Thereby Excluding the 0.0001% Super-Super Geniuses
Allen December 8th, 2005
I read where Scott Adams of Dilbert fame wishes to poll only the Well-Informed Super Geniuses.
Scott reasons (quite rightly) that polling the mythical man on the street simply re-enforces what everyone thinks.
The only polls I want to see are ones that exclusively includes the people in the top .01% of intelligence who are also highly informed on whatever topics the polls include. Let’s call those people the Well-Informed Super Geniuses. If most of the people in that group have the same opinion, and it’s different from mine, I’m willing to change my opinion. After all, I don’t tell my doctor where to find my appendix. Why would I tell a Well-Informed Super Genius what to think about the global socio-economic implications of a particular foreign policy or monetary decision or whatnot? (The exception would be if he had some financial or other interest in the outcome.)
As far as I can determine, there are two problems with polling the WISGs:
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Even WISGs can be mistaken. Witness many times in scientific history when "everyone knows that….". Everyone know it until a really, really bright one figures out what is really going on (until everyone knows that….).
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The really well-informed super-super geniuses are probably keeping mum about what is really going on and capitalizing on everyone elses ignorance.
So a poll of WISGs simply picks up the blather-mouths WISGs.
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Even WISGs can be mistaken.
I put it a little more strongly than that, after I quit Mensa (the international club for people who excel at standardized tests) in disgust: “There are some monumental stupidities, of which only genius is capable.”