Okay -- so this is how my day sometimes goes: Wake up. Let dog out. Turn coffee on. Make bed. Turn on computer. Imbibe coffee while searching through emails for fires that need tending. Roomie reads aloud some pronouncement that combines marketing and science. I ask him to shoot me the link, which I then go on to use as an inflammatory catalyst inspiration for a blogpost.
Today's experience in watered-down complexities: "Smart people are more likely to binge drink."
Wait, I said. What do they mean by "smart"? I go from the first post by Eric Barker to his source, Satoshi Kanazawa on Psychology Today where I'm introduced to his Hypothesis. Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist. That's the kind of profession that makes me salivate, which is probably an evolutionarily based psychological reaction.
Getting back to my sticking point: what is "smart"? I headed for Kanazawa's post on "How Did General Intelligence Evolve?"
Now I get it.
I have always had a problem with concepts of intelligence and, particularly, the measuring of it. I understand the reasons we try to define and quantify intelligence, I just don't think we're very good at it. And here's why: I don't have a lot of faith that even the "best and brightest" can get over, around, and through their own prisms of experience and emotion to clearly comprehend the notions they're making up and measuring. And I damned sure don't like how those ideas and "conclusions" get digested and presented by the media. That's when I have to stop what I'm doing, track down studies, and figure out just where the kernel of "truth" (such as it is) lies in the over-simplified pronouncements. (That whole "stop what I'm doing" thing gets under my skin a little, especially if I've already downed a cup of coffee or two.)
Funny. That's kinda where I see Kanazawa heading with his theory on the evolution of general intelligence. In short, the theory says that "more intelligent" folks only have an advantage when a problem is evolutionarily novel or when a solution involves evolutionarily novel entities.
He winds up the explanation this way:
"I believe scientists and civilians alike may have grossly exaggerated the importance of general intelligence in everyday life. Intelligence does not help you with really important problems in your life, such as maintaining a successful relationship, being a good friend, and raising children. It merely helps you with solving unimportant, evolutionarily novel problems like getting formal education, making money in a capitalist economy, and flying an airplane."
Fine by me. I just wonder how many "smart" people are reading the pablum headlines and thinking that their binge drinking is not only justified but an activity to pursue if they haven't already.
Good thing for me I'm not that smart, I guess.
Now I can get back to putting out email fires.
