Is George W. Bush dumb?

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Richard Parker

It was clear you hadn’t read the study because you dismissed it out of hand for evaluating figures long dead based on their writings, even though the studied used widely-accepted techniques not limited to such analysis.

Bullshit. That is exactly what they did. They applied the same methodology to all of the presidents, which should be evidently ludicrous with the examples I pointed out. My guess is that you have no idea how widely accepted those techniques are, but I know that had I been asked to be a reviewer of the study, I would have had extreme problems with the methods and any conclusions drawn from them.

But I’ll take your hand and walk you through it more clearly. The authors describe the derivation of scores on three measures for all US presidents: Intellectual Brilliance, Openness to Experience, and IQ.

Intellectual Brilliance:

Assessment began by extracting personality descriptions from several biographical sources for 39 presidents from Washington through Reagan. All identifying information was then removed to produce anonymous biographical profiles. Several independent judges used these profiles in conjunction with the Gough Adjective Check List (Gough & Heilbrun, 1965) to rate the presidents on 300 descriptors, obtaining reliable assessments for 110 adjectives (cf. Deluga, 1997, 1998; Historical Figures Assessment Collaborative, 1977).

As I said, they used information from biographies, getting estimations from “several” judges about these descriptors. Don’t you see the likelihood of error in a) the original biographical material, which may be quite skewed, erroneous and otherwise unrepresentative, and b) the estimation then of others about how a person unknown to them appeared on three hundred descriptors based on those biographies?

IQ:

In particular, Cox compiled chronologies of childhood and adolescent achievements to detect any signs of intellectual precocity. Using a team of independent raters, the ages at which certain accomplishments appeared were compared with the average ages at which those achievements would be expected in the general population. The IQ scores were then defined according to the traditional concept of the intelligence quotient as 100 ¥ MA/CA, where MA is mental age and CA is chronological age (extended from Terman, 1917).

Here again, sources of error include: the biographical source material from which to draw the data on “childhood and adolescent achievements,” and the completeness and accuracy thereof, and also the accuracy of the derivation of the average age at which certain achievements would be expected in the general population. Since these authors are referring to another source, the methods for doing so are not made explicit here. There is simply no way, however, to meaningfully translate these types of developmental achievements into “IQ” scores.

Openness to Experience:

Rubenzer, Faschingbauer, and Ones (2000) assessed the 41 U.S. presidents prior to George W. Bush on the NEO, a standard measure of the “Big Five” personality dimensions (Costa & McCrae, 1992a,b). The assessment was executed by having recognized experts on specific presidents rate their subjects on the items making up the key facets and factors of the NEO. From these questionnaires useful measures were obtained for all of the NEO scales, at least for a subset of 31 chief executives for whom sufficient ratings were available. The resulting measure of special relevance here is Openness to
Experience, a cognitive proclivity that encompasses unusual receptiveness to fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, and values.

This is complete bullshit. The NEO is a measure of personality intended to be completed by self-report, using items that are not necessarily face-evident. There is a good bit of error in ones self-rating on these items. The idea that someone else could complete it about another person and have the ratings mean anything is nonsensical. Furthermore, when someone becomes an expert on a president, there is also a high likelihood of bias, no?

Here are a few examples of items on the NEO specifically pertaining to Openness. Imagine trying to accurately answer these about John Quincy Adams, using a five point rating scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree:

I have a very active imagination.

I often enjoy playing with theories or abstract ideas.

I am sometimes completely absorbed in music I am listening to

How I feel about things is important to me

Once I find the right way to do something, I stick to it.

Now imagine that you are an expert on that person, and have come to feel more strongly about him because of your work. Are you likely to endorse items more positively than you would otherwise? Complete rubbish.

The study methods are completely bogus and clearly prone to massive amounts of error. The idea that one could use these methods to determine that George W. Bush has an IQ of 120 (or 60, for that matter) is sheer bullshit.

[Richard_Parker]

@Hentor the Barbarian

Bullshit. [snip]
The study methods are completely bogus and clearly prone to massive amounts of error. The idea that one could use these methods to determine that George W. Bush has an IQ of 120 (or 60, for that matter) is sheer bullshit.

I concluded that the methods were well-accepted because for each measure they cited an article on that measure in a peer-reviewed journal. Not being a psychologist myself, I didn’t look much further. In any case, let’s stipulate that the study is very error-prone (no doubt it is, and you haven’t heard differently from me). Would you care to respond to anything else I said, including why you think your own subjective evaluation is less error-prone, scientifically speaking?

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Richard Parker

Would you care to respond to anything else I said, including why you think your own subjective evaluation is less error-prone, scientifically speaking?

Why my opinion is scientifically less error-prone? I don’t even know how to formulate a response to such nonsense. For one thing, I haven’t tried to assign an IQ score to Bush.

I am comfortable in guessing that he isn’t in the “very superior” range of IQ based on his history and present functioning. As I’ve said, stupid is as stupid does, and if one looks simply at the outcomes of his decisions and actions, they reflect very poorly upon his abilities.

I’ve asked several times if anyone else wants to step up and claim that they believe he is in such an IQ range.

[Richard_Parker]

@Hentor the Barbarian

Why my opinion is scientifically less error-prone? I don’t even know how to formulate a response to such nonsense. **For one thing, I haven’t tried to assign an IQ score to Bush. **

I am comfortable in guessing that he isn’t in the “very superior” range of IQ based on his history and present functioning. As I’ve said, stupid is as stupid does, and if one looks simply at the outcomes of his decisions and actions, they reflect very poorly upon his abilities.

You’re not guessing it. You’re asserting it. And not only that, you’re asserting that anyone who disagrees with your “guess” is partisan.

[Richard_Parker]

Sorry, missed the edit, but my last post was badly worded.

What I meant was this: you are positively asserting, in contradiction to the only available quantitative evidence (however flawed), that his IQ cannot be that high. That strikes me as a little more than a guess, especially because you believe that anyone who disagrees with your guess is partisan.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Richard Parker

You’re not guessing it. You’re asserting it. And not only that, you’re asserting that anyone who disagrees with your “guess” is partisan.

Fine. I’m doing those things.

[Richard_Parker]

So, to sum-up:

You blamed Sam for coming up with those numbers from his “fevered imagination” when in fact he was citing two independent, non-partisan sources.

Then, after you realized that these numbers actually came from somewhere, you reject the strong correlation between SAT and IQ as too error-prone, substituting instead your own guess on the matter and assert that whoever disagrees is a partisan (a methodology not unlike the decision-making methodology of the subject in question).

This is why I thought you were out of line.

[RedFury]

@Richard Parker

Sorry, missed the edit, but my last post was badly worded.

What I meant was this: you are positively asserting, in contradiction to the only available quantitative evidence (however flawed), that his IQ cannot be that high. That strikes me as a little more than a guess, especially because you believe that anyone who disagrees with your guess is partisan.

And all your doing in rebutting an expert on the field (Hentor) is to continue to cluck “I read it on the Internets, so it must be true!”

[Wee_Bairn]

And also continually asserting that an IQ score in 1964 is “valid” for the rest of your life.

But its understandable- Bush supporters are basically forced to cling to the idea that he’s of normal intelligence, otherwise they’d look foolish for supporting an idiot.

[Richard_Parker]

@Wee Bairn

And also continually asserting that an IQ score in 1964 is “valid” for the rest of your life.

But its understandable- Bush supporters are basically forced to cling to the idea that he’s of normal intelligence, otherwise they’d look foolish for supporting an idiot.

I agree that his IQ may have slipped (and if you read my earlier posts, you’ll see that I’ve already said so). What I don’t believe is that anyone who disagrees with me is automatically a partisan. It will obviously come as a shock to you that I am not a Bush supporter. But I do believe in fairness to people who disagree with me.

[Lemur866]

@Wee Bairn

But its understandable- Bush supporters are basically forced to cling to the idea that he’s of normal intelligence, otherwise they’d look foolish for supporting an idiot.

:rolleyes:

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

Sam Stone is, if you’ve been following him recently, not a Bush supporter. Even if he were, though, that would be irrelevant, as irrelevant to his points as pointing out that Hentor is a Bush hater.

My experience with folks around me is that Bush is smarter than the average person. He is not, however, nearly smart enough to be president. Most folks aren’t.

If you’d like a reminder of the average person’s intelligence on political matters, go read the YouTube comments about political clips.

Daniel

[RedFury]

How about if we frame the arguments thusly?

Bush IQ low on presidential league

GEORGE W BUSH has the lowest average IQ of all but one American president since the start of the 20th century, according to the estimates of psychological researchers.

He “is definitely intelligent . . . certainly smart enough to be president of the United States”, says Dean Keith Simonton, a psychologist at the University of California.

But his intellect falls below all other presidents of the past 110 years except Warren Harding, who was in the White House briefly in the 1920s and regarded as a failed president.

Bush’s estimated IQ is about 20 points below that of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, “a disparity that may have created a contrast effect that made any intellectual weaknesses all the more salient”.

Simonton has drawn up a table of estimated presidential intelligence by amassing data created by other researchers. Writing in the journal Political Psychology he says that estimates of Bush’s IQ range between 111.1 and 138.5, with a mean of 120, “which is about the average for a college graduate in the United States”.

Doesn’t look as good as some of his defenders make it out to be, does it?

Oh, and I read it on the Internets too…

[Wee_Bairn]

@Richard Parker

I agree that his IQ may have slipped (and if you read my earlier posts, you’ll see that I’ve already said so). What I don’t believe is that anyone who disagrees with me is automatically a partisan. It will obviously come as a shock to you that I am not a Bush supporter. But I do believe in fairness to people who disagree with me.

Fair enough, but I would say you are exception, and that most people who think he’s smart are supporters. No cite, just my opinion.

[XT]

Were you aware of the fact that this assertion is an ESTIMATE (edit: This is in response to Red’s ‘proof’ that Bush’s IQ is the lowest evah)? Not only an estimate of Bush’s supposed IQ but of the IQ’s of most of the other presidents as well? Of course you were…

(BTW, I thought that earlier the assertion was the IQ and SAT scores don’t matter…now they matter because someone estimates that Bush’s is the worst in umpty ump years? Not trying to make the, er, data, fit your theory, ehe Red?)

Why its so important to ‘prove’ that GW is stupid is beyond me…one can simply look at his actions and judge those without resorting to this obviously partisan bullshit.

-XT

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Richard Parker

So, to sum-up:

You blamed Sam for coming up with those numbers from his “fevered imagination” when in fact he was citing two independent, non-partisan sources.

Did you mean “to sum up” or “to cock up”? If the former, please tell me which two sources Sam cited.

Then, after you realized that these numbers actually came from somewhere,

Just because numbers come from “somewhere” doesn’t make them either valid or not the product of “some fevered imagination,” as I said.

you reject the strong correlation between SAT and IQ as too error-prone,

I did nothing of the sort. I pointed out that even a strong correlation would not allow one to develop a metric for simple score conversions across two different measures of different attributes.

substituting instead your own guess on the matter and assert that whoever disagrees is a partisan (a methodology not unlike the decision-making methodology of the subject in question).

I’ve always had my own opinion on the matter. I’ve just not tried to weasel some appearance of scientific legitimacy upon it by claiming it to be the product of a scientific process.

[Richard_Parker]

@Wee Bairn

Fair enough, but I would say you are exception, and that most people who think he’s smart are supporters. No cite, just my opinion.

Oh, I’m not even an exception. I don’t think he’s smart at all. My argument is limited solely to the assertion that, when it comes to IQ (one imperfect measure of “smart”), one might reasonably believe that his IQ is 120-130. I don’t personally believe that it is that high. And I certainly don’t think that even if that is his IQ, he is “smart.” I’m fully in **Lemur **and LHoD’s camp on that count.

[Lemur866]

@RedFury

Doesn’t look as good as some of his defenders make it out to be, does it?

Isn’t that pretty much exactly what I said?

He’s certainly not as smart as Bill Clinton, he’s probably the dumbest president of the modern era, he’s probably too dumb to make a good president, although you can be both smart and a terrible president. That doesn’t mean he’s dumber than an average person. After all, half the people on the planet are dumber than the average person. If he was your next door neighbor or your office coworker you wouldn’t be shaking your head over how stupid he was, although neither would you be marvelling over how smart he was.

[Richard_Parker]

@Hentor the Barbarian

Did you mean “to sum up” or “to cock up”? If the former, please tell me which two sources Sam cited.Just because numbers come from “somewhere” doesn’t make them either valid or not the product of “some fevered imagination,” as I said.

The figure came from the SAT to IQ conversion and the Political Psychology study. And it does make them not the product of some fevered imagination.

@Hentor the Barbarian

I pointed out that even a strong correlation would not allow one to develop a metric for simple score conversions across two different measures of different attributes.

Well, I’m not equipped to have that debate except to say that you should at least concede that some qualified psychologists disagree with you. More to the point, the correlation is meaningful when arguing that the SAT is evidence of a higher IQ. Circumstantial evidence, perhaps, but better than gut judgments based on disagreement with policy.

[RedFury]

@Lemur866

Isn’t that pretty much exactly what I said?

He’s certainly not as smart as Bill Clinton, he’s probably the dumbest president of the modern era, he’s probably too dumb to make a good president, although you can be both smart and a terrible president. That doesn’t mean he’s dumber than an average person. After all, half the people on the planet are dumber than the average person. If he was your next door neighbor or your office coworker you wouldn’t be shaking your head over how stupid he was, although neither would you be marvelling over how smart he was.

I have no quarrel with you neither was I responding to what you posted earlier. In fact, I agree with you.

Having said that, I also agree Hentor’s quote from Gump (IIRC): “Stupid is as stupid does.” And it that sense I also believe he’s been the most harmful President of/to your nation in my fifty years on earth. And I’ll also add that I think he would have had a snowball’s chance in hell to be where he is if it wasn’t for an accident of birth.