View 323 August 16 - 23, 2004 (original) (raw)

Sunday, August 22, 2004

It has been a busy week, and next week will be more so. First a few remarks from another conference:

This paper which seems to demonstrate an appreciable improvement in IQ (ie performance on the Raven's test) suggests an obvious hypothesis for at least part of the Lynn-flynn effect. Creatine is apparently obtained mainly from meat, and the amount of meat consumed in the diet has probably increased over time in most countries.

From another conference:

Notice the practical implication also that those seeking good performance (at least if vegetarian) on a g loaded exam, such as the SAT would benefit from creatine supplementation.

"Paper is mirrored here, from the Royal Society:

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/creatineProcRoyalSoc.pdf

Given that RAPMs are a rather pure measure of g, or general ability, the data suggest that general ability was improved by creatine supplementation. These results support efficiency models of intelligence (Bates & Stough 1998). With this view, differences in intelligence test performance reflect individual differences in underlying biochemical and structural factors influencing the energetic and temporal resources of the central nervous system. Increasing the energy available for computation increases the speed and (in a distributed computational system such as the brain) power of computational resource, reflected directly in improved general ability."

And on that theme, from an Australian:

I think the list is controversial enough without including koko the gorilla's IQ scores next to those of our fellow citizens! :)

(Koko, for those of you who don't know, supposedly has an IQ in the 70-90 range...which would look REALLY bad if juxtaposed next to a list of our fellow citizens.)

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20040809/koko.html

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A long day devoured by errands. Sable and I walked over five miles and up 850 feet today, and I'm tired. She's ready to do it again.

And don't forget BURNING TOWER

In answering Mail I revisited my report on my walking tour of Rome, and discovered that one part of that report was never linked to the others. That is my "Culture wars" musing,which is here.

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