The average IQ of the people of this country is 100. That is no coincidence. The IQ rating is designed around the premise that 'average' gets a score of 100, above average gets more and below average gets less. if they had set the average to 'zero', half the population would have a negative IQ which wouldn't be fair. An IQ of 80 is a perfectly functional human. Okay, they won't be likely to write the next great novel or rise to the rank of professor, but they will not need to be looked after. They can run their own lives perfectly well.
The IQ test isn't perfect. I know at least one very intelligent dyslexic who simply cannot do the test. You can't test someone's intelligence through a medium they can't use effectively. You might as well set the test in Klingon and then crow about how low everyone's scores are. It is also possible to ramp up your score by practising the test. So it's not perfect.
It does, however, demonstrate that there are very different levels of intelligence within a population. I know, the socialists like to pretend we are all born equal and that different levels of achievement are the result of all those evil capitalist oppressors, but that's just total rubbish.
You don't even need to be smart to succeed in life. Many who aren't born smart end up rich and successful anyway, through sheer bloody-minded persistence. The dimmest of all succeed by getting into parliament where they are not required to do anything other than dream up lunatic rules and apply them. How can so many idiots get into parliament? By being compliant with the Party line and getting themselves placed in safe seats - not on the basis of ability, but because the party can be sure they'll vote as directed. Oh, and the ability to make a sound like a dodgy lawnmower whenever the other side says something they don't like.
Socialists think that all they need do is make sure everyone has the same stuff and that will make them all the same. If we all have the same amount of money, we will be equal. If everyone has a computer and access to the internet, we will all be equally intelligent.
I know people whose computers have no word processor installed. No software other than what came with it, and what came with their camera. No printer. A webcam, often, but no scanner, no peripherals. It is not for their work - they are builder's labourers, shop assistants, warehousemen. The computer is a toy. It's for watching porn and playing games and that is it. Some use Facebook or another networking programme but none write blogs, research, delve into the deeper recesses of the information out there or indeed get very far beyond the porn sites at all.
If Labour think these people will immediately tune in to LabourList when they are given computers, they are mistaken. They won't even bother with online newspapers unless they have a laptop so they can read them on the bog.
You want proof that having a computer does not make you intelligent? Angry Exile has proof. Hundreds of people failing to log in to Facebook because they are on a site that looks nothing like Facebook and is called something different.
I'm not going to advocate a minimum intelligence test for owning a computer. If someone wants to use a computer solely as a massively expensive version of Wrist Wobbler's Weekly, that's up to them. If they want to spend their lives immersed in some fantasy world until their real life bodies become bloated and grey, they end up looking and sounding like Jabba the Hut and all their friends think they died years ago, that's up to them.
But I don't want to pay for it.
Labour want to hand out free laptops to their support base. If I need a new laptop, I have to pay for it out of whatever is left after the taxman has taken a whack out of my income in order to buy a laptop for someone else. Socialists regard that as 'fair'. If I object, I am being an elitist capitalist selfish racist-Nazi-bigot. In fact, I am an elitist in their eyes for daring to have non-State-approved thoughts.
Yes, I'm smart. I've scored on IQ tests in the 140's at 3 am after drinking most of a bottle of whisky. Sober and properly awake, I've done a lot better. Does that make me look down on lesser mortals? Certainly not.
If there's a leaky pipe in my house, I am smarter than the plumber on the IQ range but I can't fix the pipe. When I had a bit added to the house, it was added by someone who can't touch me in an IQ contest but who can build a wall both sides of where a window is to be placed, and the tops of both sides of the wall will be absolutely and perfectly level. I admit I was in awe when I saw that. If he used a level, I didn't see it.
In my line of work, being smarter than the average voter is an advantage. If I was on a building site, my IQ would be of no use at all. They'll want someone who can lift as many bricks as possible up the scaffolding as quickly as possible, and that's not me.
Many people simply are not born with the potential to be deep thinkers, just as many people are not born with the potential to be Olympic athletes. Once in a generation we get an Einstein or a Stephen Hawking, whose thinking abilities are so far out of range of the rest of us that we can only shake our heads and go 'Phew'. I read Hawking's book (and I defy anyone who reads it not to 'hear' it in his voice) and when he gets to the part where some things don't look the same until they turn completely around twice, I knew I was in twilight zone territory.
I've been told my IQ puts me in the top one or two percent - top of what? It's certainly not the top of athletic ability or building skills. It's nowhere near the top of money-making ability. I know utter dolts who are far richer than me. I mean, look at how much money the 'socialist' Toynbee has, none of which, I note, she has redistributed, and yet calling her a 'plank' would be an insult to the memory of whichever tree it came from.
Pol Pot, Stalin and others sought to equalise intelligence among the proles by killing off all the academics. Those pesky free thinkers have to go. They question things and nobody should be allowed to question socialism. It didn't work. It never will, and it's because one of the central tenets of socialist dogma is very, very wrong.
Intelligence is not connected to success or social class. It's the other way around. Smart people who don't like living on the council estate they were born into will find a way to move out. Idiots born into wealth will squander it and end up destitute. Social class does not determine intelligence. Neither does education. With the intelligence I have, I cannot speak Farsi or Urdu, not one word. I've never had a single lesson. Some people will never understand the basics of the cytochrome chain, no matter how often you tell them, because they are not equipped to grasp it. Intelligence and learning are different things.
So all those kids going through indoctrination in Labour's schools will not end up of equally low intelligence, which is what Labour have tried to achieve. They might have roughly equal knowledge when they leave but some will still be very smart and some will still be very dim and there will be everything in between. The smart ones will note the discrepancies between what they were taught and what they see in the real world and they will question it. Not aloud. They're smart, remember? They will realise very quickly what could happen to them if they reveal their smartness.
All socialist states eventually fail because of this. Equality, in the socialist sense, is impossible because we are all born different. We do not start as pure blank slates at birth. Even where the socialists kill off all the smart ones, new smart ones will be born. The genetics of smartness is unknown and probably extremely complex, and smart people know better than to shout about it in a regime where smart people are punished or even executed.
I am not against people having computers. Whenever I upgrade mine, which isn't often, I'll reformat the hard disk on the old one and set it up for a friend who can't afford one. It's not the latest technology but it's better than what they have now. I don't install word processors or statistical software or PowerPoint or things like that for them. I know they are going to use it for RedTube and eBay and they'll want RealPlayer for downloading the mucky videos. I'll tell them about blogs and other sites but they won't bother with them. I am certainly not against people having computers and using them for things I consider trivial. I have no problem donating old but serviceable machines for free to others. What I am against is being forced to pay for new machines for people I have never met.
Especially since it is not going to work. Computers do not make people intelligent. Nothing does. However smart you are when you're born, that's it. You can choose to make full use of what you have by learning things or you can choose to vegetate in front of the idiot lantern all your life. That does not change how smart you are, it merely changes how successful you will be, and you do not need to be highly intelligent in order to be successful. Find what you are good at, what you enjoy, do that and do it well. That is success.
Having a Lexus and a mansion and a villa in Tuscany is, to me, not success. Those are fripperies, irrelevances, annoying things that you just have to worry about all the time. If I had a million-pound house with million-pound contents, I'd be worried about it every time I went to the shops. If I had a twenty-thousand-pound car, I'd be awake at every noise outside and fret over stone chips. My house is full of stuff I can mostly replace in one trip to Tesco, plus a lot of trivia I wouldn't actually mind someone else clearing out for me and none of it is worth stealing.
That's another difference. For some, that Lexus and mansion are the hallmarks of success. Do I regard them as wrong? No, because just like intelligence, the definition of success is a personal thing. Some people want their own swimming pool. If I had a swimming pool, I'd fill it with soil and plant potatoes in it. Some people want to own a Rolls-Royce. I'd be happier with the shell of a Fiesta with chickens living in it. Some people want to live in a really big house in the countryside. My dream is a one-bedroomed flat over a well-equipped laboratory with a pub next door.
You don't need intelligence to get those things. Look at footballers and pop stars. Some are multi-talented and very smart. David Bowie has a whole business empire now, but... Bono? Vinnie Jones has turned to acting and is very good at it, but... Beckham? All rich, and all at very different places on the scale of intelligence. All very good at what they do but it is not related to how smart they are. Beckham is very good at football but is he likely to be trying for a university position?
This is what socialists fail to see. They insist on forcing equality in all things on a species that is biologically extremely variable. That variability is key to the survival of a species that has no fur, no claws and little in the way of teeth. Make us all identical and we will die out.
We are not equal. We are different. I'm good at something, you're good at something else. Together we make it work. I'll fix your gut infection, you fix my electrical supply. If I try to fix my electrical supply I might kill myself. If you take random drugs you might kill yourself.
Socialism will not see that. We must be clones of the ideal and no more. If someone is good at something, slap them down. Stay in line, prole, and don't try to be better at anything than anyone else. Do not attempt to appear intelligent or you will be re-de-educated.
Some people are smarter than others. Some people are stronger than others. Some people are faster than others. Some people want things other people don't want. Some people like things other people don't like. Some people are frightened by things other people find comforting. Some are offended by things other people can shrug off. Some people really enjoy doing something that other people don't like doing at all.
We are different. Socialism will never accept that and it will always fail as a result.
22 comments:
"You want proof that having a computer does not make you intelligent?"
Witnessed this phenomenon years ago when you could monitor real-time web searches. Top of the lists would be searches for things like www.bbc.co.uk or Yahoo.com
Some people just shouldn't be allowed to touch a computer if you ask me.
Great article L_I, nothing to add really. Would it be worthwhile scooping up a few of those free computers on e-bay or are they likely to be rubbish anyway?
I couldn't agree more.Years ago I used to have the occasional pint with an old retired labourer, he was incredibly intelligent and well read, he could discuss, in depth, on any topic and not in a regurgitation kind of way but original thought. I was often way, way out of my depth and the conversations often resulted in me spending hours in the reference library (shows how long ago this was). I asked him once if he felt that life had dealt him a bad hand and denied him the chance of a better life. He laughed at me and said he lived the life he chose.
Conversely today, I have tried to have intelligent conversation with many degree qualified people only to find they have no original thoughts, their opinions are directly cribbed from MSM inspired consensus and their small minds are firmly closed to alternative views.
Sorry for the long post but it annoys me when people confuses or equates intelligence with qualifications and qualified with educated.
"The dimmest of all succeed by getting into parliament where they are not required to do anything other than dream up lunatic rules and apply them."
...to everyone else.
"We are different. Socialism will never accept that and it will always fail as a result."
Only, the problem is, as was the case with USSR, it took 3 to 5 generations to fail, tens to hundreds of millions had to die during the period of its iron-fisted rule and for most of us, even those being just born into this new era of world wide communist control in the former Western democracies, if one were to live, say 80 years of age, that could be a full 80 years of nothing but communist rule. It's an entire lifetime and several generations who have to suffer from the pain.
As to intelligence ratings and stupid people, I can tell you from direct personal experience, reading the monthly US Mensa "Journal" that arrives like clockwork in the mail, it is nothing but a rehash of MSM unproven false science, fake statistics, polly-parroting sycophants and narrow-minded one-political-party bullies whose exhibit of what they call "intelligence" is merely a parade of fools and a new editorial staff that was assembled to make sure that the Mensa name appears to be endorsing all the same trite sh*t that appears in MSM and which anyone of true intelligence, of the real sort, knows is a load of unintelligent sh*t.
Intelligence can't be measured by number of college degrees alluding to the amount of political indoctrination time that's been accumulated or by the amount of money one has due to guile and c*nt f*ckery one is able to pull off like the political ruling class manages to achieve - but rather could have been seen more visibly on display in any local pub on any evening of the week among good local folk, many of whom might have had a pint or two with a fag over intelligent chat, but of course are now rendered obsolete and unnecessary in the new world order of things where even the meaning of "intelligence" has been re-written to mean those of the political class, their tools and the ones sucking the teat of the state for some shred of power and control to accumulate to themselves.
The world has changed a lot, but not for the better, not under socialism and 80 years wait for it to fall is too much damage done in the meantime, that much is for sure.
When phishing was really taking off in the UK (so some years ago), I was asked what we needed to do to stop customers falling for phishing emails. My suggestion of an IQ test before we allowed access to online banking didn't go down too well with the marketing people.
Because customers must be right - even when they are clearly, utterly, absolutely wrong.
Although I did have one, once, who after telling me his (fairly hideous - it would have had to be to have ended up on the phone to me) tale of whisky inspired woe said "You're going to tell me that was an extremely stupid thing to do, aren't you". I was happy to tell him that there was no way I would be allowed to say anything like that but, as he had, I would gratefully agree with him. Honour served.
I spend far too much of my time reading blog posts, many really obscure or weird, but the reason I do it is on occasion I come across something truly inspiring that changes the way I see my world and save them to show my kids.
This is one such post. Many thanks.
Watching
As an aside the word verification thingy is unnfund.
We need to unnfund the socialists as quickly as possible!
Some of the stupidest people I've ever met have high IQs and degrees coming out of their ears. My IQ is consistently below 100 because I'm shit at puzzles, yet I'm successfully self employed and am still the only person i know who can finish and understand Illuminatus by Robert Anton Wilson. I base intelligence solely upon the ability to do this. If you've not read it LI I cannot recomend it enough. Its the greatest manifesto for anarcho-libertarianism ever written.
Totally agree Leg. Intelligence is not handed down in accordance with socialist principles.
The annoying thing is that the guvment will probably tax books and newspapers - restricting self-education to those who don't have to choose between reading and eating - yet want to give away computers...blocking protocols pre-installed? ;)
BTW - want to know what line of attack Ash looks like planning next?
One of the many things that amuse me about the socialist concept of equality v eliteism is that they're so damned inconsistent in their application. It would appear that it's perfectly OK for state schools to be "selective" on the grounds of kids' sporting ability, artistic ability, etc., but not on the basis of intelligence.
Yo Leg man,great stuff,the most intelligent kid at my school could do his 6 times table by the time he was 12.
@Banned,call me a swivel eyed loon but I wouldnt trust them guvmint comps,I bet they are riddled with monitoring gadgets!
A lot of material in this post, Leg Iron, so I shall try and concentrate on one bit.
"The smart ones will note the discrepancies between what they were taught and what they see in the real world and they will question it." not necessarily.There is an old saying, "seek and ye shall find". Many intelligent people live lives of willful ignorance. Many need to learn how to think. Modern education does not impart that, it imparts a crude method for passing exams.
Anybody in higher education will tell you how despairing they are when faced with new students who have not grasped the fundamentals of education. Plagiarism is rife; students think that Googling, cutting and pasting, will not only not show up, but is a substitute for thinking.
Questioning is one thing, learning to ask the right question is a product of a liberal education.
It was George Orwell who remarked, of the then latest lefty lunacy, that only an intellectual would believe in it. Such intellectuals were very clever, socialist and self-serving idiots: listen, for instance, to education, medical or climate change advisors to government - and their BBC interlocutors - spouting the latest line of the political class on Radio 4's Today programme to get a flavour of this.
Were the damage that socialists wreak limited to not being able to fashion a window frame properly the corrosive effects of socialism and its fans would be tolerable or, at least, containable. It's their endless quest for power over the rest of us who are able to manage our own lives without the need to be continually on the look-out for activities and people to ban or encourage (both of which apparently require inordinate sums of tax-payers' money to be seized and splurged by state apparatchiks) which is making life in the UK increasingly vile.
Awesome article, first I have read here and I see why this blog is on everyone's blogroll. I hope you're right on socialism failing, I also hope it's in my lifetime (I'm 29 so I bloody hope so).
Dear Mr Leg-iron
Socialists are useful idiots for a political elite to exploit for access the public's pockets to fund a lavish lifestyle. The new aristocracy are not concerned with any beliefs other than their own selfish interest.
Why do we pay taxes?
DP
For proof that possession of academic ability is no guarantee of intelligence look no further than Cherie Blair: a clever woman with the emotional intelligence of a fish.
Jay
To pick up on what Great Scot wrote about the old retired labourer who was incredibly intelligent and that 'intelligent' people these days...
"have no original thoughts, their opinions are directly cribbed from MSM inspired consensus and their small minds are firmly closed to alternative views."
I am sure that this situation has been deliberately created so that most folk these days are living in 'Plato's Cave'. In other words, they think what they see around them is reality, but they just see shadows and hear echoes that they have been told is reality (MSM; state 'education') and then when people like us bloggers come along and give them a glimpse here and there of reality, they often do not/cannot accept it because they believe that anyone who goes against the consensus must be insane, but this 'consensus' has been created specially for them, like Plato tried to explain a few centuries before Christ.
I used to wonder why the brainwashing 'authorities' would want to give free computers to the masses when it could lead to them becoming become better educated and thus empower them to free themselves from the darkness of their caves of ignorance, but like you say, Leg-iron, most will only use the internet for trivia and titillation.
And the increase in porn use will have the effect of further dehumanisation. Along with the changing attitudes towards infidelity and sexual deviancy, the population is further deprived of real power because when fun is all that matters, there is no civilisation left to speak of and the people become enslaved.
Our masters have it all worked out. This is why it often seems like we are banging our heads off a brick wall trying to explain it. The techniques really are ancient. Create a false reality and depict the sane as mad and immerse the masses in total trivia (have you watched "Deal or No Deal"?) and encourage them in unnatural, degrading behaviour.
And make them narcissistic; afraid of every wrinkle and grey hair; concerned about their weight, what they eat, what they own ("brand awareness!") - leading to selfishness and a society which won't stand up for others - massively aided by the divide and rule politics of 'equality' and 'diversity' where gaining your own selfish 'rights' at the expense of someone else's freedom is all that matters.
Hope you don't mind my going on a bit there!
Well I think the Government giving computers to idiots is a marvellous idea.
Anyone who has ever felt that slight paranoia that one gets after a good internet rant, or after having been browsing a wrongun website or blog, or after having had a good rant on a wrongun website/blog, will welcome the resulting increase in noise to signal ratio that giving internet access to imbeciles will bring.
Formatting a Hard Drive is no guarantee of preventing a subsequent user from recovering your files. You should use a utility like "Eraser" to overwrite the entire drive, or at least all the free space when you've deleted your files and installed programmes.
Why not do that, re-install an O/S and then Firefox with a selection of good blog sites saved in bookmarks. You never know, the new owner might just find them interesting....
I have an average IQ.
It's 180 in the morning and 20 after lunch.
"when he gets to the part where some things don't look the same until they turn completely around twice, I knew I was in twilight zone territory."
Years ago when pubs were pubs and intelligent conversation was permissible, someone showed me an intriguing demo of this or maybe just a party trick.
Hard to describe in words but here goes:
Take a strip of cloth e.g. a tie or scarf. Anchor the loose ends on the edge of a table letting the loop of material hang down. Now insert fag packet or similar into the end of the loop, making sure there are no twists in the cloth. Then, holding said object (and loop) firmly, just below the table and without rotating it, pass it behind the loop of cloth and bring it back to its initial position.
If you do it right, the cloth will have twisted 720 degrees.
I think it's called a 'Twister' and F**k knows whether it sheds light on 'Grassman' numbers or 'Clifford' algebra. It is surprising though.
I saw this and thought of you http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/03/one-game-machine-per-child.html
Romanian science paper about how free laptops drive down children's grades, cos low income kids who suddenly have computers just play games.
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