<p>I believe the US army uses The “Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery” or the ASVAB. I think they did studies as far back as the 1940 and found enlisted men with low aptitude a danger to everybody, including themselves. </p>
<p>No, we dont need to all take the SAT, any other proxy for an intelligence test would do. I am just suggesting is that picking a ruling class based on intelligence is more effective and more efficient and that is all. We know even the NFL uses the Wonderlic.:)</p>
<p>2)LoremIpsum-some parents send kids to college precisely for that reason.;)</p>
<p>I will write a separate post for Beliavsky. I think his post is really important </p>
<p>Your analysis is clean and elegant but dead wrong. I am saying this with no malice intended, but are you a STEM major by any chance? Applying a linear sequential mode of thinking on a nonlinear problem is a mistake I have seen STEM majors made over and over again. I dont know if they are attracted to STEM because they think that way, or studying STEM make them that way.</p>
<p>Empirical studies have shown heritability of IQ ranges from .5 to .8 or thereabout. (Of course, the politically correct answer is .5, or half.) Then there is the phenomenon of regression, the influence of within-family and between-family environments etc. etc.</p>
<p>We know the average difference in IQ among children with the same biological parents is 12 points. The difference between unrelated adult is only 17 points. I am sure it is obvious to you by now how far off you are.:)</p>
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<p>You are partly correct of course. I certainly do not know as much about the American system as you folks do. It is, however, important to remember that we are just talking in the abstract. Frankly, I think we here in Canada need an overhaul more than you do.</p>
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<p>I hope this is the last time I have to say this. The attack began with post 329 (stage one). I escalated it to stage two after waiting 2 days for others to intervene but to no avail. De-escalation began almost immediately an hour later with post 345. Observe how the mode of communication changes from 329 to 345, from the same poster. Interesting, isnt it?</p>
<p>You are the second poster to have mistaken the solution for the problem.</p>
<p>This all goes to show the importance of a well-rounded education, something I have been advocating but everybody seems to think I have some ulterior motive for some reason.</p>
<p>What are you talking about? Who do you define as the “ruling class?” Certainly, U.S. Presidents must be included in that group, at its pinnacle. Other than the Bushes and Kennedy, you would have to stretch to claim that any of our Presidents in modern history achieved their status due to family name, wealth, or connections, which is what you seem to be claiming are the basis for achieving entry into America’s elite.</p>
<p>I don’t understand what you are arguing anymore, other than that you advocate IQ tests for all. I cannot think of a worse way to live than as defined by one’s IQ test results. Talk about being <em>born into</em> the “ruling class.”</p>
<p>I agree. The quote “if there is no ruling class, there would be no need for merit in motion” doesn’t make any sense. There doesn’t need to be a ruling class for the idea that it’s a good thing to identify and give a helping hand to otherwise-overlooked-diamonds-in-the-rough. </p>
<p>Who do you think are the “ruling class”? Senators / Reps? Hedge fund managers? Entrepreneurs?</p>
<p>I would like to explore those two statements a little more. My older son was tested privately at age 5.5 by a psychologist who specialized in the highly gifted. She did tell us that siblings, the vast majority of the time, test within one standard deviation of one another, regardless of how far above the mean they are. So the 12 point average you suggest sounds about right, based on the psychologist’s comments and our family’s results.</p>
<p>However, both my sons test 50+ points above the mean, a far cry above the 17-point difference you mention in statement 2. At the same time, such scores are fairly rare, occurring only once in every 3,000-10,000 individuals (if you believe the bell curve distribution). So Statement 2 could be an artifact of two possible scenarios: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>The same family distribution also occurs at the extreme lower end of the bell curve tail, reducing the overall average spread.</p></li>
<li><p>The average spread is highly biased due to its weighting – the fact that the vast majority (two-thirds, was it?) of the population is plus or minus 15 points from the mean of 100. A 5-point difference over a 30-point range (plus or minus 1 SD) is thus far more significant than a 5-point difference over a 120-point range (plus or minus 4 SDs).</p></li>
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<p>The current ruling class already has the necessary resources to hire the best brains available as advisors and technicians. Wall Street is certainly eager to “buy” the best quants from the tippy-top colleges to write ever-new algorithms that shave micro-seconds off their trading software. And accounting majors who can discover new loopholes to save on personal or corporate taxes are also in high demand.</p>
<p>But that doesn’t make them a “ruling class.” It just makes them highly paid people. I swear, the amount of bowing and scraping to WS quant jocks on this board is so obscene and out of touch w reality.</p>
<p>Of course that’s true. I merely wished to point out that the ruling class already has the benefit of some of the finest minds available. Presumably, the advice these fine minds provide is already being acted upon to some degree, otherwise those advisors would either be fired or quit in frustration and go work elsewhere. </p>
<p>Thus, one has to wonder how much improvement would result if intellectual ability became the benchmark for entering the ranks of the elite.</p>
<p>^^^
Pretty much. Aren’t about 80% of the threads on here about this topic?</p>
<p>The basic difference is that this thread is dominated by a guy who thinks you need to be as smart as Gauss to run for office, and the other thread has a poster who claims to be as smart as Gauss.</p>
<p>And we’ve forgotten all those misguided souls who are studying English, sociology and anthropology, among other major choices smacked down by Kiplinger’s.</p>
<p>My thread got hijacked by a segue topic on IQ.</p>
<p>IQ is important, but it isn’t everything. I work with lots of science PhD’s who are book smart, but have the people skills and business sense of a grapefruit.</p>
<p>My apologies to GMT for being partly responsible for the hijack. It all started innocently enough, asking a fellow poster why she or her company chooses to select candidates from the elites and not by subjects and or test scores. Now I can see questioning the status quo on CC is a no-no, and rule breakers will be treated as infidels on the run. I am deeply disappointed by many of the responses.</p>
<p>Bay and PG-Merit in motion was invented to keep the number of Jews in check. The definition of merit before the Jewish invasion was the same around the English speaking world. The elites, as handmaidens to power, did what they thought would keep their clients happy. Putting a new spin on merit is a small price to pay.</p>
<p>I never said anywhere that the ruling class is a closed system. Indeed, to maintain power and rigor, they need the injection of new blood to maintain the status quo.</p>
<p>Instead of having I talk about the ruling class and how they have distorted American value, why not read what the Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz has to say? </p>
<p>LoremIpsum-My problem is not with the rich hiring the fine minds, but that they hire the fine minds to steal from the non-rich. See Stiglitz above. I simply dont want a plutocracy to destroy our way of life. That somehow makes me a bad person on CC.</p>
<p>I think both 1 and 2 are in operation. I also suspect the right tail is getting fatter as well. If You were to draw a normal distribution curve for a kids with a score of 50+ above the norm, a small %tage of them must have a sibling with a score of 50+ above the norm. Does that make sense? In other words, if black swans exist, your case cannot be that rare.:)</p>
<p>The stereotype about socially inept PhDs makes me want to reach for my water pistol. People who lack people skills are found at every level of the intelligence continuum. Different types of people choose different educational and employment paths. Some are more lucrative than others. In some, it’s easy to find employment. In some, it’s not. Different jobs require you to have different types and levels of intelligence. Different jobs require you to have different personal skills. So what? If you are looking to enter the job market today, you should be strategic and realistic. But some things haven’t changed; you should still look for the career path that excites your interests and best suits your abilities and ambitions.</p>
<p>Canuckguy- we all know about the history of Jews in admission to HYP. Not new news. </p>
<p>However, there is a huge difference between policies that were deliberately chosen to keep a group out, and policies that are meant to encourage diversity. No one at any top uni is actively “seeking to keep Asians out” in any way that is comparable to the “keep the Jews out because they are socially undesirable.”. So really, cut it out.</p>
<p>What we really need is some brainy quant type to research the gravitational effect of this AA/Asian admission debate on CC discussions. It’s like a black hole that ends up sucking every thread remotely in its topical vicinity into the vortex.</p>
<p>1)PG- The Jews were never kept out. Their numbers, as a percentage of population in the elites were high when merit in motion was implemented to bring that %tage down. It was numerus clausus, not numerus null.</p>
<p>AA was sold as a method of redressing past oppression and injustice. The Supreme Court ruled against that rationale, but left a door open for diversity by claiming it a state interest. That was when everybody jumped on the diversity bandwagon, not before.</p>
<p>I haven’t read the whole thread. But in response to Canuckguy’s latest post: yes, individual Jews were indeed kept out. I personally know an older woman whose acceptance to Pembroke (Brown) was rescinded the summer before what would have been her freshman year after she requested a Jewish roommate – with the reason explicitly given that she was Jewish (which they hadn’t realized before).</p>
Then there is the phenomenon of regression, the influence of within-family and between-family environments etc. etc.</p>