This latter effect is an emotional one arising from the strategic deployment of a taint or stain, and that is almost certainly why it gained currency, despite being infelicitous and contrived. To say someone is dishonest is pretty serious. To say they're "intellectually dishonest", in an academic setting, is to conjure the apparition of an especially heinous kind of dishonesty in those circumstances, even though the term doesn't actually make much sense if you examine it closely: all dishonesty involves the intellect as well as the emotions. But the cry of intellectual dishonesty is the equivalent of holding your nose and making a sour face when, despite it's having been loud, you couldn't actually smell the fart.

Anyway, CountIblis is clearly not being dishonest. The worst you can say is that he precipitously threw out an assertion based only on a naive personal analysis.

 

[swat4life]

I'd go with Trancendental Meditation specialist (i.e. full-time instructors/experts). Now before someone goes throwing their pocket protector at the screen, I'd encourage an interesting look at the International Journal of Neuroscience and a fantastic study published there:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a768445194?words=increased,brain,coherenceMost people define "intelligence" very narrowly and mainstream universities disproportionately are skewed toward very limited left-brained thinking.

However, whole brained focused learning and activities are empirically correlated with almost every test of intelligence there is. I chose the above job/career, etc because I know of no other job that leads to such eye-popping development of whole-brain development and the associated enhancement of the higher faculties of mind.

I didn't say there WEREN'T any others...

I simply said I know of no other jobs/careers etc that have been written about, studied and for which respectable, peer-reviewed research is available to prove the validity of this contention.

//
PS
Here's the abstract of the study above

Abstract
Two studies investigated frontal alpha lateral asymmetry and frontal interhemispheric coherence during eyes-closed rest, Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice, and computerized reaction-time tasks. In the first study, frontal coherence and lateralized asymmetry were higher in 13 TM subjects than in 12 controls. In the second study (N = 14), a one-year longitudinal study, lateral asymmetry did not change in any condition. In contrast, frontal coherence increased linearly during computer tasks and eyes-closed rest, and as a step-function during TM practice—rising to a high level after 2-months TM practice. Coherence was more sensitive than lateral asymmetry to effects of TM practice on brain functioning.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Thank you for the definitions. If you read them carefully you'll see that none of them effectively separates 'intellectual' dishonesty as a phenomenon from dishonesty per se. It remains an artificial sub-category.

I believe that the term is actually supposed to be separate from "lying" and even persons who "knowingly lie". A person may give an explanation or argument which seems consistent with itself, and the person believes is true, but which ignores certain facts or is based on false assumptions. This isn't dishonest in the classical sense that one is lying so you can not say "you are dishonest" without sounding as though you are outright calling the person a liar but one might say "you are ignoring the logical and intellectual pitfalls in your argument" or "you are being intellectually dishonest". You might say that the argument itself is 'dishonest' (due to ignoring of facts and being based on false assumptions) though the person making it may be honest in their belief and delivery. Such a person may commit yet another level of dishonesty by using such an argument intentionally to gloss over facts and uphold false assumptions for some purpose or other. This would be separate from the 'dishonesty' inherant in the argument and would be a sort of obfuscation and more like the classic definition of dishonest as you point out.

I'd go with Trancendental Meditation specialist (i.e. full-time instructors/experts). Now before someone goes throwing their pocket protector at the screen, I'd encourage an interesting look at the International Journal of Neuroscience and a fantastic study published there:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a768445194?words=increased,brain,coherence


Most people define "intelligence" very narrowly and mainstream universities disproportionately are skewed toward very limited left-brained thinking.

Intelligence is not necessarily measured by actual brain activity.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I believe that the term is actually supposed to be separate from "lying" and even persons who "knowingly lie". A person may give an explanation or argument which seems consistent with itself, and the person believes is true, but which ignores certain facts or is based on false assumptions. This isn't dishonest in the classical sense that one is lying so you can not say "you are dishonest" without sounding as though you are outright calling the person a liar but one might say "you are ignoring the logical and intellectual pitfalls in your argument" or "you are being intellectually dishonest". You might say that the argument itself is 'dishonest' (due to ignoring of facts and being based on false assumptions) though the person making it may be honest in their belief and delivery. Such a person may commit yet another level of dishonesty by using such an argument intentionally to gloss over facts and uphold false assumptions for some purpose or other. This would be separate from the 'dishonesty' inherant in the argument and would be a sort of obfuscation and more like the classic definition of dishonest as you point out.

The Websters has a note at the bottom:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dishonest

"dishonest implies a willful perversion of truth in order to deceive, cheat, or defraud <a swindle usually involves two dishonest people>"

and that's what I've always understood. You can't be dishonest by ignorance, self-delusion, or neglect of rigor. You can be wrong, certainly, but not dishonest.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

The Websters has a note at the bottom:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dishonest

"dishonest implies a willful perversion of truth in order to deceive, cheat, or defraud <a swindle usually involves two dishonest people>"

and that's what I've always understood. You can't be dishonest by ignorance, self-delusion, or neglect of rigor. You can be wrong, certainly, but not dishonest.

Which is why it is a separate thing. It generally targets the argument and not so much the person. It does partly target the person though and as you have pointed out the choice of words makes it an ad hominem in nature while it cloaks itself in an attack on the argument.

But we digress. I think we mostly agree at any rate.

 

[swat4life]

Intelligence is not necessarily measured by actual brain activity.

Of course. Was this ever suggested or stated? Perhaps you're not familiar with the basics of neuroscience. If you are, you know that most people do not efficiently use the whole brain. It's quite similar to a man or a woman who mostly uses his "left" hand or his "right" hand - while the opposite hand lies limp at the side and grossly underdeveloped vis-a-vis the other side.

Whole brain development is "rather" similar to hand Ambidexterity - mental/cognitive ambidexterity if you will.

One of the advantages of whole brain usage and development is that the normal mental faculties that are woefully under-developed through standard education - <insert name of top tier university here> it's pretty much the same - gets utilized.

With more of the brain/mind being used (one could debate if they are synonymous we all know...) of course all measurements of intelligence demonstrate a noticable enhancement.

Someone actively involved in a job where the brain’s response to somatosensory stimuli are more widely distributed across the cortex on a regular basis, leads to permanent whole brain usage, i.e. active usage of all of the intellect not just SOME of it - CONSISTENTLY.

To get technical with regard to the actual technical measurement of intelligence, those with whole brain integration consistently score noticably higher on:

1) IQ Tests
2) The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking

and several other standards for measuring intelligence.
To illustrate it using a more right brained conceptualization/presentation, here's a quick little image from google:http://www.wblrd.sk.ca/curr_content/adapthandbook/learner/images/brain3.gif

In other words, when you have a job which causes actual PHYSICAL CHANGES in the make up of the brain and hemispheric connectivity which leads to long term integrative thinking, you LITERALLY BECOME MORE INTELLIGENT.

This assertion is not just a personal opinion; it's supported by research found in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences ( check ---> for anyone who's interested 12 (1991): 1105–1116.)
-
In sum, the subtle proposition I'm making here is that while scientists may think well of their type of specialized analytical work and the assumption of how intellectually rigorous it is, the fact is for the most part they are using very limited portions of their intellect due to the standard, lop-sided academic training anyone who's gone to a top tier university no doubt received.

True, many scientific jobs require, above average or even superior development of a few portions of the intellect - principally left-brained cognitive skills related to numbers, analysis and speech (well, if they aren't wearing braces, lol) - this is FAR from a fully complete usage of one's intellectual capabilities.

From my own personal experience, having been raised by scientists and having received degrees in the sciences, I found portions of my own intellect woefully less developed in relation to those portions such as creativity, unbounded imagination (i.e. imaginative exercises not constrained by linear logic), intuition, etc. essential for superior intellectual and cognitive decision making in a leadership position once I became an investor and business owner.

Unfortunately, I'm still overly dominant in the use of my left brain and actively practice exercises to advance hemispheric integrative thinking.

In any case, I'd encourage anyone interested in the practical application of these ideas to explore this topic because the benefits to this type of usage of one's intelligence are astounding - whether it's a new job you want, research funding, vastly higher financial net worth, or even enhanced moral reasoning capability - it's all there...

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Of course. Was this ever suggested or stated?

It seemed to me that you proposed TM experts as a candidate for for most intellectually rigorous 'job' based on evidence of increased neural activity.

 

[Count Iblis]

I've read that the brain evolved fast as a result of social interactions. Our ape-like ancestors lived in social groups where being slightly smarter than average gives you a huge advantage.


It turns out that being able to deceive others is the prime reason for this. Experiments with young children have shown that the children who are better at lying score higher on IQ tests and do better at school. So, quite literally, if you can fool others and get away with that, the others really are fools compared to you.


So, you would expect that the intellectually most challenging job would be one that requires you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal" Academia and other disciplines where there is an inherent purpose to the particular job being done, are potential exceptions to this rule.

 

[rootX]

I've read that the brain evolved fast as a result of social interactions. Our ape-like ancestors lived in social groups where being slightly smarter than average gives you a huge advantage.


It turns out that being able to deceive others is the prime reason for this. Experiments with young children have shown that the children who are better at lying score higher on IQ tests and do better at school. So, quite literally, if you can fool others and get away with that, the others really are fools compared to you.

Reference please

So, you would expect that the intellectually most challenging job would be one that requires you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal" Academia and other disciplines where there is an inherent purpose to the particular job being done, are potential exceptions to this rule.

I am not sure how you are coming at this conclusion

 

[zoobyshoe]

Experiments with young children have shown that the children who are better at lying score higher on IQ tests and do better at school.

Question: does it show that children who are better at lying automatically resort to lying, or employ lies more often than other children?

 

[Count Iblis]

If I remember correctly, a test was done in which children were given some toy, but that toy was hidden in some box or something. The child was asked not to peek inside. The child was then left alone in the room. After some time, the experimentor comes back, ask the child if he/she has peeked inside. The child knows that if he/she answers "no", he/she will get a reward. Unlnown to the child, all actions of the child can be observed.

The results of these test show that children who are inclined not to stick to the rule and then not confess that they've violated the rule, do better in intelligence tests.

 

[zoobyshoe]

If I remember correctly, a test was done in which children were given some toy, but that toy was hidden in some box or something. The child was asked not to peek inside. The child was then left alone in the room. After some time, the experimentor comes back, ask the child if he/she has peeked inside. The child knows that if he/she answers "no", he/she will get a reward. Unlnown to the child, all actions of the child can be observed.

The results of these test show that children who are inclined not to stick to the rule and then not confess that they've violated the rule, do better in intelligence tests.

It seems to me the conclusion to be drawn is not about "better liars", but about people with disregard for authority.

 

[junglebeast]

I don't think there's any job more mentally demanding than being a professor working towards tenure who has to juggle teaching college courses with writing grant proposals and doing state of the art research in a real field of science to publish in peer reviewed journals.

 

[rootX]

I don't think there's any job more mentally demanding than being a professor working towards tenure who has to juggle teaching college courses with writing grant proposals and doing state of the art research in a real field of science to publish in peer reviewed journals.

@general:
This thread is nonsense.
1) It is not possible to compare different jobs in different fields
2) It is not possible to come up with a criteria to find if a particular job is mentally demanding (other than providing opinions) because it largely depends on who is doing the job

 

[IP Owner]

Jobs, which require a good set of intelligence and hard work?

Architect? A collection of different sciences, arts.
Let me know what u guys think.
All the best,
IP Owner