Eminent Minds

Most days I have the opportunity to talk to someone with an IQ around 180. It is usually the highlight of my day. I rarely get to finish a joke with this guy because he has already seen the punchline.

You might think that such a person is a nerd and socially awkward. You would be wrong. Everybody loves him. His beautiful brain makes it effortless for him to see things from another person’s point of view. He has amazing empathy. He has never been stopped by police. He has never had a parking ticket nor a moving violation. He seems to know everybody in Los Angeles with similar brain power. He frequently takes time to do nice things for other people and he seeks out win-win solutions.

James Thompson writes: More likely, they will leave town and search out other eminent people just for the fun of exchanging ideas. Their vocabularies will be above 40,000 words. They are unlikely to believe in gods or superstitions, and can calculate coincidences. (Dick Feynman used to begin his lectures by saying: “As I parked my car today I noticed that the licence plate of the car in front of me was 79346229. What’s the chance of that?”). They may be seen as unconventional, and can be difficult to understand. In IQ terms they are 155. Call them the Three Sigmas.
When such eminent intellects leave town, they soon learn that they are not that bright. After all, even the United Kingdom has 6,500 of them, and they soon work out which the really bright ones are. So, for really interesting minds, we are looking at those who, in open competition, tested on very hard subjects, can show other scary bright people that they are closer to 1 in a million. In IQ terms this would be 160, but it would be simpler to say that they are well above conventional testing limits. Call them the Four Sigmas.
Think of Bertrand Russell going up to Cambridge University and finding very few intelligent people there, but later observing that every conversation with John Maynard Keynes was exhausting, and noting he always came away feeling defeated. Or consider John Von Neumann, (from Steve Hsu’s very good account) who made fundamental contributions in mathematics, physics, nuclear weapons research, computer architecture, game theory and automata, and also had formidable powers of mental calculation and a photographic memory. Laureate Eugene Wigner who knew Planck, Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Albert Einstein ranked von Neumann the highest in intellect, and the aforementioned luminaries did not question this judgement. A little uncharitably, Enrico Fermi said to Herb Anderson, with whom he ran the first ever nuclear reaction: “You know, Herb, how much faster I am in thinking than you are. That is how much faster von Neumann is compared to me”. Laureate Hans Bethe, whom I revere, went so far as to say: “I always thought Von Neumann’s brain indicated that he was from another species, an evolution beyond man”.

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We Need To Educate Journalists About Intelligence

James Thompson writes: The Economist is not a reliable guide to human ability. It believes in homo-economicus: all-purpose, equipotential beings without inherent differences, any such adventitious peculiarities to be smoothed away by compensatory education and the amelioration of unfavourable circumstances.

Very occasionally, like a maiden aunt reluctantly acknowledging the existence of sexual arousal, they refer to genetic differences, but soon revert to their standard mantra: with more education, earlier education, and more flexible education those nasty gaps between one person and another, and one group and another, can be washed away. Perhaps so.

As part of a holiday ritual I buy The Economist to take to the beach and find out if it has improved. The issue of June 25th looked promising, in that it had a special report on artificial intelligence, in which they said that the intelligent response to the dislocation caused by this development would be “making education and training flexible enough to teach new skills quickly and efficiently”. Quite so. They should have added “but the intelligent will always learn more quickly and will generalise their learning more widely, and to greater advantage”. Learning speed is correlated with general ability. The US armed forces have all the data, and Linda Gottfredson has dug it up. The Wonderlic data also show that training a person in one simple task in one ability domain does not generalise to improved ability in simple tasks in other ability domains. A task is learned, but the individual is no brighter or faster at learning the next task…

The Economist is confused about human beings, but if we are to accept their shaky presumptions about the power of pre-school education, then even journalists can be educated, if they can be caught young.

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Islam calling: troublesome minorities

James Thompson blogs: “The paradox comes thus: any state which guarantees the rights of citizens must also grant them to those who would destroy the state and injure its people. Our interpretation of Magna Carta is that the big letter demands that no-one be arrested without due cause. A noble aim, though of course the original did not apply to all citizens, only to free men, say about 40% of the population at most. It did not contemplate millions of non-Christian non-Europeans, with perhaps 10% of them at least passively in favour of establishing the dominion of another religion and another system of law. That which would have been considered treason is now considered a right which must be defended by the very State which is the target of the attack.”

Larry Auster had some ideas:

What to do about Islam in the West


A Real Islam Policy for a Real America [My speech at the Febuary 2009 conference on Preserving Western Civilization. Culminates in an imaginary speech by a future U.S. president laying out the steps for the removal of Muslims from America and for a constitutional amendment banning the practice of Islam in America.]

How to Defeat Jihad in America [A step by step plan to force or encourage the departure of most Muslims from America. FrontPage Magazine, May 2004.]

Laying out the Civilizationist Strategy [The strategy consists of speaking the truth about Islam, stopping and reversing the immigration of Islam, isolating Islam, and destroying dangerous Islamic regimes and groups. It is concluding web page of The Search for Moderate Islam, Part II: If it doesn’t exist, then what?, FrontPage Magazine, January 2005.]

Draft manifesto: Together facing the new Islamic jihad [My alternative manifesto to the secularist manifesto. March 2006.]

Separationism [December 2006. Briefly summarizing the separationist position and quoting various writers with similar positions.]

What is to be done about Islam [Draft statement, Feb. 2007, focuses on sharia, rather than jihad. Breaks down the various types of “moderate” Muslims depending on their relation to sharia, and shows how all moderate Muslims as well as radical Muslims are part of the problem. Says what is to be done about various categories of Muslims, defined by their adherence to sharia, and their legal status in the U.S. Thus it strips citizenship of naturalized citizens who adhere to sharia, while it strips citizenship of natural born citizens who actively advocate sharia. It says that this is not about Muslims being morally bad people, but about Muslims being Muslims ]

The Islamic plan to take over America, and a Constitutional amendment to stop it [September 2007. A constitutional amendment that, paralleling the language of the 13th amendment, prohibits the practice of Islam in the United State. The approach is the opposite and complement of “What is to be done about Islam.” Instead of focusing on precise categories of Muslims defined by their relation to sharia and stating which categories shall be stripped of citizenship and/or deported, this amendment doesn’t deal with individuals at all but outlaws the religion.]

The “Islamist” penetration of America that we are doing nothing to prevent

Another Modest Proposal: Impose America’s Decadent Culture on the Muslims

Jihadist says the West can kick out the Muslims any time it wants [The reform of Islam is impossible, but the removal of Islam from the West is not.]

Islamization in Reverse! [Italian city bulldozes Islamic center, replaces by square named after Oriana Fallaci.]

How to tell Muslims that we don’t want them around [Paragraph from “What is to be done about Islam” where I say the problem with Muslims is not that they are bad people, but that they are good Muslims.]

Is my hard line on Islam unrealistic? [“I suppose there are instances in which a “noble lie,” an approximate truth, can help lead toward the good. I don’t think that the Islam issue is such an instance. When it comes to Islam, only the plain truth can save us. Anything short of the plain truth about Islam leads to Muslims taking us over…. For the same price we could tell the truth. Since we will be rejected and excluded for speaking the noble lie that only radical Islamism is the problem and that Islam per se is not the problem, why not be rejected and excluded for speaking the truth that Islam per se is the problem?… It’s tough enough to wear yourself to skin and bone for the sake of the truth. Could anything be more ridiculous and absurd than to wear yourself to skin and bone for the sake of a lie?” May 2007]


Separationism and Civilizationism

Separationism (December 2006. I define Separationism as a doctrine and quote several writers with similar positions.]

If we can’t democratize Islam, and we can’t destroy it, then what? [August 2006. My most concise statement of Separationism.]

Separationism, restated [Nov. 2008. Following the Bombay attack, I quote several key jihadist verses in Koran, and conclude that it’s the Koran’s sacred call to kill unbelievers that is the source of terrorism, not any secondary social or economic factors. “[T]he only way the non-Muslim countries can make themselves safe from jihadism is by excluding Muslims and quarantining them in their own lands. If non-Muslim humanity is to be safe and free, Muslim humanity must be permanently separated from the rest of mankind and be deprived of any means of having any effect on the rest of us. There is no other way.”]

Proposing disengagement from Muslim world, September 2001 [My first statement of Separationism, before it was called that..]

The Search for Moderate Islam, Part I Does it exist? [FrontPage Magazine, January 2005]

The Search for Moderate Islam, Part II: If it doesn’t exist, then what?

Concluding page of Part II [This is where I lay out the civilizationist/separationist strategy]

Better Living Through Separationism

Kemalization and other strategies [Considering Hugh Fitzgerald’s idea of forcing Islam to change by isolating it.]

Dreher on Separationism

All we really need to do [Reversing Bob Dylan’s “All I really want to do,” I get at the logical and obvious solution to the Islam problem—far simpler and more effective than British columnist Minette Marrin’s incredibly involved action plan that involves the constant surveillance, evaluation, and control of almost every activity of virtually every Muslim in Britain for all future time.]

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Why Are Some People Smarter Than Others?

James Thompson writes: Doug is a quiet guy, who has entirely ignored the American habit of self-promotion, but has gently put modern intelligence research on the map. Almost unseen, in 1977 he founded and edited one publication Intelligence from precarious obscurity, to fragile partial visibility, to its present position as the leading journal on intelligence research. He only got his freedom from the editorial coal mine last year. He also founded the International Society for Intelligence Research (ISIR) in 2000.

Now he looks back at 50 years of intelligence research, and avers that it is much more important than curing cancer, controlling global warming or ending poverty. He also regards teachers and schools as over-rated, since they only account for 10% of pupil achievement. Five decades dedicated to finding a satisfactory answer to a simple question: why are some people smarter than others?

His answer: a traffic jam. All the modules of the brain have to go through a central hub, and the poorer the connection the lower the intelligence.

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Schizos Are Dangerous

Dr. James Thompson writes:

Positive predictive value in schizophrenia_thumb[1]

As you can see, assaults are committed by 1 in 7 untreated schizophrenics and by 1 in 10 treated schizophrenic patients per year. Treatment is only moderately effective in this regard. These are very high rates compared to the general public. Even with a relatively weak predictor, you need to monitor only 2 or 3 patients to possibly prevent an assault. This would be a highly effective intervention, and should receive more publicity. Large et al. seem to be doubtful about the value of screening in general, but their own data show it has utility for assaults.

For violent crime, monitoring 26 patients is required for a possible prevention of a violent crime. Again, this is manageable given resources.

Homicide in untreated patients happens, according to this table, at the very high rate of 1 in 600 schizophrenics. That compares with homicide rates in the UK of 0.9 per 100,000 persons and in the US of 3.9 per 100,000 persons. (US 4 times as murderous as the UK). So, the rate of homicide in non-schizophrenics in the UK is 1 in 111,111 and in the US is 1 in 25,641 persons. Therefore, an untreated schizophrenic person, using the estimates given in this paper, is apparently about 42 times more likely to murder someone than a US citizen, and 185 times more likely to murder someone than a UK citizen. Can these figures be correct? If so, this is a very dangerous category of person. An instrument with a positive predictive value of 0.66% (extremely low) requires that 151 persons be monitored. This would be onerous, but would prevent a murder. It is an indicator of the level of risk to the population when patients do not take their medication.

A homicide committed by a treated patient (1 in 10,000) means that treated schizophrenics are apparently 11 times more dangerous than UK citizens and almost 4 times more dangerous than US citizens. In the US it requires 2500 patients being monitored, a high number, and the best estimate of how difficult it would be to prevent one person being murdered, assuming most patients comply with treatment. Monitoring for most patients would probably involve no more than chasing up non-attenders at follow-ups, and doing some random checks on compliance with medication. This would be worth studying, particularly now that monitoring in diabetes is being trialled using mobile phone apps, with good results.

Here are a few reflections. Risk estimates vary considerably, but all are raised for schizophrenics, particularly in the early untreated phase. By implication, a schizophrenic patient who does not comply with medication falls into a high risk category. It seems very worth-while to screen for assaults, violent crime and homicide, particularly in untreated or medication-refusing schizophrenics.

schizophrenia and violent crime in sweden_thumb[2]

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