My Thoughts about Lucy, the Movie Starring Scarlett Johansson about a woman who gets to use 100% of the brain

The movie perpetuates the false myth that a person can be more intelligent simply by utilizing a higher percentage of the brain at one time.

It is not that a person can be more intelligent by simply using more portions of the brain at one time, but actually it is to get the different parts of the brain(the neural network that spans across the brain) to work in better cooperation with one another. This is why having a brain's neural network to be heavily wired in a more efficient manner is the real reason for people to become more intelligent and evolved rather than just having a bigger brain mass.

It has been said that the brain has logical and artistic sides being the left and right sides respectively. So if people can get these two parts of the brain working better in cooperation, they would be able to perceive a bigger picture of reality and understand it at a much higher level.

The movie Limitless where the main character gets to have his brain's neural network to become more organized and efficient that helps him to deal with his problems is a more accurate reflection of how the brain works.

Ten percent of brain myth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_brain_myth

Lucy and the 10 Percent Brain Myth
http://blog.brainfacts.org/2014/07/lucy-and-the-10-percent-brain-myth/#.VAxKMOOSw9c

Humans Already Use Way, Way More Than 10% of Their Brains

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/you-already-use-way-way-more-than-10-percent-of-your-brain/374520/

Scarlett Johansson uses more than 10 percent of her brain
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/23/its-a-myth-that-we-only-use-10-percent-of-our-brains-no-matter-what-scarlett-johansson-says/

Do People Only Use 10 Percent of Their Brains?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-people-only-use-10-percent-of-their-brains/

I have solved the mystery of why Asians consistently have higher average IQ than westerners, getting a high IQ is not necessarily a good thing!

Long boring story short:

the IQ test was created in 1950s to gauge the basic mental response of mentally-retarded children so that they could be identified and get proper assistance in school. The IQ test was created to test the mentally-retarded children's skills for recognizing basic patterns from reality such as basic number progression, pattern recognition etc

Asians fare higher in average IQ scores compared to westerners because most Asians focus very much on interacting with the basic patterns of reality rather than focus on the other minor details. This is seen in the Chinese written language where the characters form the basic outline patterns of pictorial symbols. So because Asians rely mainly on the basic patterns, they are very used to recognizing and relying with these patterns that are frequently used in Mensa IQ tests.

For example, the Chinese word for mouth looks like a square box. While Asians focus mainly on the pattern of this square box, westerners on the other hand, are more focused on what is found inside the pattern of the square box and can be concerned with the teeth and tongue for example.

Most Asians focus on the basic superficial things in life such as earning money and being successful while westerners focus more on living one's dreams and being truly happy. Focusing on the pattern of the mouth and missing out on the other important finer details is obviously not a good thing.

Using mental resources on working with the complicated Chinese characters also wastes precious mental resources(short term memory for example) that could instead have been utilized on dealing with complicated thoughts and ideas.

The Writing on the Wall
How Asian Orthography Curbs Creativity

http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13905.html

"This well-written, well-documented book convincingly argues that there is a 'creativity gap' between East Asian countries and the West."—Choice

"Students in Japan, China, and Korea are among the world's top performers on standardized math and science tests. The nations of East Asia are also leading manufacturers of consumer goods that incorporate scientific breakthroughs in telecommunications, optics, and transportation. Yet there is a startling phenomenon known throughout Asia as the "creativity problem." While East Asians are able to use science, they have not demonstrated the ability to invent radically new systems and paradigms that lead to new technologies. In fact, the legal and illegal transfer of technology from the West to the East is one of the most contentious international business issues. Yet Asians who study and work in the West and depend upon Western languages for their research are among the most creative and talented scientists, no less so than their Western counterparts.

William C. Hannas contends that this paradox emerges from the nature of East Asian writing systems, which are character-based rather than alphabetic. Character-based orthographies, according to the author, lack the abstract features of alphabetic writing that model the thought processes necessary for scientific creativity. When first learning to read, children who are immersed in a character-based culture are at a huge disadvantage because such writing systems do not cultivate the ability for abstract thought. Despite the overwhelming body of evidence that points to the cognitive side-effects, the cultural importance of character-based writing makes the adoption of an alphabet unlikely in the near future."

*End Quote*

It is said that there are many types of intelligence. While the main type of intelligence is that of a basic pictorial pattern such as the square box to represent the mouth, the other types of intelligences are found within the square pattern inside the square box.

This different ways of thinking for Asians and Westerners could answer the question of why Asians are less technologically advanced compared to westerners. Asians are good in copying westerners' technology but because they often cannot think beyond the basic pattern of the box(cannot think outside the box), they lack the creativity gained from multiple perspective to create new things.

Getting high IQ scores for Asians is not necessarily a good thing because being skilled and focused too much on the basic patterns of reality might cause one to be dis-focused from the other important details found beyond the basic patterns. Getting a high IQ score therefore might not seem like a very good reflection of one's ability to recognize the other important things in life.

I think that being too focused on the basic patterns of life might be due to a cultural influence. Asians are culturally influenced to focus on the basic survival skills and to gain good superficial appearances to earn money and respect(the fake kind). This can cause them to be lost on the path to personal happiness that can only be found from recognizing one's own uniqueness.

In addition, Asians in the East follow strictly a social hierarchy system where interaction and the flow of alternative information can be heavily limited between people of different 'social standing', which can severely limit alternative thinking and creativity.

Conclusion: Having a higher average IQ score for Asians does not necessarily mean that they are more intelligent than Westerners on the whole. It simply means that they are more dependent on working with the basic patterns of reality. Relying on the basic patterns of reality might reflect a primitive form of thinking, and moving beyond this basic pattern intelligence to focus on the other patterns beyond the basic ones might be a sign of mental evolution.


Should westerners aspire to gain higher IQ scores for themselves?

Gaining higher IQ scores on a test originally created for mentally retarded children may not seem like a good thing, it might simply mean that one is thinking similar in line like mentally-retarded children.

There are exceptions to this case however, I feel that there are some people who do score high on the IQ test being skilled in identifying both the basic and advanced patterns of reality. They are also skilled in other types of intelligence that the IQ test failed to measure properly.


References to other similar blog posts and writings on this subject:

My Theory on Why East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews Have Highest Average IQ Scores in the World 
http://thethinktankguideforsmarterliving.blogspot.sg/2014/04/my-theory-on-why-east-asians-have.html


Mensa recruits members who think like its founders(I say lots of bad things about Mensa)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/119277304751102/

The group's explanation:

In short, I claim here that Mensa members generally think like lawyers. Mensa's founders were both lawyers(one doubled as a scientist) and their limited perception created a strong bias in the test that filters people based on similar 'lawyer traits'. 

<<What is Intelligence?>>

According to Cognitive Science, the fundamental component of Intelligence is pattern recognition.

"the act of taking in raw data and taking an action based on the category of the pattern"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_recognition

Definition of Intelligence--

"Mainstream Science on Intelligence defines intelligence as the general mental ability to analyze, comprehend and utilize one's immediate environment."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence

"A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings - “catching on”, “making sense” of things, or “figuring out” what to do."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intelligence


<<The Mensa test is heavily biased by its founders>>

The founders of Mensa were both lawyers(one doubled as a scientist) and they created the Mensa IQ test in the 1950s based on their own definitions of intelligence and their own similar ways of thinking(thought processes).

Since they were lawyers and a scientist, their views of intelligence were influenced by their own thinking characteristics like lawyers and scientists. With reference to questions found in Mensa tests created by them, we can find many questions that require investigation, cross referencing and finding of loopholes-- these are main crucial skills of lawyers, scientists and investigators. Therefore it is logical to imply that people who score well in the IQ test would possess the most similar thinking traits as the founders, and people who score poorly would possess the least similar thinking traits as the founders.

A look through the general characteristics of Mensa members and we can find general lawyer and scientist traits. Mensa members generally look, talk and behave like lawyers and scientists.


<<There are different forms of Intelligence>>

The most basic form of intelligence is to recognize and match the patterns of a desire with the patterns of a solution that can resolve that desire-- this creates experience. Humans are intelligent because they can recognize patterns that they have experienced before.

Pattern recognition is not only present in basic traits of lawyers, scientists and investigators. The skill of pattern recognition is also found in common tasks such as-- art, fashion design, styling, cooking, writing, drama, film-making, language, music, hospitality etc. In the handling of these tasks, analysis, comprehension, reasoning, planning, abstract thinking, and handling of complexity are all required.

The questions in the Mensa test only tested specialized forms of intelligence, they do not test multiple forms of intelligence. It is unrealistic to proclaim a person's overall intelligence by testing only from *some* of the many forms of intelligence. This is not intelligent and adaptable(smart).

There were reports stating that Emotional Intelligence(EQ) is also part of Intelligence.


<<The test is ineffective to test intelligence>>

Mensa forbids people from taking the test more than twice, therefore, those who studied for the test have defeated the very purpose of the test. Studying for the test shifts intelligence-testing over to memory-testing and generates an inaccurate high IQ score. This shows people's desperation to think like Mensa's founders in order to get accepted into their club.

"It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream_Science_on_Intelligence

The Mensa test itself also reveals an inaccurate form of intelligence testing by using the multiple choice format. Mensa even encourages the person taking the test to guess the answers, thereby miscalculating intelligence and adding flaws to an already flawed MCQ test.

"The most serious disadvantage is the limited types of knowledge that can be assessed by multiple choice tests. Multiple choice tests are best adapted for testing well-defined or lower-order skills. Problem-solving and higher-order reasoning skills are better assessed through short-answer and essay tests. However, multiple choice tests are often chosen, not because of the type of knowledge being assessed, but because they are more affordable for testing a large number of students. This is especially true in the United States where multiple choice tests are the preferred form of high-stakes testing."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_choice

MCQs require a simple tick and do not require the user to input defined reasons for choosing any specific answer, causing a vague rather than thorough testing of the individual.

Mensa even admits members based on SAT or GMAT scores-- the tests were not designed to test intelligence.

Some Mensa MCQ tests that are reused for testing individuals are highly susceptible to cheaters who can cheat by sourcing answers for the last few most difficult MCQ questions.

<<What is a Mensa member?>>

Mensa members are not better than others in terms of multiple forms of Intelligence, rather, they were tested to be better in only *some* of the many forms of Intelligence. People who do not score well to get in Mensa might be superior to Mensa members in other forms of intelligence.

In short, Mensa members think like lawyers. Their IQ score do not necessarily deem them to be better than the rest of the populace in overall intelligence.

<<Mensa is not effective in its roles>>

"Mensa's constitution lists three purposes:
to identify and to foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity;
to encourage research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence;
and to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members."
http://www.mensa.org/constitution2005.pdf

Mensa may have fulfilled the 3rd objective but it has done poorly in the first 2. It's elitist and ignorant mindset segregates itself from other forms of intelligence, to its own undoing. It is not a round-table society of minds. Mensa has over 110,000 members worldwide. I'm glad I am not part of it.

Update: Someone told me long ago that the IQ test was firstly developed by Alfred Binet who was a psychologist, but I was lazy to check. So, if it really matters to you, just replace the mentioned lawyers and scientists with psychologists. But it doesn't matter really, since psychologists are professionals who think like lawyers and scientists. They even have a 'Dr' to their name— they are the true doctors of the mind. So this edit can be considered an 'upgrade'.

My Theory on Why East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews Have Highest Average IQ Scores in the World

I was looking at the toys in a Toys "R" Us newsletter and then began thinking why East Asians have higher average IQ scores compared to western races as reported in research findings. I realized that East Asians do not play with as much toys as their western counterparts yet they managed to score higher average scores in IQ tests.

I was thinking about the main environmental factors that could possibly influence such a difference in average test scores, so I compared the similarities and differences in both eastern and western types of childhood, and it came down to 1 most seemingly substantial environmental factor.

The main environmental factor is the learning of the complex East Asian written languages.

For instance, the Chinese written characters are modified symbols of many patterns found in nature as well as in human behaviour. Since IQ tests subject people to recognize complex patterns, those who have already done much practice in recognizing and remembering complex patterns found in the Chinese written language would already have developed much skill in pattern recognition, and would therefore be faster and more effective in dealing with IQ test questions that require similar recognition and manipulation of complex patterns compared to those who lack years of such practice.

I myself have learnt how to read and write the Chinese characters from a young schooling age in Singapore, so I am well aware of the substantial mental requirements it takes to memorize the complex structure of new Chinese characters in detail and then visualize their structure well enough to write them out accurately without error. The written Chinese that is taught in Singapore is the simplified version, for Chinese people growing up in East Asia such as Taiwan and China, they would be learning traditional Chinese characters that are more complex in structure.

In Asian schools, there are frequent Chinese spelling tests that require Chinese students to do well in accurate memorization and writing in order to pass the spelling tests as well as final exams. Over the years of a Chinese student's school life, he/she would have accumulated many countless hours of such practice.

So I think the main environmental reason for East Asians having higher average IQ scores compared to westerners and Black people is due to having a written language that is more visually complex.

The Japanese use a written language that includes many kanji characters taken from the Chinese language.

The Koreans have a written language that is similar in form.

The Ashkenazi Jews who are ranked at the same top level as East Asians in average IQ test scores also have a written language with complex symbols. So they would also have gotten much practice in pattern recognition like East Asians do.

I think the neural plasticity that the brain has to go through would be more intense and dynamic for someone learning a complex written language compared to someone learning a simpler written language such as English.

Race and IQ - The IQ data is out - in Danish television
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7Fdl9Kmhgs


                  


Update: I did some research after writing this blog post and found a research study that shares my theory.

Asian kids' IQ lift: reading system may boost Chinese scores

"Learning to read 2,500 pictorial symbols, as Chinese students do in grade school, yields a 5-point advantage on IQ tests, compared with the scores of Westerners whose languages are based on alphabets, according to a new analysis of mental capabilities of Greek and Chinese children. The international team of analysts, led by psychologist Andreas Demetriou of the University of Cyprus in Nicosia, attributes the scoring disparity to a superiority in visual and spatial tasks that comes with learning to read Chinese. 

"Our findings support the assumption that reading and writing systems are powerful methods for influencing the development of mental abilities, and perhaps brain growth, in individuals and in cultures," Demetriou says."

IQ Intelligence Scoring -- Lynn's Flawed Cold Winters Theory Can Support Notion that Ugly People are More Intelligent than Good-Lookers?

Lynn's Cold Winters Theory is about a theory that White people living in cold climates have evolved their intelligence over time to deal with cold winters as compared to Black people living in hot climates assuming they don't need to do so.

However, I think that Black people living in hot climates also needed to evolve their intelligence/brains to adapt to other environmental conditions(besides cold winters) such as natural disasters, lack of food and interpersonal conflict. So this theory is heavily flawed and over-generalizing for the entire human population.

Cold Winters and the Evolution of Intelligence
Lynn's theory of the evolution of intelligence does not fit the facts.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/unique-everybody-else/201211/cold-winters-and-the-evolution-intelligence

Nations and intelligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nations_and_intelligence

Lynn's Cold Winters Theory that assumes a specific group of people to be more intelligent than other groups is just as overly-assuming that all East-Asians are more intelligent than all White people.

Race and IQ - The IQ data is out - in Danish television - YouTube.flv..



Are Ugly People More Intelligent than Good-Looking People?

The logic in the Cold Winters theory is similarly bizarre as implying that ugly people have evolved their intelligence to deal with their less favourable physical conditions compared to good-looking people who don't need as much intelligence to survive in life.

We all have heard about the dumb blond jokes and know where such assumptions originate. Even supermodels have been linked to such assumptions that the Beautiful don't need to try as hard as ugly people to survive in life.


Minority of Good-Lookers Leads to Rarity of Intelligence Expression

Perhaps there are many good-looking people who are intelligent but don't get a high chance to get spotted for their intelligence in many areas in society because such areas usually contain lots of ugly people, so the minority good-looking ones would find it much harder to get well-spotted even if they express their intelligence alongside with the ugly-looking people. This could be the reason why there are so few good-lookers spotted in many key intelligent areas in society.


Logical Fallacies in Correlating Intelligence with Superficial Features

There are many good-looking people that are more intelligent than people who are born autistic and ugly, so the theory that puts ugly-looking people to be more intelligent than good-lookers is inconsistent and flawed.

Ugly people can also undergo plastic surgery to look like supermodels yet such a procedure cannot lower their intelligence during the process. So one's superficial good-looking appearance cannot be correlated to one's mental intelligence.

Gangnam Style TOP Plastic Surgery, Best Before and After - South KOREA SEOUL


But one can counter such an argument by saying that a bigger brain that creates an average-looking face would be more intelligent than a good-looking streamlined face that is formed with a smaller brain size. But yet there are research showing that brain size is not related to intelligence.


Conclusion:

I think intelligence can be found in a group of ugly-people as well as in another group of good-looking people. Stupidity can also be found in a group of ugly-people as well as in another group of good-looking people. Stupidity is as wide spread in different physical forms as intelligence also is wide spread in different physical forms.

Assuming that there is a direct correlation of intelligence with physical appearance would not be accurate to realize the truth of how things really are.

The non-material nature of mind does not have to be closely linked to the material nature of the body.


Can Intelligence Evolve in Nature?

There is still the unanswered question of whether Intelligence can evolve over time in nature. No one can really know because the genetics of humans on Earth might have been altered by alien beings so there is no clear way to test for a correlation between Intelligence and environmental factors.

The first introductory post for this blog

I recently wrote about the social and political climate in Denmark while debunking its status of being the "happiest nation" in the world from a global ranking that I also explained to be heavily flawed. What I wrote was endorsed by a Danish book-writer and that got me thinking about sharing what I write to more people.

I am currently 32 years old(but still look 22 due to great health) and living in tropical Singapore. I first got into serious writing in the local newspapers about local politics in the early 2000s most notoriously dealing with Free Speech and government negligence of handicap accessibility in key public areas. I stopped writing and dealing with local politics after a few years and moved on to research about the meaning of life and Happiness that was spurred by the huge increase in books with such topics in bookstores. I later self-published my findings to experience self-publishing that was becoming popular a few years ago.

While in 2007, I assisted a local international school's debate team to win the finals at a national debating tournament that was telecast on national TV.

The research in the meaning of life that ended in late 2007 eventually got me heavily interested in Spirituality in the following year. Since then, I have been researching about the greater spiritual reality and have accumulated lots of insights that most people are not aware of. I realized that what most people on this planet knows about spirituality is only at the surface level, there is a much greater spiritual reality that is beyond the public's knowledge. My level of consciousness has since then evolved into becoming more powerful to handle the bigger picture of reality.

Throughout the last 5 years, I have also researched and accumulated lots of information on other topics such as nutritional health, anti-aging methods, weight-loss methods, natural cures for various diseases, sports nutrition, nature of various emotions, positive psychology, sociology, sexuality, energy-saving methods, money-saving methods, Intelligence, flaws in IQ-testing, culture, vegan cooking, art, video-making, video-editing, music remixing. I have also recently debunked lots of flawed diets, faulty scientific studies, false social notions etc and I hope to publish them all in this blog.

My hobbies are: listening to music, making art, beauty appreciation, making fan music videos, spiritual exploration, spending time with nature, exploring new cultures and trying foods from other cultures, and investigations in the supernatural as well as UFOs and aliens.

I have had experiences during my dream-time state of encountering different species of aliens as well as being assisted by spiritual beings in my own life. Such experiences no doubt have enabled me the ability to relate to other people's encounters of such similar experiences and made me somehow of a believer in such beings.

I hope this new writing journey will bring me closer to my goals of experiencing more of the greater spiritual reality while getting more out of life, and I wish to share such a journey with the readers who would visit this blog.