Actually, what I've read suggests that you only have to be smart enough. You don't have to be brilliant to become an amazing artist or an innovator or what ever. You've just got to be clever enough and put in the practise - if you haven't read Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" you should. It's a rollicking read.
There are only certain subjects where I think intelligence is critical to be innovative: mathematics, and philosophy (like your son's reading of Nietzsche). And often the people making the breakthroughs in one are making them in the other (Leibniz, Descartes for e.g.). Pretty much anything else only uses intelligence periodically, and practise is the more important factor.
So yeah, the average successful guitar player is not going to be a dumbbell. But they're not all geniuses - or even close. Brian May has a PHD (or is it a Masters degree) in astro-physics, I think, but he's not a better player than Hendrix - who seemed pretty average, or Clapton, who also seems pretty average. Christopher Parkening doesn't strike me as very bright at all. So it's not a straight line curve: more smarts equals better playing. Not at all. It's just a thresh-hold level you have to have to be able to learn the instrument. Once you're past that threshold, all bets are off.
If you put a guitar in your son's hands is he going to be a virtuoso? He could be. If he works his ass off at it. But so could the kid with the 105 IQ if he does the same.
X-rated Bob wrote:
I don't see that IQ has anything to do with ethics. Geniuses are just as capable of unethical behaviour as anybody else.
Very true. I think Conrad is not so much talking about their ethics though, as their study and knowledge of ethics. But there are professionals who are already ignored in this field (although it's partly their fault. It drives me mad when philosophers don't enter the public debate). This is why I think that there's no reason for a society for the intelligent to exist. It's like a society for the strong. I mean, WTH? You have weight-lifting clubs, and rugby clubs and all that. It would be pointless to have a general, "society for the strong." With intelligence you have mathematics clubs, philosophical clubs, puzzle clubs. I don't see the value in a society that simply generalises all this stuff
except if they are people who don't know how to meet other people and identify themselves only by their general intelligence. That would account for the reputation of social awkwardness ?
