So I'm sorry to say that you don't believe what he wrote, mainly because you didn't understand it.
To show he's wrong, you would have to dig into the maths or data rather than throw some ideas about other true, but irrelevant, variables around.
Mq, I never pretended to understand the math and said so, but if you had read my response carefully, you would have noted that I do indeed believe that there is probably a correlation between intelligence and GDP. I am not convinced that it can necessarily be teased out of verbal intelligence levels with the degree of certainty which is claimed.
I did what most math-challenged lawyers who look at similar matters do, namely, check other work, particularly peer-reviewed stuff, to see if the academic world has put these theories to the brutal test of peer review. Guess what I found? That SFT, while an interesting construct, is a creature of the blogosphere, there is not a single peer-reviewed scholarly article I could find dealing with it. The comments range from entries in far right wing wacko racist white power sites to those made by seemingly thoughtful writers.
In short, SFT has probably not been formalized because the writer has not yet, for his own reasons, submitted it to the academic world for inspection. Naturally, this does not mean that it is wrong, but it does mean that his math has not been validated by the experts. Until then, skepticism is in order despite the fact that the ideas do indeed seem to carry some appeal. In other words, it's bunk until proven otherwise.
I am giving it the test a court of law would give it if the writer were testifying as an expert. It is my frame of reference, right or wrong.
No one can come into a court with untested ideas and declare them true unless and until they are tested and accepted in the pertinent academic community. And this, by the way, is the flaw in your rants about incompetent lawyers. We do not need to know the maths or work them. Our analysis is different because we do indeed know our limits. Thus, rather than perform the calculations ourselves and risk error, we determine if other experts who are recognized as such have looked at the pertinent theory. If there is agreement within the specific community that the ideas are indeed scientifically valid, and the process to test them is good, then they are accepted as true. The fact that there are often two or more sides battling to establish their cases is a good thing because each side will generally keep the other honest.
You may feel competent to discuss the accuracy of the maths and the data collection. That's nice. You may very well be right, but until I see more, lots more, from folks who do this for a living, and who subject the idea to a far more rigorous examination than that it will ever receive at SI, SFT is to me an appealing if unproven construct which holds some promise. |
