SL's average IQ decreasing?

Sorry if I spoiled your fun, I didn't mean too.




It's not that it's impossible to “learn to relate to people”, it's just that it gets exhausting after a while. Talking about normal things with normal people is fine, but it's nice go be able to talk about things that interest you as well. It's not a matter of being “incapable of social interaction”. It's more a matter of there being no real reason to interact.

Think of yourself, with an IQ in the 130's it seems, hanging out with people who have IQs of about 80. Sure, no big deal for a while. Could even be fun and enjoyable, after all they are great people with a lot to offer. But how would it be if they were the only people you ever got to hang out with? Seriously, try to imagine what that would be like in detail.

Frankly normal people bore me tears most of the time. I'm also pretty sure I bore the crap out of them too. In a very real sense we live in two different worlds, and that makes it very difficult to make a real connection. So yeah, lots of casual friends who are nice to chat with, but not many deep meaningful relationships.

My partner in SL is an exception. She is brilliant and we have literally spent hours just standing there talking, never even moving from the spot we logged in on. Doesn't even matter what we talk about really, I just love the way her mind works. Finding her has literally saved my sanity.

Here, we certainly agree. In fact, I already commute by bicycle.



Given the fact that there's no truly safe way to dispose of nuclear waste, I rather think not. And then, too, there's no reason to think that uranium is infinite.



I'd like to know what those advances are, exactly. Unless I've missed something significant, solar panels still lack the ability to generate sufficient energy even to create more solar panels, meaning that an oil platform is actually what sustains them. Even if I didn't live in a delusional society that's talking about biofuels and hydrogen (not even a fuel source given the net energy loss in conversion, but it satisfies people who can't be bothered to research it) as solutions, I'd still be skeptical about what solar energy could possibly do for us. Furthermore, given that the U.S. economy, at least, requires infinite growth to function, we'd probably need an ERoEI that's not just "pretty good" but actually comparable to cheap oil to prevent total economic collapse and massive, large-scale die-offs to bring human beings back down to normal population levels, don't you think?

(And even if that impending die-off could be prevented, is it really for the best to prevent it?)

It's alright. I let myself be dragged into a serious discussion, too, and I still haven't gone to bed like I said I would.



*sigh*

I guess you kind of have a point, but I dislike saying it.

And truthfully, I spend most of my time in SL with Mistress, whose breadth and depth of knowledge on even some of the most esoteric subjects never ceases to astonish me. We do have some wonderful discussions, and She assigns reading because She feels I need to know more of the classics (and I do ).

But then, on the other hand, I can relate to other people for other reasons -- for example, fellow artists.

Ahhh, Art.

Art is my refuge.

True artistic talent is just another type of genius really. Artists don't think like normal people either. Their brains work in different ways, and I find it fascinating.

As an aside that some might find interesting, I will say that not only is the mean IQ of Second Life decreasing, but so is my own personal IQ.

Over the last thirty or forty years I have lost over 20 IQ points. This is something that is not an anomalous result - it is consistent over several tests. Part of it might be simple ageing, but another factor is that I am a type one diabetic, and have had about five severe insulin comas, one of which was so bad that I barely survived, and it caused a five-day blank in my memory. I suspect that the loss of a significant number of brain cells has contributed to the IQ drop.

But I also suspect that someone who knew me then and now would not really see any difference in me. This is because as I have become older my wider range of cultural references and my increased experience of life generally have compensated for whatever it is that the IQ tests measure.

I took the TA3 test and got:
YOUR IQ SCORE IS:
144

Yay, that was fun. Next we should all do Myers-Briggs so that we're thoroughly classified.

Okay.

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

*refills popcorn*

IQ206 INTJ

Sometimes i like to destroy whole planets and enjoy watching myself do it............

From what I can gather, they appear to chiefly measure proficiency with symbolic logic. What that actually indicates about a person's overall intelligence is a matter of some controversy.

ENFP bordering on ENTP

But no. No, no. You're forgetting Emotional Intelligence. We have that now, too.

And after that, we can each find out what kind of supervillian we are.

I have not read any of this posts(no time) but have a couple of things to say:

Yes, 1 year ago SL used to belong to builders and scripters and creative people and over the time this has been going down, is a good thing, it became more POPular what is good because normal people brings the lindens with them ;3

well they bring some other things that give you the envy to crack their skull open with a plank

ENTJ according to that test. Which makes sense. I was XNXJ last time I took it.




Most of the Caledonians already know about my supervilliany already. I cannot wait for the Caledon train to go into service so I can be the first to rob it! The only unresolved portion of the plan is whether to use a rocket propelled getaway airship, or a steam-powered earth borer...

It's actually quite a ways along in development, and (in test) runs from Chessboard Park to Tamrannoch but only when I set it out.

I haven't released it yet though; it is still too 'rough' - and the last update ensures that I've got to make some changes. Very Soon (TM) though!


Of course, since we *all* must know...

http://onnachance.com/quiz/vq.php

There I am.

That's fine. I'm a bit crunched for time, and would have trouble pulling off the robbery with the appropriate elan and panache. It'd be a hack job if I had to do it right now.




As if there was any doubt:

http://onnachance.com/quiz/sv.jpg

As a new user, I can say that I have been fortunate to have found most all SL members I've encountered fairly intelligent, friendly and helpful. I think it has a lot to do with what Serra mentions below, however; finding the right places to hang out, just as in RL, is probably the answer.

Just MHO, from a newbie SLer

Another fun one: http://onnachance.com/quiz/qz4.php

I was:

Well, for the solar panels, there's an ultimate upper limit on any panels' efficiency for converting light - it's the silicon band-gap, and it doesn't get any wider. There's a professor in South Africa (vivian alberts) that's developed and patented a process for putting other materials (doped metals) to use to catch photons in a wider range than the silicon band gap, but it requires expensive chemical vapor deposition equipment/factories comparable to silicon logic production facilities to achieve, the process isn't capable of running concurrently in silicon logic production facilities with current equipment, and those facilities that do exist will be running at/near capacity for quite some time just to meet demand for silicon logic.
Someone in Germany apparently licensed his technology because the German government subsidises solar panel installations in country. Yes, it does still require oil/nuclear/hydrothermal to produce any solar cell, but do we use that oil to bus our fat butts to and from the water park, or to produce solar panels that will still be giving us energy we need to /simply survive/ forty years from now?
As for biofuels - the real holy grail there is that someone can genetically engineer a bacteria strain that efficiently produces methanol/methane/ethanol/hydrogen from plant leavings and which fails to escape to the wild and/or which fails to kill us/our food chain. Biological machines/processes produced crude oil's precursors, geological processes did the rest (collection, transformation) up until refinement - if they can produce our next energy storage precursors /and/ refine them too, then we're set.

As far as economic collapse... Well, learn to grow your own food and buy and be able to protect land, eh? Little numbers in crashed computers and little inedible green pieces of paper mean nothing if the economy crashes / we can't run computers. If it happens, then people need to work together to get each other through it, but given what we've seen in the southern US from our government after Katrina, I don't think government's going to be acting to help each other get through it. And I think a lot of individual people aren't going to be either.

Nice

Actually most of the griefing is probably done by long time rezzies who rushed to get alts when registration was thrown open. It's been my experience that the true newbs are easy to get along with while the long time, upper financial classes in SL are far and away the worst. Most of them don't balk at lying, cheating or stealing to find a way to fleece others. And a lot will go out and grab alts to grief someone so thier main accounts' hands remain clean so to speak.

At the end of the day, we need the plentiful food that only comes from mass transportation and from oil-powered agribusiness more than we need energy that can only generate electricity. And okay, keeping electricity online a little longer would be nice (especially for those of us who are addicted to the Internet ), but if I'm reading what you're saying correctly (and you'll have to forgive me for not having nearly your understanding with respect to these technologies), the final, actual ERoEI generated by these isn't particularly good. Am I right? For that matter, is it even a positive ratio? In the long run, would these panels be capable of generating more panels, or would they just give (possibly) a few decades more of electricity (for whomever is still alive to use it) and then be done?



I'm seeing tons of very shaky "ifs," and underneath it all, the admission that really, we only have the notion that this "might" be possible. I'm inclined to file this under the same "it sure would be nice if" category as ZPE.



Oh, I agree. I think that the best chances for long-term survival do lie in learning to live locally and become self-sufficient, although I have this horrible image of self-sufficient communities that can actually grow their own food and live sustainably being overrun and ravaged by starving hordes of "normal" people.

I guess what I was really asking was, "Don't you worry sometimes that you'll spend your life pursuing this only for computer technology in its entirity to be lost regardless?" But I suppose there's little to be gained from allowing ourselves to become paralyzed by things beyond our control.