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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: carranza2 who wrote (21990)9/5/2007 6:10:10 AM
From: Maurice Winn  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 218145
 
C2, you will see that those graphs are not just a single row of dots right along the expected line but have got a wide range of variation and he specifically mentioned Barbados and South Africa as extreme examples which diverge from the expected line by a long way.

What that shows is not that the theory is wrong, but the extent to which other variables also have an influence.

The fact that other variables have an influence too is entirely irrelevant to the smart fraction theory.

What his maths shows is the effect of smart fractions and verbal intelligence on GDP per capita. It doesn't purport to show what are the effects of other variables such as you were thinking of - multitudinous, complex and perhaps difficult to explain though they might be. Those other variables are irrelevant.

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.

He did show that the data fits his theory really nicely. That's what happens when scientific people come up with theories which nicely match reality. The data slips right into their theory and comes out looking very nice.

Even a non-mathematician can see from his graphs that the clusters of points fit quite reasonably around his graphs, with oddball outliers like South Africa and Barbados.

The point he explained about South Africa, that it's not a Gaussian distribution [due to the very large Negro population and the smaller Euro population] would also apply to the USA, which would be a variable which would help explain the difference between expected GDP per capita and actual GDP per capita. Other variables such as the size of the country, natural resources, capitalist history, working hours rules also contribute to deviation from the expected result, as you say.

The fact that those variations exist doesn't make the Smart Fraction Theory wrong. They are just confounding variables, which are relatively small compared with the dominant issue which is verbal intelligence smart fraction. If verbal intelligence smart fraction was a trivial variable, the data would form what is called a "starry night", which is a very annoying data set for people looking for effects of things.

When one gets "starry nights" in one's data, one is stuck with having to do large studies, which cost lots of money, to pin down the actual effects being studied.

For example, the brain cancer effects of cell phones are no doubt present, but so overwhelmed by other variables, that so far, nobody has shown effects. If there are effects, [which I think there are], they are so small that they are very well hidden in the noise from all the other things that contribute to brain cancer. The data is a starry night as far as cellphone radiation is concerned.

That isn't the case with verbal intelligence and its effect on GDP. It sticks out from the background noise like a flag pole.

He did have to ditch the confounding variable of visuo-spatial ability because it messed things up. Of course visuo-spatial ability also has an effect, like other variables, but it's the verbal intelligence which does the heavy lifting in GDP per capita.

You can see why I despair at juries and judges deciding whether phragmented photons in Fourier transforms are patentable and whether QCOM should be beholden to poxy little obvious patents like Broadcom's power saving "light switch" patent.

While judges have got verbal intelligence, they are not notable mathematicians, or even amateur ones. Juries of course are lucky to find the coffee machine and work out how to use it.

In law, arbitrary subjective decisions are the norm. There is no linear regression analysis of data that the legal process does. That's why it's entirely unpredictable. Any reality a judge and jury declare is ipso facto a good reality and the right one and cannot be denied, on pain of death or prison. Their realities don't have to match any data sets or be tested in reality. They just are and too bad for the victims of their faulty thinking.

Mathematicians run their theories, collect data, crunch the numbers and if the numbers don't fit, then their theories are DEAD. There is no appeal to a higher court to reverse reality. They are defunct.

In summary, the score is Griffe 10, C2 0.

It was like watching me play Kasparov at chess. I would wildly wave a few knights around and pop a pawn here and there. But it would soon be game over for me with holes through all my ideas and my king prostrate before him.

I might contend that Kasparov is full of high-falutin' bunk, but that wouldn't make my assertions correct. Kasparov could beat me while brushing his teeth and with his eyes shut.

I recommend even slower reading next time. Griffe's other theories are also very interesting; such as why melanin-deficient males are the serial murderers.

I would like to see him do a review of brain performance versus age at puberty. Mq's theory is that females are disadvantaged by having their brains fully grown 3 years younger than males. Females get a double disadvantage because not only are they matured younger, hence enjoying fewer experiences during their growth, but the education processes are not challenging them when they are rapidly developing, while prepubescent, with maths, science and languages.

Females do better than males at school because they have got bigger brains which are mature. Males catch up later and overtake the females, if they haven't given up, quit school and gone to work as a carpenter or something.

Mqurice



To: carranza2 who wrote (21990)9/9/2007 4:52:04 PM
From: Maurice Winn  Respond to of 218145
 
C2, just to help with the idea of maths, the reason Griffe got onto smart fraction theory was that his data showed his previous theory was "bunk" as you call it [or more accurately, it didn't precisely match the data].

His graphs of general intelligence vs GDP per capita were the usual beautiful things which nature produces. But there were some glitches, as there usually are when we try to pin down the variables in theories.

Newtonian mechanics graphs worked beautifully, until things became relativistic. Albert Einstein's equations were excellent - but he did feel the need to try to tidy up a glitch with a gravitational constant. There are also issues in the fine details of physics and a black hole of conception at the Black Hole of cosmic conception aka the Big Bang.

Those fine details don't mean the rest is bunk. It just puts limits on the precision and boundary conditions of the ideas.

The Barbados and South African glitches are easily explained by the dichotomy of South Africa being run by high g Europeans while populated with low g Negroes and Barbados is a dot in the ocean with its own sociological circumstances.

Looking at the graphs in fine enough zoom in, you'll see that NO countries are exactly on the line. That doesn't mean the theory is wrong, it just means there is [as you have said] a lot more to the wealth of nations than g or smart fraction.

China was a bigger problem for Griffe. A billion people, and fairly homogenous = what gives? So he dredged his theory some more to see what was wrong with it.

That's the beauty of science and maths. You don't have a vote, or flip a coin, or consult a bunch of jurors, lawyers and judges, or a book of dogma, to decide a heresy trial outcome. You consult data and if the data doesn't fit, you must acquit.

Fine legal argument, obfuscating, haranguing, and reasoning is irrelevant. If the data don't fit, you must acquit.

His data didn't fit. All the DNA evidence showed was that a close relative was involved. He did not have the actual perpetrator. He had to refine his search.

His idea was verbal intelligence rather than general g a the likely driver of the data.

So, he piled up the data again using smart fraction and bingo, a very good correlation. Ipso facto, ultra vires, casus belli and QED - the argument was won.

At this stage, we should hasten to add that correlation is not causation [the usual mistake people make, often including people who should know better]. But correlation is often because of causation - in the absence of other evidence or ideas, it's a pretty good bet.

Mqurice