<p>Intellectualism is love of intellectual pursuits. Intelligence is the foundation of intellectualism. Intellectualism without intelligence is pseudo-intellectualism. In common language, we call it bs-ing. Do you really need to go to an elite school to be around BS-ers? You can find them everywhere.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Are you aware of the SMPY studies going on in Johns Hopkins? The top of the cohorts are people with quantitative or verbal reasoning skills (SMPY is a misnomer) at .01% of population. You want to guess what discipline they mostly choose? Physics. Read up on it if you don’t believe me.</p>
<p>Charles Murray, in the following opinion piece, expressed his belief that theoretical physicists makes up no more than “a few people per thousand and perhaps many fewer”. So that too is common knowledge. You should like him because he has pedigree ( Harvard A.B., MIT PhD) without math. ;)</p>
<p>BTW, Murray is wrong by a country mile. My estimate is probably only 1/75000 can really do theoretical physics, the most intellectual of all human pursuits.</p>
<p>I think this should be my last post on this topic; there is nothing more for me to add.</p>
<p>Look, we each determine another person’s intelligence based on our own understanding of knowledge. As someone passionate about math, I am far more likely to judge a college based on the percent of students in engineering than an avid writer.</p>
<p>No, if your estimate is correct, then he’s not. Let’s re-read what he said:</p>
<p>
[quote]
If “intellectually gifted” is defined to mean people who can become theoretical physicists, then we’re talking about no more than a few people per thousand and perhaps many fewer.<a href=“my%20italics”>/quote</a></p>
<p>Logically, the only way he could be “wrong by a mile” would be if many more than a few people per thousand fall into this class. Your estimate, on the other hand, logically would be wrong by a mile if far fewer than 1/75,000 fell into the class, or if far more fell into the class. Murray’s statement is more nuanced. Maybe that’s because he has the humility (one of the themes of his article) to recognize how much slop is in these estimates, and in our understanding of intelligence.</p>
<p>Anyway, I wouldn’t mind if my kid rubbed shoulders with a nice, rich theoretical physicist, and married her. Famous? More trouble than it’s worth. But smart and rich? Sure, I’d probably take that deal.</p>
<p>Interesting. You sure this is not a probabilities and statistics problem (and not one of philosophy)?. If a student’s answer to 4+1 is " a number between 2 and infinity", he is philosophically correct, but I doubt any math teacher would accept it.</p>
<p>BTW, a reliable source tells me that I too, am overly optimistic. A more accurate %tage is like 1/100,000. No wonder Wall Street love those guys. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree. If the American ruling class is anything like the British version, however, they will want their pound of flesh. Like any contractual agreement, marriage in essence is still a value-for-value exchange.</p>
<p>Canuck, I wonder what’s your basis of estimate?</p>
<p>I did my own quickie back-of-the-envelope estimate and came up with a ratio closer to Murray’s “a few per K” than yours. I estimated the number of institutions that do decent physics research (~100?), the number of theoretical physics professors at each (~5?), the number of graduating students per year taught/mentored by each (~5?), and the average career length before death or senility catches up (~40 years?). Multiply these numbers together, divide by the US population (~300 mill) and I figure about 1/3,000 people “can become” a TP based on the accumulated number of people who’ve passed through some threshold training process. </p>
<p>Now, what level of performance/competence are we talking? Stephen Hawking? The average grad student at Berkeley? I dunno, that would seem to be the biggest “slop” factor of all.</p>
<p>According to the United States Department of Labor ([Physicists</a> and Astronomers](<a href=“http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos052.htm]Physicists”>http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos052.htm)), there are about 7,300 physicists or astronomers working in non-corporate and non-governmental positions. There is no provided data on how many do theoretical physics, but it is probably well under 10% of that number.</p>
<p>If we assume only those doing theoretical physics are able to do the job (which I disagree with), 99.9998 percent of the population can not do theoretical physics.</p>
<p>That’s why I did not try to estimate (or look up) the number of people who are theoretical physicists. Charles Murray referred to the number of people who can become theoretical physicists. So, I approached it as a problem of estimating the accumulated number of people who’ve passed through a threshold training process (which presumably demonstrates the basic aptitude), including many people who are not practicing.</p>
<p>Just as the number of theoretical physicists doesn’t prove how many can do it, the number of graduate students in theoretical physics doesn’t prove how many can do it.</p>
<p>Sure, the whole concept of trying to identify this class of uber-smarties is very squishy. It’s not even clear what we mean when we refer to a person who “can do” theoretical physics. So how can we presume to count “it”?</p>
<p>But I think we are losing track of the main points in contention. I don’t want to put words in Canuckguy’s mouth, but it sounded like he was suggesting something this:
Most people at “elite” colleges are frauds, or at least confused about their own goals, because … doing theoretical physics (and perhaps work in some allied fields such as mathematics) is the ultimate standard of what it means to be an intelligent person, and only an extremely small fraction of people can do it (far fewer than the number of students at these schools). Everything else is BS. Therefore, most people who claim to be seeking the company of intelligent people in elite colleges could in fact only be there for some less noble purpose, for instance to find a rich, famous marriage partner … (or something like that.)</p>
<p>In contrast to that argument (if I’m representing it accurately), the Charles Murray article he cited made a rather good contribution to what I think we are discussing (the value of an elite education). Murray has thought a lot about intelligence and citizenship. He recognizes there is some small class of uber-smarties in the world. However, those are not the people he is most concerned about. He suggests there is value in a classical, elite liberal education that challenges young people to their limits (even if those are not the limits of a Stephen Hawking). One of the most valuable lessons one can learn from it is a sense of intellectual humility, for instance the humility to admit we cannot say exactly how many intellectually worthy people exist just by estimating the number of theoretical physicists.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Intelligence should not be generalized, regardless of any articles which claim that there are correlations between the different kinds of intelligence.</p></li>
<li><p>There should be no threshold for being considered intelligent. It is better thought of as a continuum.</p></li>
<li><p>It takes a rare degree of intelligence to understand the nuances of physics, and even more intelligence to make advancements in the field of theoretical physics.</p></li>
<li><p>There are many people with a high degree of intelligence who do not do theoretical physics. </p></li>
<li><p>Some of the aforementioned people who do not do theoretical physics but possess a high degree of intelligence are capable of doing it and some are not.</p></li>
<li><p>There is probably a greater percentage of people high on this continuum at elite schools than at a given state school.</p></li>
<li><p>There is probably a smaller percentage of people on the lower end of this continuum at elite schools than at a given state school.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I am going out of town for two weeks, the real reason for closing discussion.</p>
<p>He heard it from Steven Xu (sp?), who teaches at Oregon. Xu apparently first heard it when he was a student at either Berkeley or Caltech, and came to exactly the same conclusion years later. The threshold is the ability to “do good” theoretical physics.</p>
<p>I will explain my position further when I get back, if you are still interested. Got to go.</p>
<p>I suppose the Canuckguy argument against Silverturtle’s last post would be something like this:<br>
Maybe it’s true that there is a greater distribution of latent intelligence at elite schools, but it does not matter, because the only areas where that intelligence can be expressed in a rigorous, testable way is in fields such as theoretical physics or mathematics. Everything else is BS. So, if you want serious intellectual challenges you should choose those fields, regardless of school. And in fact, you’ll get more bang for your buck at large state universities because they support more people in those areas than small elite colleges do.</p>
<p>So we get back to the question of why elite education matters. Is it really all BS (other than TP etc)? Why would it matter to have higher percentages of high-scoring students in a BS field? If it’s not BS, is it any better taught at the elite schools? etc.</p>
<p>The best answers we have so far in this discussion, in my opinion, are in the Charles Murray article. But it’s hard to understand and accept what CM has to say if (as in post #45) we insist on reducing every matter of judgment to a probability and statistics problem.</p>
<p>I found this article very interesting, but I disagree with some of its points. While it may be true that some students at elite colleges have elitist attitudes, it would be a mistake to apply this stereotype to all or even the majority of them. A stereotype is a stereotype. Period. Also, I know a number of poor students that go to top colleges because they have need-blind admissions and excellent financial aid, so I don’t really know what the author means when he says that everyone at elite institutions belongs to the same class. He may mean that wealthy students have access to the best college counseling and test prep materials, and if this is the case, he has a point.</p>
<p>I certainly agree that SAT and ACT scores only measure one type of ability/achievement, but I also understand that colleges don’t have very many ways of judging the ability of their applicants to succeed academically. Standardized tests, though imperfect and often dehumanizing, do tell colleges something about their applicants. However, I disagree with the notion that intelligence exists in some objective sense and that there is only one measure of intelligence. I have friends whose “academic intelligences” span the entire spectrum, yet I am constantly witnessing each individual’s own, unique brilliance. Many people whose grades and standardized tests scores are well below mine surpass me in many other areas. In this regard, I am opposed to the contention held by many elite colleges that people who achieve academically are somehow more interesting and have more to contribute to the world than people who do not. Indeed, I am opposed altogether to the notion that there are “smart people” and “stupid people.” It seems to me that a society’s criteria for judging intelligence is based simply on what that particular society deems necessary for fiscal success. The difficulty of judging intelligence exists even among different academic disciplines: I tend to find math easy, but, though I love literature, I often find discerning and understanding the complexities of literature quite difficult. I have two close friends who are exactly the opposite. Who is more “intelligent”? It would be impossible to say.</p>
<p>To “do good theoretical physics”, one has to make original contribution to the subject area. In other words, one must have done a dissertation in the subject, got hired by a research institution, and have a respected publishing history in peer-reviewed journals.</p>
<p>As the graphs showed, it is extremely difficult to get a teaching job in the area, let alone getting tenured. My estimate was between 1/50,000 to 1/100,000, and used 1/75,000 as a compromise.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You understand me quite well, although I would not go as far as to say everything else is BS. (I do think there are a lot of frauds hiding in many disciplines, where they do not have a tough gatekeeper like mathematics on duty). My position is simply that one does not need an “elite college” to be intellectually stimulated. Just “upgrade” your major by GRE scores and you will be in good shape. Your State flagship would be more than adequate and you can save a bundle in the process.</p>
<p>That article makes ivies sound like the devil and that somehow they are worthless. i don’t believe that ivies train students to think like machines but i do think they by nature attract certain types of human beings, and some of the kids are there just for show and don’t care about learning. but there are some who truly are and not all of them feel like they’re selling their souls. honestly those kids would feel that way at any school.</p>
<p>i do agree about the different kinds of intelligence but i don’t think the “one kind of smart” idea is fostered by the school. i think it’s the idea many close minded people carry with them when their prep schools tell them As are a sign of intelligence and that somehow their SAT score matters.</p>
<p>I think much of the article has to do with your personality and upbringing. the author is failing to take into account the backgrounds of the students and clumping them together assuming they call came from feeder and have never learned how to really think. it’s true some have not, but some have and i think this is why ivies go after the “hooks” so hard. they want kids with hardships. they want kids who know what i means to want for something and who have learned how to think so when they get to their colleges they will take full advantage of what they have earned and teach others in the process.</p>
<p>the way i see it you can either take the “ivy advantage” and ride on through life in a blissful bubble and never know what it means to be excited by learning</p>
<p>or you can use the school to advance and think outside the box and continue to work hard and strive to be even better.</p>