Watching NBC news last night, I was floored when Brokaw asked Kerry if he thought he had underestimated Bush given that comparison of Military Aptitude tests revealed that Bush had a higher IQ. I looked for a cite and found this:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/kerry_iq_lower.htm
The source is clearly biased, but the analysis seems to have been done in the spirit of fairness. Is this surprising to anyone else?
I put this in GD because it will no doubt turn into one.
That source is not only biased, but displays idiocy right from the start:
Hummmmmmm…anybody spot a contradiction anywhere?
The (in-)validity of IQ has nothing to do with politics. IQ tests are highly suspect, but in this case, the fellow guesses at IQ’s as if they are tacit features, like blood types, that can be reliably ascertained by testing. This is something like guessing at someone’s golf handicap if they’ve never golfed. IQ is a score on a test, nothing more, and if they haven’t taken the test, they don’t have a score.
This is pseudoscience, and should not be treated as news. However, since newspapers also run articles about ghosts and psychics and most run an astrology column, I guess it’s par for the course.
But… he provides links! It’s true that one link is to another (rather racist) blog entry of his own and the other doesn’t work, but still: there are links!
Uhhh. not that I endorse the link in the OP, but that’s sarcasm, chief. Take a deep breath.
I don’t understand how the thread title relates to the issue. If anybody’s dumb here, it’s Brokaw. That’s just a painfully stupid question. Even if the analysis was accurate, why the hell would you ask someone a question like that?
LOL, so it is - I should pay more attention when reading shoddy web pages :wally
I think we need to distinguish between high IQ and mental habits. For middle-aged baseball fans you can say it’s sort of like the difference between Pete Rose and Joe Pepitone. Joe Pepitone was an extremely gifted ballplayer but, for reasons I can only guess at, prefered sleeping with loose women to. say, fielding practice. Pete Rose is said to have had mediocre talents but hustled every second he was on the field. Rose, if it hadn’t been for his little gambling addiction, would be in the hall of fame. Pepitone wound up as a tragic/comedic figure who never lived up to his potential.
So, sure. Bush could have been born smarter than John Kerry but we’re talking about a very slight difference in natural gifts versus a huge difference in application.
Also, Bush was a pretty bad drunk for a very long time. That sort of thing doesn’t help. They could be even now.
How did Kerry field this question? Is there a transcript or link to the interview available?
Well, this may brand me as a liberal but IQ’s *really don’t * mean a lot. One can have an extremely high IQ and absolutely no common sense or social skills. One can have a high IQ but never apply it by learning anything new or broadening their mind.
A child could be tested and determined to have a genius IQ then spend their life coasting through school, partying/doing drugs and alcohol and then doing whatever their advisors tell them to do without ever having to think for themselves. They will never have applied their IQ to actual learning and productive thought and would not have lived up to their genius potential.
A high IQ does not make one a genius.
The rest can be found at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6354942/
Did the rest of you read the analysis? It seemed pretty fair-minded to me. A biased source doesn’t mean its a wrong source. Its pretty clear that Kerry’s side wouldn’t care to reveal this.
I’m also not saying that IQ means anything (though it certainly does), but this thread is referring to statements like:
Howell Raines
Also, I didn’t mean for the thread to be about the predictive power of IQ.
Has Bush’s IQ score been made public? His SAT scores have, I think - I thought they were on Snopes but I could find them - but I don’t think any candidate would want to reveal an IQ score. There’s no benefit to it.
Bush is intelligent? I knew there was going to be an October surprise.
If you read the linked article you’ll find a surprising absense of real comparisons. There’s nothing like “Bush and Kerry both took this intelligence test and here’s what each one scored.” It’s more like Kerry took this test once which is the equivalent of taking this test and people who took that test and got similar scores often have IQ’s in this range. Meanwhile Bush took this test and if you adjust the score to reflect the change in final scores over the years you’ll see he was in this percentile and people who scored in the same percentile in an IQ test had this score. The man is comparing apples to bananas and oranges to grapefruits and then noting that bananas are yellower than grapefruit.
A military aptitude test is not an IQ test. My own IQ test results have consistently been well into the “genius” range" but I did only so-so on my ASVAB. There is no objective or nmpirical method by which anyone can extropolate an IQ from a military aptitude test. This is like someone deciding that one candidate is “smarter” by examining their handwriting.
Also, what did they compare Bush’s test to if Kerry’s is not publicly available?
Frankly, I think the debates made it painfully clear who the idiot was.
I guess you didn’t read it either:
http://www.johnkerry.com/pdf/jkmilservice/Training_School_Record.pdf
It doesn’t matter what GW’s test score was he doesn’t know how to plan. Maybe because he never had to do it.
His college classmates say he was the most uncurious (is that a word?) individual they ever saw. He never dug very deeply into anything. He has never traveled until he became president. He doesn’t read newspapers by his own statement.
This seems to show that he never had a list of things that must be done in a sucessful Iraq operation and never asked his staff who was in charge of covering “what” and what was the status of “what” and whether the tasks were in the correct sequence and on time. It also shows in the amost complete lack of followup to the Afghan operation.
Commentators keep saying the Kerry’s problem is that his answers are too thoughtful and detailed and that Bush is popular because he’s a likeable good 'ol boy. Who in the world would ever want a thoughtful president when you can have a glad-handing, immature dilletante? Make me want to throw up.
Here’s the Bush - Kerry IQ article in The New York Times -