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Thanks for taking the time to write that! You presented your ideas extremely well. (And I love this kind of debate.) So I'll accept both premises. And for premise 1, let's imagine the system we use to quantify beauty measures pronouncement of cheekbones and thickness of lips, etc. Premise 2 remains untouched. Here's the problem: Angelina Jolie would score well, but so would Jocelyn Wildenstein (Google image search that), and Emma Watson would score poorly. We would come to wrong individual conclusions based on correlations made from larger sample sizes. In fact, Jocelyn Wildenstein might come away with the title of "the most beautiful person ever." (And if you think I'm joking, listen to any interview with a man named Chris Langan.) Since intelligence is qualitative, like beauty or flavors of ice cream, it's about the mix of ingredients. It's about "character". So that while you can make good correlations on large sample sizes, it's that individual mix that defines "beauty", "tasty", etc. Alan Kay was wrong: point of view isn't worth 80 IQ points -- 80 IQ points is worth a better point of view. That point of view is the end result, the character that determines your intelligence. Again, the most beautiful woman, say, may not have the combined biggest lips and highest cheekbones, but an especially good mix. If you look at Einstein and every other great thinker, the people we consider the smartest, they won't have the highest IQ scores, but they had the best intellectual character. |