Blog - Intelligence and IQ

Are We a Community of Intellectual Equals? –Sturgeon’s Law

In 1993, psychologist Anders Ericsson challenged the concept of innate talent, asserting: Individual differences, even among elite performers, are closely related to assessed amounts of deliberate practice. Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years. Analysis of expert performance provides unique …

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In Praise of Excellence

Blog / By Brendan Kelly Ph.D.

Recently, the egalitarian movement has attempted to diminish the concept of “talent” or “giftedness” by promoting the idea that we are all essentially equal in most, if not all, respects. This is an attractive proposition in its potential to mollify the feelings of inferiority that many suffer when they see the achievements of others paraded …

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What is an Example of a Hi-Q Person who is not Wise?

5 Comments / Blog / By Brendan Kelly Ph.D.

In November 2011, 68-year-old physicist Paul Frampton was feeling lonely and despondent. Years of chasing top-dog status among Nobel laureates in elementary particle physics had left him without a family, and languishing in the emptiness of a life devoid of relationships. Since his divorce 3 years earlier from Anne-Marie, his only connections to the outer …

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Evil Genius or Madman?

Blog / By Brendan Kelly Ph.D.

On December 14, 2021, Ted Kaczynski a.k.a., the Unabomber, was transferred from his cell in a maximum security federal prison in Colorado to the U.S. Bureau of Prison’s FMC Butner medical center in North Carolina after serving almost a quarter century behind bars. After pleading guilty to planting home-made bombs that killed three people and …

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The Monty Hall Dilemma: Part 2

Blog / By Brendan Kelly Ph.D.

In my previous post, I presented the famous Monty Hall Dilemma that sparked a maelstrom of controversy in 1990 and beyond. In that post, I presented three of the emotional responses from Ph.D.’s who declared Marilyn’s answer was wrong. There were many more vitriolic responses from mathematicians (see Intelligence, IQ & Perception pp. 220-224) However, …

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The Monty Hall Dilemma: Part 1

Blog / By Brendan Kelly Ph.D.

In spite of our confidence in our intuition, we are often fooled by the gap between our senses and reality. This was evident in the counterintuitive birthday problem that we posted a few days ago. Another of these famous counterintuitive problems, known as the Monty Hall Dilemma, has created a lot of controversy and sometimes …

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The Coincident Birthday Problem

Blog / By Brendan Kelly Ph.D.

Sometimes the intuitive sense is so compelling that we have trouble accepting truth–even in the face of absolute proof. The celebrated coincident birthday problem is an excellent example of counterintuitive problem that creates cognitive dissonance. Coincident Birthday Problem: What is the probability that in a randomly chosen group of 24 people, there are at least …

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Is Everything and Everyone Racist?

2 Comments / Blog / By Brendan Kelly Ph.D.

On December 26, 2021, E. O. Wilson, described as “one of the towering intellects of our time,” passed away at the age of 92. He was a research professor emeritus in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, specializing in myrmecology, the study of ants. In 1990, he was awarded the prestigious …

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Who was the Most Intelligent President in US History?

Blog / By Brendan Kelly Ph.D.

One of the many hotly-debated topics that surfaces on the internet from time to time is the question, “Who was the most intelligent of the 46 U.S. Presidents from George Washington to Joe Biden?” Was it Thomas Jefferson, as suggested by John F. Kennedy? Or was it John Quincy Adams, or Kennedy, himself? Maybe it …

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New Year’s Day Hangover: Good or Bad?

Blog / By Brendan Kelly Ph.D.

If you’re reading this post under a cloud of guilt for overimbibing, while welcoming the New Year, you may take heart. What moralists would call profligate behavior, may not be as injurious as these teetotalers would have you believe. For example, the relationship between the consumption of wine and potential health benefits was investigated in …

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