Friday, August 13, 2004

About IQ, again

I'd always wondered how many of the people who say "IQ does not matter at all" or "heredity has nothing to do with IQ" really believe it. Somebody (Daniel Mocsny?) has once suggested an experiment: if a person is faced with a heart surgery and has a choice of surgeons with the IQ of two standard deviations below normal and two standard deviations above normal, how many of the IQ-nonbelievers would choose a low-IQ surgeon and how many would have a crisis of faith? I'd like to add: if a person needed donor sperm or a donor egg, for many would willingly choose an egg or sperm of a donor with low IQ?

Incidentally, the stupidest person I have met in my life is a mother of two very smart children. It happens. Maybe she inherited some particularly unfortunate combination of genes. Maybe something happened to her, too little oxygen at birth or something like that. I'd still choose a smart donor's genetic material over a stupid one's. Not that I have any use for any genetic material, of course.

I wanted to write about the Bell Curve, but Tommi read my mind and beat me to it.


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