Gentlemen—Let me propose that the heart of serious intellectual achievement is synthesis, creativity, simplicity.
These are factors that actually increase with age and are not “IQ” or “g” driven. In fact I believe Edward de Bono argued that creativity drops at IQ 125 or so: maybe because people begin to fall into an “expert trap,” where they have to maintain their previous work and expert status more than anything else.
Creativity need not decline with age at all—if you can avoid common habit errors.
My objection to Vassar is just that all these “tests” are highly flawed and biased—they consistently disfavor certain people and favor others. They just do, sorry, and this alone invalidates them or at least diminishes their usefulness.
My other comment to you all has to do with Feynman. I once asked another member of the Project, who is a famous emeritus experimentalist, about him. He told me that what distinguished Feynman was his wit and curiosity about things that others didn’t think were “on the critical path,” so to speak. Wit and curiosity are completely untestable, but if you look at real achievers I believe you’ll find these qualities extremely important.
The courage to appear silly to avoid the expert trap—wit—careful avoidance of habit error—constant search for bias—doubting intuitions—deliberately slowing down to allow more time for divergent thought esp. if you are overclocked—synthesis—simplicity—tenacity—the person with these 9 qualities will be a thinker for the ages.
Gentlemen—Let me propose that the heart of serious intellectual achievement is synthesis, creativity, simplicity.
These are factors that actually increase with age and are not “IQ” or “g” driven. In fact I believe Edward de Bono argued that creativity drops at IQ 125 or so: maybe because people begin to fall into an “expert trap,” where they have to maintain their previous work and expert status more than anything else.
Creativity need not decline with age at all—if you can avoid common habit errors.
My objection to Vassar is just that all these “tests” are highly flawed and biased—they consistently disfavor certain people and favor others. They just do, sorry, and this alone invalidates them or at least diminishes their usefulness.
My other comment to you all has to do with Feynman. I once asked another member of the Project, who is a famous emeritus experimentalist, about him. He told me that what distinguished Feynman was his wit and curiosity about things that others didn’t think were “on the critical path,” so to speak. Wit and curiosity are completely untestable, but if you look at real achievers I believe you’ll find these qualities extremely important.
The courage to appear silly to avoid the expert trap—wit—careful avoidance of habit error—constant search for bias—doubting intuitions—deliberately slowing down to allow more time for divergent thought esp. if you are overclocked—synthesis—simplicity—tenacity—the person with these 9 qualities will be a thinker for the ages.
Why make the assumption at all, and much less so blatantly, that women are not reading your messages or posting on this site?