Growing up, the culture taught me that the arts was for stupid people. Expressions like “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out” or “it doesn’t take an Einstein to figure that out”, clearly sent the message that math/science = smarts. No one ever said “it doesn’t take a great painter to figure that out” or “it doesn’t take a Shakespeare to figure that out”. The schools taught me that if we failed art and music class, the teachers would just laugh it off, but if we failed math, God help us. I remember a friend once complaining that she was “smart at all the things, that don’t count, like music and art”.
Meanwhile everyone in Ontario knew about scholar J.P. Rushton’s views that East Asians were the smarter than whites who he felt were smarter than blacks, and yet everywhere I looked it seemed like blacks were great at art (especially popular music) yet East Asians were invisible in the arts but dominated math and science.
I remember my best friend and I were laughing hysterically at a rerun of my favorite show The Cosby Show and his racist grandmother entered the room, looked at the TV in disgust and muttered “all they’re good for comedy.” The implication was clear: Arts is for the primitive people. Us whites and East Asians do math and science. They entertain us on TV and radio, but we built those inventions! Toni Morrison might be a good writer, but who would read her if East Asians hadn’t invented the printing press!
In the 9th grade students began complaining about the disproportionate emphasis colleges were giving to math grades. My big-headed math teacher told the class “if you are good at math, then that means, you are good at logic.” In the 11th grade a chemistry teacher took me aside to tell me that if I wanted a single umbrella to cover the vastness of intelligence, then it’s “the ability to adapt; to take whatever situation you’re in and turn it around to your advantage. That’s really what intelligence is.” So that’s why math and science are considered the smart subjects, I remembered thinking. All of humanity’s most practical and life changing advantages come from technological advances. Arts is fun and games, but scientists are the ones who adapted the environment to humanity’s advantage.
It wasn’t until I started corresponding with a British Promethean (who who claimed to have a head as big as Chris Langan’s, despite claiming to be much less robust though a bit taller) that I considered an alternative view. This Promethean felt the greatest minds were artists and that Hollywood was crawling with brilliant minds especially the great actors whose charisma oozed through the screen. He felt art required lateral thinking, while science generally didn’t, but he felt conventional IQ tests were too highly crystallized and math-centric to measure the artist’s enormous g (general intelligence). He felt chronometric tests (on which he was one of the three best in the world at the time) were needed.
However another Promethean with age adjusted chronometric scores even higher, did not share this eccentric view. The British Promethean felt the disagreement was a cultural difference between Britain and North America. There’s some truth to this. I remember British actress and Cambridge grad Thandie Newton gushing about how incredibly smart Oprah was for her proficiency at technical acting, despite this not being her primary profession. That shows Newton’s British upbringing; it’s rare for Americans to cite acting talent as evidence of intelligence.
I would learn that writers, especially literary writers, consider themselves intellectual elites despite the fact that they are not in a STEM field. Jonathan Franzen was famously kicked out of Oprah’s book club for making snobby comments about some of her other selections and the accessibility of his “high art” writing to a mass audience. I think a lot of the literary elite deeply resented the fact that an overweight dark skinned black woman who entertains soccer moms was deciding who made the bestseller list.
Clearly good writing requires intelligence. Verbal abilities are highly g loaded, but writing also requires certain special abilities in-which blacks excel like rhythm and artistic creativity, which may help explain why literature has more black Nobel prize winners than any other academic field, including Oprah’s favorite author Toni Morrison.
In the book Understanding Human History, scholar Michael Hart (pages 274-275) had some relevant comments about intelligence, India, and art:
…no other non-European civilization has produced nearly the variety of high-quality literature, music, and art that India has…The average IQ in India is considerably lower than in China or Europe. If we assume that a very high level of the talents measured by intelligence tests is essential for major breakthroughs in mathematics, science, and invention, but not as crucial for artistic achievements, it would explain why Indian civilization was able to produce so much of the latter, but so little of the former.
While I agree with Hart’s argument, he overstates his case by failing to acknowledge how much malnutrition stunts the current IQ of India.
May I ask who is that big headed Promethean? 🙂
In arts, there are no strict tests/evaluations as in sciences. “Nature” is a very harsh critic. But in arts, critics are human with weaknesses… still hard though…
Nobel Literature Prize has also highest ratio of women…
In my early 20s, my life was around novels, which I thought the highest form of art, and highest form of intelligence. I thought, people interested in sciences were dumb… 🙂 Art is a wholistic approach to human condition, it touches emotions and daily life too, unlike sciences. And reality is that we are human with weaknesses, emotions…
LAte 20s I changed, and appreciated more the hard sciences…found most of the novelists dumb 🙂
Artists are smart… and something else I cannot name… NO wonder they are cooler than scientists…at least most consider them so…
Nobel Literature Prize has also highest ratio of women…
And as we’ve discussed, one of the lowest ratio of Jews.
https://brainsize.wordpress.com/2014/09/26/jewish-ancestry-the-iq-of-nobel-prize-winners/
If I had to guess I would say they are the least intelligent of the academic Nobel prize winners, but still way smarter than the Nobel peace prize winners.
And no I can’t name the Promethean. He valued his anonymity.
Artists are smart… and something else I cannot name… NO wonder they are cooler than scientists…at least most consider them so
I think coolness is just the layman’s term for primitive r genotype. Rock stars are especially cool and r:
https://brainsize.wordpress.com/2014/06/29/why-do-women-love-rock-stars/
…
traits with high heritability have likely not been under selective pressure, which is why the cold climate IQ theory is stupid; cold doesn’t require smarts, we’ve had plenty of smarts all along.
Directional selection means something about the cold made average iq’s higher.
no it does not. a trait under strong directional selection pressure would be one that had low heritability, not high. for example, the number of eyes we have —> heritability probably near zero…strong selection.
Obviously not as strong as the selection for two eyes, but selection nonetheless.
well every single trait that is phenotypical is subject to some non-zero amount of selection….
but to say that cold climates selected for higher IQs…well, if you also want to say that the heritability of IQ is .8, then something’s wrong there.
otoh, to look at selection pressure we might get a better picture by looking at parent-child h^2 —> as far as I know, this number is between .2-.4. That could fit.
Swanky,
Who says ten to fifteen IQ points over fifty thousand years is strong directional pressure? By comparison, we have about a ten IQ point difference between European Jews and gentiles that’s appeared in just a few hundred years. Now that’s strong directional pressure.
Larger variations in the seasonal environment require more adaptability, and in humans that adaptability comes from increased smarts and longer time preference. And the evidence shows this to be the case.
‘Who says ten to fifteen IQ points over fifty thousand years is strong directional pressure?’
A full SD in 50,000 years is pretty quick.
Even in modern society, when you take education into account, the correl between IQ and # of children is almost zero.
The human brain has also been shrinking. In the last 20,000 years…there has been a decrease of 150 ccs. Explain that one, if brain size correls with smarts and selection has been acting on us for more smarts.
Swanky writes,
Nope. There are 400 to 500 generations every ten thousand years. So there doesn’t need to be strong selectional pressure to carve out a full SD between populations in genetic IQ in that time frame. All that’s needed is consistent pressure that culls the herd ever so slightly.
Or, alternately, there could have been very strong selectional pressure that reached an equilibrium with the new environment in short order – say ten thousand years – and then remained relatively stable thereafter.
I’ve seen various theses. Domestication. Climate. An energy-saving mutation that gave humans more brain power in exchange for smaller skull size. Or perhaps our distant ancestors really were smarter than we are.
None of them are satisfactory. We just don’t know yet.
” genetic IQ”
words are things for RuPaul.
RuPaul hasn’t taken a math class past high school pre-algebra.
can’t be helped.
tiny head, ya know.
interesting post. yeah, I keep coming across biographies of celebs and other individual in ‘non-STEM’ fields being gifted, finishing college early, finishing high school early, etc etc. I’m sure the average entertainer is probably smarter than an ordinary person, but we;re talking multiple standard deviations here. There is a hierarchy in the arts in that painting and dance requires less cognitive capacity than writing. Music is in-between, depending on the instrument. It we assume a more more complicated task requires a higher IQ, how do we define complexity?
Yes, there is a hierarchy in the arts. I’m inclined to think comedy is on top but the learned Pincher Martin strongly objects. Also various fields overlap. You can’t say comics are smarter than writers who are smarter than actors who are smarter than singers and dancers because there are comic writers and comic actors. Also, writing a complex literary novel probably takes more IQ than writing the screenplay for a slasher film; composing classical music probably takes more IQ than composing a pop song…,so you’d have to define the fields very specifically.
[redacted; wrong spot]
Arts generally require smarts. It’s that simple. It’s an extremely abstract process. If you don’t think painting a landscape requires smarts, it’s because you haven’t attempted to do so. Choreographing dances also requires smarts.
Different art forms require different mental abilities and different mental skills. Whether you want to define those as smarts, depends on your definition of intelligence. You don’t believe in g so you’re not arguing art requires g: and if there’s no g, you have no reason to argue that artistic ability correlates with other important mental abilities, so what you’re really saying is art requires talent, not smarts.
if by ‘g’ you mean some far-off thing called intelligence, sure, why not. if by ‘g’ you mean the product of factor analysis, then yeah, I don’t quite ‘believe’ in g…at best it’s incomplete.
regardless, trying to differentiate between ‘talent’ and ‘smarts’ in abstract fields is strange. the reason it looks like ‘talent’ is the same reason advanced mathematics looks like ‘talent’ to a neophyte —> the underlying process is unknown.
Do you believe all mental abilities are positively correlated?
I’ll save you the trouble. the problem with your argument above is this leap “if there is no g, then…”
The mental abilities in IQ tests correlate with one another and, tautologically, “g.” As I pointed out below, a concept like “g,” which is just the IQ mental abilities, really….may be unrelated to the types of intelligence we see in art, and therefore uncorrelated, but still smarts.
Sternberg claims to have found exactly this. Others have claimed ‘no it’s still just g.’ Either way, it doesn’t matter. Art probably requires smarts under either my paradigm or yours.
Art requires mental abilitities, but if those mental abilities are uncorrelated with a global or general mental ability, then it makes no sense to say art requires smarts. Rather, art requires art smarts (aka talent )
No, the concept of g is that all mental abilities positively correlate; not the ones on IQ tests only. If you find a mental ability that lacks a positive correlation with any other mental ability, then you have falsified g.
not if the “g” in your paradigm doesn’t encapsulate all of intelligence and instead is a short-hand for IQ mental abilities….
it only “makes no sense” if you take the “g” of factor analysis as = all smarts. I don’t. the tests partially correlate with one another. sometimes positive correlations are just positive correlations.
which means that if we find a correlation, then under your paradigm arts require smarts. if we don’t find a correlation, then arts could still require smarts under a paradigm suggested by Sternberg, which is gaining acceptance any way.
‘the concept of g is that all mental abilities positively correlate’
the concept of g is that a general factor that is real and practical causes all mental abilities to positively correlate.
To most people “smarts” is an overall or general ability. If artists are good at art but mediocre in most other cognitive domains, the word talent is more appropriate
After all even a bird is brilliant at the art of making a nest, but to call a bird smart robs the term of its meaning
How can you have a real & practical effect without a real & practical cause?
or it’s just a set of skills. each successive skill being the combination of other, earlier learned (or possessed) skills. such a situation would always yield a “false” factor analysis g.
you say high development in one area with mediocre development in another would equate to “talent.” I don’t think that’s true. It’s just high development in one area.
‘How can you have a real & practical effect without a real & practical cause?’
Vocabulary and writing skill are probably highly correlated. There could be a ‘w’ factor that explains this or it could just be that writing skill is a skill, the development of which is partly controlled by the development of another skill — vocabulary.
Smarts is an overall or general concept in the minds of most people, so an artist who was mediocre outside art would probably not be defined as smart by most people.
If all mental abilities correlate because they’re interdependent skills that’s still a real & practical cause but it’s not the kind of biological g factor that Jensen believed in & he would dispute that all mental abilities are just learned skills
‘so an artist who was mediocre outside art would probably not be defined as smart by most people. ‘
Yes they would. If anything, this latest debacle re: Hart is contra what you just said. Excellence in any field tends to gain one the title of “smart.” John Mayer writes about many issues that are unrelated to music. Numerous actors speak out about political causes.
I would agree that evaluating whether we should treat their statements with deference or not does depend on their expertise. But most people — again, as already demonstrated — don’t do that and take any excellence to equal all excellence. They a) accept that the individual is generally smart (which is fine, I don’t care), and b) generally accept that individual’s opinion on various topics.
‘that’s still a real & practical cause’
Never said it wasn’t. It’s just not your ‘g.’ And in that paradigm, ‘g’ would still exist but be meaningless. And yes, Jensen would disagree. Who cares. There’s still plenty of debate about g, and psychologists prefer talking about ‘IQ,’ rather than g for that very reason. IQ is a set of skills that provides a ‘good enough’ practical use.
Oh my God, you are so stupid! If you have an IQ as high and believe the nonsense you write, imagine if you had mediocre IQ.
If you have an IQ as high and believe the nonsense you write, imagine if you had mediocre IQ. The whites of North America are all white trash.
Thanks for coming out with those stimulating thoughts 🙂
You’ re welcome, honey. It is always a pleasure to tell the truth.
It is always a pleasure to tell the truth.
It’s a great pleasure indeed. I hope you get a chance to try it one day. 🙂
Dear Pumpkin,
I’m still waiting for you to answer why East Asian have jaws and larger teeth than Caucasians and still are their descendants. I also want to know how people who have black hair and eyes may be descended from populations with thin and light hair and eyes of different colors.
Do you believe that the human population who produced art was the Indians …. interesting, see the northern Italy and all that was produced of art and literature, and compare the number of inhabitants of the two populations.
Do you think the Indian IQ is not as high because they are not well nourished? I thought that intelligence was the ability to adapt the environment to your advantage, and want to understand how a population that lives on one of the most fertile soils in the world can still starve and be smart.
An addendum: it is interesting to note that although East Asian have the highest average IQ than Europeans, with particular advantage for logical mathematical IQ, they are not a large number of winners of the Fields Medal.
Here’s your chance to tell the truth, sir pumpkin head, you are ignorant or dishonest?
I’m still waiting for you to answer why East Asian have jaws and larger teeth than Caucasians and still are their descendants.
If Northeast Asians are more prognathous than Caucasoids, that would be anomalous, but no theory fits all the data perfectly. There are always mysteries in science.
However if it’s southeast Asians you’re thinking of, their facial angle can be explained by admixture with the non-mongoloid dark-skinned natives.
I also want to know how people who have black hair and eyes may be descended from populations with thin and light hair and eyes of different colors.
Northeast Asian are descended from an archaic form of Caucasoid that may have predated light hair and light eyes. Northeast Asians hair is more different from African hair than Caucasoid hair is.
Do you believe that the human population who produced art was the Indians …. interesting, see the northern Italy and all that was produced of art and literature, and compare the number of inhabitants of the two populations.
I was quoting Michael Hart who said Indians were the most artistic NON-EUROPEANS. Do you believe Italians are non-European?
Do you think the Indian IQ is not as high because they are not well nourished? I thought that intelligence was the ability to adapt the environment to your advantage, and want to understand how a population that lives on one of the most fertile soils in the world can still starve and be smart.
The causation works both ways. Low IQ causes malnutrition, but then malnutrition makes IQ much lower than it otherwise would be.
indeed Astor.
HBDers ARE genetically incapable of telling the difference between truth and lies.
pp’s and Charles “white trash” Murray’s god:
World Moustache Champion,
the problem is that hbds read Rushton and Kanazawa and think they have discovered everything.
“If Northeast Asians are more prognathous than Caucasoids, that would be anomalous, but no theory fits all the data perfectly. There are always mysteries in science.”
?????????
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15838862
Population variation with respect to the alveolar index is shown below:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1468330/
“Northeast Asian are descended from an archaic form of Caucasoid that may have predated light hair and light eyes. Northeast Asians hair is more different from African hair than Caucasoid hair is.”
http://www.ceacb.ucl.ac.uk/cultureclub/files/CC2006-03-07_Frost.pdf
“I was quoting Michael Hart who said Indians were the most artistic NON-EUROPEANS. Do you believe Italians are non-European?”
Southern Italians, especially Sicilians are not pure European, North Italians are clearly European.
The awarding of Nobel Prizes for Literature and Peace is politically motivated.
Toni Morrison is certainly not a first-rate writer.
Indian art is formulaic, like European Gothic art. The formulas in both cases were generated by the theoretical, priestly/monastic class, whose members presumably had a much-higher-than-average level of intelligence.
Perhaps the priests and nobles of pre-Columbian Mexico and Peru were as intelligent, on average, as those of Ancient Egypt or India. Perhaps the entire priestly and noble classes of those societies were wiped out, or perhaps their children failed to reproduce after the Spanish conquest rendered their abilities worthless. The average Peruvian and Mexican IQ might have crashed to present levels as a result. If so, this might happen to Europeans as well.
I think one needs a verbal IQ of at least 125 to even understand Toni Morrison; not that that necessarily proves she’s a good writer (it could prove the opposite); but it does suggest she’s highly intelligent. I’ve personally never read her, but I’ve read that her books are considered too difficult for undergraduates and the movie Beloved had a lot of symbolism and a complex narrative structure. And Morrison’s an eloquent speaker
As for Amerindian intelligence; they seem to have a genetic IQ very similar to non-white caucasoids, so they should have historical accomplishments similar to Egyptians and Indians.
I have a theory that iq will settle to an environment regardless of admixture. It seems being half white did little to raise average iq in Mexico. Despite the fact that blacks have a lower iq, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans and Indians converge at around 85 to 90.
The only the groups share is a long growing season.
Her books aren’t difficult because people need a high “IQ.” They’re difficult because most people are very surface-level thinkers and readers.
“White people believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way . . . they were right. . . . But it wasn’t the jungle blacks brought with them to this place. . . . It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread . . . until it invaded the whites who had made it. . . . Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own.”
That’s a passage from her. Personally I think it’s a good passage.
You simply cannot read fiction or approach it in the way you would approach non-fiction or an academic work.
Lol according to current science there’s evidence to show that creativity and other types of lateral thinking are real and can help explain as much if not more of the variations in outcomes as IQ.
Blacks have probably contributed as much if not more to popular art through music than whites in white society.
“Types of intelligence other than the analytic kind examined by IQ tests certainly have a reality. Robert Sternberg and his colleagues (Sternberg, 1999, 2006) have studied practical intelligence, which they define as the ability to solve concrete problems in real life that require searching for information not necessarily contained in a problem statement, and for which many solutions are possible, as well as
creativity, or the ability to come up with novel solutions to problems and to originate interesting questions. Sternberg and his colleagues maintain that both practical intelligence and creativity can be measured, that they correlate only moderately with analytic intelligence as measured by IQ tests, and that they can predict significant amounts of variance in academic and occupational achievement over and above what can be predicted by IQ measures alone”
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-67-2-130.pdf
Sternberg and his colleagues maintain that both practical intelligence and creativity can be measured, that they correlate only moderately with analytic intelligence as measured by IQ tests,
The fact that they positively correlate at all, let alone moderately, is evidence of g.
‘The fact that they positively correlate at all, let alone moderately, is evidence of g’
But it’s not evidence of g being anything real or practical. There is a difference between factor analysis and the real deal.
otoh if Sternberg is correct, then these three separate domains may account for genius.
g is whatever variable(s) cause all mental abilities to positively correlate. It’s real in the sense that it can be very easily falsified if its not.
It’s enormously practical if it influences all mental abilities & sternberg failed to show it doesn’t
Sternberg has perhaps done a good job showing that certain mental talents or skills are useful independently of g but no one ever denied that.
people are denying that these skills are part of “intelligence…” which seems silly. And the article refers to them as types of intelligence.
‘It’s real in the sense that it can be very easily falsified if its not.’
One of the main critiques of a lone “g” is that it is unfalsifiable.
G(f) and G(c) is better, but probably incomplete
people are denying that these skills are part of “intelligence…” which seems silly. And the article refers to them as types of intelligence.
Well some people think they’re just knowledge and skills, as opposed to innate abilities. Jensen dismissed a lot of Sternberg’s tests (though perhaps not all) as measuring “tricks of the trade”. However you argue that IQ tests just measure knowledge and skills too. Jensen begged to differ.
One of the main critiques of a lone “g” is that it is unfalsifiable.
A simple way to falsify g is to find a cognitive ability that doesn’t positively correlate with another cognitive ability
That really wouldn’t falsify factor analysis g, because g is a theory set up to explain the cause behind the positive correlations. So pointing back to the fact it is set up to explain is weak.
There is only good support for G(f) and G(c).
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2012/12/24/how-intelligent-is-iq/#.VIYy4om9Kc1
However the fact that different areas associated with each lit up suggests that these different areas represent skills within the particular domains of logic or memory.
Jensen begged to differ, sure, but even more people begged to and still beg to differ with Jensen.
return of Lamarckism, epigenetics etc.
‘Here, we demonstrate that exposure of 15-d-old mice to 2 weeks of an enriched envi-
ronment (EE), that includes exposure to novel objects, elevated social interactions and voluntary exercise, enhances long-term potenti-ation (LTP) not only in these enriched mice but also in their future offspring through early adolescence, even if the offspring never experience EE’
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/29/5/1496.full.pdf
The infamous mice experiment —> nearly genetically identical mice behaving differently depending on the laboratory they were brought up in (despite every effort to standardize the conditions)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/neu.10173/pdf
Watson auctioned off his nobel prize. Boohoo.
Interestingly enough, Watson’s IQ is apparently only 120. Just another one of these apparent geniuses who has not-so-high IQ.
before you ‘BUT HE SPOKE TRUTH TO POWER’ people start…. –>
“Fellow faculty member E.O. Wilson described Watson in the 1950s and ’60s as the “Caligula of biology” for his contempt of scientists who studied anything other than molecules. Wilson wrote that, unfortunately, due to Watson’s stroke of genius at age 25, “He was given license to say anything that came to his mind and expect to be taken seriously.”
“Watson had a major insight 61 years ago about the physical structure of DNA. He is one of the founders of a very important but very specific subset of modern biology, and he devoted most of the rest of his career to the study of cancer biology. But he knows fuck all about history, human evolution, anthropology, sociology, psychology, or any rigorous study of intelligence or race. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works for him to think that his expertise at one level of analysis—a molecular level—predicts anything at a higher level of analysis.”
a reason why expertise is important….
The James watson example shows the limits and power of 124 iq. It can reason and digest data but not discover at the highest level.
“discover at the highest level” is subjective. He won a nobel prize, which is the highest honor you can receive..
He used another scientist’s data and research without her permission. We don’t know why James watson had to do shady things to earn that prize but one explanation is that his iq was inadequate to do the research but high enough to analyze.
while you’re right that “finding” and “gathering” data is important, and indeed as sternberg suggests, probably a type of intelligence….it really isn’t the type that IQ measures. so the analysis is what counts anyway.
really *purports to measure
It takes intelligence to succeed in art just like it takes intelligence to succeed at anything. That doesn’t mean every successful artist is intelligent. Nor does it mean that those artists who do happen to be intelligent aren’t also fruitcakes. Many of them are.
I’m reminded of a reclusive abstract artist some years ago whose paintings became highly sought after — until it was discovered to be a chimpanzee slinging paint at a canvas. Not that there wasn’t some intelligence behind the chimp’s success. But the intelligence was in the promotion not the art itself. You see a similar phenomenon with many entertainers. As a STEM comparison, Steve Wozniak was the “chimp” who engineered Apple computers and Steve Jobs was the intelligence who promoted it. The difference is that the intelligence required to engineer a computer is undeniable. The intelligence required to sling paint at a canvas or type shit on a page not so much.
Fortunately for “artists”, it doesn’t take much intelligence to entertain the mindless. If that weren’t true then Real Housewives and Girls would have both been off the air a long time ago. Speaking of Girls, it’s starting to look like the girl you claimed was so smart molested her baby sister and lied about being raped. Meanwhile, nearly 20 women have come forward to accuse your other hero of raping them. In other words, they’re both examples demonstrating how successful blithering idiots can become in arts and entertainment. Toni Morrison is only slightly better. Just because a bunch of dickwads sit around intellectualizing about how “smart” she is doesn’t make it so. Those were the same pompous dickwads who showed up to eat wine and cheese and pontificate about how brilliant that chimp’s paintings were. For you to misjudge people and situations so badly makes me question your intellect as well.
‘The intelligence required to sling paint at a canvas or type shit on a page not so much. ‘
You’re falling into rhetoric and fashioning lame stereotypes for your dichotomy; the worst for art and the best for math/science.
‘Fortunately for “artists”, it doesn’t take much intelligence to entertain the mindless.’
“Lasting” art is usually appreciated most by smart people. A real crude way to assess the smarts of an artist may be to assess the smarts of their average fan/admirer. I’d guess the artist’s IQ/smarts/whatever to be about an SD above. That’s usually the kind of level where a) you consistently have insights that others don’t have but b) those insights can be appreciated.
Nobel-prize winners are supposedly ~145 IQ; average professor/academic IQ 130; average college-grad/student ~105-115.
So…..elite artist —-> normal artist —> normal consumer of art/entertainment.
‘ In other words, they’re both examples demonstrating how successful blithering idiots can become in arts and entertainment’
Neither of those examples shows what you believe it shows.
How does allegedly raping women prove he’s an idiot. Failing to distinguish alleged morality & IQ would be misjudging. As for Lena Dunham, i stated in my post on her that she was smart but not smart enough
“You’re falling into rhetoric and fashioning lame stereotypes for your dichotomy; the worst for art and the best for math/science.”
Pot meet kettle.
“How does allegedly raping women prove he’s an idiot.”,/i>
serial raping celebrity = idiot.
‘Pot meet kettle.’
Feel free to show where I did so. To me, it’s hard to tell which takes more smarts….but at the very least, to succeed in the arts takes smarts.
‘serial raping celebrity = idiot.’
a) you’re assuming that he actually “raped” anyone, despite no charges being filed, the accounts defying common sense, and at least one accuser having been shown to have a pecuniary motive
b) crime != stupid. Ted Bundy wasn’t stupid.
Destructure
The black male sex drive is extremely strong. If he’s guilty, it’s because the desire was too strong to resist, in spite of his better judgement, not because of a lack of it.
And as you astutely pointed out earlier, perhaps facetiously, getting away with that many alleged crimes for so long implies intelligence.
Lastly, I never implied the man was a genius, but getting the best IQ score in his childhood school implies an IQ of at least 125; probably no higher since he later flunked the SAT
I agree that there are a lot of non-smart entertainers, but he’s not just any successful entertainer. He’s the most successful african American of his entire generation so odds of him being smart are quite a bit higher (though still no guarantee)
now we’re just getting into racist territory and ecological fallacy —> “as a black his sex drive was just too strong to resist.”
lol…….
nevermind that he’s rich beyond his wildest dreams and FAMOUS and has thousands of women at his fingertips.
nevermind that the allegations are horseshit.
I said IF the allegations are true. Not suggesting they are
even if they were true, pumpkin, turning to ‘the black male sex drive’ is classic eco fallacy especially in light of the fact that other variables here exist that would explain it.
no worries swank. d is a criminal himself. not to mentioned paranoid, autistic, and mentally retarded.
nasty “Feel free to show where I did so.”
I did. Now piss off.
pumpkin “The black male sex drive is extremely strong.”
I’ve never considered the “black male sex drive” to be stronger than any others’. Rather, I’ve considered any difference an issue of intelligence, impulse control, etc. For example, violent impulsiveness is largely limited to those with an IQ below 90. Common sense suggests sexual impulsiveness would be as well irrespective of one’s drive. That’s why it doesn’t really matter if Cosby was rich or had opportunities. Because he also lacked the intelligence and ability to control his impulses. So he could have an opportunity yesterday and tomorrow but still rape a girl today because today is when he feels the impulse. That’s what impulse control is all about.
‘I did. Now piss off.’
lol here let me help you gather your toys before you stomp home.
‘That’s what impulse control is all about.’
Judging by the mental masturbation in that preceding paragraph, you have poor impulse control.
For example, violent impulsiveness is largely limited to those with an IQ below 90. Common sense suggests sexual impulsiveness would be as well irrespective of one’s drive.
Common sense suggests both IQ and sex drive would each have an independent effect on sexual impulsiveness. And who says it was allegedly impulsive? The fact that he allegedly got away with it so long suggests it would have been well planned. Bill Clinton has a high IQ and he was sexually impulsive.
That’s why it doesn’t really matter if Cosby was rich or had opportunities. Because he also lacked the intelligence and ability to control his impulses.
Millions of high IQ people can’t control their impulses. Look at all the high IQ smokers, alcoholics, drug addicts, food addicts etc. Impulse control is only moderately correlated with IQ. It’s much more an emotional or personality trait than it is a cognitive ability. Ancient philosophers divided the mind into two parts: The intellect (that which thinks, reasons, knows, and understands) and emotion (that which feels, wants, and wills). You’re mixing them together into a hybrid. Poor impulse control can be caused by poor intellect (failure to think or plan ahead) or it can be caused by really strong impulses that can’t be controlled.
So he could have an opportunity yesterday and tomorrow but still rape a girl today because today is when he feels the impulse. That’s what impulse control is all about.
Are you saying he allegedly raped women because he lacked the impulse control to wait for consensual sex? No, if he raped women (and we should be VERY clear that these are only accusations), it was because he was turned on by rape. That’s a problem with his sexuality, not his intellect. As they say in the ghetto, don’t get it twisted.
“lol here let me help you gather your toys before you stomp home.”
There’s no stomping. I’m just not going to waste my time arguing with a ******.
******
“Common sense suggests both IQ and sex drive would each have an independent effect on sexual impulsiveness.
I never said otherwise. But most people are average. It’s exponentially less likely that someone will not be average on multiple qualities.
“And who says it was allegedly impulsive? The fact that he allegedly got away with it so long suggests it would have been well planned.”
The only planning is to acquire rape drugs. Slipping someone a drugged cocktail is opportunity and impulse.
“Bill Clinton has a high IQ and he was sexually impulsive.”
Clinton was sexually aggressive and a womanizer. That’s in a completely different category from rape. Similarly, drinking, smoking, etc are in a completely different category than rape. Regardless, you’re using anecdotes to support general principles. That’s backwards.
“Impulse control is only moderately correlated with IQ. It’s much more an emotional or personality trait than it is a cognitive ability. “
The smarter one is the better one is at controlling impulses. That’s why violent crime is largely committed by those with an IQ below 90.
You trying to argue would be a waste of time, no argument from me on that.
You only think there’s a difference between sexually aggressive womanizing in one case and “rape” in the other because you believe — without evidence — that Cosby is a rapist, because — surprise! — you’re a racist.
Destructure,
Bill Clinton was accused of rape too, & Christopher Hitchens claimed the accuser was very credible.
And criminals have low IQs for a number of reasons; not least of which is the fact they’re not smart enough to earn an even semi- honest living. In sharp contrast, Cosby earned hundreds of millions through wholesome clean constructive entertainment,
Statistically alleged rape decreases the odds Cosby is smart, but not by much. Average rapist is around 90, but I’m sure there’s enormous variability around the mean.
Hitch described Clinton as a “serial rapist”.
“Bill Clinton was accused of rape too, & Christopher Hitchens claimed the accuser was very credible. “
Not by nearly 20 women. Clinton’s only accuser had previously denied he had “made unwelcome sexual advances toward” her. Years later she claimed she had lied and that he had actually raped her. If someone changes their story and claims they lied then that makes them not credible. Christopher Hitchens was a professional muckraker and glorified carnival barker. I couldn’t care less what he thinks about anything.
this from a professional criminal.
that’s chutzpah!
“And criminals have low IQs for a number of reasons; not least of which is the fact they’re not smart enough to earn an even semi- honest living.”
Correlation doesn’t imply causation. Poverty doesn’t cause violent crime. It only looks like it because poverty and crime are caused by the same thing — low IQ. We know this because there are actually a few smart poor people and a few dumb rich people. Their rate of violent criminality is more in line with those of similar intelligence than similar wealth.
Lol, I guess the number zero and numeral systems are not that complex by Michael harts standards. Primitive math kept antiquity from going beyond hero’s stream toys.
Similarly, a strong cultural divide keeps westerners from fully understanding chinese art. These two facts show hart has little credibility.
yes. for all the high-fiving, a lot of the west’s touted successes are pretty recent. Egyptian and Mayan civilization were very advanced for their times, too though.
Because only a few people can make a living from the arts, the competition is much tougher than getting a STEM degree. Since the path is ill-defined, an artist making $100k would be brighter than an engineering making the same amount. It would only be fair to compare the top 10 sculptors and top 10 physicists can compare their iq.
yes. I pointed this out already….there are only 5k working TV and Movie writers in the US. 2.5 million engineers and 1 million or so lawyers.
There are literally millions of people working in the arts in the United States. They produce, direct, act, sing, write, paint, choreograph, dance, compose, design, sculpt, or work in affiliated fields.
Since the “path is ill-defined,” many smart people tend to stay away from it unless they’re either totally committed, crazy, or (most likely) stupid.
If you’re an average engineer, you’re very employable and you’ll earn a decent salary. If you’re an average artist, you’d better hope you have a college degree so you can teach at the local high school.
That wouldn’t be a fair contest. How about you compare the top ten sculptors to ten randomly-selected guys teaching physics at a junior college.
typical.
first Martin says millions make a living at it…
then he says you’d better have a masters in education so you can teach in a high school.
the guy’s got the logic of a woman or shemale.
i’m thinking shemale.
Freddie Mercury,
Millions do make a living at it, you fat swine.
But unlike engineering there’s no settled track for success in the entertainment industry, no set program for membership. It’s all on the job training, and so you’re average actor, writer, sculptor, etc., better have a backup plan.
definitely shemale.
You can always hope.
‘There are literally millions of people working in the arts in the United States.’
Yes, if you combine all of the arts. If we combine all of the sciences we’d also get a much larger number.
Rhetorical ploy # 340909 from old spunky.
And like WMC pointed out —> we’ve always limited the discussion to those who are working in the arts. Not teaching.
I’ve actually worked as both a top tier software developer and as an artist (the latter is much more in tune with my personality than the former) so maybe I have a unique perspective. In my experience it’s true that the arts are awash in fickle undisciplined people who couldn’t understand math and thought splashing some paint on a canvas would be easier. These artists often have someone who supports their endeavors while they produce one or two pieces every once in a while and hang out with the cool kids at art shows. Many of them teach or go on to teach art which annoys me to no end because dilettantes by definition don’t understand the drive it takes to succeed in anything. However, the top ten percent of artists, those who can make a decent living are pretty smart and the top one percent are very smart, very hard working, very adaptable, and of course: creative (a word I find to have a very nebulous meaning depending on who you talk to).
In the past a competent engineer could do well while a competent artist would struggle unless they had some special edge, some unique perspective, that they could sell to the world at large. That’s not as much the case as it used to be, not with the rise of the gaming industry and all the artists it employs. I made the conscious decision to move to art from engineering, not just because I enjoy it more but because I could see the escalating demand for artists while I watched entire groups of software engineers disappear only to be replaced with foreign contractors.
Art teachers like to say that ‘everyone is an artist’ and ‘art is expression’ which is true to an extent… but the actual day to day work, the practice, the dedication it takes to be great, to have work that makes people gasp, that is not part of any art school curriculum that I have seen. The people who teach that are people like me: working illustrators. Maybe it’s best that I got a science degree first, going to art school seems to have turned a lot of kids into people who just expect success and when it doesn’t instantly materialize, they work at starbucks and spend their free time bitterly picking apart the work of those who did make it.
This comparison was your rhetorical gambit, Swanky, not mine. You just don’t have the intellectual chops to understand the supply and demand behind your rhetoric.
The arts and sciences are not equal, and nowhere is it written that they must employ equal or similar numbers of people in a modern society. Or that they must attract an equal number of smart and dumb people. Or that they must employ those people with similar salaries. So right off the bat your comparison is dumb.
It’s still worth noting that there are plenty of jobs in the U.S. having to do with the arts, and most don’t pay very well. Nor do all the people in them go directly to them on a straight path from school. So trying to compare the top IQs of sculptors and physicists, or the top screenwriters and lawyers, as you suggested was illuminating, is a dumb exercise. No one becomes a lawyer or physicist by dumb blind luck. But that’s not true of many people working in most of the arts (music, and a couple of others, aside).
Take the top popular novelists in the country. By any measure of income, they are among the best paid Americans working today. Write a best selling novel and you can earn ten million for your next book. So is there anything in the backgrounds of pop novelists as a whole that suggests their IQs compare well to, say, the smartest lawyers in the country?
John Grisham, for example, was obviously smart enough to successfully study the law, pass the bar in Mississippi, and begin work as a small-town lawyer and politician. His first legal thriller, A Time to Kill, was rejected by more than two dozen publishing houses before an unknown publisher agreed to publish it. The book later became a best seller after his second book, The Firm, became a best seller, and he has since made over half a billion dollars selling books.
So if an average lawyer could become a top selling novelist worth hundreds of millions of dollars, why don’t more smart lawyers in the country – young lawyers clearly ahead of the young John Grisham by education and job – go into novel writing?
Because writing a novel is a lot of work and too much about finding success in the publishing field is dumb blind luck. There’s a huge margin between the people who make a name for themselves by writing novels and those who don’t – and that margin is enough to chase away many highly intelligent people who are already hard at work in the legal profession.
That’s why – even though there are more full-time lawyers than full-time novelists, and even though the money to made in novel writing is potentially much higher than in the legal profession – the smartest lawyers in the country are still going to outscore the top novelists on IQ tests. Stephen King, for example, reportedly scored in the 1300s on the SAT. That’s a very good score, but a similar mark on the LSAT won’t get you into any the best law schools in the country. King’s not weeping on his way to the bank, though. He’s earned hundreds of million of dollars over his life.
‘This comparison was your rhetorical gambit, Swanky, not mine’
Yes, and your retort failed to do it any damage because my point still holds under proper comparison. If you had any of these supposed intellectual chops, you’d understand that.
‘No one becomes a lawyer or physicist by dumb blind luck. But that’s not true of many people working in most of the arts ‘
More illustrations of your unfamiliarity with the entire field. An artist of any kind may get one gig because of pure dumb blind luck. Just like an individual may pass the bar exam or the engineering exam because of pure dumb blind luck. However, steady work as a lawyer, engineer, etc. is probably not because of pure dumb luck, just like steady work as an entertainer is also not just pure dumb luck. They have the skill and they can consistently deploy the skill.
You didn’t do a proper comparison, Swanky. You suggested to us, for example, that because there are a lot of lawyers and very few screenwriters that the latter occupation must be brighter than the former occupation, that the narrower funnel for success only heightens their excellent intellectual qualities.
Wrong. You’re not passing that bar exam by pure dumb blind luck. Not when so many smart and properly trained people fail it. Just ask Hillary Clinton or JFK Jr.
You can, however, become famous for sculpting a modern masterpiece by pure blind luck.
‘So if an average lawyer could become a top selling novelist worth hundreds of millions of dollars, why don’t more smart lawyers in the country – young lawyers clearly ahead of the young John Grisham by education and job – go into novel writing? ‘
The fact that someone with Grisham’s smarts had as tough of a time as he did more proves my point than yours. He had probably around average lawyer smarts — IQ ~120 — and yet still had trouble writing a novel that publishers thought was quality.
‘Stephen King, for example, reportedly scored in the 1300s on the SAT. That’s a very good score, but a similar mark on the LSAT won’t get you into any the best law schools in the country’
This is wrong.
‘99.013’-tile is 1300 on the old SAT
That’s around 172-174 on the current LSAT which is around the median for Yale law, the number 1 law school. Even if you adjusted it down to match for a “smarter” test-taking population, down to about 169-171, you’d still be a strong admit chance for the best law schools in the country.
‘You suggested to us, for example, that because there are a lot of lawyers and very few screenwriters that the latter occupation must be brighter than the former occupation’
Actually, I never said that they must be brighter. I merely said that it indicates that the professions probably require significant smarts because a) the professions require abstract skills and b) the highly competitive nature of the professions probably sorts at least partly based on the quality of those abstract skills.
‘Wrong. You’re not passing that bar exam by pure dumb blind luck. Not when so many smart and properly trained people fail it. Just ask Hillary Clinton or JFK Jr.’
You can’t pass the bar exam by pure dumb luck because many smart people have failed the bar exam? Lol. You can be near the cut-off but just below in actual ability but pass because of whatever good guess on the MBE or whatever silly turn of phrase on the essays. The same general phenomenon can inflate your score on any standardized test or deflate it, which is a big part of why people don’t get identical scores even when they take the same test twice.
Publishers are dumbasses. That’s why a major part of getting published is dumb blind luck.
Grisham getting his first novel published was hard – as it is for any first time writer. That’s the hump that prevents many smart, already gainfully employed people from trying it. There’s a lot of work involved and a high likelihood for no payoff. (The other is that novel writing, unlike the law or medicine or anything STEM, is not considered a serious profession by smart people and their parents, and so most smart people steer away from it.)
Grisham initially treated novel writing like a serious hobby. But once he found success, the flip side was that continued success was pretty easy.
‘Publishers are dumbasses. That’s why a major part of getting published is dumb blind luck.’
Lol. Yes, everyone in the art industry must be dumb, which is why it’s so hard for a smart person to succeed! Publishers, like Hollywood studios or financiers, are likely smart — they are making investments. They must have a good idea of what will sell and what will not sell in certain markets.
‘Grisham getting his first novel published was hard – as it is for any first time writer.’
Yes. It’s hard in part because of taste, but it’s also hard because the craft itself is hard.
Swanky,
The problem was not Grisham’s. He did his job by writing a novel that the public would buy once it was widely available. The problem is that publishers have as much trouble recognizing what books the public will buy as stock brokers have picking winning stocks.
Where are you getting this conversion table? King took his test before 1974.
Your comparison strongly suggested it.
This is like saying that stock brokers must know what stocks are going up. You know, because they work in the industry. But studies show it ain’t true.
The smart people in the movie and publishing industry know this. Sidney Pollack, for example, used to tell reporters that no one in Hollywood has any idea which movies will be successful and which movies won’t be successful. Not even the people making the movie know it when the film’s a wrap. One of the best screenwriters in the business, William Goldman, said the same thing.
I’m sure many publishers are competent about their main business. They diversify their risks and try various strategies to make a buck. But that’s besides the point. It doesn’t make them forecasters.
‘The problem is that publishers have as much trouble recognizing what books the public will buy as stock brokers have picking winning stocks.’
Nevermind that they’re in the business of marketing books that will sell and making these investments. Sometimes longshots payoff, but failure to bet it all on a longshot != lack of acumen.
‘Where are you getting this conversion table? King took his test before 1974.’
If he took the test before 1974, then his likely score on the later versions of the SAT would have been higher, not lower.
Here’s a chart:
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/Pre1974SAT.aspx
According to that, the IQ would be around 134, which is ~ 99th-tile anyway…even if you wanted to persnicket about the 15.6 vs 15 SD.
You can slice it any way you want — converting his SAT score to an LSAT score would probably get him in to at least one of the top law schools.
‘Your comparison strongly suggested it.’
No it didn’t. You just got caught in yet another rhetorical “fast-one.”
‘This is like saying that stock brokers must know what stocks are going up.’
Not really. Publishers are more like art critics. Critical approval, oft-times, does coincide with the commercial success of artwork.
Mensa accepts lower SAT scores after 1974, not higher:
http://www.us.mensa.org/join/testscores/qualifyingscores/
So king’s SATs are likely lower than the median LSAT of the most elite law schools
Having said that , the LSAT probably overestimates the IQ of elite law students since they were selected largely based on LSATs & would probably regress to the mean on other tests. I suspect if you surveyed Harvard law to ask them their SAT scores, the median IQ equivalent would be lower.
Pumpkinperson, the scarcity of Asians in Hollywood has more to do with the peculiarities of Hollywood, and little to do with lack of interest or talent in the arts on the part of Asians. Dozens of critically-acclaimed Asian films have been remade by Hollywood, many of which became Academy Award-winning movies like The Departed and The Magnificent Seven–or became blockbusters like The Ring. Star Wars fans might recall that the saga was inspired by George Lucas’ love of Japanese films, notably The Hidden Fortress by Kurosawa. Many people pointed out parallels between Spielberg’s War Horse and Kurosawa’s film Ran (Lucas and famed director Spielberg later presented Kurosawa with a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars). Directors like Ozu and Kurosawa are often named in ratings of the top 10 directors of all time.
Back to Hollywood: The lack of prominent Asian actors in the US can be traced to their small proportion in the US population and racial typecasting. These factors are related–few producers are going to cast a member of a group that comprises just 5% of the population. There is a racial element there, but it’s understandable: why would the main characters not look like 95% of the population? The interesting thing is, the few American Asian actors that have managed to find significant roles have been well-regarded. Ken Leung is a good example: his small role in The Sopranos garnered high praise from critics, and led to the writers of TV series Lost creating a role just for him. Director Brett Ratner said he’s “equivalent to Philip Seymour Hoffman as far as talent is concerned,” and director and actor Ed Norton, who has won two Academy Awards for acting, said that Leung “has unlimited potential as an actor…I don’t even think anybody’s tapped his full range yet.” Yet he’s gotten zero prominent roles since his Lost days, 7 years ago–which is probably a big reason that Asians here don’t go into acting, because even the best ones will struggle to find parts. That’s why Asians in the film industry are mostly behind the camera: back in the 40’s and 50’s, James Wong Howe won two Academy Awards for cinematography, and was nominated 10 times. More recently, Ang Lee has gotten two Oscars for directing, and TV shows like The Office have often had American Asians as head writers. There are probably other prominent figures, but I am neither an expert on Hollywood or Asian Americans. Main point is, it’s probably hard to break into an industry as a member of a group that’s a fraction of the size of the black or Latino populations; and harder still to get recognition among the public if you do succeed.
Assume hart was talking out of his ass about asians.
Just assume Hart was talking out of his ass, actually. Much better.
no HBDer is capable of speaking from his mouth.
Rick,
Ken Leung is the equivalent to Phillip Seymour Hoffman? Leung must be leveraging his knowledge of Brett Ratner’s dirtiest secrets for the director to be selling the actor that hard.
It’s not hard for Asians to break into the industry. If you watch the credits for movies, you’ll see Asian surnames all over them and in nearly every area of production. There are plenty of Asian-Americans (and Asians) working in Hollywood.
But not many Asians – particularly East Asians, who seem to be your focus – work in front of the camera in films for the U.S. market because, honestly, most don’t have the charisma to carry a feature film to a global audience. Phillip Seymour Hoffman can carry a film; Denzel Washington can carry a film; Ken Leung cannot.
There’s also a lot of Asian money in Hollywood and has been for some time. Samsung acquired part of Dreamworks SKG back twenty years ago when Spielberg and his partners were looking for investors.
this son of two mds can carry a film.
How would you know, you fat twink, when you can’t even afford a movie ticket?
only shemales go to theatres anymore.
the movies are so much better on a plasma screen in your own house.
Prose entertainment is so much better when you don’t have to move your lard ass to view it, isn’t it?
I love some korean directors.. Asians are definetely talented. but it is again a standard deviation thing, I guess.
I do not know who started this stereotype of asians being less creative…Asian success in arts/creativity is definetely proportinal to asian success in hard sciences.
imdb best 250 list is mostly American. These are selected by people.
But when you look at best movies ever, selected by experts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_considered_the_best
It is mostly europeans and russians…
Yeah I was also really really offended by that!
Japan is conspicuously UN-accomplished in natsci given its wealth and population.
You’re at the wrong site then. This is a blog for both those who wish to offend and who don’t mind being offended against.
“offended against”
yep!
Martini’s a Chinaman.
greatest artist of all time:
Martini doesn’t recognize my fat ‘tachioed friend.
if only there were audio what you’d hear would pumpkinhead or Cockring “speaking”.
I turned to follow him, but I despise most of the comments that you tolerate. You should give meditation classes, practically a monk.
Verbal IQ is more important than the non-verbal IQ, because the verbal IQ produces culture and societies. It is as if the verbal IQ was a manual and non-verbal IQ was carrying out the instructions that are contained in the manual.
This explain 104-107 spatial iq o aboriginous (abobos).
I would sacrifice all scientific achievement to a good line of poetry!
i have a thick biography of a relative and famous portrait painter, but…
art is better termed “fart”?
i’m a Cynic.
art is “typhos”.
human material/technical progress IS increased life expectancy OR it is TYPHOS/bullshit.
when i no longer need a job and a criminal record will do me no harm, i’ll buy a loge ticket to an RSC production of Lear and shit off the bar in the middle of Act V.
now that’s a climax.
… stand out of my sunlight…
no HIV or HEP, unlike Martini, so no charges of attempted murder.
Swanky writes above:
You’re still not getting it. *Most* bets are long shots, and the bets which aren’t long shots you’ll pay through your nose for.
When no one knew who John Grisham was, he was a long shot and no publishers took a gamble on his work. After the public bought his book The Firm, making it a best seller and luring Hollywood into the game, Grisham became a much better bet and got paid for it.
I assume you’re at least somewhat familiar with the scholarship on the quality expert opinion and the much deeper scholarship on expert stock picking. The consensus is that expert opinion is worthless except in some very limited conditions.
Publishers don’t make money by the quality of their new book picks; they make money because they provide a service the public wants (i.e., published reading material) and they’re good at managing the risk of providing that service.
That’s not the same thing at all as saying they’re just really good at predicting what new books will sell. The history of publishing has countless examples of great books that had all kinds of trouble finding a publisher and of other books that a publisher tried vigorously to market to the public but which just fell flat.
But if you don’t know anything about the scholarship on expert opinion, then I’m sure what I just said is a complete mystery to you. Especially since you’re so in awe of expert opinion.
Then I retract my claim for King.
Not in literature, it doesn’t. Critics and educated snobs like certain kinds of books, and the public likes other kinds of books. The two rarely meet.
Martini knows nothing about money.
surprise?
the reason why experts collectively do no better than the market as a whole is because they ARE the market.
almost ALL money is run by these experts.
so saying they do no better than a chimp is like saying “it’s impossible to jump higher than yourself or run faster than yourself.”
it’s retarded.
Please, Macaca, give us the considered financial views of a warehouse security guard overseeing a tool inventory.
more lies.
Come now, my little bourgeois Marxist, explain the world of finance and business for us by way of your porn buying habits.
i’ve never bought any porn.
you joined the US military voluntarily.
you live in the basement of your grandma’s double decker trailer.
you have no opinion.
Come on, Ron. Don’t bullshit the people like that. What else do you have to do at night other than buy porn, troll HBD sites, and a keep one eye on those cutting tools?
i work in the day moron.
but i do have a very irregular sleep wake schedule.
i’m basically 3 SDs to the right on the day person/night person continuum.
but my dog’s been sick, so i’ve had to take time off recently.
you couldn’t define alpha and beta if your life depended it on it.
you couldn’t even find the ytm given the price, par, coupon, and number of payments.
you’re an intellectual, economic, AND moral LOSER.
Well, if you stopped buggering the poor beast, maybe he’d recover and live a happy canine life.
‘You’re still not getting it. *Most* bets are long shots, and the bets which aren’t long shots you’ll pay through your nose for.’
Also not true. Most books don’t sell that many copies. Everyone knows this. So while you can’t predict a best-seller, publishers can predict books that will make enough to cover the sunk cost, if not turn a profit. Something like 30% of novels do turn a significant profit. That’s a lot.
‘scholarship on the quality expert opinion and the much deeper scholarship on expert stock picking’
All expert opinion is not equal. Stocks != movies != literature != etc.
Movie critics, for example, do often successfully predict a movie’s success.
‘The history of publishing has countless examples of great books that had all kinds of trouble finding a publisher and of other books that a publisher tried vigorously to market to the public but which just fell flat.’
The history of poker has millions of people folding 7-2 offsuit only to reveal a flop of 227. Doesn’t mean the folds were bad or that the folders were bad players. In fact, it probably means the opposite.
millions con their way in the (f)arts in ‘mer’ca-stan.
BOURGEOIS DECADENCE!!!