Good Morning Digital Neighbors! A little later posting for the Padre today, the cool weather made a warm bed a bit too cozy to leave. More excuses! More excuses than Carter's Little Liver Pills as Momma used to say. 😉 How about another quote or two for your Wednesday ruminations? I am not aware of who Alfred Binet is or was but he has some interesting quotes. Let's suit up and dive in!

The intelligence of an individual is not a fixed quantity. - Alfred Binet

One can grow and decrease in their personal possession and application of discernible intelligence. I think one of the real fallacies individuals embrace is the mistaken idea that intelligence in one area indicates an overall sense of brilliance and understanding in all topics. It gives rise to the cult of experts who might be knowledgeable and well spoken in one area of life but are unable to apply the same depth of understanding in other areas.

Expert is too often more of a shield than a designation of competency. Much like victims, experts are another class of people who the rest of us ought to defer to with the utmost respect and lack of question or criticism. Nothing is above question or criticism. Victims do not get a magic pass (though many expect one and often demand one) and experts do not get to be free of questions or criticism in their respected field. Contrary to the current gospel of compulsive compliance sold to us by the Enemedia and espoused by the Establishment, one need not be an expert to ask intelligent questions or raise doubts. Experts of haughty malice and victims of unquestionable experience are a blight on modern discourse. They shut down conversations and demand submission to their reality. Wrong think is punishable by exile or extermination.

I wish that one would be persuaded that psychological experiments, especially those on the complex functions, are not improved [by large studies]; the statistical method gives only mediocre results; some recent examples demonstrate that. The American authors, who love to do things big, often publish experiments that have been conducted on hundreds and thousands of people; they instinctively obey the prejudice that the persuasiveness of a work is proportional to the number of observations. This is only an illusion.

An interesting quote since it just raises more questions rather than providing answers. A survey of 10,000 while being very board may not be any more useful or accurate that a survey sampling only a handful of people. I am not sure it is an illusion so much as not a given. Bigger studies do not yield bigger truths, just more questions and varied hypothesis. Humility before knowledge is always a good posture to adopt. It doesn't mean we have to be timid in looking at the data, just not presumptuous and erroneously assume it is conclusive. Today's established fact might be tomorrow's mistaken and discarded truth. We all act in the light of tentative certitude when it comes to the realm of "facts".

Happy Wednesday Digital Neighbors!

Autumn Texas barn