Autopsies on prominent humans have enabled the investigation of human intelligence relative to brain size. Though some highly intelligent people were found to have possessed significantly larger than average brains, there were many who did not. Gauss, regarded by historians of mathematics as one of the three greatest mathematicians of all time, weighed in at …
Yes, value can be created without people. For example, nature produces fruit trees and vegetables as well as fish that people harvest for food. These are intrinsic values that enable our survival and can be produced without human intervention. Automation generally creates value and that is why we have access to many more goods than …
You raise an important question. This week, AP News reported that “CEOs made nearly 200 times what their workers got paid last year.” In an extreme case, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple made just over $60M last year which is about 672 times the median annual salary of an Apple employee. Is this fair? Many …
My answer would depend upon the person asking the question. If I felt the person were fragile and insecure, I might answer, “You could be right, we’re all intelligent in different ways.” There’s no point in hurting someone who is lashing out because they feel inferior. In most cases, I would just smile, because time …
This is an interesting question, and one that I’ve been exploring for the past three years. We do know from the research of Bouchard and others* on the studies of identical twins separated at birth that a significant part of our intelligence is determined by our genetics. We also know that intellectual stimulation and early …
Is intelligence determined by genetics or early exposure to learning? Read More »
This answer depends upon what we mean by “intelligence”. We humans have used our ingenuity to harness the electronic properties of inorganic elements like silicon, to simulate human intelligence. Computer chips, operating on the simple rules of logic that humans implement in the deductive process, are able to execute mathematical algorithms much faster than we …
Your brain grew rapidly throughout early childhood, when the neuron connections or “synapses” were generated at a prodigious rate and then pruned to adapt to the environment–deleting the synapses that were stimulated the least and increasing those that supported cognitive demands. The next dramatic phase in your brain growth occurred just before puberty when a …
There is no absolute standard for measuring a person’s worth because there is no universal agreement on what constitutes “worth.” Furthermore, a person’s worth is assessed differently by different people and different generations. Worth as an absolute measure If we grow up in a family that values education, we tend to adopt those values and …
How is a person’s worth measured? Can anyone truly have a quantifiable value? Read More »
Sports psychologists are recognizing that excellence in sports is more mental than physical. In his book Empowerment: The Competitive Edge in Sports, Business & Life, psychologist Gene Landrum profiled 13 of the world’s greatest athletes, from Jim Thorpe to Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. In his in-depth study of the personality and cerebral qualities that led …
We have some fairly precise information about the percentage of people who have abnormal intelligence as measured by IQ, but much less information about the percentages of people of various personality types. The normal curve, that displays the distribution of IQ, across the human population, shows the IQ percentiles from 0 to an upper bound …
What is the percentage of people who have abnormal intelligence or personality type? Read More »
