[QUOTE="yoshi-lnex"][QUOTE="Blood-Scribe"][QUOTE="yoshi-lnex"][QUOTE="MattUD1"]How shall we decide who is intelligent or unintelligent?Blood-Scribe
IQ testsAnd IQ tests are the final word on something that hasn't even been properly defined and varies by definition from person to person?
sure, it might take some tweaking if it were to become very very important, but yes. There's already a clear relationship shown between iq test score and how succesful in life a person is as far as money, career path, influence and net output of work.It's kind of hard to take such a statement seriously considering the fact that it's nothing more than a test that only determines certain attributes of a person, and it's completely conditional and there are countless factors that can come into play when determining a persons performance. In many cases, an IQ test seems to lean more towards problem solving and mathematical problems, which basically only measures one dimension of a person's "intelligence".
The problem with how you go about defining intelligence is the fact that there's a lot of different facets to it, and it's not something that can be easily assessed. You can have people that are supposedly intelligent when it comes to math and science, but are out-right horrible when it comes to reading skills, deductive reasoning, history, or whatever. If we're going to bother trying to measure something that's essentially impossible to measure, the least we could do is not do it in such a one-dimensional and easily manipulated format. That's something that a test couldn't hope to achieve.
There's also the problem with mental conditioning that would come when the subject is taking the test. Some people get anxious and unstable when they've got pressure riding on them to take tests, which can result in them making simple mistakes that they wouldn't normally make if they were just answering a simply question posed to them by a person, rather than a test. If you've got your life riding on the line between a flimsily defined and tested standard of "intelligence", and you just so happen to have tipped the scale to an opposing favor simply because you didn't eat that last bit of eggs in the morning to keep your mind well nourished, well then that's a damn shame, and all the more reason to show that a test isn't going to cut it.
But even if such a standard of intelligence were to exist that were somehow agreeable with everyone for all given circumstances, how in the hell would just killing the "stupid" people make things better? We need a diverse environment in order to get a good look from all perspectives. We need seemingly idiotic people so that they can be used for certain tasks that only they could achieve. Some people end up being pawned by others, and the people pulling the strings end up reaping the benefits. If the idiot didn't exist in that situation, you'd end up with a scammer that doesn't end up making his mark. It's sad to think about, but that's how the world works. It's all a system of checks and balances.
Some people just aren't ambitious enough to pursue interests that others tell them they should. I'm sure there's plenty of people who have made high marks on the supposedly reputable IQ tests that aren't as successful as you seem to imply just because of a relationship between IQ and success (which, by the way, you have not shown me). The funny thing about it, is that success is also something that cannot be measured, either. Success is based on how a person deems themselves to be. You can have a billionaire who thinks that he had a horrible year because he didn't meet a quota that was previously reached, and he thus deems himself, unsuccessful. Then you can have a taxi cab driver who just immigrated the the U.S., and deems his goal of at least being able to live, a success, and they can be content with that.
So what I don't get is how you can expect someone to be competent enough to do as well as they should on a test if their life is on the line. I'd get pretty flustered and unstable if I were told that if I don't pass some bull**** test, I don't get to have the right to live my life the way I see fit. I also don't get how you could say that the world would be a better place if we just killed stupid people, since if we bothered to do that, the standards that we would apply to people who are supposedly stupid would constantly change. We'd kill the stupidest person, and then we'd have to change our standards for who is the stupidest person, because the original would be dead, and then you'd deem the next stupidest person to be the stupidest person in existence. So at some point, you'd end up killing people who are supposedly of the highest intelligence, because by the standards of that situation, they'd be slightly less intelligent than the most intelligent person, but by a small enough margin to the point where they can be considered the stupidest because there's no one stupider than them.
So at face value, you'd think killing "stupid" people would be a great idea, but once you actually consider the implications of a given situation, you realize how big of a load of crap it is. Like I've been saying before, stupidity and intelligence are completely relative, defined differently from person to person, and ultimately, incapable of being measured.
Good point. I know I wouldn't do well at an IQ test if my life depended on it.
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