Archive for the ‘Intelligence’ Category
Entry 1688 — Traits of Genius, First Revision
Saturday, January 10th, 2015
Here’s a shortened (improved but still in-progress, with hopes for feedback) version of idea of the characteristics of genius:
The Objective Hallmarks of Genius or: the traits you can recognize a possible genius by (and I now believe he will have them all, although some may not be instantly identifiable)
1. Gross tendency to emotional ups and downs, sometimes psychotically extreme as with Theodore Roethke. (Note: most of the characteristics on this list have been pointed out by many others, and I doubt it any is original. While in this parenthesis, let me add that this is my first list so with surely be incomplete, perhaps severely so.)
2. A need for Great Achievements–like Keats’s declared hope of being among the English poets when he died—and an inability not to strive to the utmost for them.
3. Sufficient fundamental (innate) self-confidence to go one’s own way regardless of what others say—which must make one a (natural) non-conformist since no one who is true to himself will be more than partially like anyone else. (Note: a natural non-conformist is one who is naturally different from others rather than one who has to work to be different from others; evidence of this will be the many ways a natural non-conformist conforms, without its bothering him.
4. Sufficient lack of self-confidence to forever fear failure, coupled with an insane final immunity to it that keeps one from giving up.
5. Reasonably high output as an artist and/or verosopher–due to determination and persistance. (Needless to say, I’m assuming in advance that I have the hallmarks of genius, so basically listing what I believe to be my own characteristics–but I’ll leave out bald-headedness. And unbelievable potent wittiness.)
6. Unusual curiosity, varied and intensive.
7. Extreme perfectionism, but only about what’s centrally important: sloppy about details. I always remember Ezra Pound’s saying about chess grandmasters: they will look for the best move, then, having found it, look for a better.
Someone with all these will be at least a ?enius–but not necessarily a genius.
It seems to me there must be more hallmarks of genius, but I can’t bring any to mind just now.
I took the last two from the National Enquirer list. There were two others there I left off my list but find worth commenting on:
HONESTY. Geniuses are frank, forthright and honest. Take the responsibility for things that go wrong. Be willing to admit, ‘I goofed’, and learn from your mistakes.
My Comment: That’s me, but I have no idea whether other ?eniuses tend to be frank, etc.
ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE. Geniuses are able to effectively get their ideas across to others. Take every opportunity to explain your ideas to others.
My Comment: This would be one of the characteristics of a genius mentality, I would guess. I tend to think it must be the hardest thing for a ?enius to achieve. A subject worth an essay. The geniuses most easily getting appropriate recognition before they are dead are those specializing in something where colleagues are in some sense clustered and on the same page–physicists, for example. Their vocation needs to have been recognized as significantly a superior one, as physics is, poetry not, for a genius to be recognized as such in his lifetime. Perhaps the greatest geniuses are those who succeed not just in getting personal recognition but for getting, or playing an important role in getting, recognition for their vocation. (In my case, recognition for what I call “Otherstream Poetry.”)
The Two Not-Yet Substantiatable Essential (Innate) Components of Genius
1. Extremely superior general cerebreffectiveness (i.e., general intelligence that takes in all the varied kinds of intelligence that exist, few of them measured by IQ tests, such as skill with people, musical ability, and general creativity)
2. At least one extremely superior major kind of cultural talent –e.g., musical creativity or mathematical deftness.
All the Objective Hallmarks of Genius will automatically result from a person’s having the two essential components of genius. Hence, “all” one needs to be a genius are the two components just mentioned.
Revised Footnote from Yesterday: No matter how often I notice how ardently those advocating some point of view so frequently seem to need to denounce all views on the subject involved but their own as wholly invalid rather than merely incompletely convincing, or the like, it almost always makes me shake my head. I can’t claim I’m never guilty of it, but . . .
New word: “nincomplootly”
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Entry 1686 — Some Thoughts on ?enius
Friday, January 9th, 2015
None of my three or four faithful readers will be surprised that I have a rather large need to believe I am a genius–a genuine one, not an IQ or MacArthur genius. The only thing perhaps unusual, for a serious, meta-professional artist or verosopher like me, is that I admit my need. By “meta-professional artist or verosopher,” I mean someone whose main reason for his activities as either is to produce something of significant cultural value. Unlike Samuel Johnson, at least if we go by his famous saying about only fools writing for anything but money. Sam is one of my cultural heroes however much I disagree with him about possibly more things than I agree with him about. Of course, one reason for that is that money is much less meaningful in our incredibly affluent country than it was in his. True poverty was hard for a great many people to avoid in his, near-impossible to suffer in ours.
I think false modesty is so battered into people like me that, for most of us, it is no longer false. There is also the (innate) need to fit in in spite of being different. Like many ?eniuses, I do downplay my aptitudes (like the one that made schoolwork mostly easy for me). I also somewhat exaggerate my many ineptitudes such as the way it grab hold of conclusions prematurely, or my slowness to understand (which, most of the time, I contend, is a virtue due to realizing how much more there is to be understood than most others). What helps me most is that I’m actually pretty normal in most respects, and that’s genuine. I tend to think of myself as a television that has one channel no other television has that picks up telecasts from some weird planet in another galaxy . . but only once or twice a year. (Other ?eniuses are the same kind of television, each of which picks up telecasts from a different weird planet.)
I’ve now used my newest coinage, “?enius,” enough to indicate it’s not a typo. That’s because, as is the case, I suspect, with many blessed/cursed with the kind of brain I have, I have enough self-confidence to be sure I’m either a genius or not far off from being one, but not to declare myself one. In fact, I truly don’t know whether I am one or not. What I am, therefore, is a ?enius.
I would not be surprised if even the most ratified culturateur–Murray Gell-Mann, for instance–
Hey, I just did a quick search of the Internet for Murray to check for about the twentieth time whether or not he spelled his last name with a hyphen and found an entry at this Roman Catholic Blog that is one of the best blog entries I’ve ever come across–in spite of its having been written by someone who considers those not accepting the existence of God as a given to be intellectually vacuous, and their arguments on par with those of holocaust-deniers (which, he implies, are wholly worthless although some I’ve found to be pretty good, just not good enough to unconvince me that it is beyond reasonable doubt that a great many Jews were deliberately killed by the Nazis[1]).
Back to what I was saying: I would not be surprised if even Nobelist Murray Gell-Mann sometimes fears he’s not very smart, after all. Maybe not. More likely he is like Newton feeling like a small boy at the beach finding interesting pebbles or shells . . . but still aware at some level that only he was noticing them.
The situation is different for ?eniuses like me who, even in old age, are near-completely unrecognized. One would have to be close to insane to be sure the whole world, just about, was wrong about you. Nonetheless, I keep thinking and writing about genius and related topics, my own underlying aim always being, to some degree or other, to find a way to get around the evidence against me.
Not today, unless in just having revealed my invention (so far as I know) of the world’s first English word for day-to-day use that includes a typographical mark as one of its letters (Cummings and others have made words like it, but not for use outside the poems they are in) is my subtle argument for my being a genius. I guess I am never not trying to prove I’m a genius whenever I create a serious work of art or write a serious text. In this entry I’m mainly considering what someone you might reasonably characterize as “brilliant” of “gifted,” but not accept as a genius.
My latest thought is minor but taxonomically valuable: it is that a genuine genius has two characteristics: the temperament of a genius and the mentality of a genius. This thought occurred to me when (as so often) thinking about myself–in particular about what I could claim for myself as one striving to achieve genius. I feel certain that I do have the temperament of a genius; what is unknown is if I also have the mentality of a genius.
All I can say about the latter is it’s very much higher than even a superior human mentality, and that it’s far more than ability to score high on IQ tests or get high grades in school. I lean toward believing it is probably high-superiority in only one kind of art or verosophy, maybe two, not some kind of all-around superiority. In any case, I don’t feel capable of pinning it down objectively.
I do feel the temperament of a genius can be objectively defined. I contend it consists of some high proportion of the following characteristics, each overt and easy to identify:
1. Gross tendency to emotional ups and downs, sometimes psychotically extreme as with Theodore Roethke. (Note: most of the characteristics on this list have been pointed out by many others, and I doubt it any is original. While in this parenthesis, let me add that this is my first list so with surely be incomplete, perhaps severely so.)
2. A need for Great Achievements–like Keats’s declared hope of being among the English poets when he died.
3. A disregard for the opinions of others–i.e., non-conformity.
4. Reasonably high output as an artist and/or verosopher–due to determination and persistance. (Needless to say, I’m assuming in advance that I have the temperament of a genius, so basically listing my own characteristics–but I’ll leave out bald-headedness. And unbelievable potent wittiness.)
5. Extreme self-reliance–a variation on #3 because it importantly includes going one’s own way regardless of what others say.
Yikes, I see I don’t need to make a list–the National Enquirer beat me to it by some 35 years:
- DRIVE. Geniuses have a strong desire to work hard and long. They’re willing to give all they’ve got to a project. Develop your drive by focusing on your future success, and keep going. Sure: my #4 is the necessary result and provides objective evidence of this.
- COURAGE. It takes courage to do things others consider impossible. Stop worrying about what people will think if you’re different. See my #5.
- DEVOTION TO GOALS. Geniuses know what they want and go after it. Get control of your life and schedule. Have something specific to accomplish each day. Only sometimes true. My #4 again will be the result for someone with the temperament of genius.
- KNOWLEDGE. Geniuses continually accumulate information. Never go to sleep at night without having learned at least one new thing each day. Read. And question people who know. Everybody continually accumulates knowledge. A ?enius becomes a genius in part by applying what he accumulates better than others due to his genius mentality.
- HONESTY. Geniuses are frank, forthright and honest. Take the responsibility for things that go wrong. Be willing to admit, ‘I goofed’, and learn from your mistakes. That’s me, but I have no idea whether other ?eniuses tend to be frank, etc.
- OPTIMISM. Geniuses never doubt they will succeed. Deliberately focus your mind on something good coming up. Again, see my #4.
- ABILITY TO JUDGE. Try to understand the facts of a situation before you judge. Evaluate things on an opened minded, unprejudiced basis and be willing to change your mind. My mentality of genius would include this; it’s just the truism, be intelligent.
- ENTHUSIASM. Geniuses are so excited about what they are doing, it encourages others to cooperate with them. Really believe that things will turn out well. Don’t hold back. Maybe, but I tend to see being a loner in your field as more likely a characteristic of a genius temperament.
- WILLINGNESS TO TAKE CHANCES. Overcome your fear of failure. You won’t be afraid to take chances once you realize you can learn from your mistakes. #4.
- DYNAMIC ENERGY. Don’t sit on your butt waiting for something good to happen. Be determined to make it happen. #4.
- ENTERPRISE. Geniuses are opportunity seekers. Be willing to take on jobs others won’t touch. Never be afraid to try the unknown. #4 and #5.
- PERSUASION. Geniuses know how to motivate people to help them get ahead. You’ll find it easy to be persuasive if you believe in what you’re doing. I suspect ?eniuses are too advanced to be persuasive, and not involved in collective enterprises.
- OUTGOINGNESS. I’ve found geniuses able to make friends easily and be easy on their friends. Be a ‘booster’ not somebody who puts others down. That attitude will win you many valuable friends. No. Although this fits me more than it doesn’t. Many ?eniuses are ingoing. All ?eniuses must be ingoing at times, extremely ingoing, I would say.
- ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE. Geniuses are able to effectively get their ideas across to others. Take every opportunity to explain your ideas to others. This would be one of the characteristics of a genius mentality, I would guess. I tend to think it must be the hardest thing for a ?enius to achieve. A subject worth an essay. The geniuses most easily getting appropriate recognition before they are dead are those specializing in something where colleagues are in some sense clustered and on the same page–physicists, for example. Their VOCATION needs to have been recognized as significantly a superior one, as physics is, poetry not.
- PATIENCE. Be patient with others most of the time, but always be impatient with your self. Expect far more of yourself than others. #2
- PERCEPTION. Geniuses have their mental radar working full time. Think more of others’ needs and wants than you do of your own. BS.
- PERFECTIONISM. Geniuses cannot tolerate mediocrity, particularly in themselves. Never be easily satisfied with your self. Always strive to do better. I think I would put having high standards for oneself on my list although that would follow from #2, having a need to be great.
- SENSE OF HUMOR. Be willing to laugh at your own expense. Don’t take offense when the joke is on you. I feel I pretty decidedly have this, but don’t see what it has to do with genius.
- VERSATILITY. The more things you learn to accomplish, the more confidence you will develop. Don’t shy away from new endeavors. I’ll have to think about this. My initial thought is how one should balance improved understanding of one thing versus having many understandings. But having a genius mentality will automatically cause you to absorb a great many things not obviously related and use many of them (as well as know which ones to scrap).
- ADAPTABILITY. Being flexible enables you to adapt to changing circumstances readily. Resist doing things the same old way. Be willing to consider new options. Have superior accommodance, the most important characteristic of a genius mentality.
- CURIOSITY. An inquisitive, curious mind will help you seek out new information. Don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know it all. Always ask questions about things you don’t understand. I’m sure extreme curiosity, inability to be satisfied with one-step answers, or even ten-step answers, is an important part of the genius mentality.
- INDIVIDUALISM. Do things the way you think they should be done, without fearing somebody’s disapproval. This is on my list.
- IDEALISM. Keep your feet on the ground – but have your head in the clouds. Strive to achieve great things, not just for yourself, but for the better of mankind. Do great things, by your definition.
- IMAGINATION. Geniuses know how to think in new combinations, see things from a different perspective, than anyone else. Unclutter your mental environment to develop this type of imagination. Give yourself time each day to daydream, to fantasize, to drift into a dreamy inner life the way you did as a child. Again, be born with a superior accommodance.
L. Ron Hubbard thought this worthy of re-circulation. It’s not bad for The National Enquirer, but basically a guide for socio-economic go-getters, not my kind of geniuses.
The list is here, by the way. It’s followed by a lot of interesting comments.
I now need a break from this topic. I hope tomorrow to be able to have an updated list here.
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Entry 1668 — Additions & Blither
Sunday, December 21st, 2014
First an addition to my taxonomy of awarenesses: I’ve decided to give what I was temporarily calling the “X-ceptual Awareness” one of the names I previously considered, then junked, “the Magniceptual Awareness.” My problem with it was that it was too similar to “the Supraceptual Awareness,” the name I had given to my system’s over-all awareness. I made that problem go away by simply changing “Supraceptual Awareness” to “Cerebral Awareness.” Pretty clever, wot? It makes sense since both the Practiceptual Awareness and the Magniceptual Awareness are in, or mostly in, the cerebrum. And I’m comfortable with the idea of a Sub-Cerebral Awareness located in the cerebellum and other parts of the brain, as well as various places in the secondary nervous system.
Next, a Noun cement that I hope will will cause those of you feeling guilty about getting all this blog’s incredible brilliance for free to express your gratitude with money–to someone on food stamps (due to his actual economic situation, not lies about it, although I did not report the $200 I made as a writer last year in my 2013 request to continue on the dole, nor will I report the $350! I made as a writer this year on my upcoming request). You can do this by sending me $5 or more for an autographed numbered copy of a limited edition of 4 More Poem Poems. It just came off the press. Only 8 copies printed, each with a different cover from the others–in fact, I have just decided to paste a unique original visual image on each cover. (Note: I really think $20 would be reasonable for anyone who is paying that or more for a subscription to any poetry-related magazine whatever.) I claim that no one who likes Joycean foolery with the language and surrealism will find at least one of the poems delightful. And there iz not one (1) but two (2) dreadfully wicked attacks in the collection on our country’s poetry gate-keepers–but only in passing! Remember, Posterity will really be angry with you for not sending me any money!
To take advantage of this Fabulous Offer, send check & your name&address to:
Bob Grumman
1708 Hayworth Road
Port Charlotte FL 33952
Sorry for the begging, folks. I’m really not badly off: I still have credit cards that will allow me to borrow over ten thousand dollar before I max them. I just used on of the cards for $1500, in fact–to have some company try to get the data in an external drive of mine that went bad about a year ago, and has the only copies of a few of my poems, and a lot of my only copies of others’ poems including four or five of Guy Beining’s the originals of which are lost. But I thought it’d be fun to play marketeer for a little while. And at least I didn’t bold-face the above.
* * *
Okay, now to what seems to me an interesting question I just wondered into (note: it’s near impossible now for me not to qualify every opinion of mine in some way like this) while discussing Karl Kempton’s current central project, an exhaustively researched history of visual poetry from pre-history on: what poem should be considered the world’s first major full-scale visual poem? Very subjective, I fear, because of the difficulty in defining both a full-scale poem (for me, to put it simply, it would be a poem that’d be mediocre or worse if not for what it does visually) and a major poem.
I have no idea what poem is but don’t think any of Mallarme’s was because not depending on the visual for anything truly central to them. Nor Apollinaire’s, which seem primitive to me, although I’d have to look at them again to be sure. Such a poem would have to have a highly significant and original visual metaphor at its core to get the prize, in my opinion. Nothing before the twentieth century that I know about does. I think I’d aware the prize to something by Cummings (although I’m not sure what, and he may not have composed what I’d call a full-scale visual poem); if not Cummings, then Grominger’s “silence,” but not with confidence because I don’t know what other superior visual poems came before it.
Here’s a related question I didn’t send Karl: what poet could be said to have been the world’s first serious, dedicated, lyrovisual poets, by which I mean poet who concentrated a fairly substantial portion of his thoughts and energy to lyrovisual poetry–as opposed to Lewis Carroll who (1) was not a lyrical visual poet and (2) wrote light visual poems (which were nonetheless an important contribution to poetry, or Mallarme or Herbert, neither of whom composed more than a few poems that could be called visual–or, from my standpoint, made primary visual poems, or poems whose visual content was at least as important aesthetically as its verbal content.
I’m not even sure Cummings would qualify for consideration since he did not compose all that many poems I’d call primary visual poems. I’d have to go through my volume of his complete poetry to be sure of this, though. So, we have a preliminary question: what poets devoted a fairly substantial portion of his thoughts and energy to lyrovisual poems. My impression is that Kenneth Patchen was one of them. I think Apollinaire probably was, too. Most of the concrete poets seem to have been. I know I’ll annoy a number of you with my next pronouncement: it is that fewer and fewer people calling themselves visual poets devote much, or any, time to the composition of visual poems, preferring to make textual designs (and mostly doing extremely well at it).
Now another addition, this to my thoughts about urceptual personae:
It occurred to me that I made no attempt in yesterday’s entry to indicate the biological advantage of having . . . ursonae, so I’ll try to do that now. I’ll need to go into some detail about the way an urceptual persona is created. For an example, I’ll use the urnemy (no, I’m just foolin’ around: I won’t make that my new name for “the urceptual enemy”). When a baby first sees its father, it will automatically be thrust into its socioceptual awareness[1] where its urceptual persona recognition mechanism is. This mechanism will activate the baby’s urceptual other—due to such stimuli as the father’s face and arms. The father will be unfamiliar to it (probably, although he may have experienced enough of him while in the womb for him to be familiar; or perhaps any face will be familiar enough not to cause the baby pain, or even to cause it pleasure; assume here, though, that the father is unfamiliar to the baby, maybe because he has a beard and is first encountered while he is sneezing or farting). Since the unfamiliar causes pain according to my theory, and pain caused by another person has to be one of the stimuli causing the activation of a person’s urceptual enemy, the baby’s urceptual enemy will become active.
The baby will withdraw as much as possible from its enemy, the father, because urceptual personae automatically activate appropriate certain reflexive behavior. This is value #1 of an urceptual persona.
At this point, I am going to drop the urceptual enemy for not being as good a choice as an example as I first thought. I’ll go instead to the urceptual father. In the scenario I began, the father will almost certainly not continue to activate the baby’s urceptual enemy for long, if he even does so when the baby first encounters him. The baby’s mother will probably be with the father and say something like, “Here’s your daddy, Flugwick (or whatever the kid’s name is),” in a momvoice, accompanied by a mom smile, and many another mo0mfeature, so neutralize the father’s unfamiliarity. And the father will smile and say something in a gentle voice and perhaps, tickle the kid under the chin—certainly something likely to seem pleasant to the kid. In short, little Flugwick’s urceptual persona recognition mechanism will soon activate its urceptual father (I now think a baby will recognize the first male it encounters as its father—but be able to correct the error before long—rather than as a friend; if my hypothesis turns out valid, it will be easy to determine exactly what happens.
Be that as it may, eventually the baby will (in normal circumstance) automatically perceive its father as both a certain shape with a certain voice and smell—and as its urceptual father. The activation of the latter will help it more quickly react to the father appropriately. It will learn from its social environment—mainly its family—the details of appropriate reactions not instinctive like its smile will be until it learns enough to control it.
That an urceptual persona will double the ability of the real person it is attached to cause reactions is it second extremely important biological value. For one thing, this will make people more important than almost anything else to a person, which would obviously help a species survive.
What might be as important to a person as people? Here’s where my superspeculative nature takes over from my speculative nature. The goals a person shoots for may become as important to a person as others, or even himself Beauty, for an artist. As I’ve already tried to demonstrate, an artist will almost surely be motivated to some small or large degree to create an object of beauty to gain others’ approval. But simply to create something of beauty for its own sake can very well be his main motive, or even his only motive. I’m back to the magniceptual awareness where one might go to concentrate on beauty free of interpersonal concerns. Where I increase my speculativeness is in thinking puberty may open a person’s magniceptual awareness—give him doors into it, or significantly increase his doors into it. I strongly suspect a male’s magniceptual awareness is significantly large than a female’s. Just as a female’s anthroceptual awareness is much larger than a male’s. Of course, feminists will take this to be an insult to women, but I don’t see it as that. Well, as a male, I have to think of what I am as superior to females, but nonetheless trying to be objective about it, there’s no reason to say that interpersonal matters require less talent than impersonal matters.
[2] A major awareness is an awareness just under one of the primary awarenesses on my taxonomical chart of the awarenesses.
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Entry 1665 — Additions to Yesterday’s Entry
Thursday, December 18th, 2014
Note: in yesterday’s entry, I opposed entities that are “real,” because capable of being sensorily perceived, to “imaginary” ones that cannot be perceived. I should have used “communicatively perceived” in place of just “perceived,” or whatever term I used for that. That’s because some believers in Eastern x-ceptualities, believe themselves actually perceiving gods and the like whom others cannot. I say that if I see a tree, and say the tree is real and get almost any sane person to look at it and agree with me that it is, I have identified a communicably perceivable entity whereas if an Eastern mystic says he went somewhere in his mind, or some like place, and talked with his god, his god is only perceptible to him, if he cannot take me where I can also meet him; the god is not communicably perceivable.
This goes back to the two realities idea of mine. I’m not sure what nutto names I gave them, but they are the personal reality and the collective reality, and–for me–the only one the means anything is the collective reality: reality is what I and others agree it is. I think my personal reality is almost the collective’s. The important differences are no questions not yet genuinely decided by the collective: for instance, the value of my cultural contributions. I suspect there will never be a fair way to determine that but the collective’s current answer would have to be”who knows.”
As I think more on it, it seems to me there might be two collective realities: the one with a city called New York separated by an ocean called the Atlantic from a city called London, and we go into our x-ceptual awareness to consider. There most questions are a good deal less than 95% decided by the collective, and I think it fair not to consider something to be part of the collective reality (“objective reality” is or should be my name for this unless 95% of the clearly sane say it is. It is insane, though, to reject something proposed as real because it hasn’t gotten enough votes; one must accept it as not sufficiently demonstrated only.
Maybe I’m saying objective reality is what we deal with in a practiceptual awareness, while insufficiently-demonstrated reality makes up most of what we deal with in our higher awareness. From another slant, objective reality consists of entities; non-practiceptual possible reality consists of the inter-relationships of entities.
I’ve thought more about what to call x-ceptuality. “Sapienceptuality” may be my best attempt, but it’s not right. “Aristoceptuality” gets it almost exactly, but only if we put aside the fact that most aristocrats are not very bright. And Aristotle, my favorite philosopher, had little to do with the arts. Another miss: “Magnaceptual,” out because too similar to “Supraceptual,” which I want to keep for my ruling awareness.
I thought of following Siggy in using the names of gods which would have given me “Apolloceptual.” But what god’s name could I use for “practiceptual,” assuming I could give up that name, which seems near ideal for what I want it to mean. Also, Apollo seems to me to represent only part of where goes on in the “second” awareness.
“Significeptual?” I like it but fear it’s too much of a slur on the practical. I thought of “culturaceptual” because the practiceptual awareness has to do with survival and comfort, the other awareness with what I think of as culture. But “culture” is a contaminated word.
“Abracaceptual?” A good one, but no.
Fie on it. I’m quitting for now.
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Entry 1664 — Back to Important Stuff
Wednesday, December 17th, 2014
Today I”m back to my little third- or fourth-level theory of Intelligence. Here are my latest thoughts on it:
(1) I’m tentatively changing some terms: “pracsipience” to “practiceptual intelligence,” and “pracsipiceptual,” or whatever term I had for the awareness involved, to “practiceptual”; “cerebrasipience” to . . . I’m not sure. I want “x-ceptual intelligence.” Weird: may that’s it: “xceptual intelligence.” Too cute? My first thought was was “metapracticeptual intelligence.” I love the German “hohen,” for “high,” but am not so sure “hohenceptual” would work. It’s exactly right in meaning conveyed, but . . . I think I’ll leave the matter hanging for now.
Note to Marton: I’m claiming scholar’s use for my use of the ellipsis, so will not be sending you a royalty for use of it.
(2) Could the x-ceptual awareness be the first home of theology? I distinguish “theology: from “religion.” At the moment, I think of religion as the practiceptual worship of gods, and belief in various superstitions. Theology is an attempt to work up a philosophy (or, better, metaphysics) of religion—to explain Jehovah, for instance. Theology, in working almost entirely with abstract (really, imaginary) entities would seem surely to be a kind of practiceptual undergoing—“metaverosophy,” verosophy dealing rationally with entities one can perceive, metaverosophy dealing with all entities we are capable of thinking of, real and imaginary.
Digression: is there a difference between the imagined and any other kind of unreal entity? I tend to think not, but the closer an imaginary entity is to something real, the more plausible it becomes: God as a man who is hiding rather than beyond human perception is about as plausible as an imaginary entity can be, it seems to me. Or as a computer.
I can go along with the idea of the non-practiceptual awareness being caused, in part or wholly, by the need for a theology. The need for meta-arithmetic would likely be a greater cause, however.
(3) Might the non-practiceptual awareness be a place to escape perceptual overload for many? For our girl Emily, for sure. But for me, too. Which makes me think how my present ideas could make a psychotherapy book, and be useful: how to use your x-ceptual awareness to save your mind! Or show it as a kind of East Indian practice—which it is, to a degree.
That makes me wonder if I need to divide my x-ceptual awareness in two, one division involved only with . . . reality, the other with both reality, since it’s impossible fully to escape it, and the imaginary. Maybe call the first simply “Western x-ceptuality,” and the second “Eastern x-ceptuality,” each name being a derogatory epithet to a good number of people.
(4) The relationship of music to my new two awarenesses of the first rank is an interesting problem. Music is both highly abstract and highly concrete. The dance would be practiceptual: choreography above it.
I find I need a term for our over-all system of awarenesses. Perhaps, “supraceptual awareness?” That which contains the practiceptual awareness and its sibling, with portions of (so far) ten major awareness shared or separately under those two? One of the ten is the one I call the “compreceptual awareness”; so far I haven’t worked out a good definition of it but provisionally consider it always active, and the repository of a general overall picture of everything a person is experiencing during a given instacon, both his perception of the inner and outer environments, and his retroception of past experience. The supraceptual awareness, whoever, is just a name: it has nothing in it except . . . all the other awareness and sub-awarenesses.
Back to the dance. It must be the most practiceptual of the arts since it requires a continuing sense of what one’s muscles are doing. But the abstract patterning that choreographical creativity becomes involved with would require the higher awareness. Similarly music ascends out of simple practiceptual art into higher art as patterning takes over from simple instinctual love of basic sounds and rhythms. I think its ascent is faster than dance’s.
(5) I find this scheme of two awarenesses of the first rank (under the supraceptual awareness) to support much of my musings on verosophy and the arts versus survival, and all the other practiceptual activities I’ve previously listed, who knows where. Not surprisingly, it confirms many of my cultural prejudices such as my belief that visimagery (visual art) only became an art with the advent of non-representational painting, before that being a craft, albeit sometimes becoming more in the hands of its most gifted practitioners. I see only non-representational visimagery as post-practiceptual. Color and shape, of course, remain for it as important as sounds and rhythms are in music, but patterns, within compositions and intercompositionally (the way paintings and sculptures interact with other paintings and sculpture, and musical compositions interact with other musical compositions—by the artist involved himself, or by other artists, become much more important.
(6) Maybe “systeceptual awareness” may be a good term for the higher awareness, some relatively complex system (importantly) underlying everything that goes on in it. The trouble is that some practiceptual activities are systematic, albeit only tactically so. So, maybe “stratisysteceptual?” Just kiddink. I guess I now have two entities to name.
I can’t remember any more of my ideas, but know there were scores, all terrific. So this entry is about done. I may have gone about as far as I can with this topic: four entries and a little under three thousand words. Not much, and it includes a lot of digressions like this. It may be a good very rough start to the full presentation of my knowlecular psychology I’ve always hoped to compose.
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Entry 1662 — More on Prac- & Cerebra-ceptuality
Monday, December 15th, 2014
Questions in the Night: Big words only make it into the cerebrasipience zone? Algebra and higher math goes to cerebraceptual awareness only? Only strongly activated anthroceptual data gets in the cerebraceptual awareness? High charactration required for use of cerebraceptual awareness?
Later I remembered enough of my model of the brain to begin making a little sense (I hope). First off, I remembered how many awarenesses it contains, from the main ones like the reducticeptual (or conceptual) awareness through lesser ones like the matheceptual (or mathematics) sub-awareness down to even smaller ones I have not yet gotten down to but know are there. Each basically contains little but master-cells (m-cells), associative-cells (a-cells) and a mnemoduct. It is the activation of m-cells that gives us our experience of existence in the form of knowlecules, those being a sort of understood datum: “horse,” for instance, or “hoof” or “mammal,” depending on the context. Each active m-cell contributes a knowicle to the experience—i.e., a unit of knowledge, perhaps a syllable or something much smaller. They are activated either by sensory-cells reacting to stimuli in the outer or inner environment, or to memories of previously experienced knowlicles stored in their associated mnemoduct.
The a-cells are what count for this new cerebral set-up of mine, for they connect to m-cells in lower-order awarenesses unlinked to sensory-cells. This allows me to hypothesize an entire cerebraceptual awareness with sub-awarenesses in touch through a-cells with many or all the awarenesses making up the practiceptual awareness. Hence, the possibility that the latter sends only certain, potentially-“higher” to the cerebraceptual awareness. Meanwhile, the cerebraceptual awareness may have sensory-cells in the practiceptual awareness (I’m really brainstorming here, so may not be making sense) that are aware of data beyond the competence of the practiceptual awareness—perhaps relationships in the latter’s knowlecules. Hence, some m-cells in the cerebraceptual awareness will be activated by what is going on in the practiceptual awareness—and cause one to experience some new kind of knowledge.
To try feebly to give an example: a cerebraceptual sensory-cell in the practiceptual awareness’s matheceptual awareness might perceive some knowlecule as algebraic, tag it as such and activate an m-cell in the cerebraceptual awareness that causes us to experience something the practiceptual awareness could not have: “a3,” say. But probably not.
The point is, that the cerebraceptual awareness could easily share only some data with the practiceptual awareness, and be sensitive to data the practiceptual awareness can’t be—except maybe in some roundabout way due to an exceptionally good popular science book for laymen.
In any case, I now believe that the brain’s attention center is important. It’s where the brain determines where one’s attention should be focused. I now think it could allow this new cerebral organization of mine by sensing when some awareness in the practiceptual awareness has been stymied by something requiring verosophical attention, and in effect shuts down the practiceptual awareness and turns on the cerebraceptual awareness.
Or a poet experiences something in his practiceptual awareness that becomes in effect a problem for him to solve as a poem. He has fragments of thoughts that strike him as material for a poem but they bewilder him enough to cause his brain to flip his attention (assuming nothing important is happening in this day-to-day, that always over-rides cerebraceptual needs, although the two awarenesses may struggle). Eventually he will be able to control his attention—more easily by simply by (1) reducing his day-to-day as much as possible, and (2) working his way into a frustrated mental state that will flip him into his cerebraceptual awareness.
Meanwhile, his cerebellum may help out by going automatic, thus leaving his practiceptual awareness with nothing to do, which will shut it down. (Until something environmental alerts it powerfully enough—a loud sound, for instance.) I think of Wordsworth’s turning his practiceptual awareness over to his cerebellum by taking long walks that the cerebellum tended to while he was (mostly) composing away in his cerebraceptual awareness.
Random thoughts: that much of the anthroceptual awareness is blocked from the cerebraceptual awareness. It is in the latter that a person becomes impersonal, and the people in his life become objects.
Superior minds are those able to stay in their cerebraceptual awarenesses the longest. This will require the ability to raise one’s cerebral energy and maintain a high level of it—although dropping it when appropriate.
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Entry 1661 — Fuzzilier Re: Pracsipience, Etc.
Sunday, December 14th, 2014
The first thought here in a continuation of my thinking about day-to-day-thinking I was annoyed into by another lawyer’s making a bundle out of the increasingly complete abandonment by our country of any belief in self-responsibility: a kid got killed by a negligent driver; for lawyers, though, the responsibility in such a case is only that of the individual who directly caused a death if he is the one with the most money who can be sued. Hence, in this case, the party sued (successfully, for over a million) was the church owning the parking lot (because some bushes got in the driver’s view and there’s no reason that should have made him slow down and be extra cautious: those owning any kind of property most make sure it is 100% safe).
That made me think about the pracsipience of the lawyers involved. Is it greater than other people’s? I decided it wasn’t. They are probably in the 60% of the people I believe are quite intelligent in day-to-day living. But they have a special talent for swindling. Similarly I believe that doctors are no more pracsipient than the rest of us, but they have a talent for their vocation (which I admire, as I do not admire the vocation of some, but definitely not all, lawyers).
On second thought, I’m not sure doctors have any special talent so much as they have concentrated some of their pracsipience into becoming doctors. As everyone concentrates a certain portion of his pracsipience. Perhaps a talent is such a concentration of pracsi-pience? (Am I unfuzzying rather than the reverse as I certainly was in my mind when I began this entry?)
On third thought, it seems to me that concentrations of pracsipience are different from a talent. The lawyer suing the church had a talent for swindling whereas my doctor has a concentration of pracsipience in the field of medicine. Of course, many doctors also have talents related to doctoring, as well. The normal academic is all concentrated pracsipiences, or must pretend to be if he is going to make a living in academia.
I forgot about my 10% of those whose pracsipience is a level above the 60%’s: perhaps it’s superior because of those with it are better at concentrating their otherwise normal pracsipience than others. In any case, those who succeed at what most people consider the higher professions like law and medicine are no doubt mostly in the 10% of people of superior pracsipience.
To be reasonably effective in the day-to-day, one needs to have the ability to concentrate one’s pracsipience in some vocation, so it’s part of pracsipience–at all levels.
I’m pretty sure I haven’t said all I want to on this topic but right now I’ve zeroed out. I’m afraid I’ll be saying more on it tomorrow. Sorry.
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Entry 1660 — “Pracsipience”
Saturday, December 13th, 2014
I’ve been thinking about a new way of thinking about anthreffec-tiveness, or an individual’s over-all intelligence. It’s new for me, but I suspect it may be close to most person’s idea of it. Anyway, it’s just a different way of sorting them for me. But I’m wondering if it may have a neurophysiological basis in the existence of a cerebral basement. I like the idea so will stick a “Pracsipiceptual Awareness” into my model of the cerebrum that is be responsible for all of an individual’s “pracsipience,” or practical, day-to-day cerebreffectiveness (“cerebreffectiveness,” remember, being my word for exclusively cerebral anthreffectiveness, which is an individual’s entire effectiveness).
Frankly, I haven’t figured out how it would work. Its mission would be to guiding an individual to maximally effective choices in his day-to-day tactical activities. Making a living, keeping house, marketing, bringing up children, etc. Not writing poetry or music, and designing bridges, etc. Not, that is, strategic cerebreffectiveness, although a person using his pracsipience will often also being using his . . . cerebracip-ience, or what he needs from his mental equipment to go beyond day-to-day living into the arts, verosophy or the other higher human activities, if there are any (right now my mind’s a blank about them).
I now have divided the cerebrum into two sections: the pracsipiceptual awareness and the cerebrasipiceptual awareness. I think of them as one under the other like the cerebellum under the cerebrum, but suspect each is all over the place. My need now is to find a way for only certain “day-to-day date,” whatever that might be, to get into the pracsipiceptual awareness, and higher data into the cerebrasipiceptual awareness. With the former passing on anything that might be useful to the higher awareness to it?
The only thing so far clear to me is that all the awarenesses would be involved with both these two new awarenesses. I must think more on it.
My first interest, though, is in sorting an individual’s intelligences or competences in his pracsipience . . . and the minor and major talents i believe just about everyone has, like the ability to sing or play bridge well on up to the ability to make large-scale scientific discoveries or novels that his cerebrasipiceptual awareness oversees. All I’m saying to this point is that each individual has a pracsipience and talents, which I think is a standard way of looking at a person’s mental equipment: intelligence, and talents. Although the word, “intelligence,” is used (in my view) confusingly too often to mean only ability at academics or the like.
My guess is that a good 60% of us are pracsipient, or effective in our day-to-day lives. Another 20% are just adequately effective in our daily lives, most of them about as pracsipient as most people except for some condition that keeps them always or occasionally . . . stupid: alcoholism, for instance, or rigidnikry (i.e., what I call a theoretical mental dysfunction that makes a person excessively inflexible of mind and cerebraffectively flawed in a number of other related ways) or poor eyesight, etc. . . . or, interesting, excessive cerebrasipience!
A further guess of mine is that only 10% of us (not me!) are an order of magnitude more pracsipient than the average 60%, and another 10% an order of magnitude (or more, in the case of the truly mentally handicapped) less pracsipient than the just adequately pracsipient.
What I’m doing, it seems to me, is explaining to myself the fact that I find almost every one to be “intelligent” (every bit as “intelligent” as I), 80%, in fact, if I count the 20% whose basically effective pracsipience is flawed). I’m also trying to explain the not too common people I know or have known who seem to me gifted in . . . simply, living (but never, so far as I know, having the highest kind of cerebrasipience, genius). but not too many. Finally, I’m hypothesizing that I am right in assuming that what I call pracsipience does not really vary much. Except for those with extreme inborn defects, or who have suffered horrendous damage to the wrong organs, we’re all about as much the same in this characteristic as we are in . . . the ability to eat. Exaggeration–to give my drift.
Now, genius is the one talent that very few have, if you define it to mean something as special as I do. One in a million? Perhaps, although that would mean the USA has over 300 geniuses in it, and my sense is that we have quite a bit less: my friends–ME, needless to say–and what? maybe fourteen or fifteen others. Seriousfully, 300 may be right. But just a few would be have a genius an order of magnitude greater than the best of the others. The only American genius I’m even sorta sure is one, is Murray Gell-Mann; but I don’t understand advance theoretical physics or–and this is important–am not an expert in its history; therefore, I can’t evaluate the importance or originality (this latter being what I need to be an expert in the history of recent physics to determine) of what he’s done. All I can say is that he is definitely a minor genius, at least–a “minor genius” as opposed to a major one being most of thus in my genius class.
I feel certain intuitively that America has a few Beethovens although I’m not sure who they are. Nobody in America since Pollock doing visimagery (i.e., visual art) exclusively is for me a Pollock–but my opinion is next to worthless because I don’t know very much about what’s going on in either art–and the media certainly isn’t any help.
To finish up, the one firm belief I’m considering holding until new data invalidates it is that most everyone is intelligent and talented, which means they have both pracsipience and cerbrasipience (although, as I didn’t mention, some vary a lot in number of talents as well as quality of one or more talents), but very few have a talent I would call genius, and almost none a talent I would call major genius.
It occurs to me that intelligence may be my favorite subject to pronounce and blither about, I guess because the world I grew up in seemed to me to make more of it than of anything else. Ultimately it has to be–by my definition, which is “that which accounts for a person’s full lifetime effectiveness as a human being.” But the “intelligence” made so much of by the world in general is only a small part of that.
In any case, no doubt whatever intelligence is, I have a need to know it well so I can rate myself. But I also think I have simply been drawn to its study out of an innate proclivity to understand myself and others. That’s impossible without getting significantly into a study of whatever intelligence is.
I hope to say more about the loose ends in what I’ve said here. I hope also, as I always do, that a few people will read this with interest. I’d love to get feedback, but don’t expect any.
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Entry 1609 — The Volume of the Intellect
Thursday, October 23rd, 2014
While thinking about getting back to my essay on formal education, I got to thinking about the difficulty of measuring the value of any kind of education. That led me back to old ideas of mine concerning the volume of one’s intellect. My thought is that an objective measurement of one’s intelligence would be very difficult, but a way that might help to make it in theory would consider one’s over-all understanding of existence as an object with three dimensions. If so, one could simply measure it. The larger the volume, the greater the intelligence it was the result of.
What I would begin with is a map of God’s understanding of existence–assuming existence is the same for him as it is for us. I would divide it into several general understandings. (1) understanding of the physical world–physics and, basically, all the other sciences . . . I’m brainstorming . . . while trying out of another null zone of mine to jam something, anything, into this space so I will remain true to my vow of posting a blog entry every day. Anyway, I’m interrupting myself almost immediately because an understanding of the physical world requires (a) visual knowledge, (b) verbal knowledge, (c) mathematical knowledge. God will know what’s in the world, all of it. Knowledge. But that’s not enough for understanding. Understanding means knowing how everything relates to everything else.
To begin again: An understanding of existence consists of (1) an understanding of the physical world which depends on one’s ability to reason mathematically, verbally and spatially–but that ability is not part of the intellect, only the understanding, if any, that it provides. One builds an understanding of existence using math, words, and visualization. This understanding thus has a measurable volume. This might be called intellectual understanding as opposed to emotional understandings like music, visimagery and literature. There’s also psychological understanding–how large one’s social life is–to put is simplistically: how many friends one has, how long one has known them, and–most important–how deeply one’s relationship is to each of them. But the complexity of the over-all group one is ultimately part of counts, too.
These are notes toward notes. My goal is to show that basically the size of one’s intellect depends on how many subjects one is significantly involved with, and how deeply one is involved with each. I know what I’m talking about,but am too tired to show it.
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Entry 1449 — IQ Tests
Saturday, May 10th, 2014
About all I was able to write today was the following for my essay on intelligence, which suddenly looks like it’s going nowhere:
The many defects of IQ tests
1. The abilities they measure are important in too few of the understandings intelligence should be a means to, dealing for the most part only with numbers, words and spatial relationships—not music, colors, physical movements, people. . . .
2. The abilities they measure are short-term; for example, the ability to solve arithmetic problems quickly as opposed to the ability to solve a problem in higher mathematics that might take weeks, months or years to solve
3. The abilities they measure are simple: knowing what words mean, for instance, as opposed to being able to use them in a sentence
4. They don’t measure creativity, which is much more important than what they do measure, or even could measure if they measured all they should, for the highest intellectual accomplishments. Indeed, in certain ways, they do measure it–negatively, marking creative solutions wrong that may be better than the one considered correct.
5. The answers to their questions are not necessarily the only good ones, and are sometimes not the best.
6. They do not necessarily test a person under the best conditions for that person. Fear of failure, for instance, could make a testee miss many questions he’d have no trouble with if a friend pretended he needed help answering them, for instance.
7. They are biased in favor of grinds—that is, they can be studied for, which means those taking them seriously enough can outdo others brighter than they without similar motivation.
8. They are egalitarianized—that is, they are written in accordance with the assumption that, for instance, males and females should be equally good at them instead of making each test of a subject like mathematics made to see how effective the person taking it is in that subject without consideration of what group outdoes another, or is outdone.
9. They may measure ability at tests rather than ability in the subjects involved.
10. The ones given to children fail to take into account different rates of maturation: one child may take longer to reach full intellectual maturation than another. The tests should not be age-related. Hence, someone tested at the age of fourteen, for instance, should do a lot better than he did when tests as an eight-year-old.
IQ tests give a very rough approximation of what I guess they are intended to find: a person’s likelihood of academic success. That’s because such success is based on the ability to take tests, superficial knowledge (e.g., a large vocabulary competently but trivially used versus a smaller vocabulary creatively used), an absence of creativity, academic motivation (which I hold to be different from intellectual motivation—a form of opportunism, it is: become proficient at that which pays regardless of whether or not it helps you in the search for truth), promptness.
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