Halfothesis

A halfothesis is half a hypothesis. It’s a notion that sounds good if you don’t think about it long. It’s not worthy of full scientific exploration, but it’s sort of fun to noodle about.

My halfothesis is that intelligence is largely determined by the degree of stimulation you get from your external environment, starting from the time you are a baby. The relationship is the inverse. If you get a lot of joy from enjoying the moment, your brain has no reason to do much else. Your brain’s job is to keep you happy, and if looking at a sunset is enough, your brain’s job is done. Like a muscle that gets no exercise, the brain that is easily finished with its work has no reason to become stronger.

On the other hand, if the external environment gives you little joy, you retreat into the relatively richer environment of your own imagination. The continuous exercise of your imagination makes your brain more efficient. That’s my halfothesis.

The next time you are in a large gathering, notice which people are the happiest in a stimulating social setting for an extended period of time. Perhaps everyone seems happy at first, but as the evening wears on, some people will fade faster than others. They will be easily saturated with the stimulation that the physical environment provides and start daydreaming to increase their happiness.

Are the people who start daydreaming first usually the smartest people in the room?

Comments

[Julia]

The Richness of ones own imagination? Try applying that to schizophrenics.

[Nels Tomlinson]

I think the fly in your ointment is that intelligence is going to influence the point at which external stimulation become more interesting than the ``richer environment in your head.''

For dummies, that interesting sunset, or just some drying paint, is sufficient distraction to keep the brain quiet. For the smarter half, what's going on inside the skull is pretty interesting, and can easily drown out most external stimuli.

So, my story is that you have cause and effect backwards: ``smart people use their brains more because it's more fun,'' rather than ``people who enjoy using their brains more get smarter.''

[Quantum_Flux]

I suppose there are people who act really crazy at parties. This is just acting out emotions of what is in their mind, but it's still daydreaming because they're not paying attention to the here and now.

[Dom]

My dad used to tell me all the time "Only boring people get bored"

[spandabulosso]

Halfothesis -- hmm

I have a bunch of ideas that would fall into that category. Some were conceived many moons ago.

One such halfothesis is that God was essentially created by disillusionment.
Consider the young child whose parents are the image of perfection. Parents are flawless, they can solve everything and they know everything.

One day this young child is hit with the crushing realization that, in fact, those parents have a few cracks. The sheen fades and disillusionment starts to settle in. The child, now a bit older perhaps, still has an embedded notion that perfection exists but since it is OBVIOUSLY not to be found in parents, it must be somewhere else.

Perhaps for a while teachers or the objects of sexual desire embody this perfection. We all know where that leads. In the end, this sought after perfection and the blind adoration that it evokes are given to something other, something apart and elusive. Thus 'God' was created to fill the place the perfect parent used to hold.

[Akshay]

To answer your question: Yes.

Day Dreaming is a Good Paastime...

I dont have time to Pass...

lots to do...

Akshay

webdesigning and development Company
HugeH.com
Mumbai

[soniahime]

hahaha ;)

i believe so, if the people in the party are not stimulating enough, intelligent people withdraw and have more fun in their minds!

[Darkwing]

It's kinda depressing writing a comment three days after the post... no one reads them when they are on time, so really, i know i am having a conversation between my self and the webmaster who couldn't give a rats arse what i think... Hi Mr. WebMaster, you have a cool name...

I will address my comment to Scott knowing that he will not read it, the added futility makes me feel somehow more righteous about it...

Scott, you should read Plato. And by that i mean that you have no need to read Plato, because clearly my reason for saying that you need to read it is that your opinions are similar to his, in which case you already know what he is going to say. So really what i have done here is wasted 5 mins of my life posting something useless to the webmaster that he won't read anyway...
And they say we don't have free will?

[Adriana]

"Social butterflies are rarely brilliant... I agree with you that they never bother to hone whatever IQ they were blessed with."

There's a difference between social butterflies that were popular their entire lives, and those that were lonely pupas.

I'm sharper than Ockam's razor, and I've been called a social butterfly very frequently. I've always been smart--I haven't always been liked.

Part of my extroversion-intelligence mix is due to my ability to learn things and be interested by individuals that would generally be labeled boring and stupid. Those were some of the only people I could spend time with as an extroverted uncool person.

Also, most introverts I know love sitting around thinking about how much smarter they are than the funny, center-of-attention person of whom they're jealous.

[Don]

Well, on this subject ..... bombs are dropping ... I being the hero type save everybody ... uhmmm what were we talking about .... that cute woman wants to jump my bones in the kitchen and .... oh yeh. Sure. Cows have jumped over the moon as evidenced by .... thank you thank you. yes it is great to be the smartest man in the universe .... oh, you still here?

[Jonathan]

"This would imply that children raised in say Baghdad would be exceptionally intelligent. I'm skeptical. I think you need positive environmental stimulation in the first place in order to develop a rich imagination."

Children in Baghdad may indeed be exceptionally intelligent. But then comes the issue of how one would measure that. They're not more *knowledgeable* which is often confused for intellect. But I'm more than willing to bet that a child who's seen first hand the horrors of war are far more philosophically mature than a child raised on buying Bratz dolls. The former is almost forced to ask the question "why" whereas the later simply learns how whining gets him/her more toys.

But this is all just speculation and personal projection. I've now, however, been inspired to look up introvert vs extrovert average intellect.

[Jonathan]

"My momma always told me, 'If you are bored, it's because you are boring'."

That's some fine parenting there Lu.

[Seth]

People STOP daydreaming?

I wondered why people thought it odd that I'll sometimes mutter half-thoughts while I'm listening to them.

Also, does anyone else find it annoying that only one non-self person will talk to you at a time? It's not hard to listen to 2 people at once.

3 may be pushing it, but, hey, it's not like I get enough practice at it.

And all the while I'm thinking about my awesome plan(s)...

See, I'm going to "run in" to Mr. Adams at a book signing or something and get his autograph. If/when he asks why, I'll look around and say, "To show them." When he says, "to show who (or whom)" I'll say, "To show them ALL!"

Then will come either maniacal or diabolical laughter, and I'll run away and do a heel-kick.

Or perhaps I'll try to get OTHER people to do it to him, repeatedly, in an insidious manner that's sure to begin annoying him after a few years... that COULD be more entertaining. Maybe.

Also, he needs to let people rate the posts, like SlashDot, except "Inane" and "Lemon-Eater" need to be categories it can be rated in.

[tech guy]

My son and my daughter have radically different intelligence levels, ruling out environment and instead putting the odds on a luck of the genetic draw (that is, even with smart parents you might not get the smart genes).

[Dick]

since you gave us halfothesis, I'll give you a halfarted answer that is a half assed answer. Of course I am bored, I am the smartest person in the room.

[Bruce Harrison]

Those things, as do most of your postulations, fall into the category of "halfassedothesis." Your (and my) memberships in MENSA notwithstanding.

You are welcome for the clarification. Have a good day.

[Rebecca]

By extension your halfpothesis says that introverts are therefore more intelligent than extroverts because introverts would be less stimulated by the party environment that you described than extroverts. Introverts are also more likely to retreat into their own thoughts. As far as I can tell, there is no correlation between introversion and intelligence (although social awkwardness may be another story...), so I disagree with your halfpothesis.

[Natasha]

So intelligent people take less joy from the external environment. But does that cause the intelligence, or is it a result of being intelligent? Maybe it would make more sense to take it backwards. Once a person has a capacity to think further into everything, its easier to find flaws with objects in the external environment. If intelligence is viewed as raw thinking power, that could cause the person to enjoy his/her environment less, and therefore retreat into his/her own mind more often. But I'm thinking of this theory more in relation to the wind in the trees, or fart jokes, rather than social situations. Overanalyzing just gets more interesting with people, as theres plenty to pick apart. Therefore my halfothesis leads me to believe that more perceptive people are the intelligent ones, not more introverted people.

[Dmitry]

By that measure, people who get drunk at the parties fast are those who have a lot of intelligence but lack imagination.

[Mishlai]

Yes, but one might suggest that they phase out early because they're bored by average company.

[Amit]

Truly speaking i would say those are the ones with few cracked nuts into there brains. They themselves are boring and there lack of intelligence adds to there boringness.
Scott you teased me today. Because I am the one who daydreams a lot, but an not at all fk'ing intelligent :D

[Rolf Marvin Bøe Lindgren]

Congratiulations, you have discovered the Cattellian (classical) concepts of fluid and crystallized intelligence, first proposed by Cattell way back when (last century).

Cattell discovered that intelligence can be viewed as two aspects - what you're born with, your engine as it were - and what you've developed - how far you've travelled, so to speak.

the "born" part is called fluid intelligence and the "developed" part is called crystallized intelligence (look it up :)

now, the social fatigue you observe is actually something else. people have different tolerances for social exposure, those at one end of the scale are called introverts and those at the other end are called extraverts. now, introverts retire to their own world faster than the extroverts because their system get overloaded by social exposure faster (all people are energized by social exposrure until the get enough of it, the introverts get enough very fast).

according to most research, introverts are more intelligent, as a group, than extraverts. so there.

[Mark]

I would say what you have IS a hypothesis. Your next step is to say "now, if that hypothesis is correct, I should see X correlate to Y". If it does, your hypothesis is OK. Now your trickier questions pop up:

a) is there a way that SOMETHING ELSE made it look like my hypothesis worked?
(NULL Hypothesis test, which you should have done in your statistics course)

b) is there something strange that my hypothesis would predict that is novel?
(E.g., for a lame dig at you, evolution required something inheritable. when DNA was found that could code protein AND was inheritable, that gave evolution its' boost)

c) are there any more results of the hypothesis that are testable
(in case they break)

d) can I prove my hypothesis incorrect
(you can often rely on others to do this, but it's a good one to remove bad ideas, which long term is better for you to weed out)

Or, IIRC,

Hypothesis + Synthesis = Thesis

Or summat like that.

[Joe]

How is "this is a halfothesis" any different in meaning from "what follows is a total load of excrement that even *I* don't believe: reading about it would be a total waste of your time"?

I prefer to spend my time thinking about the world and how it works, and things that at least might be true. So I didn't bother to read this entry past the first sentence.

[Incredipete]

Social butterflies are rarely brilliant... I agree with you that they never bother to hone whatever IQ they were blessed with.

Of course, there's no denying that a lot of anti-social people are dumber than a retarded chipmunk, too.