I’m pretty sure that that’s a failure of education, not of intelligence. Education has the best effect at a young age, when habits are formed; it’s a lot harder to educate someone later, unless that someone really wants to be educated.
Looking at that specific example, I can see why someone who is lazy, and unfamiliar with alphabetic sorting, might not want to try it. Mainly, that step one would be to figure out this whole ‘alphabet’ thing and memorise what order things go in (a significant neural effort, done now; somewhat easier if already literate, but note that ‘literate’ does not necessarily mean ‘familiar with the order of the alphabet’); step two would be to sort in alphabetical order everything that’s already in the office (a significant physical effort, done now); step three would be to actually bother to put new things in order instead of just toss them in a random drawer (an ongoing effort).
So much easier to just pretend to understand less than one does (admittedly, it does mean a bit more time searching for a piece of paper when someone asks, but that’s a minor task, and won’t have to be done immediately in any case).
You can get some benefit even without learning the order of the alphabet. If you divide things to groups by their first letter, even if the groups are sorted randomly, and the things in one group are sorted randomly, the search time should be at least 10 times shorter.
As a bonus, you can switch to this system gradually. Create empty groups for each first letter, and consider everything else as an “unsorted” group. When searching, first look in the group with given letter, then in the “unsorted” group. When finished, always put the thing into the group starting with that letter. Your system will sort gradually.
I’m pretty sure that that’s a failure of education, not of intelligence.
By this you mean that you think P(Can’t understand sorting | low education, moderate intelligence)>P(Can’t understand sorting | moderate education, low intelligence)?
If you had said “this might be the result of low energy,” then I would have agreed that’s a likely partial explanation, as you argued for that fairly well and it fits the rigors of a tropical climate. But I’m concerned that you’re conflating education and energy.
No, I mean that I think that P(low education|group of humans who can’t understand sorting)>P(low intelligence|group of humans who can’t understand sorting).
The ‘group’ part is important; while education is often constant or near-constant among a community, intelligence is often not; thus, something that is true for an entire group is more likely a result of education than intelligence. Similarly, ‘humans’ is an important word, because I know that many humans are capable of sorting, and thus there is no species barrier.
Having said that, “low energy” is almost certainly also a contributing factor.
I’m pretty sure that that’s a failure of education, not of intelligence. Education has the best effect at a young age, when habits are formed; it’s a lot harder to educate someone later, unless that someone really wants to be educated.
Looking at that specific example, I can see why someone who is lazy, and unfamiliar with alphabetic sorting, might not want to try it. Mainly, that step one would be to figure out this whole ‘alphabet’ thing and memorise what order things go in (a significant neural effort, done now; somewhat easier if already literate, but note that ‘literate’ does not necessarily mean ‘familiar with the order of the alphabet’); step two would be to sort in alphabetical order everything that’s already in the office (a significant physical effort, done now); step three would be to actually bother to put new things in order instead of just toss them in a random drawer (an ongoing effort).
So much easier to just pretend to understand less than one does (admittedly, it does mean a bit more time searching for a piece of paper when someone asks, but that’s a minor task, and won’t have to be done immediately in any case).
You can get some benefit even without learning the order of the alphabet. If you divide things to groups by their first letter, even if the groups are sorted randomly, and the things in one group are sorted randomly, the search time should be at least 10 times shorter.
As a bonus, you can switch to this system gradually. Create empty groups for each first letter, and consider everything else as an “unsorted” group. When searching, first look in the group with given letter, then in the “unsorted” group. When finished, always put the thing into the group starting with that letter. Your system will sort gradually.
You are correct. This methodology will work, as long as we assume that no-one will put a piece of paper in the wrong (apparently sorted) file.
Was it ever explained to the Haitians in this way, though?
By this you mean that you think P(Can’t understand sorting | low education, moderate intelligence)>P(Can’t understand sorting | moderate education, low intelligence)?
If you had said “this might be the result of low energy,” then I would have agreed that’s a likely partial explanation, as you argued for that fairly well and it fits the rigors of a tropical climate. But I’m concerned that you’re conflating education and energy.
No, I mean that I think that P(low education|group of humans who can’t understand sorting)>P(low intelligence|group of humans who can’t understand sorting).
The ‘group’ part is important; while education is often constant or near-constant among a community, intelligence is often not; thus, something that is true for an entire group is more likely a result of education than intelligence. Similarly, ‘humans’ is an important word, because I know that many humans are capable of sorting, and thus there is no species barrier.
Having said that, “low energy” is almost certainly also a contributing factor.