There can’t be a blip in the bell curve, because the modern definition of IQ is based on the bell curve. The normal curve is the normal curve, and people are assigned their place under it based only on the rank of their raw test scores.
Granted, using the archaic definition of IQ based on mental and chronological ages, there could be more people at either end than would be the case if people were normally distributed with respect to test scores. But then it wouldn’t be a bell curve (normal curve) any more.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. (Oscar Wilde)
Sometimes, when I listen to the opinions of others, I just… well… snap… It’s difficult, living in the world of mental midgets and maintaining a sense of sanity… (he said, absentmindedly polishing his fingernails on his shirt and inspecting them…)
Well, “insane people” is a term broad enough to easily include myself, so I won’t speak to that. One thing I know is that most sociopaths do score better than average on I.Q. tests. They also share some other curious characteristics, like a willingness to endure a higher than average amount of pain to get a reward (note: this does not mean they are less sensitive to pain, which is even scarier) and, IIRC, an above average ability to emulate other peoples’ patterns of speech.
I once had a professor attempt to explain this I.Q. disparity through a common sense approach: the not-so-bright sociopaths quickly learn that their self-absorbed behavior is counterproductive to getting what they want, and so they emulate the behavior of non-sociopaths, effectively becoming outwardly indistinguishable from the average joe in most situations. The smart ones find ways to continue their unacceptable behavior and get away with it, and are the ones who get identified as sociopaths. Keep in mind this is all stuff I picked up in lectures ten years ago, and conventional thought may have changed since then.
I think society has already identified both ends of the sociopath spectrum: “dumb-ass” and “asshole.”
There are a few lines of thought. Briefly: some say that ‘what we define as insane’ (which we’ll refer to as insane from now on) is actually merely a deviance of percpeption. Now I’m not sure I’m willing to buy that completely but many certainly have a mental flexibility that leave a great many of us for dead. Another suggestion asserts that many ‘insane’ people refuse to accept limitations or society’s standards so they can freely think and associate. This theory holds that these people don’t think in logical, linear patterns like most of us (therefore alienating themselves) but that they can still reach - and often jump forward to far quicker - conclusions that are correct. Kind of like saying you only have the limits you accept which is a bit zennish…
Then again maybe they’re more in touch with their uncharted part of the brain and it’s merely instinctual. Some undiscovered mental ability. Insert pyschic theory here. Who knows?
In response to Biibliophage saying that there can’t be a blip in the bell curve.
The bell curve is a theory so when this theory met real life they found that reality doesn’t follow the theory. It is a fact that the bellcurve predicts only one person will have an IQ of 200. It is also a fact that testing has found at least 2 people who test at higher than 200 (and those are only the two I know of, I am sure there are more out there). These were not ratio IQs (the IQs which are derived from MA and CA) and they are not scores derived from the outdated test used with Marilyn Vos Sant.
What do you think happens anyway when people score this highly? As I follow your argument, there can only be one person at a time who scores at 200 - in reality what do you think happens when more than one person scores that highly? It doesn’t totally invalidate the bell curve - we are still talking tiny numbers of people in comparision to the vast majority in the centre of the bell curve. It is just a statistical anomaly which nobody can fully explain.
The normal curve is not a “theory”, it is a mathematical construct. I repeat that the very definition of IQ scores depends on the normal curve. Two people scoring over 200 on one test can only be explained by
they were using a standard deviation of 16 (not 15), as some experts do or
The test scores were not properly calibrated. It would be nearly impossible for any IQ test to be properly calibrated for the very highest-scoring people. This does not change the fact that the definition of IQ still depends on the normal curve. It is the fault of the test or of the test calibration, not of the definition of IQ score.
Whats the average IQ of the people who make the IQ tests?
If people use only 10% of their brain power and the scientists who made that assertion were only using 10% of their brain power, does that make it a 1% accurate statement?
I thought that the ‘blip’ actually started at IQ160 and was attributable to the successive mating of parents of superior intelligence. Besides if the Bell Curve were not more or less theoretically derived we’d have alot of people with IQ’s one SD or more below the mean. That means people like you and me.
-What’s right is only half of what’s wrong- George Harrison - Old Brown Shoe
