>> I think we can accept that articulation and intelligence are
orthogonal ...
>If by "intelligence" you mean innate mental ability, then I agree
that
>intelligence and articulation are close to being orthogonal.
I agree that there is such a thing as innate mental ability ... but
I believe that if ability isn't innate it can be learned ... for example
Polya's "How To Solve It"
>I would add that thoughtfulness is also orthogonal to both
intelligence and articulation.
We'd have to start defining our terms here ... I'd define
"thoughtfulness" as the process for increasing ability ... and again this
can be innate or learned ...
>Any one of the three can get you through college. This seems to
work to the >disadvantage of intelligent and articulate people. (I think of
thoughtfulness as an >advantage obtained through education.) I've seen
dozens of intelligent students who >were able to get by without becoming
more thoughtful.
Yes, I'd say this is a symptom of grade inflation ... my criteria
for intelligence is diversity of references. In this case thoughtfulness
would be the application of tools from one discipline onto another....the
choosing of tools is "the art" of science ... or perhaps the science of art
....
>So I take it you have a model of the mind as a vector that has
components:
>intelligence, articulation, and so on. And if you meet someone
that thinks
>the way you do, presumably the dot product of your mind with
theirs is large
>because you are both pointing in about the same direction. A meme,
then,
>is something that tends to align nearby vectors?
I'll buy this ... but note that the choice for domains ... vectors
... is infinite and arbitrary. How you and I might measure intelligence vs.
articulation for a tele-evangelist might be completely different then how
another religious nut would measure them.
>I have a picture of the human race as this vector field. Maybe I'm
reading too much into >your use of the word orthogonal.
So that the origin of the field is relative to whoever is doing the
measurement .... I think you understand my use of the word better than I do,
but the word is only useful for you and I to communicate and has no meaning
to my wife...who is also a thoughtful, intelligent, and articulate
individual, but who views memetics as too reductionist.
>Is memetics something like that? Sorry, I'm new around
here--there's probably
>a faq I should have read, but I already typed this nonsense, so I
think I'll click send....
I'm not real hip to memetics theory ... there are certainly web
sites off of the virus site that are useful for modeling .... But, from an
applied P.O.V. I think memetics offers mechanisms for establishing
communication ... by accepting the idea of the existence of memes you
automatically gain an anthropological detachment from your own memes.
>BTW, the connection with game theory is fascinating--if psychology
could
>be reduced to game theory, I might even have a chance of
understanding it--
>maybe some day I'll even understand women! :o)
Among the several books I'm currently reading is a Science Fiction
novel called "The White Queen". In the book a race of telepathic aliens is
amused that humans pretend that males and females aren't separate species.
They view reproduction as being symbiosis between the species. Game theory
would work provided that you could ever determine a player's utility
function ... It's the three body problem ... once you have more than two
players, each with their own utility functions you get a combinatorial
explosion of possibilities....the three bodies being you, the woman, and
"the relationship". Richard Brodie first posted the www.seduction.com site
... which offers NO insight into the dynamics of interspecies interactions,
but certainly offers some strategies for improving your chances with the
parasitic components of the symbiosis. It allows you to reduce the problem
of seduction to a two-body problem by ignoring "the relationship" component.
All opinions subject to change ...
Nate