Showing posts with label IQ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IQ. Show all posts

Tuesday, 13 January 2026

Post No. 3,368 - Some interesting reading/viewing

I found these interesting and/or useful, so I am posting them in case anyone else also does: 


And also: 

  • “Renee Good was murdered and that needs to be acknowledged”   by Richard J Murphy   https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/01/09/renee-good-was-murdered-and-that-needs-to-be-acknowledged/   and   “What Was Jonathan Ross Thinking When He Killed Renee Good? [Psychiatrist's Shocking Insight]”   by Dr Russell Razzaque   https://youtu.be/3tR3jPRYEsQ   “In this video, I take a close look at Jonathan Ross's mind at the moment he killed Renee Good. A psychiatrist explains what may have been going through his mind during this tragic event. The media missed some important details, but this video gives you a deeper understanding of Jonathan Ross's thoughts at the time of the crime.”   
  • “Octavia Butler on N_z_ Germany and Resistance Today”   by Tad Stoermer, Resistance Historian   https://youtu.be/Le-DiO4CwXg   “When Octavia Butler was writing “Parable of the Talents” — a novel set in 2032 about a far-right regime intent on making America great again — she needed to understand how fascism takes hold in a democratic society. So she went back to N_oz_ Germany.   But she didn’t study the N_oz_s. She studied the Germans.   As she wrote in 2000: “I was less interested in the fighting of World War II than in the prewar story of how Germany changed as it suffered social and economic problems, as H_tol_r and others bludgeoned and seduced, as the Germans responded to the bludgeoning and the seduction and to their own history, and as H_tol_r used that history to manipulate them.”   What she found was that resistance failed in Germany not because Germans were uniquely evil, but because they were trapped inside stories about themselves that made H_tol_r’s rise seem legitimate — even inevitable. The lies they already believed about their identity and their history made it almost impossible to see what was happening until it was too late.   “I wanted to understand the lies that people have to tell themselves when they either quietly or joyfully watch their neighbours maimed, spirited away, killed.”   Butler called her Parable books “cautionary tales”. When a student asked her what the answer was, she said: “There’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers — at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”   And on studying history: “The past is filled with repeating cycles of strength and weakness, wisdom and stupidity, empire and ashes. To study history is to study humanity. And to try to foretell the future without studying history is like trying to learn to read without bothering to learn the alphabet.”   We are trying today to read fascism, authoritarianism, defiance, and resistance. So we need to learn the alphabet.”   Read her full essay:   “A Few Rules For Predicting The Future by Octavia E. Butler”   https://commongood.cc/reader/a-few-rules-for-predicting-the-future-by-octavia-e-butler/   
  • “Where Are the Slave Ships? Exposing the Dangerous Lies of Pseudohistory”   by Tad Stoermer, Resistance Historian   https://youtu.be/BjVUSbwA-i8   “The question “Where are the ships?” is making rounds, and it’s not as innocent as it sounds. It’s a calculated tactic used by denialists like Dane Calloway to distort the history of the transatlantic slave trade, erase its victims, and sow chaos for clicks.   In this video, we take the pseudohistory head-on:   (1) Highlighting the overwhelming evidence, from SlaveVoyages.org to archaeological finds like the Clotilda;   (2) Explaining why no one should fall for the dangerous grift of “just asking questions”;   (3) Showing why honest history, grounded in rigorous research and evidence, is a shield against misinformation in this post-truth era.   We owe it to the tens of millions of enslaved people and their descendants to protect and preserve the truth. Let’s stop the noise and focus on what matters.”   
  • “The Difference Between a Loyal Opposition and Resistance | A Dispatch from the High Castle”   by Tad Stoermer, Resistance Historian   https://youtu.be/eTZW-kSCV0s   “What’s the difference between a loyal opposition and resistance? And why does it matter right now?   A loyal opposition accepts the legitimacy of the system it works within. More than that - it reinforces it. Every time it plays by the rules, it signals that the rules are legitimate. Every time it treats its opponents as normal political adversaries, it confirms that normal politics is still happening. Every time it channels your energy into approved outlets - vote, donate, call your representative, wait for the next election - it tells you and everyone watching that those outlets still work.   That’s not a criticism. That’s what loyal oppositions do. They’re how normal politics functions. They provide accountability, they offer alternatives, they keep the system honest. When the system is basically sound, a loyal opposition is exactly what you want.   But resistance is something different. Resistance is what happens when the rules stop working - when legal channels fail, when institutions get captured, when the system itself becomes the source of abuse. Resistance doesn’t reinforce the structure. It operates against it.   In this video, I refer to the resistance dynamics at play in American history - from the New England patriots who spent a decade petitioning before Lexington, to the antislavery movement that worked within legal channels for seventy years before building the Underground Railroad.   The Democratic Party is a loyal opposition. That’s not cynicism - that's what the institution is designed to be. If you think the system is still basically sound and just needs better people running it, that might be enough for you.   But if you’re looking to them for resistance, you might be waiting a long time. And worse - you're going to be learning the wrong lessons about what resistance actually requires.   Confusing a loyal opposition with resistance isn’t just a mistake. It's fatal to any meaningful opposition.”   and    “Democrats say they can’t do anything because Republicans control Congress. Is that true?”   by Tad Stoermer, Resistance Historian   https://youtu.be/1PwmiG7ABl0   
  • “Who's Afraid of Thomas Paine? Almost everyone, it turns out”   by Tad Stoermer, Resistance Historian   https://youtu.be/zfwsSZG1mw0   “Common Sense turned 250 this month. Everyone’s claiming him — John Roberts in his year-end judiciary report, Jamie Raskin pushing for a memorial on the Mall, Heritage Foundation posting about his “libertarian” vision.   None of them are giving you the real Paine. No one in power ever has.   Ten years ago I found a letter in an archive that changed how I came to understand how this worked. John Page, head of Virginia’s Committee of Safety and Jefferson’s best friend, described getting handed Common Sense on a Williamsburg street in January 1776. He took it (probably to the Raleigh Tavern) and edited it for Virginia readers. Cut the opening sections where Paine attacks inherited authority itself — where monarchy is sin, heredity is absurd, and legitimacy flows from reason and character rather than birth or accumulation. Kept the parts that made Britain look dangerous and expensive.   Why cut that? Because Paine’s logic didn’t stop at kings. If inherited advantage doesn’t confer the right to rule, the questions keep going. Virginia's enslaver patriots had built an entire ideological architecture to make bondage fit inside a philosophy of liberty. Paine’s reasoning threatened to unravel it. So Page made sure ordinary Virginians got the argument for secession without the reasoning that might make them ask what else it applied to.   They’ve been filtering him ever since. Used him when useful — Washington had The American Crisis read to troops before Trenton. Discarded him when not — he died a pariah in 1809, six people at his funeral.   Roberts quotes Paine while building legal architecture for executive immunity. Raskin wants a statue, which turns Paine into a destination, a closed question. Both are doing what Page did: picking which parts serve their purposes.   Franklin reportedly said, “Where liberty is, there is my country.” Paine answered: “Where liberty is not, there is mine.”   That’s not a quotation for a plaque. It’s a test.”   

 


Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider: 

  • there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;  
  • I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.

 

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Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).

#PsychicABetterWorld   and  

Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here, and Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear  

Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2026     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-ShareAlike basis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/  




 

Tuesday, 30 November 2010

Post No. 179 - IQ and car speed cameras

I've never been much of a believer in "Intelligence Quotient" as having much significance for anything in particular - although, mind you, mine is, I have been told quite high [1]. I mention that to show that I am not downplaying IQ out of bitterness or anything similar: it's just that I'm in a good position, I consider, to argue the point that IQ is overrated exactly because I have an IQ that is well above the average.

I have NO desire to be part of Mensa, incidentally: the people I saw applying when I was at Uni put me off because of their arrogant attitudes. I suppose they, as is the case with most people, wanted to feel good about themselves. In their case, what they excelled at was stuff measured by IQ, so ... they used that to feel good, and then they made the mistake of trying to feel even better by belittling others who had skills in other areas.

You never acheive anything of merit or genuine value when it is founded on tearing down or attacking something that is different: treasure and appreciate the good things you have, but do so because they are good, not because they are a means to lord it over others.

I consider Emotional Quotient to have greater relevance to most people's lives, for instance. One of the advantages of EQ, or Emotional Intelligence as it is sometimes called, is that it forces those who may over-intellectualise, to the exclusion of all else (and I am writing on the basis of, in part, 30 years of engineering, working, at times, under some truly appalling, dreadful managers who should never have been allowed to manage a pencil case, let alone a human being) to become aware that human interactions are important.

However, getting back to what I wanted to cover, on SBS television last night was a programme examining the alleged link between racism and intelligence. After some really aggravating views claiming that a link was found, the best objective evidence was that things like educative support and opportunities (the sort of things missing in situations of gross poverty) were what made the difference in terms of IQ. The best comment, to me, was along the lines that what IQ measures is really extent of adaptation to modernity.

I can SO relate to that. There are people I've known who have low IQ, but their skills in non-academic areas such as living rough or going bush are phenomenal. For instance, there was an Torres Strait Islander at the high school I went to in Mackay who was, to me, very clearly intelligent, but his focus was not on academic acheivement: his interest was elsewhere in life [2].

I tried to find a link to the documentary, but the SBS website defeated me ... :(

I have been thinking about this issue of adapation to environments: I think focusing too much on an intellectual situation can lead to some downright stupid behaviour elsewhere. I'm particularly thinking of some pedestrians I've seen in the last few days doing some incredibly stupid things - one man, in the city, ran across cars that had just started moving because their traffic lights had turned green. If the cars hadn't braked, he would have been hit.

This situation probably involves a whole host of other things, such as focus on the music he was listening to, focus on trying to get fit (he was clearly running some distance at some speed, and probably didn't want to stop the flow of that), not to mention to tendency I've noticed in many people to put the great God *bow, scrape, worship* PERSONAL CONVENIENCE *bow, scrape, worship* ahead of everything else, such as waiting for traffic lights. At he time, I remember thinking this person coukld quite possibly be someone who is quite intelligent in their workplace, and yet they are so incredibly dumb out on the street.

And talking of streets and traffic leads me to my final point, a nice little story from Sweden about a speed camera where (a) speeding motorists were fined, and (b) the fine money went into a lottery and those obeying the speed limit had a chance to win some of it. I like that - think i might suggest it to our new State government ...

Love, light, hugs and blessings

Gnwmythr

Notes:
  1. When my family moved from Victoria to Queensland in the early 70s, one of the things the new school system made me do was an IQ test - Goddess knows why. Anyway, after completing the test, I wasn't sure whether I was allowed to move or not until I saw someone else deleiver their completed test paper, so I did (and then found out that time to complete this was assessed! I had asked, but the supervisor must have misunderstood my question, as he said "take as long as you want"). Anyway, after that, I wasn't told my actual IQ (apparently the policy of the Department), but I was given a [percentage bracket, and it was quite high ... So that statment actually does have some objective foundation; it is not a case of being arrogant.
  2. I remember this kid because I actually offered to help him with his homework if he ever got stuck. The offer didn't lead to anything in the end.

This post's photo is yet to be posted.

Tags: IQ, indigenous, school, about me, attitudes, arrogance, irresponsibility, safety,

First published: Tysdagr 30th November, 2010

Last edited: Tysdagr 30th November, 2010