Massive creationist fallacy in MENSA magazine

[Castorama]

The UK Mensa magazine (August 2006) recently devoted space to a blatant creationist non sequitur -

The Hon David V Fricker's entire letter read:
There is scientific evidence to support the idea of a designer or designers in evolution. This arises from the use of the principles of probability theory. It has been estimated that the chances of the elements of part of one piece of DNA coming together unaided are 10 to the power of 108 to one against. That is 1 with 108 zeros after it, and just one part of one piece of DNA.1. Even if the 'evidence' was anything but a non - sequitur, it would not stand for a creator.

2. Fricker is simply using an argument from magnitude. Just because the number of potential combinations is so large, it does not follow that evolutionary forces would not arrive at one combination. He is using the theory of probability within a tested model, to test the probability of the model itself being valid.

A combination has to be found, no matter how many possibilities there are!

3. Evolution is a directional hypothesis, not a random one, therefore his use of 'unaided' does not work. Not that it matters to my counter - argument, but nearly all of the combinations will simply be lost, as they are deleterious or maladaptive, i.e. evolution is by definition, directional.

3b. I could use exactly the same argument on Fricker, by producing a similar figure of magnitude, based upon the number of possible word combinations in the Bible. He could somewhat refute the magnitude of my figure by pointing out that language is directional, i.e. it has a structure that guides it's form, just like evolution!

4. Evolution itself created the multitude of possibilities that Fricker is using to baffle us with.

5. By producing a solid and predictable figure, Fricker unwittingly reveals a strength of Pure Evolutionary Theory, in that it is based upon a scientifically testable model.

Has such a weak argument ever been presented at such a high level? I ask the Americans on this board, in particular.

[DNAReplicator]

Mensa magazine

high level

Erm.....am I missing something?

(Don't respond 'enough IQ'. That would not be funny)

[Castorama]

Mensa makes claims to greatness that should be represented by the letters in their magazine. In general, the letters are of a high quality, but I agree no testament to the quality of IQ as a necessary predictor of intellectualism.

Has such a weak argument ever been presented at such a high level? I ask the Americans on this board, in particular.I've just looked at another thread in this forum, that seems to answer this question.

[Tao of Steve]

I wish i had a massive creationist phallacy.

oh wait . . .

[Malachi151]

As a member of mensa I can tell you that mensa sucks :p

The intellectual company in mesa is total crap. Did you know that mesa used to be an almost exclusively pseduo-science and paranormal group? James Randi covered the group in the 1970s. They used to publish all kinds of paranornal crap in their magazines.

This organization is not a paragon of intelligence. Among my mensa friends, we call it DENSA, the orgnaization of spectacular failures.

Seriously you meet so many quackpots in mensa, and people who "had potential"... but went nowhere....

Its not so much a high IQ society as it is a group for the socially challenged.

[anthrosciguy]

Back when Playboy had a "Women of MENSA" pictorial; a local woman was in it. She said she was surprised when she received a check for the photo shoot as it hadn't occurred to her that Playboy might pay for the pictures. Passing IQ tests doesn't mean you have a lick of common sense.

[Straight A]

There is scientific evidence to support the idea of a designer or designers in evolution. This arises from the use of the principles of probability theory. It has been estimated that the chances of the elements of part of one piece of DNA coming together unaided are 10 to the power of 108 to one against. That is 1 with 108 zeros after it, and just one part of one piece of DNA.

I wonder at what point the odds tip in favour of a god/creator ?

A dice landing on a 4 has a probability of 1 in 6, does this require a divine hand ?

Or how about the 'EuroMillions' European wide lottery where the odds of hitting the jackpot are around 1 in 80,000,000 have we reached the point where a win would signal divine intervention ?

The guy from Mensa is a worry.

[JLK]

One of the funniest episodes in the saga of the ID movement occurred when Dembski found Chris "the highest IQ ever measured" Langan, who was working as a bar bouncer, and published Langan's "Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe: A New Kind of Reality Theory (http://www.crank.net/proof.html)" in Dembski's journal. (Operations become numbers and vice versa. Or something. It's no doubt all completely correct. Everything's teleological - get over it.)
Langan's supergenius girl friend, Holistic Cyber Therapist (http://www.ctmu.org/CyberTherapy) Gina, assisted him in ruthlessly crushing all the lesser minds who dared to critique him on-line. The two of them were sued for trying to take over some Mensa chapter somehow, so they formed The Mega Foundation (http://www.megafoundation.org/History.html) "as a hopeful haven for the severely-gifted."

I wish my business card read:
Logic, Cosmology, and Reality Theory, The Mega Foundation and Research Group
Excerpt from the Mega Foundation website:
Because of academia's intransigent posture towards those wishing to make meaningful intellectual contributions to their fields of interest - because of the way it forces them, on pain of virtual excommunication, to acquire academic credentials on its own terms and at its own price - many talented individuals have been unjustly excluded. Among them, no doubt, are some of the ablest. Because this represents a terrible potential loss to the intellectual wealth of mankind, the matter cannot be left in academia's hands. Rather, an alternate channel of communication must be maintained for the use of those who find themselves, despite high levels of knowledge and ability, on the wrong side of the academic establishment. At this time, there is just one plausible candidate: the high-IQ community.

It is true that the high-IQ community has occasionally been the butt of well-deserved jokes. By statistical necessity, it consists mainly of its lower strata, which in turn consist largely of that segment of the high-IQ population given to self-pity, social ineptitude and pseudointellectual argumentation for its own sake...people who are "fed up and not going to take it any more!", and who labor under a burning conviction that because they do moderately well on IQ tests, they must by definition have something important to say. And say it they do, often so loudly as to drown out any real genius who might have a worthwhile point to make.

But the high-IQ community has many levels, and as one moves upward, one is increasingly likely to encounter someone with "the right stuff". At the very top - where it becomes problematic even to extract measurable differences among intellects - the occurrence of what we call "true genius" may actually become probable. This is the level at which the high-IQ community must be taken most seriously, and which must take most seriously its own responsibility for the production of original, academically-uncensored ideas of potential benefit to mankind.

The Mega Society East resides on that level.

Ye lesser minds, ye things of dimwittery! Think you that we Mega Societans share the limits of your puny lobes, the petty arithmetics of your shallow child-like cogitation? We, who teach string theory to our hamsters? We, whose slippers translate Finnegans Wake into Attic Greek? Fie!OK. I added that last paragraph.
Among my mensa friends, we call it DENSA, the orgnaization of spectacular failures.Mensa is not Densa! We Densans may be spectacular failures, but I challenge you to shovel coal over a horse.

[Susannah]

I don't know why I have never heard anyone mention this: "Mensa", in Spanish, at least in Mexican Spanish, means "stupid woman".

[Castorama]

Straight A:The guy from Mensa is a worry.To be fair on Mensa, he could technically not be a member. Even I can (and will) write a reply to the magazine.

[Straight A]

Straight A:To be fair on Mensa, he could technically not be a member. Even I can (and will) write a reply to the magazine.

Castorama, fuck 'em, they should have a somewhat more robust editorial filter than what they appear to have.

Please do write, and if you get through, please share the response (if any).

[Febble]

Straight A:To be fair on Mensa, he could technically not be a member. Even I can (and will) write a reply to the magazine.


From its website, it looks as though you need to score an IQ of 130 to join Mensa (2% of the population). That means that over a million Brits are eligible to join. The website also says its UK membership is 25,000. That means its members are 2% of the eligible British population.

IQ is fairly well correlated with academic achievement. It's also fairly well correlated with giftedness (in that most people regarded as gifted - i.e highly successful in their fields - have IQ scores in the top 15%). But the second correlation is a lot looser than the first. In other words, IQ isn't gifteness, or even intelligence, it's just a loose correlate of both. What it actually is is the knack for doing IQ tests. I find it plausible that 2% of those with a knack for doing IQ tests are actually pretty dumb. I wonder if that 2% is the 2% that makes up Mensa's UK membership?

[Richard Forrest]

From its website, it looks as though you need to score an IQ of 130 to join Mensa (2% of the population). That means that over a million Brits are eligible to join. The website also says its UK membership is 25,000. That means its members are 2% of the eligible British population.

IQ is fairly well correlated with academic achievement. It's also fairly well correlated with giftedness (in that most people regarded as gifted - i.e highly successful in their fields - have IQ scores in the top 15%). But the second correlation is a lot looser than the first. In other words, IQ isn't gifteness, or even intelligence, it's just a loose correlate of both. What it actually is is the knack for doing IQ tests. I find it plausible that 2% of those with a knack for doing IQ tests are actually pretty dumb. I wonder if that 2% is the 2% that makes up Mensa's UK membership?

It has always struck me as a curious phenomenon that people should join a club whose requirement is to pass an intelligence test. What's the point? If intelligence is demonstrated by a high level of achievement, it's the high level of achievement which demonstrates your intelligence, not your membership of a club.

I'm a member of a "club" of sorts as a vertebrate palaeontologist, but that "club" is defined not by passing any sort of test, but by a shared passion for the subject.

The only shared passion of MENSA members is their own intelligence. How wierd is that?

Mind you, I think that if you want to be a member of a club which boasts about the intelligence of its members, that marks you out as someone who is driven by insecurity more than anything else.

Richard Forrest

[Febble]

The only shared passion of MENSA members is their own intelligence.

Their shared passion seems to be for their own IQ scores. Not the same thing.

[mirage]

A certain fellow with some strange ideas about SR springs to mind.

As if being in a select club of er..a million plus in Britain and 5 or 6 million in the US qualifies you as an amateur to overturn scientific orthodoxy.

[chapka]

Its not so much a high IQ society as it is a group for the socially challenged.

I've been invited to a few Mensa events and that's always been my impression as well. Frankly, I've always felt there was a bit of a creepy vibe to the whole enterprise. What's the difference between Mensa and a group of very tall people forming a club and holding parties where everyone ostentatiously picked things up off of high shelves? "How about that? Let's see my 5' 4" boss do that!"

[Malachi151]

It has always struck me as a curious phenomenon that people should join a club whose requirement is to pass an intelligence test. What's the point? If intelligence is demonstrated by a high level of achievement, it's the high level of achievement which demonstrates your intelligence, not your membership of a club.

I'm a member of a "club" of sorts as a vertebrate palaeontologist, but that "club" is defined not by passing any sort of test, but by a shared passion for the subject.

The only shared passion of MENSA members is their own intelligence. How wierd is that?

Mind you, I think that if you want to be a member of a club which boasts about the intelligence of its members, that marks you out as someone who is driven by insecurity more than anything else.

Richard Forrest

Well, to come to the defense of mensa a bit here, the *point* f the group is to have an orgnazation where intelligent people can go specifically to engage in intelligent discussion.

What I have found, however, is that atheist grousp are a better place for this, but aside from atheist groups I would that that mensa does fill this role.

Let's face it, unless you join a group specifically for the purpose of finding intelligent conversation, most intelligent people are not going to find it.

By far I enjoy athiest groups much more than mensa, but mensa is probably the second best general national/international group you can look to to find a place to have discussions about interesting topics with people who can actually discuss them with you and who will want to do so.

But, most mensans are religious.

In fact I joined for three reasons.

#1) On an atheist website someone pointed out that on the mensa survey only 3% of mensans were listed at non-religious, so I joined partly just to take that survey and add my number to the non-religious group.

#2) For my resume.

#3) I have moved a lot over the past 3 years and its one other way to network and meet people and possible business contacts.

Still, the majority of people I have met in mensa are quacks, sorry, but its true.

[Foobear]

I wonder at what point the odds tip in favour of a god/creator ?

A dice landing on a 4 has a probability of 1 in 6, does this require a divine hand ?

Or how about the 'EuroMillions' European wide lottery where the odds of hitting the jackpot are around 1 in 80,000,000 have we reached the point where a win would signal divine intervention ?

The guy from Mensa is a worry. How many times would you need to hit the jackpot before you started to worry that the game was rigged?

2?

10?

100?

If it can be demonstrated a long and ongoing series of highly improbable events occured, then it does mean someone is rigging the game. The probability of the rigging can be worked out statistically.

Now consider that back in the case of evolution. The fact of the matter is that we've lost all of the original "rolls" (i.e. the mutations that triggered everything back in the day), so nothing can be proved either way... but as an atheist once said, seeing a frog suddenly evolve wings would convince him that God (or something) does exist.

[chapka]

Let's face it, unless you join a group specifically for the purpose of finding intelligent conversation, most intelligent people are not going to find it.

I've never had a problem. I work with plenty of intelligent people, and I meet plenty of others in the everyday activities I'm involved in.

By far I enjoy athiest groups much more than mensa, but mensa is probably the second best general national/international group you can look to to find a place to have discussions about interesting topics with people who can actually discuss them with you and who will want to do so.

This has actually been the opposite of my experience. Intelligence is not the only requirement for intelligent conversation; you also need a modicum of social skills and maturity. The mensa groups I've been exposed to (admittedly only two, and one was in college, so they're hopefully not representative) didn't meet that standard very well. (And the conversations I've had at Mensa parties mostly focused on sex, food and brain-teasers. Two I can talk about with anyone, and the last doesn't thrill me that much. And the political views I've run up against at Mensa meetings tend to be no more nuanced than the general public, with a lot more bizarre political absolutists (Objectivists, Maoists, anarcho-libertarians, etc.) but people even more wedded to their ideology than other people are to political parties.

#2) For my resume.

For the record...I've been responsible for or involved in hiring decisions for several firms, and if I see a MENSA membership on a resume it doesn't give a positive impression to me. If you went to Yale and put Mensa on your resume, it's superfluous and makes me wonder if you lack perspective (unless you're a Bush, of course, in which case you might actually have something to prove). If you went to community college and put Mensa on your resume, it frankly gives a bad impression. I may not be typical of hiring types, but I wouldn't assume it's an automatic plus.

[chapka]

How many times would you need to hit the jackpot before you started to worry that the game was rigged?

2?

10?

100?

If it can be demonstrated a long and ongoing series of highly improbable events occured, then it does mean someone is rigging the game.

Sorry, but no. Realistically there's no less statistical likelihood of you winning the lottery twice than of you winning once and me winning once. I once bought a lottery ticket and chose the winning numbers "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ,7". Do you think that I'm any less likely to win with that sequence than with any other? Was that a bad sequence to choose? If you understand why it wasn't, then you'll understand why your argument above is wrong.

Whoever wins the lottery, it's equally unlikely. It's only if you pick the numbers beforehand that it starts to become unlikely. And nobody is arguing that the particular DNA molecules we ended up with were inevitable or that they could be predicted mathematically.

[His Noodly Appendage]

That's *nothing*.

Think of a golf course. There are countless millions of grass blades in each one - just imagine the odds against any one of them having a golf ball land exactly on them. Yet it happens hundreds of times every day.

It's patently obvious that goddidit.

[Nialler]

Sorry, but no. Realistically there's no less statistical likelihood of you winning the lottery twice than of you winning once and me winning once. I once bought a lottery ticket and chose the winning numbers "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ,7". Do you think that I'm any less likely to win with that sequence than with any other? Was that a bad sequence to choose? If you understand why it wasn't, then you'll understand why your argument above is wrong.

Whoever wins the lottery, it's equally unlikely. It's only if you pick the numbers beforehand that it starts to become unlikely. And nobody is arguing that the particular DNA molecules we ended up with were inevitable or that they could be predicted mathematically.

It would be a *very* bad sequence to use - if you wish to raise the odds of winning the jackpot outright.

I read somewhere that in the UK lottery, up to 15,000 people choose 1-6 as their numbers. If the numbers ever come up there will be a lot of disappointed people that Saturday.

Of course, the chances of such a sequence emerging are exactly the same as the chances of any other specified sequence. There's no magic to those numbers.

[mirage]

Sorry, but no. Realistically there's no less statistical likelihood of you winning the lottery twice than of you winning once and me winning once.
That's true, but not quite the point. An argument in favour of it being fixed does not assert this. It must assert that the combined odds of you winning twice are more likely (because you have awarded a non zero prior to the hypothesis of it being fixed).

If you have awarded the hypothesis that the lottery could be fixed in your favour some non-zero prior, then you winning twice favours it.

But that a priori estimate would have to be awarded a priori, on some other justification than the result, as you have pointed out.

If you award the hypothesis that it is fixed some non zero prior, and split it equally into separate "fixed for" each ticket buyer hypotheses, i.e. without favouring yourself in the priors, then you winning once favours the hypothesis that it was fixed for you.

However, since it disfavours each of the hypotheses that it was fixed in favour of other people, it does not favour the combined hypothesis that it was fixed.

If you win twice, then it does, quite a lot.

But you have to have the a priori odds statistically independent of the outcomes. In the case of life, our decision to focus on that category and regard it as important is certainly not statistically independent from the outcome of it having happened.

Neither is focusing a prior on a particular actual biological structure statistically independent from the actual outcomes.

[SophistiCat]

If you award the hypothesis that it is fixed some non zero prior, and split it equally into separate "fixed for" each ticket buyer hypotheses, i.e. without favouring yourself in the priors, then you winning once favours the hypothesis that it was fixed for you.

However, since it disfavours each of the hypotheses that it was fixed in favour of other people, it does not favour the combined hypothesis that it was fixed.

If you win twice, then it does, quite a lot.

Heh, I just checked the math - I think you are right on winning twice. (This goes back to our discussion of the FTA in EoG.)

For the posterior probability of the lotery being fixed in the event that someone wins twice I got

n*c / [ 1 + c*(n-1) ]

where n is the number of lottery tickets and c is the prior probability of the lottery being fixed.

For n = 100 and c = 0.1 (10%), the probability of the lottery being fixed in the event of two consecutive wins rises to over 90%.

[mirage]

I'm glad that I wasn't talking complete bollocks then.

[RBH]

Heh, I just checked the math - I think you are right on winning twice. (This goes back to our discussion of the FTA in EoG.)

For the posterior probability of the lotery being fixed in the event that someone wins twice I got

n*c / [ 1 + c*(n-1) ]

where n is the number of lottery tickets and c is the prior probability of the lottery being fixed.

For n = 100 and c = 0.1 (10%), the probability of the lottery being fixed in the event of two consecutive wins rises to over 90%.Wpman wins $1m lottery twice (http://www.auburnpub.com/articles/2006/09/10/news/state/state03.txt). (Though not consecutively.)

RBH

[ninewands]

Mensa, schmensa ... they CLAIM to be exclusive but they'll admit one in fifty ...

Now the Triple Nines Society (http://www.triplenine.org/main/constitution.asp) (top 0.1%), or the Prometheus Society (http://www.prometheussociety.org/docs/constitution.html) ("Membership in the Prometheus Society is open to anyone who can provide satisfactory evidence of having received a score on an accepted IQ test that is equal to or greater than that received by the highest one thirty thousandth of the general population."), ... THAT's exclusive ... also kinda sad :( ...

[Abacus]

As the smartest person I know, I stand alone in my club.

[theyeti]

That's one of the dumber things I've ever read, but creationism breeds dumbness.

In order to require a probability of 1 in 10^108, you'd need something like 170 bp with an exact, specified sequence that could not vary. There are no such known sequences. Invariant sequences are rarely more than several nucleotides long.

theyeti

[Ezkerraldean]

in MENSA? even they don't understand how evolution works.

[quester]

How many times would you need to hit the jackpot before you started to worry that the game was rigged?

2?

10?

100?

If it can be demonstrated a long and ongoing series of highly improbable events occured, then it does mean someone is rigging the game. The probability of the rigging can be worked out statistically.

Now consider that back in the case of evolution. The fact of the matter is that we've lost all of the original "rolls" (i.e. the mutations that triggered everything back in the day), so nothing can be proved either way... but as an atheist once said, seeing a frog suddenly evolve wings would convince him that God (or something) does exist.


The game IS rigged - by natural laws, and natural selection favoring the repetition of some throws over others.

[quester]

Well, to come to the defense of mensa a bit here, the *point* f the group is to have an orgnazation where intelligent people can go specifically to engage in intelligent discussion.


Let's face it, unless you join a group specifically for the purpose of finding intelligent conversation, most intelligent people are not going to find it.



I'm a member of Mensa. Yes, I'm socially challenged. In my 20's, (I won't say how long ago that was) I started to work on that. I joined a singles club that mainly met in country-western bars. I thought Mensa would have more of my type of people. It worked! I met my husband at a Mensa meeting.

I go to local gatherings once in a while, and a regional gathering once a year. Last year somebody gave a talk promoting ID which did not go over well at all.

I can't say that I've found anything creepy or weird about Mensans in comparison with other people, but then, like I said, I'm socially challenged and I don't know very many people.