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On December 14, 2021, Ted Kaczynski a.k.a., the Unabomber, was transferred from his cell in a maximum security federal prison in Colorado to the U.S. Bureau of Prison’s FMC Butner medical center in North Carolina after serving almost a quarter century behind bars. After pleading guilty to planting home-made bombs that killed three people and …
In my previous post, I presented the famous Monty Hall Dilemma that sparked a maelstrom of controversy in 1990 and beyond. In that post, I presented three of the emotional responses from Ph.D.’s who declared Marilyn’s answer was wrong. There were many more vitriolic responses from mathematicians (see Intelligence, IQ & Perception pp. 220-224) However, …
In spite of our confidence in our intuition, we are often fooled by the gap between our senses and reality. This was evident in the counterintuitive birthday problem that we posted a few days ago. Another of these famous counterintuitive problems, known as the Monty Hall Dilemma, has created a lot of controversy and sometimes …
Sometimes the intuitive sense is so compelling that we have trouble accepting truth–even in the face of absolute proof. The celebrated coincident birthday problem is an excellent example of counterintuitive problem that creates cognitive dissonance. Coincident Birthday Problem: What is the probability that in a randomly chosen group of 24 people, there are at least …
On December 26, 2021, E. O. Wilson, described as “one of the towering intellects of our time,” passed away at the age of 92. He was a research professor emeritus in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, specializing in myrmecology, the study of ants. In 1990, he was awarded the prestigious …
One of the many hotly-debated topics that surfaces on the internet from time to time is the question, “Who was the most intelligent of the 46 U.S. Presidents from George Washington to Joe Biden?” Was it Thomas Jefferson, as suggested by John F. Kennedy? Or was it John Quincy Adams, or Kennedy, himself? Maybe it …
Who was the Most Intelligent President in US History? Read More »
If you’re reading this post under a cloud of guilt for overimbibing, while welcoming the New Year, you may take heart. What moralists would call profligate behavior, may not be as injurious as these teetotalers would have you believe. For example, the relationship between the consumption of wine and potential health benefits was investigated in …
When I was a child, my friends had discovered a way to discredit any member of our group; we pointed an accusing finger and announced, “He has cooties!” No one seemed to know exactly what cooties were, but it was enough to exclude them from the group, and banish them in disgrace. As personal hygiene …
This question was posted recently on Quora at: https://intelligenceandiq.quora.com Before answering, I wish to remind you that although IQ is the best measure of intelligence that we have, it’s not perfect. Some people who have taken IQ tests on different occasions and under professional supervision have obtained significantly different scores on those occasions. Performance on an …
In the intellectual stratosphere, there live people who dedicate their lives working on arcane problems that typically have no obvious application. Like the great mountain climbers, they tackle a problem because it’s there. While many high IQ people seek careers that bring monetary rewards, some of the most brilliant are captured by the desire to …
