Posted on 01/19/2004 10:52:54 PM PST by JohnHuang2
It is indeed.
This article is nonsense; General Norman Schwarzkopf has an I.Q. greater than 170. He certainly didn't have any problems analyzing and dealing with multiple scenarios.
As for Clinton only having an IQ of 137. He wasn't my cup of tea but I always thought he was far smarter than that. I'm told he could recite verbatim long passages from policy documents he'd read years before.
Well, since you asked... *cough*. I've gotten scores indicating around 170-ish. It's hard to pin down precisely because "regular" IQ tests aren't designed to accurately measure that far up and thus even with all questions answered correctly the results "cap out" lower than that. I've taken a few that were designed to cover a higher range, and gotten scores varying from 166 to 175.
And at times I can relate to the problem mentioned in the article about tending to get distracted by "too many options" (either of action, or possibilities). If you can come up with too many "what ifs" it can bog you down trying to take them all into consideration. But it's hardly inevitable, and it's just as possible to see when you're becoming too analytical and "not go there", if you take a moment to monitor your own "performance" and focus on the job requirements.
Like anything, though, some handle it better than others. Jimmy Carter, especially, was a big failure at "cutting to the chase". I forget who it was, but one of Carter's advisors once said that "some people have trouble seeing the forest for the trees -- Jimmy gets sidetracked by the leaves."
But the bright side is that the same active mind that got you into a mire of "what ifs" can also sometimes get you out quickly with an "aha!" solution that might short-circuit the potential problems.
Another common problem with a high IQ (or advanced education) is that it's easier to get overconfident and convince yourself you're capable of more than you really are. First, a high IQ helps in certain ways, but can also be no advantage in other aspects of life. Presuming that it does has gotten a lot of people in trouble (just like those who similarly mistake their money, good looks, or fame for some sort of natural all-encompassing superiority -- Hollywood, anyone?)
It's also too easy to mistake competence in one field for competence in other fields. Too many scientists, doctors, lawyers, etc. can fall prey to con-men and hucksters of various sorts (including ideological ones like Marx and his followers) by thinking that expertise in, say, brain surgery prevents them from being idiots in other fields. A related issue is the number of successful people who become amateur pilots of their own small planes, and then proceed to get themselves killed by overestimating their ability to fly competently as easily as they succeeded at some other endeavor for which they were better suited or prepared. JFK Jr's fatal plane crash seems a good example of this. To quote from a Clint Eastwood movie, "a man's got to know his limitations".
Having a high IQ and having a near-photographic memory are not the same thing, and one is often found without the other. In extreme cases there are the absent-minded geniuses on one end, and the idiot-savants on the other.
As for Clinton, here's a fascinating article I first read when it came out in 1998, and have found it to be very illuminating in the years since: Can the President Think? .
It's a *long* read, but well worth it. At the risk of condensing it too far, it makes the case that Clinton has a superb (almost photographic) memory and a natural ability to charm people by sensing what they want to hear (and an emotional need to do so), but that he suffers from almost no ability to analyze information himself. He's just good at covering it and *looking* like his mind is going 100mph.
Well, sometimes. But then so are being dumb as a stump and common sense.
Yes, and science and technology advances this past decade have proven this to be the case. To store data in the brain it first has to go through short term memory. Short term memory sorts through data and decides what is to be sent into the long term memory bank.
I don't believe this has been established.
Those of genius level have low short term memory
What is your source for this statement? I have personally found that "those of genius level" have the same (wide) range of short term memory ability as the average population.
and therefore the data goes straight into the long term memory bank without the ability to rationalize and sort what needs to go there.
Long-term memory storage doesn't seem to be the kind of "conscious" tucking away of information you appear to be implying here.
This is also why they have excellent memory capability.
Again, not all do -- many high-IQ people have pretty poor memory abilities. They're great at analysis, but not so good at recall.
It's not the blessing most would think.
This I'll agree with.
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