I've been thinking lately about the Multiple Intelligences Hoax.

To clarify: this isn't strictly about Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which might on its own be valid; it's more about the abuse of concept that the smarter morons fall back on after being caught making no sense with 'IQ tests don't prove nuthun'.

I've covered that one before, in fact; it was in News of the Stupid. And it went like this:

<IQ>

Toldya I’d get back to this.
I’ve developed a new IQ test. It’s a simple pass/fail thing. It works like this. Anyone who says ‘iq tests dont prove nuthun’ automatically flunks.
In point of fact, IQ tests prove intelligence. Nothing more; nothing less. No: they don’t prove success, happiness, height, weight, or anything else, apart from intelligence. That’s why we call them Intelligence Quotient Tests. We thought about calling them Aardvark Quotient Tests; but then someone reminded us that they don’t prove aardvarks.
Now, whether stupidity is itself opprobrious is neither known nor important. I can tell you this: the species which have survived most successfully over time are brainless: sharks, crocodiles, amoebae, et cetera. If intelligence is actually an evolutionary advantage, I personally haven’t seen evidence of it yet. So, if you happen to be a moron, and someone’s reading this to you, feel free to gloat that you’re as likely to live for ever as any other insect.
What impresses me is how much people care about this shit. So, you got a measly ninety-one on your IQ test. So what? So you’re kinda stupid. If you’d like to keep that a secret: stop telling smart people that IQ tests don’t prove anything. That would be a good start.
Granting that I’m smarter than average, as proved by IQ tests, and also taller than average, as proved by rulers, I wonder whether there are midgets out there whimpering that rulers don’t prove anything. I actually suspect that there are; I suspect also that the midgets call themselves Little People.
If I were a midget, I’d be way more insulted by Little People than by midget. Midgets are great; they’re just like little people; gush.
But that’s extreme. More extreme than I am. I’m only around 6’5”. I’m not that tall. I’ve met people taller than I am. But who cares: rulers don’t prove anything.
I’m thinking more about people around, like, 5’6”. Subaverage in height. Inasmuch as average is 5’8” exactly. Are they compelled to pretend that rulers don’t prove anything? What about a guy who’s 5’10”? He’s above average. How haughty do you suppose he is? Comparing 5’10” to 5’8” is like comparing an IQ of 100 to 112 or so. Do people with IQs of 112 brag about it? Or do they just hop online and lie a lot, claiming to be ‘geniouses’? I think I can guess.
I could pull weight into this, but that’s variable. At my height, I’m 135lbs. I know people my height who are 450lbs. With the same skeletal frame. Various glandular disorders notwithstanding, I could be 450lbs, or they could be 135. In fact, a guy I know who’s 6’4” went from about 400lbs when I met him, to around 210 a year later, to around 450 now. So that’s immaterial.
What counts with height—and especially with intelligence—is that there’s nothing you can do about it. Are you a short moron? Hi. I’m a tall genius. And it’s always gonna be that way; ha, ha, ha.
What’s actually funny is that I know some truly dumb people. Like, way subaverage. IQs around room temperature. Know how I know that? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not a guess. I know because they told me. Matter-of-factly. ‘They said my IQ was seventy-eight; that’s why I don’t really read much: I can’t make sense of long words.’
Victory! I know people with IQs cooler than my office who actually get and admit that they’re Not Smart.
Are they likeable? Sure. If only for that reason. Are they short? They’re shorter than I am; but that’s literally normal. Are they aggressive? Or smelly? Or clumsy? Not especially. They’re pretty basic, apart from being dumber than average. They don’t bother me at all.
What bother me are these Utter Fucking Morons who tell me ‘Like, I tested at ninety-seven; how’s that for proof that IQ tests are bullshit; I’m way smarter than average!’
Uh...no: you’re pretty much the definition of average. Intellectually. You’re in that happy, normal range between 91 and 109. You’re not one of us freaks. Lucky you.
That’s another neat bit. Everyone wants to be normal—especially those of normal intelligence. Until it comes to intelligence. Then everyone wants to have an IQ above 200.
Hell: I wouldn’t much mind being shorter than this. Which is to say that, while I’m generally okay with being this tall, I’m not thrilled that half my NaziStrauss 501s are 28x36 and the other half are 32x38; I’m also not happy that you midgets keep appointing me Top Shelf Guy, like I live only to demonstrate my amazing ability to touch the damned ceiling.
Which in fact reminds me of something important. IQ tests, which measure intelligence, do not measure education. Totally separate thing. There is, for all I know, a genius out there which identifies itself as a genious. I’m smarter than average; I’m also more educated than average; that’s not to say that I know everything—it’s just to say that I’m closer to knowing one percent of it than you are.
Huh. Ever tried to think of an example of something you know nothing about, then realise that, knowing nothing about it, you don’t know what it is?
Got one. I know precisely dick about the social structure of viperfish. I can’t guess about mating, whether they abandon their young, or even whether they travel in schools. All I know about viperfish is that they’re the closest thing I’ve ever seen to evidence of the devil. Or evil goblins. Or whatever else might create really scary fish. Apart from HP Lovecraft.
Okay. So. There. If you happen to know everything there is to know about viperfish, including which demented creator thought they’d be a good idea: you’ve got one on me. Are you smarter than I am? No idea. Maybe. But your brain is officially polluted with more shit about viperfish than I’m personally comfy thinking about. Have a starsticker.

</IQ>

That was three years ago. So I've been thinking about this lately.

I've concluded a couple of different things. One's that the abuse of concept loosely supported by the Theory of Multiple Intelligences is really stupid; that's where you start hearing from morons that someone's a genius at basketball. What's that even mean—that he can plot out the differential calculus in realtime? Technically anyone able to make the shot is doing that. Can he show his work, or is he just doing it because the human animal has evolved a reasonably impressive ability to deduce spatial relations and application of force? Either way, I'm still not impressed: the ability to throw a basketball is relatively innate and average; the ability to explain how and why it works is the result of education, regardless the innate intelligence required to learn it.

For all that, I'm not even all that thrilled with Gardner's hypothesis. But it's not really what I'm thinking about in general.

What I'm thinking—what I'd propose—is that the actual multiplicity is more about the potential amalgamation of three basic and largely unrelated traits. One's intelligence, of course, which could help with the other two.

Second is education. Not that it's impossible to be highly educated with average or subaverage intelligence. It's just less likely, in application. Again: a guy with an IQ of seventy-eight can be a good guy, but I'd play the odds against him collecting PhDs.

Third is wisdom. And this to my knowledge is irrespective of the other two. I'd grant that wisdom can be [often is] developed through education, though education doesn't always produce wisdom. Trust me on that. I personally may be one of the smartest fools on the planet: intelligent nearly beyond precedent, educated well above average for my age, displaying the wisdom to spend six bucks if I've got five.

That being open to misinterpretation: I get the math; that's not too sticky. While 6>5, 5<6, 5-6=trouble. I just don't really care, for some reason.

Which actually leads me to a potential fourth attribute. What I'm trying to decide now is whether it's truly separate from wisdom. Apathy.

The story so far:

1) Intelligence is opposite Stupidity
2) Erudition is opposite Ignorance
3) Wisdom is opposite Foolishness
?) Fervour is opposite Apathy

Maybe it's an ethical or philosophical matter; maybe determining whether foolishness is the result of apathy, or fervour leads to education, or foolishness promotes antipathy, or intelligence leads to apathy...it may be too subjective to relate quantifiably into the paradigm; I dunno.

But I'm thinking about it. A little.

One strike against apathy as an attribute is that it's related necessarily to emotion, when none of the other three is; you can't really develop ardour or antipathy without emotions, and apathy is applicably something of an unemotional state. Computers can be smart, in that they can process information and develop a conclusion quickly; they can be educated in that they can contain vast amounts of data; they can arguably be wise in that they can have processed data and base future procedures on that understanding. They just kinda have to be apathetic, programming to have them report that they're happy notwithstanding, because, to date, they've got nothing resembling emotion.

So I'm still working on that.

While working on that, I'm kinda thinking about Multiple Idiocy, too. Which to date has got me thinking about the possible fifth attribute of psychosis.

Last year, since it had been precisely a decade since I'd written the first News of the St*pid book, I was thinking a little about writing a third. The problem at the time was that I had no reason to do it, apart from the date. But I did get as far as thinking up a title for it, which itself led to a general, like, plotline. It just didn't lead too far into that.

Now that I've had another nine months to think about it, off and on, I've got a rough idea for at least the chapter headings. Which by the way is vastly amusing, since everything I've been able to think of follows a certain linguistic theme.

That works like this....

I wanted to call the next book Stupidae [coincidentally already the Latin feminine plural nominative for, you know, stupid], turning the word stupid from an obligate adjective [and later a proper noun, which I still maintain is spelled as Stoopid] into a taxon: inasmuch as a velociraptor is a dromaeosaurid of the family Dromaeosauride, various genera of morons could each be a stupid under the Stupidae. See what I did there?

And, what kinda creeps me is that, so far, every genus I've been able to think of has credibly ended in -tard. Which probably isn't a secret by now: I call conspiracists conspiratards from conspirator, and creationists creatards from create...there's always a handy T somewhere in the word allowing for a portmanteau; the only exception, until or unless I can figure out a way to justify it, is the morpheme eco prepended to tard for ecotard; still, it kinda seems to work as a word, even without a basis. I'll work on that one, a little.

All that said, I'm still merely thinking about all this. I mean: I plan to do it and all; I just haven't actually started on it yet. With pretty much any book, and especially with a NotS book, I like to start, do, and finish all in something of a single action; getting slightly into it and then wandering off to do something else never really works for me.

What also fails to work, apparently, is admitting that I'm doing it, while I'm doing it. Once I've announced that I'm writing a given book, I end up thinking more about people expecting it to be finished than actually finishing it. So, optimally, the next thing anyone hears about this will be that it's done and available in whatever formats—probably including [and possibly starting with] the Kindle.

But, yeah: I'm pondering it. Mostly just playing videogames a lot, but pondering it.

More later....