Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

“Yes Mr. Hill, testosterone can jump start puberty, but I don’t give radical hormone therapy to young boys who happen to be mediocre at dodge ball.” – King of the Hill

Okay, that meme came together really well.  Or maybe Jack and Peewee were separated at birth?

Pugsley is currently experiencing what every teenage boy has experienced since there were boys – TOTP teenage onset testosterone poisoning.  The symptoms are many:  extreme idiocy.  A sudden lowering of voice.  Unexplained hairiness.  Armpit smell.  Showers longer than the Crimean War.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I think 11-14 is the critical age for children.  This is the defining age where they begin to rebel.  They’ve turned from nice, sweet children into little monsters who have determined that they have feelings but have no regard for the feelings of others – in a word, all middle school age children are psychopathic.

Although irritating, it is a passing phase, as long as the parents stick to their guns.  I have seen children become middle-school aged tyrants whose parents tremble as they approach.  It’s not a pleasant sight, and the wreckage of their lives is equally unpleasant when they first impact a world that doesn’t care that momma always cut the crust off of their sandwiches.  I’ve had occasion to see that karma train show up a in a spoiled child’s life, and I always enjoy watching the fireworks more than a virtuous person should.  Sue me.  I’m human, although my ex-wife might disagree.

At some point natural selection by impact with Kia® will kick in.

Recently, I’ve been sticking to my guns with Pugsley.  It’s not really hard, you just don’t give in to them when you’re right.  Pugsley had his most recent attack of TOTP just the other day.  I sent him to his room.  After composing himself (and issuing an apology) he and I ended up outside, and he was sweeping the last leaves of autumn off the patio.

He stopped.  “Dad, I’d like you to give my phone back to me.”  His phone had been confiscated at least two months earlier for some infraction, and Pugsley had never managed to string enough “good” days together to get it back.  If truth be told, my criteria was probably a bit arbitrary, as well – I’m not particularly a fan of preteens having phones.

John Wilder:  “First, keep sweeping.  You can work and talk.  Second, why on Earth would I do that?  I had to send you to your room today.  What does that tell me about your overall behavior?  What’s in it for me?”

He raised his hand, as if dealing with a velociraptor that was one hamburger short of a Happy Meal®.  “Hear me out.  I want you to give me the phone back.  So you can take it away if I misbehave.”

“Okay, you have my attention.  I’m listening.”  This was interesting thinking.

Then the monologue started.  “Okay, listen.”

I stopped him.  “Don’t start a sentence with okay.”

“Okay.  I mean,” Pugsley Paused, a bit flustered, “right.  So . . .”

“You don’t need to start a sentence with ‘so’ – just say it.”

I was enjoying this.

“If I have my phone, you have an effective punishment.  I know what you want.  You want for me to do my chores without nagging.  I get it.  You want for me to do them daily.  You want me to stop back talking, and to stop being a jerk.”

“Go on – what about grades?”  It was obvious he’d been paying attention when I talked.  It was also obvious he’d been thinking.

“All at A minus or better.”

“What about quality?”

“If it doesn’t meet your standards, take the phone.”

It was well rehearsed, and was logical.  If he messed up?  The phone would go away.  If he did well?  I would pay for the phone bill.

“Okay.”

Pugsley did a fist pump.  “The Art of the Deal . . . .”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

I hear he’s selling this revised edition at school.

In short, he would give me everything I wanted for the price of a phone.  I even have a signed contract.  It’s like reverse Satan – I give him his soul in exchange for a cell phone.

And what, exactly, did I extract?

• His mastery of his testosterone-besotted self so he could maintain self-control and unleash the Pocket-Hulk® (which is what we called him when he got mad and was a tiny Pugsley).
• Discipline – I wouldn’t have to nag him about the chores. He has to start his own motor.
• Long term thinking – he also agreed to link a minimum grade to the phone – and keeping an A minus means planning to do your work and doing it every time it’s due.
• Standards – he agreed that work would be fully done. Well done.  By my standards – not “good enough.”

It may sound like I’m lazy and want him to clean the house while I type amusing anecdotes into the computer.  And I am lazy.  But if Pugsley can learn self-control, discipline, long term thinking, and high standards from my slothful life?

I call that a win-win, and maybe the best deal either of us will ever make.  Besides, I want him to be successful so he has lots of money so he can choose a nursing home for me that’s not based on Game of Thrones.

I hear the pudding is to die for.

“I can easily understand why it should puzzle you that a person of my intelligence, I.Q. 207 super genius, should devote his valuable time chasing this ridiculous road runner . . .” – Road Runner

Besides, her last test came back negative.

When I was growing up I recall reading a short story that was, to me, particularly horrifying.  In the story, a group of colonists arrives at a planet light years from Earth.  All is going well – the planet is habitable but not inhabited.  The colonists set the ship down and begin to prepare the planet for people.  And they begin making babies to inhabit the planet, but in the usual way, not using space robot wombs or anything.

But, there is something wrong with the babies.  They are ugly.  And stupid.  And grow quickly, hitting puberty at about age four.  The scientists work frantically trying to figure out what is causing the problem.  Is it some alien virus?  Something to do with the journey itself?  They come up with no good answers, but in their searches determine that the children really look more like a human ancestor from millions of years in the past than modern humans.

Uh-oh.

Then they get the bad news.  Earth sends them a message (from six years in the past) that all human babies on Earth are now being born ugly and stupid, too.  Earth thinks that the colony is the last hope for smart humans, so they have to make it succeed.

Oops.

One of the colonists gets a bit philosophical, and compares humanity to locusts, who often stay in a less aggressive form for decades, and then burst out in the big, hoppy flying plague across thousands of square miles, devouring everything in their wake.  Humanity’s true form, reckons the colonist, is the fuzzy stupid pre-humans, and once humans spread among the stars, it made sense to get stupid again so that we didn’t destroy ourselves.  In the end, all that’s left on the new planet are the pre-humans.  And the wolves.  The colonists released the wolves so that the pre-humans would have something to select off the stupid pre-humans, so they could get smart again millions of years in the future.

Depressing.

The name of the story is The Locusts by Larry Niven and Stephen Barnes, and it was published in 1979 and was nominated for a Hugo® award.  This story has bounced around my mind since I first read it, though I had forgotten even the author until I was assisted by some fine folks on Twitter®.  It is available in Larry Niven’s anthology N-Space, which is probably where I read it for the first time.

The story got me thinking about the concept of how civilization influences intelligence.  And other questions:  how important is intelligence?  Is it better to be intelligent or not?  Would my I.Q. be higher if I did it in metric?

But maybe the most basic of all of these questions is:  what is intelligence?

Intelligence is the ability to process information quickly with sufficient working capacity to create useful connections with previous information.  Intelligence really is measurable by I.Q. tests, and, oddly, is predicted by reaction times – the smarter you are (in general) the quicker your reaction times.  It’s as if the brain pathways move faster for smarter people.  Sadly for those that like to make fun of smart people, the reality is that they’re generally healthier and have a pretty good ability to communicate if they want to.  Generally.

Subliminal advertising is illegal, but what about subcranial?

The way to think of intelligence is that it’s like your height.  Your DNA at the moment of birth determines what your maximum height will be, unless your environment screws it up.  You can’t study yourself taller.  You can’t “think and grow tall.”  No matter how much you stretch every day, your maximum height is your maximum height.

Intelligence is like that, too.  Studying doesn’t help your I.Q., but it does increase your capacity within that maximum intelligence.  No matter how bright the puppy and how often you work to teach it to talk, it’s never going to read quote any Shakespeare except for Romeo and Juliet.  Your dog is a philistine.  But just as environmental factors can stunt your height, environmental factors can make you . . . not as smart, which is why Doritos® took most of the lead out of their Nacho Cheese and Lead© flavored chips.  Most of it.  How can you have lead-flavored chips without any lead?

It also turns out that intelligence is very, very important if you’re considering wealth.  Here is a graph showing the relationship between GDP and the I.Q. of various countries.   It’s based on 1998 data from Lynn and Vanhanen, but I doubt that 2019 data would be much different, except for China, which has quite a high I.Q. but a low 1998 income.  I’ll let you wander around the Internet for more information if you’d like, I’m not planning on writing about it here – I have to get to sleep tonight sometime.  I will admit I was as utterly shocked as anyone could be the first time I saw this data – my preconceived notion was that the average I.Q. of the world was more or less 100, which is clearly refuted by the following graph.

What’s the difference between getting into USC™ and being a wealthy nation?  To be a wealthy nation you have to have a good I.Q.

So at least one question appears to be answered – although you might end up being smart and poor, you’re never going to be dumb and rich.  Poor countries are poor because they’re not smart.  This answers my first question – is intelligence important?  Yes.  Intelligence in nations has been shown to be correlated strongly with lots of good things:  economic freedom, savings, self-employment, education, literacy, interpersonal trust, and long lives.  Low national I.Q. has been correlated with lots of things we don’t like:  corruption, murder, and big government.

I’ll throw out that high I.Q. nations also have more suicide and lower birthrates – the only two negatives that I saw in my (brief) review of the literature I could find.

The original starred Einstein® and Hawking™, but they argued after Einstein© said a radioactive cat had 18 half-lives and had to find new actors.

Next Monday I anticipate reviewing a new book on the subject of intelligence, At Our Wits’ End by Edward Dutton and Michael Woodley of Menie.  Dutton and Woodley have worked on a disturbing theory . . . that you’ll have to wait until next week to hear more about.  But don’t expect any hairy pre-human babies.  Because nobody expects hairy pre-human babies.