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Politics : To be a Liberal,you have to believe that..... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (5457)	1/18/2000 7:07:00 AM
From: MikeH	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 6418

<<Be honest.... why don't you just twist it this way: I had the fortune to have grown up both poor and disabled, a particulary crippling mix in the fast paced American society. But, fortunately I was white, and have used this to leverage myself an education doing high-pay, sedentary work.>> I wouldn't claim that being white was the reason for my successful persistance anymore than I would claim that socialism is the reason France is bordering on falling back into a 2nd world country status. It isn't the real reason. I attempted to join the army at 18 with my best friend, but due to my illness, I was excluded on medical reasons. This left me uneducated, underpaid, and with no where to turn to make it in life. I had two options, join a union, or go to college. Unions are notorisously fickle, and the best way to make it ahead is to kiss the bosses ass. I don't like to kiss ass, so I did my other option, college. Fortunately, two year colleges ignore you high school grades, and let you in as long as you can pay the bills. Well, with $5,500 in government grants, and another $5,500 in government loans, I was rolling in cash. After getting my degree at a large, impersonal community college, I went on to a even larger, more impersonal university. Threre was aboslutely no racial bias possible in my education up to the point of my graduation. Then, it could have been possible in the interviewing process, but none of my minority friends from school had any trouble getting jobs that they were skilled for, so I don't find this to be an issue. As for the validity of IQ tests, it seems that you are unfamiliar with how they function. An IQ test is not a measure of intelligence, but is instead a measure of your "rate of learning". Most psychologists agree that it is almost invalid to test adults, because they have too much variability in their knowledge to design a comprehensive test. IQ questions are generally based in one of two ways. Solving a picture problem, where the student is timed on how fast they can identify errors in a drawing such as missing limbs, and writing in mirrors appearing from left to right. The other type of questions are problem solving, such as "Complete this sequence, Anna, Bryan, Deanna, Henry, ________" As for Gates and cohorts, all of them are individuals with extremely high IQ's, most are geniuses. IQ 160+. IQ's in this range occur in less than 1 in 10,000 people, and they are referred to as outliers. They are not statistically significant, because there are so few of them. I do agree with you on gamemanship and creativity however. But the point that you miss is that you IQ will determine how well you adapt to using these types of intelligence. Clarence Thomas is a black man, and not from rich "brown paper bag" family. But yet, he made it to the top, and in his own claim, it was because he didn't make the stupid mistakes that his brethren did. I would also venture that the fact that the man has an incredibly high IQ would be responsible for this, how else did he grasp the concepts of Gamemanship & Creativity?