When I was in my 20s I took an IQ test set up by Mensa. Thinking I was smart and would get in. Before I took the test I went and had a chinese meal, which later on I thought was a mistake. On account of as your body digests food blood flows to the stomach rather than the brain. So I completed the test and an appropriate time later got my score. It was 133, I was disappointed because it was not enough to join Mensa, even though it was quite high. I also recall the test I sat was about twenty years old at the time. So contributed my lower score to two factors. Being stupid and eating a large meal before I did the test and it most likely being out of date. Because when you think about it, questions set two decades ago are going to be different from the current day's relevant questions. The result was I didn't get into Mensa. So what. This became a minor chip on my shoulder because in part I wanted to join an elite group who think they are better than other people. A little like rich people might feel. Fortunatley the socialist part of me now thinks I am glad I'm not one of them, because as it turns out the odd person I did meet who was in Mensa in my opinion was a bit nutty. Sometimes nuttier than a fruit cake at Christmas. So to a certain extent it was fortunate, I'm not as smart as I think I am and do have a bit of humility. Or I hope so.
Therefore the moral of the story is, don't be a smart ass because nobody likes self ingratiated idiots who have a few screws loose.
Showing posts with label Intelligence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Intelligence. Show all posts
Friday, February 20, 2015
Monday, October 27, 2014
A need to read and brain food
There is this feeling which has come over me. Like I am spending too much time watching TV and as though TV really isn't doing anything for my brain. It's like my brain is now turning into mash potato probably without milk or butter added in or even a sprinkling of chives which would at least make the thing a little more exotic. The feeling is a need to read, to feed my brain rather than the passiveness of viewing a movie or TV program. It's a little like the feeling of having forgotten a lot of stuff, all the education stuff which was crammed inside has leaked out, a bit like a hole in a bucket. To the extent I'm getting to feel like I don't know a much about anything at all, just at some point I did know something and more than just a little bit. Statistics for example. I used to know lots about statistical tests and statistics but now it's like most of it has gone and I would like to brush up on it again, try and remember what it is I've forgotten. Hence the need for brain food, which is what the reading is all about. Something has got to go in and be thought about, not just anything, something the little cogs can grab hold of and start moving round in circles, in varying circles and speeds. Watching TED lectures on Youtube helps, but it's passive, by the time I've watched one I've then forgotten what it was which was so important and it didn't seem so inspiring. It's the brain thing, the leaks could be more pronounced with the less effort it takes to take something in. Whereas reading is slow and there is more time for thought, more time to take it in and so the leaks are slower. I got a leaky brain it's all there is to it, what goes in eventually leaks out. I'm surprised I still remember my name.
As part of the regular trips I take on Eastcoast mainline I get points for every pound spent. It's a kind of club, the more I spend the more points and then in exchange the points can be used for perks. For example for 100 points I get wifi for a day free. Although it's not really free because I had to spend money to get the points in the first place. There is a selection of other items I can get but there's not a whole boat load. So getting a lot of points doesn't mean I could go and get a weekly shop, which is a shame because I do like food. So I spent a few points a couple of months back and it was for a book. The book is: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I heard of Kahneman he was half of a duo of psychologists who developed models of decision making or thinking. I'd read a few of their papers and articles in books so going for Kahneman's book was right up my street. Except the think has been sat on my desk for a few weeks, dressed up with nowhere to go. It is a sexy little number however when it comes to brain food. I want to devour it and jump into it and to do so means picking the thing up and reading it. Hence the very real need to read, but it is more basic, I just need brain food and something is not hitting the spot. Like the sausage and chips I had this evening, the chips were of an awful quality and the sausage was too hot and greasy and not cooked properly in the middle. Damn I must be a walking heart attack. Maybe the brain food will help and perhaps some fish, because I hear fish is good for the neurons of the brain as well.
So it is, today I began reading a few pages of Kahneman's book, his sidekick was Amos Tversky they were the ones who come up with the theory of heuristics. Not all common sense is actual common sense and it is quite misleading. It's all about decision biases, or partly about decision biases, the rest is probably statistics. I should get a pen out, paper, calculator, old text book and see if I can do some of the basic stuff again. Or even program a spreadsheet which is very possible, with enough know how, at the moment though with all the brain leaks I got it will be a struggle finding a pencil. I should get up early tomorrow morning say about 5 a.m. and just do some brain working and eat toast with fish on it, and a cup of tea. I got some mackerel fillets with cracked black pepper they might do the job all I have to do is find the calculator, eraser, oh, and a pencil. There I go. Inspiration at last all it has to do is wake me up at 5 a.m. in the morning, I'd rather it not keep me awake with insomnia which is altogether a completely different story.
As part of the regular trips I take on Eastcoast mainline I get points for every pound spent. It's a kind of club, the more I spend the more points and then in exchange the points can be used for perks. For example for 100 points I get wifi for a day free. Although it's not really free because I had to spend money to get the points in the first place. There is a selection of other items I can get but there's not a whole boat load. So getting a lot of points doesn't mean I could go and get a weekly shop, which is a shame because I do like food. So I spent a few points a couple of months back and it was for a book. The book is: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I heard of Kahneman he was half of a duo of psychologists who developed models of decision making or thinking. I'd read a few of their papers and articles in books so going for Kahneman's book was right up my street. Except the think has been sat on my desk for a few weeks, dressed up with nowhere to go. It is a sexy little number however when it comes to brain food. I want to devour it and jump into it and to do so means picking the thing up and reading it. Hence the very real need to read, but it is more basic, I just need brain food and something is not hitting the spot. Like the sausage and chips I had this evening, the chips were of an awful quality and the sausage was too hot and greasy and not cooked properly in the middle. Damn I must be a walking heart attack. Maybe the brain food will help and perhaps some fish, because I hear fish is good for the neurons of the brain as well.
So it is, today I began reading a few pages of Kahneman's book, his sidekick was Amos Tversky they were the ones who come up with the theory of heuristics. Not all common sense is actual common sense and it is quite misleading. It's all about decision biases, or partly about decision biases, the rest is probably statistics. I should get a pen out, paper, calculator, old text book and see if I can do some of the basic stuff again. Or even program a spreadsheet which is very possible, with enough know how, at the moment though with all the brain leaks I got it will be a struggle finding a pencil. I should get up early tomorrow morning say about 5 a.m. and just do some brain working and eat toast with fish on it, and a cup of tea. I got some mackerel fillets with cracked black pepper they might do the job all I have to do is find the calculator, eraser, oh, and a pencil. There I go. Inspiration at last all it has to do is wake me up at 5 a.m. in the morning, I'd rather it not keep me awake with insomnia which is altogether a completely different story.
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Biting off too many books
At the moment I am reading four books at the same time, no maybe five lets list them
Something Happened - Joseph Heller (Story book)
The LEAN Toolbox (The essential guide to LEAN transformation). - J. Bicheno & M. Holweg (Management book)
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey (Self improvement book)
The Enemy - Lee Child (Who done it book)
The 33 Strategies of War - Robert Greene (Strategy/management/history/war book).
There are a couple of other books I have half heartily on the go but somehow have stopped in the middle of them and marked the page with a post-it note. Then there's the odd few waiting in the wings to be picked up. When I do allocate time to read these books or take extensive notes from them the time is short and periodical. Certainly in some cases not on a daily basis but more of a weekly or two weekly basis depending on the mood I happen to be in. I don't know if it is only me but I would like to know if other people have the same problem. Do they? Or have I bitten off more than I can chew. Even though I must admit to enjoying reading each of these books and know they deserve more. The one problem I do come across is when I remember something I have read but confused the story line or the book I got it from. Heller's book can't be mixed because it is pretty different from any thing else. Child's book I have only started this week after buying it out of a charity shop for the fantastic price of £2.50 as opposed to the five or six quid it would normally cost and the story is again something far different from anything else so it can not suffer from overlapping syndrome. However, the management books and self improvement books can occasionally become confusing as I read one of them and then recall something else quite similar but different in another book. At which point I wonder if it is my memory failing me, whether I have a touch of mad-cows-disease or whether it was a dream I had which has somehow trespassed into my conscious memory because it has nothing better to do. At this point I have a head full of written passages and no idea where they come from. It's a wonderful insanity and I quite rather enjoy it.
The problem is I do like to read books. But I do also get bored with them. It's like I have some kind of attention-deficit disorder of the literary kind. I also like the feeling when I can say I have actually read a book. For example when I walk through a train and I see people reading books I always take in the title and automatically recognise if I've read it. (Down with the E-Reader) If I have read a book but forgot the thing afterwards I can actually say yes I read it and usually I can remember the author. Authors are important, in fact all writers are important. Possibly more so than actors in a film but we only tend to remember the actors and take no interest in the scrip writers. It's a shame if you ask me. Then there are the books I have read on more than one occasion, these still bring me great pleasure. For there is always something I come across whether a sentence, phrase or paragraph which hits me like a lightening bolt because it is either well written or says something in a significant way. An example would be Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, every so often I'll pick this up and re read it. It's a book about quality and a man who is trying to stop on a road trip but at the same time wondering if he is having a mental breakdown. Maybe it is a gender specific book. A book men would read but women would not. If anyone has a comment please add it. I can't help it, I like it. Sometimes I notice the books I read tend to be more from American authors than British ones. Some classical British writers I just have not read. Charles Dickens is one of them, Happy Birthday Charlie (he's 200 today by the way).
Perhaps all of this adds into my introvert personality type. I'm the one who likes to sit indoors with a ... you guessed it good book, piece of cake and cup of coffee. But I do sometimes try a read when having a more alcoholic type drink, unfortunately this can lead to re-reading the same page or paragraph over and over again and still not knowing what it is I have read. Coffee is far better. If it weren't for the cake I'd certainly of said I had bitten off more than I can chew.
Something Happened - Joseph Heller (Story book)
The LEAN Toolbox (The essential guide to LEAN transformation). - J. Bicheno & M. Holweg (Management book)
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey (Self improvement book)
The Enemy - Lee Child (Who done it book)
The 33 Strategies of War - Robert Greene (Strategy/management/history/war book).
There are a couple of other books I have half heartily on the go but somehow have stopped in the middle of them and marked the page with a post-it note. Then there's the odd few waiting in the wings to be picked up. When I do allocate time to read these books or take extensive notes from them the time is short and periodical. Certainly in some cases not on a daily basis but more of a weekly or two weekly basis depending on the mood I happen to be in. I don't know if it is only me but I would like to know if other people have the same problem. Do they? Or have I bitten off more than I can chew. Even though I must admit to enjoying reading each of these books and know they deserve more. The one problem I do come across is when I remember something I have read but confused the story line or the book I got it from. Heller's book can't be mixed because it is pretty different from any thing else. Child's book I have only started this week after buying it out of a charity shop for the fantastic price of £2.50 as opposed to the five or six quid it would normally cost and the story is again something far different from anything else so it can not suffer from overlapping syndrome. However, the management books and self improvement books can occasionally become confusing as I read one of them and then recall something else quite similar but different in another book. At which point I wonder if it is my memory failing me, whether I have a touch of mad-cows-disease or whether it was a dream I had which has somehow trespassed into my conscious memory because it has nothing better to do. At this point I have a head full of written passages and no idea where they come from. It's a wonderful insanity and I quite rather enjoy it.
The problem is I do like to read books. But I do also get bored with them. It's like I have some kind of attention-deficit disorder of the literary kind. I also like the feeling when I can say I have actually read a book. For example when I walk through a train and I see people reading books I always take in the title and automatically recognise if I've read it. (Down with the E-Reader) If I have read a book but forgot the thing afterwards I can actually say yes I read it and usually I can remember the author. Authors are important, in fact all writers are important. Possibly more so than actors in a film but we only tend to remember the actors and take no interest in the scrip writers. It's a shame if you ask me. Then there are the books I have read on more than one occasion, these still bring me great pleasure. For there is always something I come across whether a sentence, phrase or paragraph which hits me like a lightening bolt because it is either well written or says something in a significant way. An example would be Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, every so often I'll pick this up and re read it. It's a book about quality and a man who is trying to stop on a road trip but at the same time wondering if he is having a mental breakdown. Maybe it is a gender specific book. A book men would read but women would not. If anyone has a comment please add it. I can't help it, I like it. Sometimes I notice the books I read tend to be more from American authors than British ones. Some classical British writers I just have not read. Charles Dickens is one of them, Happy Birthday Charlie (he's 200 today by the way).
Perhaps all of this adds into my introvert personality type. I'm the one who likes to sit indoors with a ... you guessed it good book, piece of cake and cup of coffee. But I do sometimes try a read when having a more alcoholic type drink, unfortunately this can lead to re-reading the same page or paragraph over and over again and still not knowing what it is I have read. Coffee is far better. If it weren't for the cake I'd certainly of said I had bitten off more than I can chew.
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