David Sklansky, well-known poker theorist, is challenging Christian fundamentalists to a battle of standardized-test-taking skills! (Via Unscrewing the Incrutable and Cynical-C.)
This is an open challenge to any American citizen who passes a lie detector test that I will specify in a moment.
We will both take the math SAT or GRE (aptidude test). Your choice. We will both have only half the normally allotted time to lessen the chances of a perfect score. Lower score pays higher score $50,000.
To qualify you must take a reputable polygraph that proclaims you are truthful when you state that:
1. You are at least 95% sure that Jesus Christ came back from the dead.
AND
2. You are at least 95% sure that adults who die with the specific belief that Jesus probably wasn’t ressurected will not go to heaven.
If you pass the polygraph you can bet me on the SAT or GRE. Again this is open to ANY one of the 300 million Americans.
Also, for those who think I am being disengenuous because I would make the offer to anyone at all, you are wrong. I am now so rusty that at least one in 5000 Americans are favored over me and I would pass on a bet with them. That’s 60,000 people. If the number of people who would pass that polygraph is between 10 and 30 million, which I think it is, that means that at least 2000 of these types of Christians are smart enough to be favored over me. Given such Christian’s intelligence is distributed like other American’s are.
But I’m betting fifty grand they are not. Their beliefs make them relatively stupid (or uninterested in learning). Or only relatively stupid people can come to such beliefs. One or the other. That is my contention. And this challenge might help demonstrate that.
(I’d feel better about Sklansky’s chances if he knew how to spell “resurrected” — good thing he’s sticking to the math test.)
This sounds like an interesting way to get publicity, but the theory behind it is kind of … dumb. It relies on the idea that there is some unitary thing called “intelligence” that correlates in some simple way with both test-taking skills and religious beliefs. If only it were anywhere near that simple.
Assume for the moment that belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus really does indicate a certain amount of credulity, lack of critical thinking, etc. (Obviously not an unproblematic assumption, but let’s grant that it’s true for the sake of argument.) Why in the world would that be inconsistent with being a math prodigy? The human mind is a funny, complicated thing. There are extraordinarily basic mathematical calculations — taking the square root of a fifty-digit number comes to mind — at which a pocket calculator will always do much better than any human being. Yet if you asked the calculator to invent a theory of gravity based on special relativity and the Principle of Equivalence, it wouldn’t get very far.
Some people (and physicists are among the most guilty, for obvious reasons) seem to think that the ability to do math is the quintessential expression of “intelligence,” from which all other reasoning skills flow. If that were true, scientists and mathematicians would make the best poets, statesmen, artists, and conversationalists. And faculty meetings at top-ranked physics departments would be paradigms of reasonable discussion undistorted by petty jealousies and irrational commitments. Suffice it to say, the evidence is running strongly against. (It’s true that physicists are incredibly fashionable and make the best lovers, but that’s a different matter.)
There really are different ways to be smart. Which is not some misguided hyper-egalitarian claim that everyone is equally smart; some people are very smart in lots of ways, while others aren’t especially smart in any. But it’s very common for people to be intelligent in one way and not in others. David Sklansky, for example, is a great poker player and quite mathematically talented. But his understanding of human psychology falls a bit short.
(I should add that Sklansky may in fact know exactly what he is doing, judging that hubris will be enough to lead more people he can beat to accept the challenge than people he will lose to. But from the discussion, it seems as if he really doesn’t think that anyone fitting his criteria will be able to beat him.)
December 15th, 2006 at 9:58 am
Sean,
I think you missed David’s point. He is a guy smart enough to know what intelligence means and I do agree with your argument on it (and I think David would agree too).
I think David’s bet is just a message to all those idiots religious fanatics (not only the christian ones) and a way to make fun of them (b/c they deserve).
December 15th, 2006 at 10:08 am
I went to an Engineering College. There are some very intelligent people who wholeheartedly believe premise 1 and 2. My (Qualitative) observations are that the smarter they are, the deeper they believe.
It is a loaded bet anyhow. He is “so rusty” that he is in the top 99.9998% of the country?
He does a lot of math in his head as part of his chosen profession (when was the last time you saw a calculator at a poker table?). He will be faster at math then an engineer of the same (or greater) intelligence because they depend on a computer to do error free calculations. Assuming he knows how to take a “standardized” test, he will fly through the test, answering the easy questions first, go back, answer the not so easy ones, and skip the hard ones. He will maximize his score this way.
I also think that engineers tend to become pretty conservative as part of their daily routine (they aren’t likely to ‘bet’ that a building won’t fall down, they would ‘ensure’ that it wouldn’t). Betting many months of salary would be trained out of them.
Hrmm… An Entrepreneurial Born Again Engineer with money to burn…
December 15th, 2006 at 10:12 am
I am very glad society is smart in a diversity of ways. It keeps it so we can all diversify. I can worry about physics and let others worry about the other important things which they do better than me anyways.
By the way, I do not think standardized tests are the best indication of how smart you are. I’ve met very smart people who bombed it and also met people who I almost felt sorry for who I come to learn did incredibly well. I think usually smart people do better then those who don’t know what they are doing, but often it is not the case.
December 15th, 2006 at 10:38 am
Actually, I personally knew a kid last year who probably could yes to both #1 and #2 and scored a 960 on the physics GRE. He scored in the 900’s on all four released practice physics GRE’s too. I should call him up at Cornell and tell him to take this challenge and we can split the money.
December 15th, 2006 at 10:54 am
Sklansky should know better. It is not too difficult to deceive a polygraph examiner.
December 15th, 2006 at 11:13 am
My guess is that Sklansky is moderately confident that he can score perfectly on the GRE even in half the time. Given that expectation, the wager becomes a freeroll. Most likely outcome – two perfect scores and a draw. The challenge would be more interesting if the offer were to take a more difficult exam. However then Sklansky would be revealing a real failing in the psycology of understanding differing intelligences. My guess is that that is not one of his failings. I also suspect that this was not so much a mean spirited taunt as it is a means of maximizing his return on a rather spectacular prop bet.
December 15th, 2006 at 11:30 am
Let me use an analogy to his test:
1) Do you believe only those who apply to go to Harvard have a chance of getting into Harvard – Answer YES
-) Do you believe only those who play the lottery have a chance of winning the lottery – Answer YES
2) Do you believe only the sons of rich white republicans can secure a place at Harvard – Answer, I HOPE NOT, but humans have tried other means of selectivity – ie ability to pay or make donations, ability to speak ‘english’ and ability to secure the grades (how you obtain the grades would seem irrelevant)
-) Do you believe only the sons & daughters of the rich can get into Ivy League Universities – Answer, I HOPE NOT, but I’d be denying the obvious were I to say it is not true, of course some bursaries are offered to truly ‘gifted’ people.
-
Perhaps David Slansky should ask:
1) Do you believe in heaven on Earth
2) Do you believe Harvard & Ivy League students are the only ones ‘guaranteed’ to enjoy heaven on Earth
-
Both questions require a belief in ‘heaven’ – but the first question does not require the second question to be true. And a negative reply to the second question does not make the first one ‘false’
-
December 15th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
I think David Sklansky should read Michael Shermer’s book Why People Believe Weird Things. Look specifically at the chapter titled, “why smart people believe weird things”. His argument is that while smarter people might have more tools of reasoning at their disposal those tools can be used to rationalize weird beliefs just as easily as they can be used to debunk them.
December 15th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
So all the great scientists of the past were never proficient at math … like Sir Isaac Newton?
Also if the common Christians were rational about their Bible, there’s no talk about going to heaven in it. Resurrection yes. Heaven no. So he has already excluded the rational Christians.
December 15th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
Unfortunately, I cannot participate because 1. applies to me, but not 2.
“Assume for the moment that belief in the literal resurrection of Jesus really does indicate a certain amount of credulity, lack of critical thinking, etc.”
Bad assumption. Also, everyone has some amount of credulity. Many important experiments that have been done in the past cannot really be done by us due to how complicated they are. So we need an amount of readiness or willingness to believe others in order to do our work.
“Some people (and physicists are among the most guilty, for obvious reasons) seem to think that the ability to do math is the quintessential expression of “intelligence,” from which all other reasoning skills flow. If that were true, scientists and mathematicians would make the best poets, statesmen, artists, and conversationalists.”
You forgot theologians and philosophers. They are smart too.
December 15th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
“Actually, I personally knew a kid last year who probably could yes to both #1 and #2 and scored a 960 on the physics GRE. ..”
Is that supposed to be high? The test goes all the way up to 990. In my day, any physics major who couldn’t max out the score would be ashamed to show his face.
December 15th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
How does one measure “95% sure” of anyting in my mind?
December 15th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Kuas wrote: “In my day, any physics major who couldn’t max out the score would be ashamed to show his face.”
Oh, how we all miss the glorious days when everyone was at the 99th percentile!
December 15th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
One of the aspects of this that i find more interesting is the sum of $50,000. Certainly for most of us, and presumably to those that would be interested in taking the bet, the amount is considerable and meaningful. This is not so true for Sklansky, in that $50K would represent fairly typical raises in a single hand in one of the later rounds of poker tournaments. These guys play with $25,000 chips, tossing them around as if they were $25 ones. The backroom, high stakes games that run through many of the large casino cities, where Sklansky most often plays, are run with seven figure outcomes. The stakes in this bet are a relatively trifle 1%, or less, in their world.
December 15th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
This sounds like an interesting way to get publicity, but the theory behind it is kind of … dumb. It relies on the idea that there is some unitary thing called “intelligence” that correlates in some simple way with both test-taking skills and religious beliefs. If only it were anywhere near that simple.
Spot-on.
Never mind the religious stuff. The test/intelligence thing is scary.
I believe (but have nothing to cite at the moment) it has been shown that high test scores correlates with performance in college, grad school, or whatever it is you are being tested for. However, that doesn’t imply that the test has predictive power for any given individual. If a test has decent predictive power for only 50% of the people who take it, you’re still going to get a pretty clear correlation if you look at a lot of statistics. Howveer, in this hypothetical case, if you used that test as part of the reason to grant or deny an individual admission to college or graduate school, you’re using a very suspect method.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy way around it. On the GPC at Vanderbilt, myself I pay a lot more attention to letters of recommendation and the students’ records (especially research records). However, the graduate school likes the GRE’s, and all these awful US News and World Report places use average GRE scores as a measure of student body quality… putting pressure on Universities to overvalue them so that they will look better in the rankings.
There are lots of reasons why you might do well or why you might do poorly on a standardized test. If you choose a lot of people who are in graduate school, they will on average tend to do better than many other bits of popluation that you can select. Because they’re smarter? Well, no. Because doing well on standardized tests was part of the selection criteria that allowed those people to go through the various steps that got them into graduate school in the first place…. They’re trained for that kind of thing.
I agree with Sean. This is a stupid challenge. It will show nothing.
-Rob
December 15th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Suppose that 2000 Christians are smarter than this guy. How many of them are going to have and be interested in betting that kind of money? Of course he says nothing about this.
December 15th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
I’m not sure that all of you have fully understood David’s intention with his challenge.
His intention is NOT what he says it is (i.e. that he thinks that by proving that he can beat all Christians he will have proved that Christians are all dumbasses.)
His intention is to:
1) Say outloud that Chrisitians are idiots (which is true, look at Christians voting for Bush for “moral reasons”)
Anything else that comes out of this challenge will only provide David with more arguments for why Christians are idiots.
It’s also possible that this challenge was proposed by one of David’s buddys for a bet. Therefore David would already have money on the line for doing well on this challenge or for betting whether less than x people would even show up qualifying to take the bet.
December 15th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
I agree more with Schrodinger (#1) on this.
I don’t think belief in God(s) would be inconsistent with being a math prodigy either. Newton, for example, called absolute space “God’s sensory organ”. I sincerely wonder however how Newton’s (or anyone’s of any religion in a similar situation) religious beliefs would change now that most agree that the concept absolute space has to be abolished. Just saying, I don’t know how religious people deal with this sort of thing.
December 15th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Kaus,
Yes, a 960 is high, especially for an american student. (Foreigners seem to do better on average). I guess the test is different today. I sure wish I could have taken a Physics GRE where the average student got the highest score possible.
December 15th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Um, maybe this is a little off topic, but wouldn’t an out-and-out atheist answer “yes” to question #2, as written?
December 15th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Alex R notes that atheist will answer yes to question #2. It further occured to me that the requirement was for a “a reputable polygraph that proclaims you are truthful when you state . . .”. It doesn’t require you to BE truthful when you state those things.
So an alternate look at the challenge for an atheist perspective is you need to beat him on the GRE and be able to fool a polygraph. Since the bet doesn’t state the person must be a Christian, there is no ethical problem.
Further if I read the bet correctly you don’t have to pass his polygraph just a reputable one. It also sounds like you can take the polygraph BEFORE the bet and just submit the findings as proof of eligibility. So assuming you are a math guru (and I’m sure there are lots here) the only risk is the cost of the polygraph test. All you need to do is learn how to beat a polygraph test. I think you will find some suggestions online at sites like this:
http://antipolygraph.org/
December 15th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
> wouldn’t an out-and-out atheist answer “yes” to question #2, as written
Certainly. And if one assumes that Jesus went to a funeral at least once in his life, one could also answer #1 with a yes
December 15th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
“1) Say outloud that Chrisitians are idiots (which is true, look at Christians voting for Bush for “moral reasons”)”
What does that make of people – a voting majority – that voted for Bush for other reasons?
December 15th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
“His intention is to:
1) Say outloud that Chrisitians are idiots (which is true, look at Christians voting for Bush for “moral reasons”)
Anything else that comes out of this challenge will only provide David with more arguments for why Christians are idiots.”
Not all Christians live in the US, voted for Bush, or are even eligible to vote. Also, to vote for someone for “moral reasons” is a good thing, in general. For example, if you vote for a candidate because he/she promises more housing to the homeless and better wages so that poor people can make a living wage, then that’s voting for moral reasons since it’s morally good to care about the poor. Contrast this with voting for someone because he/she promises tax breaks for the very rich, which is not voting for moral reasons.
Also, “Christians are idiots” is totally false. There are plenty of smart Christians. Like Pope Benedict, or Thomas Aquinas, as two examples. Also, my fellow physics graduate student just happens to be Christian (wow!!!) and he’s smart yo.
December 15th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
I found this by vnr1995 on another forum interesting to contemplate:
“Religion is founded in itself, and, if looked at as human product, appears circular. Religion has many empirical constraints (having founder, having bible, a set of beliefs about the nature of the world), when it exists among human communities: in this sense, Christianity is an empirical religion.”
December 15th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
And Vince, let’s not forget Doyle Brunson!
I don’t know about the math GRE, but he’s a Christian who would give Sklansky a run for his money at head’s up Texas Hold’em.
December 15th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
I’m a few years into grad school, and unless things have changed a 960 is extremely high. Most of the top programs have average scores in the 800s.
I’m used to breezing through standardized exams, but the Physics GRE is quite difficult. American physics programs don’t prepare you for this sort of test, which is very time-pressured even when you are skilled in the usual tricks for standardized tests. The story I always heard was that many Asian programs prepare their students better for this sort of test, but maybe some professor could answer this better.
December 15th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
Arun #25 “in this sense, Christianity is an empirical religion” Yes that is interesting, Why only Christianity?
December 15th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
Human beings want to be happy. People often believe what they want to believe, what they prefer to believe. For instance, a brilliant physicist may believe that a certain girl fancies him or that he is he smartest person in his research group despite obvious and overwhelming evidence to the contrary. To many, religious beliefs are a great comfort. These people are of no mind to change such beliefs. Life is short, and you only get one chance.
Most people consider logic a tool rather than a master. How else could Supreme Court Justices marshall such cogent constitutional support for whatever opinion they were predisposed to favor in the first place.
So don’t assume all fundamentalists are stupid – they aren’t. For $50,000, one of them might get really smart really fast.
December 15th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
Brian, I don’t believe all fundamentalists are stupid; see #18, second sentence.
December 15th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
“There are plenty of smart Christians. Like Pope Benedict, or Thomas Aquinas, as two examples.”
1st of all I didn’t mean catholics but christians, like the ones ONLY FOUND in the US. I dont really know the proper name of their affiliation but here in the US we call them Christians.
2nd, who told u that Pope Benedict is smart? Do you think that reject promoting safe sex in the AIDS era is smart?
3rd Thomas Aquinas lived in the 13th century and he didnt have access to the amount of information that we have nowdays to better judge thignds. And by the way, just b/c the Catholic church says he is a saint you believe? They also said that it is possible for one to ressurrect: a guy called Jesus did 2000 years ago…etc
December 15th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
Chinmaya,
I didn’t write my post as a response to your post.
I was merely suggesting that Slansky may get more than he bargained for if, indeed, his bet ever gets called.
December 15th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
OK Brian, I am still learning how the comments section works.
December 15th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
[...] Sean Carroll of Cosmic Variance also likes to compare cosmology to Christianity in order to prove that Christianity is religion but Cosmology is science. Both Christianity and Cosmology are religions. [...]
December 15th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
almost everyone I knew in college who took the GRE physics got 950-990, but then again I am a foreigner. Amazing thing is – many of those folks didn’t get accepted at US schools, but as I later realized, a lot of americans with much inferior scores did. Something tells me that a “blind” admission policy would result in 90% of grad students being from China, India or former Soviet block, but that’s another topic.
David’s bet is not meaningless and it proves an important point. Critical assessment of facts and scientific reasoning is to a large degree incompatible with belief in leprecons, fairies, Santa Clause and Jesus, among other things.
You can see “reasoning” mode setting in (eventually) with kids and Santa, most figure out that a jolly fat man cannot possibly fit through most chimneys, and most definitely cannot deliver 1 billion presents in a single night. Then how come the same people allow themselves to be brainwashed to a similarly bizzare fairy tale? This may have nothing to do with math abilities, which are more intrinsic, but scientific style of thinking. GRE test in biology, physics or chemistry would probably show a stronger correlation than that in math. Having said that, I know a biologist working in a US DOE government lab who thinks dinosaur fossils are a conspiracy and Earth is only a few thousand years old. I wonder how many people like that work in national labs in France, England, Denmark etc.?
I agree that there are a few very smart people (mathematically) who will be able to beat David, so perhaps it’s a terrible bet, statistically speaking. At the same time, I doubt many people will agree to take David on his offer, so from that point he is safe.
Even though it does look a bit like a pissing contest between christians and atheists, there must be *some* correlation between reasoning ability and belief in supernatural forces, of which religion is a sub-set. For example, Scully could easily beat Mulder in any scientific test. That’s not to say that Mulder wasn’t smarter in some other way.
December 15th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
“1st of all I didn’t mean catholics but christians, like the ones ONLY FOUND in the US. I dont really know the proper name of their affiliation but here in the US we call them Christians.”
Well, I’m sure not all of those types of Christians voted for Bush, and I’m sure you can find a smart one in the bunch. Forgive the confusion, since Catholics form a subset of Christians according to the normal definition of ‘Christian’.
“2nd, who told u that Pope Benedict is smart?”
Have you read any of his books? Sure, they’re books almost exclusively about religion. And you might think that writing about religion for the sake of religion is the same as writing B.S. And I would say that if the good poets throughout history are “smart”, then someone writing brilliant books on religion should also be labelled as “smart”. Professors are smart, right? Well, the Pope used to be a Professor. So there you go.
“Do you think that reject promoting safe sex in the AIDS era is smart?”
There’s a difference between promoting something that may or may not be smart and being smart. It may or may not be a smart move to promote safe sex in the AIDS era, but all the evidence, taken as a whole points to him being smart.
Sorry for all this off-topic discussion.
“3rd Thomas Aquinas lived in the 13th century and he didnt have access to the amount of information that we have nowdays to better judge thignds. And by the way, just b/c the Catholic church says he is a saint you believe? They also said that it is possible for one to ressurrect: a guy called Jesus did 2000 years ago…etc”
Who said anything about sainthood? I just called the guy smart, and if you had read anything that he had written, you’d think he was pretty smart too.
December 15th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
“David’s bet is not meaningless and it proves an important point. Critical assessment of facts and scientific reasoning is to a large degree incompatible with belief in leprecons, fairies, Santa Clause and Jesus, among other things.”
Why is it incompatible with belief in Jesus. Jesus was a man. So was Socrates. We believe Socrates existed. Why not Jesus? Sure, there are no scientific facts establishing that Jesus rose from the dead, so belief in that is okay since it can’t really be falsified. There also aren’t any scientific facts establishing the existence of tiny 1d strings, or supersymmetry (not yet, at least).
“Even though it does look a bit like a pissing contest between christians and atheists, there must be *some* correlation between reasoning ability and belief in supernatural forces, of which religion is a sub-set. For example, Scully could easily beat Mulder in any scientific test. That’s not to say that Mulder wasn’t smarter in some other way.”
But Mulder went to Oxford. Surely that means he’s a smart guy. Plus, he was able to formulate brilliant theories about cases, most of which ended up being true. Also, in that episode where he’s asked to name the man who had his apartment monitored, he named the Section Chief and not Skinner! Now that’s smart.
December 16th, 2006 at 12:25 am
I’d like to send this link to Dr. Chuck Pearson. Anyone have his contact details?
December 16th, 2006 at 12:32 am
Regarding the point “Ponderer of Things” makes in 35, it is absolutely true that (at least some top) US graduate schools in physics admit domestic students with lower GRE physics scores than rejected non-citizens, but that isn’t evidence that weaker students are being admitted: graduate admissions committees consider many factors other than subject GREs. Admitted domestic students typically have better general GRE scores, and more research experience, as well as reference letters that are easier to calibrate. And experience shows that GRE subject scores alone are a pretty poor predictor of long term success, particularly in experimental physics, at least once a certain minimum is reached. As someone who maintained a perfect scoring record in math on standardized tests from the PSAT and SAT through the GRE, I’d be among the first to wish that blind score-based admissions made sense.
The bet itself would be crazy if the dollars involved weren’t so high. I’ve known (e.g., through the math olympiads) a number of young kids who could ace SAT or GRE type tests but didn’t have the maturity to make religious judgments independent of their parents. I’m sure he’d lose a $20 wager open to all ages, though he might win a $20 wager against fundamentalists over, say, 30 years old.
December 16th, 2006 at 1:28 am
I am sure Isaac Newton would have passed the lie detector proclaiming his religious belief. Does any body wanna bet 50k the good old Isac wouldnt make David look stupid in any math test he would come out with?
Isaac wouldnt be the only one indeed…
December 16th, 2006 at 1:39 am
Hmm. I know a few friends back home who believe in 1+2, and will totally kill the SAT math test.
/me rubs hand conspiratorially.
December 16th, 2006 at 2:02 am
Just for the record Sean -
In Particle Physics & Cosmology
What is the difference between
Re-sur-rection & Re-in-Car-Nation ??
December 16th, 2006 at 2:17 am
I’ll bet anyone $50k I’ll beat them in a game of
Russian Roulette.
Parse that.
December 16th, 2006 at 6:56 am
To Garbage and others who dredge up Newton, St Thomas Aquinas and other historical figures.
You are missing the point. Sklansky’s point is that these kind of beliefs belong in the past now that we have the benefit of modern science to give us better and more sophisticated explanations. If anything, current trends in religious thinking are getting less sophisticated with time.
These historical figures although religious at the time were very modern thinkers and up to date in the cosmology of their times. I find it hard to believe that a 21st Century Newton with knowledge of particle physics would still be interested in alchemy, for example.
Furthermore, Garbage, I will take you up on your wager and bet on Sklansky on the math test. It be interesting to see how Newton tackled questions involving complex numbers, for example, where many of the basic results were established decades after his death.
December 16th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Garbage, Charles, just for the record I was not trying to insult Newton or anyone my point was very different…One of my math icons Srinivasa Ramanujan, for example, was also quite literal in his beliefs.
December 16th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
The guy is crazy to actually attempt this, I knew several devout christians who scored perfectly on the SAT, and became physicists who likely had high GRE scores. In fact people who graduated from xtian schools often had pretty strong SAT scores for whatever reason.
There is no correlation with affinity for religion and smarts on a test, and I say that as an adamant atheist. Take Abdus Salam, a devout muslim, as a great example. There have also been countless nobel laureates who were practising Jews and xtians.
Worse, the reliance on a polygraph ;x That machine last I checked is widely ridiculed as unscientific. Actually now that I think about it, I had a very high physics GRE score… Hmmm!
December 16th, 2006 at 2:45 pm
And I’d be more comfortable with Sean’s analysis, if he knew how to spell “inscrutable”.
December 16th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
In my opinion, the subject GRE tests seem to be an even weaker indicator of intelligence, but more about the knowledge of the field. Intelligence has very little to do with standardized tests, but how much you know of the subject material. begin tested. In regards to the so called “aptitude” tests like the SAT or GRE math- maybe person A can potentially use Pythagorean’s theorem faster than person B, but person B actually knows what it is.
I agree with the ideas in this post, and find the line about physicist being very fashionable and good lovers to be hilarious!
December 17th, 2006 at 6:41 am
On the other hand, if this dude is confident that he can top-score every time, then he has little to lose. Although as has already been pointed out, the requirement for a “reputable polygraph” pretty much renders the whole thing academic.
December 17th, 2006 at 7:49 am
RE: advanced mathematics, Professor Morris Kline describes the situation after 1911, when Einstein began to search for more sophisticated mathematics to build gravitation into space-time geometry:
‘Up to this time Einstein had used only the simplest mathematical tools and had even been suspicious of the need for “higher mathematics”, which he thought was often introduced to dumbfound the reader. However, to make progress on his problem he discussed it in Prague with a colleague, the mathematician Georg Pick, who called his attention to the mathematical theory of Ricci and Levi-Civita. In Zurich Einstein found a friend, Marcel Grossmann (1878-1936), who helped him learn the theory; and with this as a basis, he succeeded in formulating the general theory of relativity.’ (M. Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Oxford University Press, 1990, vol. 3, p. 1131.)
It’s weird to see in the declassified U.S. Government files on Einstein collected at the request of J.E. Hoover, Director of the FBI, that both Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro and Tullio Levi-Civita, inventors of the “absolute differential calculus” (named “tensors” by Einstein fifteen years later) used to formulate general relativity, were at least until 1915 dismissive of Einstein’s work (see p64 dated 10 Feb 1950 on the first PDF download at the FBI page http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/einstein.htm for downloads of 1,427 pages of reports on Einstein (mainly from the security perspective because the FBI site says: “An investigation was conducted by the FBI regarding the famous physicist because of his affiliation with the Communist Party. Einstein was a member, sponsor, or affiliated with thirty-four communist fronts between 1937 and 1954. He also served as honorary chairman for three communist organizations.”)
Prof. Thomas Jefferson See: “Einstein is neither astronomer, mathematician nor physicist. He is a confusionist. … The theory that aether does not exist, and that gravity is not a force, but a property of space can only be described as a crazy vagary, a disgrace to our age.”
… a technical analysis of the mathematical and philosophical fallacies of Einstein shows the following noted mathematics as critics:
M. Picard, Henry Poincare [who had his own, rather different, version of relativity published in 1904, before Einstein, and produced the same mathematical results from a different set of postulates], G. Darboux, M. Paul Painleve, Le Roux, and the Italians Ricci and Levi Civita who did most to develop the mathematics used by the Relativists …
General relativity is mathematically correct for the physics it emcompasses, since its modification to Newtonian physics is based on a correction forced by the need to make the divergence of the mass-energy tensor zero, for energy conservation. It isn’t speculative, so any errors come from omissions of details. It is based on observed facts like energy conservation, and isn’t a guess, apart from the cosmological constant (added in 1917) or speculations about what Yang-Mills “graviton” radiation is behind the curvature.
If mathematical skills were intelligence, Ricci and Levi-Civita would have discovered general relativity, not Einstein. Levi-Civita only corresponded fruitfully with Einstein from 1915-1917 concerning “the variational formulation of the gravitational field equations and their covariance properties, and the definition of the gravitational energy and the existence of gravitational waves.” – http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Levi-Civita.html
December 17th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
Hmph, and here I thought having faith and a strong sense of morality was a good thing. At least I have people to tell me how smart they are to make me change my mind!
December 17th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
faith and a strong sense of morality are not the same thing. You can have one without the other.
December 17th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
[...] Charles wrote in http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/12/15/putting-your-money-where-your-beliefs-are/ I will take you up on your wager and bet on Sklansky on the math test. It be interesting to see how Newton tackled questions involving complex numbers, for example, where many of the basic results were established decades after his death. [...]
December 17th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
This belief is one of the most perplexing to me. Daniel Dennett, in Breaking the Spell, does have a discussion of “belief in belief,” but there isn’t enough research yet to say much firmly.
December 17th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
Not to sound dejected, and perhaps to cover up my previous terseness, but I do believe that these comments need a wider variety of voices. Skimming over the response to this post suggests a strong anti-religious slant that is alienating (and downright demeaning) to a number of worthwhile minds out there, including myself.
Which is fine, mind you. Just I’d like to hear something else added to the discussion.
How about this: couldn’t atheistic bigotry be just as bad a demon as religious bigotry? After all, with reason on their side, atheists could come up with a number of convincing arguments for very terrible societal acts. I mean, how many mad dictators have written big fat books arguing their perspective, and how many such mad dictators have made religious expressions illegal?
Hmm, that question isn’t as rhetorical as it sounds. Oh well.
December 18th, 2006 at 1:10 am
Douglas,
Everything that happens is a result of gravity and the standard model. Our thoughts, actions, beliefs, etc. are all a result of the laws of physics. We don’t have free choice. There’s must matter and energy and forces.
Hope that helps in resolving the issue.
December 18th, 2006 at 6:00 am
Some thoughts:
A dictionary check on “intelligence” yields definitions suitable to both camps: both “ability to reason” and “mental acuteness”. I personally use the latter definition both because it seems the popular one and it means that one can’t label clearly gifted people, such as Mozart or Shakespeare, as “dumb”. The quality at large here is, I claim, the “ability to reason”, which is the primary requisite of scientific research, and something Mozart and Shakespeare didn’t necessarily have. To clarify, numerical calculation is to me, at best, the simplest form of reasoning. The standardized tests perhaps test one’s ability to reason somewhat, but I don’t see any good way of measuring the reasoning pertinent to science, not the least because we can define it only vaguely!
I’d like to mention that a statistical fact is unchanged in the face of a relatively small sample that demonstrates the opposite. Namely, Isaac Newton’s (or other examples listed above) combination of religiosity and reasoning ability is irrelevant to the claim that these two traits are strongly negatively correlated amongst humanity, as he is just a single case. The relevant surveys do mostly support this claim, i.e. the “smartest” people tend towards atheism, so one would have to list off a number of counterexamples on the order of a typical survey sample size to matter. This correlation is what, hopefully*, Sklansky is trying to publicize, the bet just being the vehicle, not the end itself (as it won’t be statistically relevant!). Of course, the Isaac Newtons of today could make the bet interesting.
The correlation between “ability to reason” and atheism comes about as the accomplishments of science to date suggest that none of the (popular**) gods exist. Some here may think this last statement bold. Those taking issue should read Richard Dawkin’s “The God Delusion”, which contains a sufficient treatment of the reasoning. Am I saying that all those who do believe are incapable? No, since there are separate reasons favoring belief, both mental and based on one’s experiences. A good point to make is that the ABILITY to reason does not preclude strong emotions or gullibility. It’s the DISUSE of reason, not the lack of ability, that I pose as the core answer to why “some people who should disbelieve, don’t”.
*skimming another site where he posts some responses to his bet, I do lose some hope
**loosening the definition of what a god is grants leeway
December 18th, 2006 at 8:22 am
Douglas,
I think most of these comments were not trying to turn the world into atheists they were mostly directed at literal religious beliefs not just religious beliefs.
December 18th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Over the course of an individual’s lifetime, he or she will oftentimes revise viewpoints on both science and spirituality. If either science or religion becomes rigid dogma, the mind is not open to possibilities. It seems that the best of science and the best of spirituality both enhance humankind’s chances of living in a better world.
December 18th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Derek writes “I’d like to mention that a statistical fact is unchanged in the face of a relatively small sample that demonstrates the opposite.”
Sure, but is it a statistical fact that “belief in God(s) is inconsistent with being a math prodigy” ?
December 18th, 2006 at 1:38 pm
Doing well on the GREs is NOT a measure of intelligence or creativity but how quickly one can solve multiple choice problems. The real world of physics (pardon me) does not operate this way. These are not even the standard type of problems one comes across as a student (e.g., determining the Green’s function for a sphere with a conical section removed in electrostatics). Any physics major can be trained to do well on the GREs and I myself have trained undergraduates to increase their scores on practise tests by huge factors…it is more `art’ than science. Some of those students are now tenured professors at well-known research universities…some have even been department chairs. I also have known students who have done well on GREs but couldn’t do REAL research to save their lives.
December 18th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Without reading the ridiculous number of comments on this post, I’m willing to bet $5 that
(1) I can at least break even with David Sklansky and
(2) no one else who’s posted a comment (yet) can.
I have an active pay-pal account, so if anyone can collect on this I’ll be happy to do it.
Substantiating my #1:
If you’d like you can read my blog. I’m a fairly convi(nced)cted Christian, so the polygraph’s not a big deal.
As for the SAT/GRE, I’m a Caltech junior in physics on full scholarship, I’ve been draining 800s/perfects on the SAT/GRE math since junior year, and I do it in maybe 11 minutes per section (the section is a 30 minute section.) I’ve yet to take my GREs, but I’m fairly confident (I’ll give it 90%) that I can score a perfect on the GRE general without studying (I still am) and less confident about the physics GRE (75%) I think Caltech’s hard, but I still have a 3.8 GPA.
Substantiating my #2:
Well, that’s trivial.
Any takers?
December 18th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
slight correction on the comment:
“I’ve been draining 800s/perfects on the SAT/GRE math since junior year” should add junior year in high school to the end.
Other credentials: RSI 2003, USAMO, USAPhO, USAChO, USACO all finalist standing. I do this not to brag, but just to show a counterexample.
Actual comment:
Overall, I do agree with Sklansky’s overall premise that genuine Christian beliefs and intelligence share a negative to zero correlation. A confounding factor would be socioeconomic, but there may also be a slightly causative relationship in both directions. I also agree somewhat with Sklansky’s assertion that the number of Christians that can have favorable odds on him is in the low thousands or below.
However, he also strikes me as a pompous and condescending jerk whose money I, in Christian charity, would only feel a little bad about taking. I’m not saying that I’m not equally pompous or jerk-tacular – I’m perfectly OK admitting how stupid I am, as opposed to someone who derides other religious groups as stupid.
December 18th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
2nd correction, sorry all:
my website is http://www.xanga.com/darkveggie, not http://www.xanga.com/darkvegige. I don’t blog on nearly the same level as these great thinkers here, but every once in a while I think of something good.
Another comment (meta-comment, really):
in the little linkbar at right of the blog text, it says there are 65 comments at this posting, but i only see 63. why? is it those 2 pingbacks?
December 18th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
truly. the brain and the mind are complicated.
there are many many things humans would never have done, had there not been some people in the world saying, “i wonder if we could do that? and if so, what would it take?” we also know a lot more than we once did, on account of a few humans thinking expansively enough to realize the possibility that sometimes people base conclusions on a false model; for instance, the notion that one would sail into the void, off the edge of a flat earth, if one ventured to far in a single direction.
the imagination can be a double-edged sword, and imagination and reason interact differently in different people. that’s why there are almost certainly devoutly christian math whizzes. and why there are people who imagined space travel and figured out how it could happen; and why there are people who wear foil beanies; and why the word processor could come to be.
but without any imagination at all, we would come no further. so much of what we do and know sprouted out of a big ‘what if’?
December 18th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
I kind of want to protest the implication that imagination is responsible for belief in Christianity. Without totally diverting this thread into a religious bash, I’d like to say this.
Christianity itself is not a figment of someone’s imagination – it’s a real historical institution. Belief in Christianity is another thing – but it is not a priori intellectual swiss cheese just because it’s a religious belief. If you want to be egalitarian in your thinking and epistemology, you had better not discount supernatural knowledge just because you don’t think God is possible or because you don’t want there to be a God.
But yeah, that’s another post.
December 19th, 2006 at 7:12 am
Imagination does not have to have a negative connotation–God, I hope not!…didn’t Einstein say that imagination is more important than knowledge?
December 19th, 2006 at 7:35 am
The underlying assumption of the “rationalists” is: if I can not understand something, it doesn’t exist. I am sure they are bad scientists.
December 20th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
i don’t recall having used the word ‘figment’. guess i should re-read my own post.
what i was getting at, is that sometimes people imagine something, and it turns out to be true. “hey. imagine if we could get up there!” “oh, cool! we can!” so imagination is worthwhile and good. (unless one is a harmful entity, using one’s imagination to hatch an evil plan – in which case it is emphatically not).
visualizing is an act of the imagination. even if one is sitting in one’s backyard, visualizing the actual, real-live ford focus locked away in one’s garage.
use of the word ‘imagine’ does not automatically imply ‘fake’.
December 21st, 2006 at 10:17 pm
There may be other reasons for the bet, as someone already pointed out: If Sklansky is almost certain to score perfect he takes no risk, furthermore, he may count on not having to play the strongest possible opponent.
It’s also true that taking standard tests can be trained, just like playing chess, and even though Topalov can claim to be the world’s top chess player (and could probably challenge any subset of his choice to an analogous bet), that neither makes him the most intelligent, let alone wisest person on earth, nor does it say anything about people who share his faith or lack thereof.
Nevertheless, I do think the compatibility of faith and scientific thought is puzzling, if it really exists. I know this question has been raised many times before, and it certainly won’t be settled in this thread. I still think this is the issue Sklansky wants to highlight, and being both a gambler and (I assume) good at taking tests, this bet is his method of choice. We can certainly criticize the method, but the main question to me remains unanswered so far: What is it that makes scientists discard reason when it comes to faith? What makes them (you?) feel it is appropriate that the myths or miracles do not have to follow the same laws that govern everything else? Where does one make the distinction, and how far would one go, i.e. would one accept to drop causality and conservation laws, perhaps even mathematical reasoning? What Sklansky really says is that you cannot be smart, honest and religious all at the same time. I don’t think he phrases it in the most polite form, but I would still like an answer.
December 22nd, 2006 at 8:34 am
I think you are missing the main point. Is not that “miracles do not have to follow the same laws that govern everything else”, it is that human reason is a METHOD to investigate reality, it is not reality itself. Who knows if physics ans science can explain everything? Human reason is like a window from which we look at the whole reality…but claiming that all we can’t explain can not exist is not fair. It is not “science”, it is “scientism”, which is a kind of ideology. So there is not contraddiction in itself between science and faith: contraddiction arises if science becomes a religion itself.