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What? Brain surgeons are NOT smarter than the rest of us?

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We are told, “Data from 329 aerospace engineers and 72 neurosurgeons suggests they are not necessarily cleverer than general population”:

Researchers examined data from an international cohort of 329 aerospace engineers and 72 neurosurgeons who completed 12 tasks online using the Great British Intelligence Test (GBIT) from the Cognitron platform, as well as answering questions around their age, sex and levels of experience in their speciality.

The tasks examined various aspects of cognition, including planning and reasoning, working memory, attention, and emotion processing abilities. The researchers then compared the results against those previously gathered from more than 18,000 members of the British public.

The findings, which were published in the festive edition of the BMJ, reveal that only neurosurgeons showed a significant difference, with quicker problem-solving speed but slower memory recall compared with the general population.

Nicola Davis, “Brain surgeons and rocket scientists no brighter than the rest of us, study finds” at The Guardian (December 13, 2021)

But doesn’t that make “evolution” a bigger mystery than ever? If the alleged smartest people aren’t necessarily the future, how did things get to be as they are?

Note: This was published in the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal, which means it could be something of a joke. But still, a pause for thought.

Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd

Comments
Surgeons and engineers solve more problems because they have to get things right. When a surgeon makes a mistake, the patient dies. When an engineer makes a mistake, the bridge collapses. The feedback isn't always immediate, but it's quick enough that we know who to blame and sue. Related professions like epidemiologists and cosmologists have the exact opposite incentive. They are paid to get things wrong, so they do.polistra
December 16, 2021
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FWIW, I've always felt that any sort of IQ test is baloney. Some people are incredibly creative or have a photographic memory or are fast and agile in their verbal skills or are capable of understanding extremely complex concepts or can visualize geometric transformations accurately, and so on. And all this intellectual diversity is supposed to be represented by a single counting number? In college, I got interested in African Ganda music for a while. The rhythmic patterns can involve up to 150 beats or so without repeating. In contrast, western music typically repeats a pattern or 3 or 4 beats to a measure. Dave Brubeck wrote "Take Five" which has a rhythmic pattern of 5 beats. Oh wow! As a result, the people who practice Ganda music think that westerners are mentally retarded. Maybe they're right. -QQuerius
December 15, 2021
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Martin_r@5
Engineers and brain-surgeons might not be smarted (IQ), but they have lots of knowledge and practical skills (training) … that is what makes them different from common people like Seversky, JVL & Co…
I agree very emphatically. I'm an electronic engineer and software designer. Although as noted engineers and brain surgeons must have higher than average mental skills in certain areas, like math. Especially the engineers simply know by their professional work in developing and maintaining complex human-designed mechanisms, that such finely tuned and still failure-prone systems could not by any reasonable stretch of the imagination been originated basically by chance errors plus selection. And that this observation applies even very greatly more to living organisms which are immeasurably more complex. Of course, I'm sure many engineers have still been brainwashed into believing the Darwinian mythology, but there still must be some buried inner conflict, cognitive dissonance, over this.doubter
December 15, 2021
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per Zweston, BobRyan, and Martin_r Hmmm, although it is certainly true that God has endowed everyone with the 'image of God', and therefore it is, basically, a futile exercise in comparing apple with oranges to claim that any particular group of humans is exceptionally 'smarter' than any other group of humans, never-the-less, I hold that you have to be exceptionally gullible, even intellectually stupid, to believe, as Darwinists do, that the brain itself, (and life itself), which far outclasses any rocket ever built by man, (in terms of engineering prowess and sophistication), can possibly be the result of a series of an accidents,
"The brain is not a supercomputer in which the neurons are transistors; rather it is as if each individual neuron is itself a computer, and the brain a vast community of microscopic computers. But even this model is probably too simplistic since the neuron processes data flexibly and on disparate levels, and is therefore far superior to any digital system. If I am right, the human brain may be a trillion times more capable than we imagine, and “artificial intelligence” a grandiose misnomer." - Brian Ford research biologist – 2009 - The Secret Power of a Single Cell http://www.brianjford.com/a-10-NSc-single_cell.pdf How Complex is a single Neuron in your Brain? - Sept. 2021 Excerpt: To find out, David Beniaguev, Idan Segev and Michael London, all at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, trained an artificial deep neural network to mimic the computations of a simulated biological neuron. They showed that a deep neural network requires between five and eight layers of interconnected “neurons” to represent the complexity of one single biological neuron. Even the authors did not anticipate such complexity. “I thought it would be simpler and smaller,” said Beniaguev. He expected that three or four layers would be enough to capture the computations performed within the cell.,,, Unfortunately, it’s currently impossible for neuroscientists to record the full input-output function of a real neuron, so there’s likely more going on that the model of a biological neuron isn’t capturing. In other words, real neurons might be even more complex. “We’re not sure that between five and eight is really the final number,” said London. - How Computationally Complex Is a Single Neuron? - Allison Whitten - Sept. 2021 - Quanta Magazine https://mindmatters.ai/2021/09/how-complex-is-a-single-neuron-in-your-brain/ Human brain has more switches than all computers on Earth - November 2010 Excerpt: They found that the brain's complexity is beyond anything they'd imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief, says Stephen Smith, a professor of molecular and cellular physiology and senior author of the paper describing the study: ...One (neuronal) synapse, by itself, is more like a microprocessor--with both memory-storage and information-processing elements--than a mere on/off switch. In fact, one synapse may contain on the order of 1,000 molecular-scale switches. A single human brain has more switches than all the computers and routers and Internet connections on Earth. https://www.cnet.com/news/human-brain-has-more-switches-than-all-computers-on-earth/ The Human Brain Is ‘Beyond Belief’ by Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D. * – 2017 Excerpt: The human brain,, is an engineering marvel that evokes comments from researchers like “beyond anything they’d imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief”1 and “a world we had never imagined.”2,,, Optimal Energy Efficiency Stanford scientist who is helping develop computer brains for robots calculated that a computer processor functioning with the computational capacity of the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate properly. This is comparable to the output of a small hydroelectric power plant. As amazing as it may seem, the human brain requires only about 10 watts to function.11 ,,, https://www.icr.org/article/10186 “Each cell with genetic information, from bacteria to man, consists of artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction and a capacity not equaled in any of our most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours" - Michael Denton PhD. Evolution: A Theory In Crisis pg. 329 Scientists discover signalling circuit boards inside body’s cells - may 2, 2019 Excerpt: “The most striking thing is that this circuit is highly flexible, as this cell-wide web can rapidly reconfigure to deliver different outputs in a manner determined by the information received by and relayed from the nucleus. This is something no man-made microprocessors or circuit boards are yet capable of achieving.” - University of Edinburgh, “Scientists discover signalling circuit boards inside body’s cells” at Phys.org https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/sit-down-cells-have-signaling-circuit-boards-only-much-more-advanced-than-ours/
It’s Really Not Rocket Science, "Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident… you have essentially “lost your mind.”
It’s Really Not Rocket Science - Granville Sewell Excerpt: It is not enough to say that design is a more likely scenario to explain a world full of well-designed things. It strikes me as urgent to insist that you not allow your mind to surrender the absolute clarity that all complex and magnificent things were made that way. Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident… you have essentially “lost your mind.” https://evolutionnews.org/2015/11/it_really_isnt/
In debates, Darwinists will often claim that we just don't understand evolution, and therefore they are implicitly claiming that they are much smarter than we simplistic rubes who believe Christianity to be true and Darwinism to be false. Well I'm sorry to spoil this Darwinian delusion of being so much smarter than the rest of us who just don't believe Darwinism to be true, but the reality of the situation is far different. The fact of the matter is that every time a Darwinist claims that the brain and life itself can possibly be the result of an accident they are, in reality, proving just how intellectually retarded/stupid they actually are, not how intellectually superior they are to the rest of us who just don't buy it.
Romans 1:22-23 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
bornagain77
December 15, 2021
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a remark from a mechanical engineer Engineers and brain-surgeons might not be smarted (IQ), but they have lots of knowledge and practical skills (training) … that is what makes them different from common people like Seversky, JVL & Co… Another good example would be the following: Have a look at a jungle tribe .. these guys have the same brain like we have. But they don’t build jumbo-jets … the reason is simple – they don’t have the knowledge… CENTURIES OF KNOWLEDGE … To sum up, not IQ but KNOWLEDGE is the key. HOWEVER, i have to add, that you have to be pretty smart to graduate as an aerial engineer (to digest this knowledge) … these schools/universities are not for everyone, i can say (i am a mechanical engineer) So i don’t entirely agree with this Darwinian paper… ( i had class mates, who repeated the same class like 3 times – were 3 years older than me, and i don’t consider myself to be especially smart)martin_r
December 14, 2021
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Zweston
to believe that living organisms in all their complexity could evolve through random accidents is patently absurd. It takes a lot of indoctrination from academia to get brainwashed that way.
i can't believe that this brainwashing is still happening in 21st century. Thousands of very smart well educated teachers and scientists are forced to claim very absurd things ... and they even attack us, ID folks/creationists - we supposed to be the stupid ones ... how crazy and absurd it is ? What is wrong with this world ? The theory of evolution is probably the biggest fail in the history of science (politely said). More appropriate would be to say, that it is a hoax/conspiracy...martin_r
December 14, 2021
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The whole of humanity is filled with unique individuals. Every person has their own gifts and weaknesses. It has nothing to do with IQ, but everything to do with finding one's own purpose.BobRyan
December 14, 2021
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Some of the most intelligent people are also completely foolish. Psalm 14:1 In reality, to believe that living organisms in all their complexity could evolve through random accidents is patently absurd. It takes a lot of indoctrination from academia to get brainwashed that way.zweston
December 14, 2021
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https://youtu.be/THNPmhBl-8I Proverbs 2:6 KJV For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.Blastus
December 14, 2021
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