
The Inappropriately Excluded - wajdiben
http://polymatharchives.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-inappropriately-excluded.html?m=1
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jstewartmobile
I make no comment about the "science", but it certainly does jive with
reality.

Outperform joe average in an intellectual pursuit, and he'll pat you on the
back. Outperform the middle of the pack in the gifted class--people who've
built their entire identity around being "smart"\--and my God! watch the
knives come out!

------
gwern
Garbage. See my comments there: it's bad math, and worse research. No
longitudinal study like Terman or SMPY
([https://www.gwern.net/SMPY](https://www.gwern.net/SMPY)) of high-IQ types
has ever supported his claims. High IQ is an (unearned) privilege and a huge
advantage for things like going to Harvard Medical. As Murray puts it, "life
is yours to lose". (So what does that say about people with high IQ who
gravitate to Mensa or blog posts like this to complain about their failures in
life...?)

~~~
jstewartmobile
I'd take a step back here. With phrases like "garbage" and "(unearned)
privilege", this has obviously pushed a more personal button than poor
methodology.

I just know from the (admittedly) small sample I am familiar with, it lines up
perfectly.

The middle-of-the-roaders all became attorneys, executives, top bureaucrats,
etc--precisely as foretold. The outliers--the ones who could still clean
everyone's clock while hung over and half asleep--all ended up in markedly
less glamorous circumstances: secretaries, clerks, pot-head househusbands,
librarians, gigolos, and the perpetually unemployed. I'm not sure I'd call it
a tragedy though. They all seem happy enough where they are.

edit: I grew up pre-internet. Post-internet, this may be a moot crisis. With
all of the opportunities it has to offer for independent study, perhaps those
secretaries and clerks would have become scientists and mathematicians?

~~~
gwern
It pushes a personal button because the sheer intellectual dishonesty in
service of poisonous self-pitying disgusts me. That the mathematical flim-
flammery is so obvious (ah yes, let's just assume that every subset of a
normal distribution is also a normal distribution, that definitely makes
sense...) and so blatantly assumes its conclusion just makes it even more
offending.

> I just know from the (admittedly) small sample I am familiar with, it lines
> up perfectly.

That's too bad, because it's wrong. For example, the SMPYers, all of whom are
almost certainly smarter than even those who could 'clean everyone's clock',
are enormously successful, and the ones who could clean the other SMPYers'
clocks are even more successful. This is all pre-Internet, too.

~~~
jstewartmobile
I could understand getting that worked-up over a science with some kind of
objective basis, but this is psychology we're talking about! Might as well get
mad at a Tarot reader for pulling the cards in the wrong order.

That, and SMPY isn't a particularly compelling example. 1972-1997 is prime-
time for computing, megacorporations, cold war military-industrial complex,
and college educations all-around. Hard to imagine a more provident time to be
a mathematically precocious youth! Looking at this in a broader slice of
history, a comparison to the lives of men like Ramanujan or Heaviside would be
more fitting.

Perhaps the " _Inappropriately Excluded_ " from the article just haven't
lucked into their own personal force-multiplier yet. Gates and Buffet were
having some discussion on how well they would have fared under more primitive
circumstances. Gates's answer was something along the lines of " _lion food_
". I think that is a fair answer.

edit:

> " _sheer intellectual dishonesty in service of poisonous self-pitying_ "

If this article set you off, I can only imagine how you deal with politics.
;-)

~~~
gwern
> That, and SMPY isn't a particularly compelling example. 1972-1997 is prime-
> time for computing, megacorporations, cold war military-industrial complex,
> and college educations all-around. Hard to imagine a more provident time to
> be a mathematically precocious youth! Looking at this in a broader slice of
> history, a comparison to the lives of men like Ramanujan or Heaviside would
> be more fitting.

SMPY covers the same time period as much of the anecdotal or self-selected
evidence he invokes. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

