Noesis
The Journal of the Mega Society
Number 74
October 1992
EDITORIAL
Rick Rosner
5139 Balboa Blvd #303
Encino CA 91316-3430
(818) 986-9177
RON HOEFLIN'S LATEST TRIAL TEST
A NOTE & OTHER STUFF FROM DARYL INMAN
including KEVIN LANGDON'S LIGHT
Dear Rick,
Could you print this article in Noesis and ask the membership what this "Blob" phenomenon is? It appears quite interesting.
Thanks,
Daryl Inman
P.S. Also enclosed is Kevin Langdon's revised LAIT called the LIGHT. I took it and sent it to Kevin.
VERBAL ANALOGIES
BY DR. P. A. POMFRIT
22 MOAT HALL AVE., PEEL GREEN,
ECCLES, MANCHESTER,
M30 7LR,
ENGLAND
MARKING FEE: 5 U.S. DOLLARS(CASH ONLY) SCORE: RAW SCORE ONLY
TIME LIMIT: NONE. A SMALL PRIZE MAY BE GIVEN (DEPENDS ON RESPONSE)
FOR POSSIBLE PRIZE: 31st DECEMBER 1992
__________________________________________________________________________
e.g. 2 : 10 :: BINARY : DENARY
1. KING ARTHUR : EXCALIBUR :: SIR LANCELOT : ?
2. FINLANDIA : SIBELIUS :: PARIS AND HELEN : ?
3. POLICEMEN : PEELERS :: BOW STREET RUNNERS : ?
4. 1 : 8 :: BOVATE : ?
5. THE CARD PLAYERS : CEZANNE :: VIEW OF DELFT : ?
6. STAG : ACTAEON :: OWL : ?
7. CIRCLE : COMPASS :: ELLIPSE : ?
8. STAMP : PHILATELIST :: TOILET PAPER : ?
9. P.M. : DEPUTY P.M. :: TAOISEACH : ?
10. FAT : STEATOPYGOUS :: SHAPELY : ?
11. LIBERATION FOR CONQUEST : PARANYM :: FLORENCE FOR FIRENZE : ?
12. MINIATURE TREES : BONSAI :: MINIATURE LANDSCAPE OF BONSAI : ?
13. DAISIES : BOOTS :: SKY : ?
14. RADAR : ACRONYM :: CABAL : ?
15. ROH : RSH :: ALCOHOL : ?
16. ELEPHANT : CAMEL :: HOWDAH : ?
17. 2621 : 2922 :: HAVEN : ?
18. CALIFORNIA : EUREKA :: MAINE : ?
19. FILMS : OSCAR :: RADIO/TV COMMERCIALS : ?
20. ANIMAL : BIRD :: PYGAL : ?
21. BUSHMASTER : SURUCUCU :: ANACONDA : ?
22. LETTER : SIGNATURE :: SERIF : ?
23. SMALL : VARIOLA :: CHICKEN : ?
24. EVIL : FAITH :: PONOEROLOGY : ?
25. SAW : SERRI- :: CUSHION : ?
26. 8 : 14 :: OCTAD : ?
27. BIRDS : DEER :: SCARECROW : ?
28. BASE : LASPEYRE :: CURRENT : ?
29. LOOSE ROBE : KIMONO :: SMALL ORNAMENT/FIGURINE : ?
30. I AM/I'M : PRODELISION :: A NEWT/AN EWT : ?
31. JACK NICKLAUS : BEAR :: HOLING OF A BALL DIRECT FROM BUNKER : ?
32. LYING ON OATH : PERJURY :: WILFUL CONTEMPT OF COURT : ?
33. GENERAL : MASSAGE :: LONGITUDINAL RUBBING/LATERAL SQUEEZING : ?
34. SON MOTHER/FATHER : OEDIPUS :: STEP-PARENTS/STEP-CHILDREN : ?
35. MADAME BOVARY : FLAUBERT :: PETER SIMPLE : ?
36. GIANTS : BROBDINGNAG :: SORCERERS/MAGICIANS : ?
37. ULTIMATE : OXYTONE :: ANTEPENULTIMATE : ?
38. CYLINDER : BOOK :: VASCULUM : ?
39. NEWCASTLE : LIVERPOOL :: GEORDIE : ?
40. ENGLISH : ARABIC :: APOSTROPHE : ?
41. FIRMAMENT : INDRA :: FORESIGHT : ?
42. ROOFED : ROOFLESS :: CLEITHRAL : ?
43. TECHNETIUM : PROMETHIUM :: MASURIUM : ?
44. MINERALS : MOHS :: METALS/ALLOYS : ?
45. LEADER : DON/GODFATHER :: CODE OF SILENCE : ?
46. CLOCKWISE MODEL OF SOLAR SYSTEM : ORRERY :: MAGNETIC MODEL OF EARTH : ?
47. THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN : JAPAN :: THE COCKPIT OF EUROPE : ?
48. SIMPLICITY AND GENEROSITY : PICKWICKIAN :: UNCTUOUSLY HYPOCRITICAL : ?
49. TEAM ASSISTANT MATADOR : CUADRILLA :: PROTECTION FENCE IN BULLRING : ?
50. BASE OF CONE : FRUSTUM :: PARALLELOGRAM WITH ONE QUADRANT REMOVED : ?
TWO LETTERS FROM GERALDINE BRADY
Dear Rick,
A belated thanks for sending the fax with the info on the schools.
I've heard from Ron Hoeflin, but from no one else from the Mega Society thus far. I've decided to scrap my 13-year-old Cantor paper and to concentrate instead on trying to salvage my thesis/work on Peirce's logic. I'm also still shaking the trees looking for help. If you know anyone who's good at writing Ph.D. theses, or who's just a good writer, please let me know.
I hope your school situation has improved. Thanks again.
Geraldine Brady
Dear Rick,
I received the latest issues of Noesis today and was delighted to read of your degree news. I hope that your B.S. will be in math. Write sometime and tell me the details.
I am following a suggestion from Ron Hoeflin and am trying to expand a paper I wrote about C. S. Peirce's logic (one of my previously rejected theses) into a Ph.D. thesis. It is pure drudgery. It is my impression right now that school has killed all my interests and sapped me of my creative and imaginative talents, but somehow left my intellect intact. Do you feel the same? We should study this. The training that the "system" provides has been many times examined, and much maligned, but I don't know that anyone has really identified the essence of the problem. I don't know that I understand it, but I do know that most of the time I feel like I have spent years of my life working on someone else's hobby (It's not even important enough to be called somebody else's interest.). I'd be very surprised if people who have genuine intellectual accomplishments to their credit have squandered their time like this.
Anyhow, all the best!
Cordially,
Gerry
[Editor's comments: The correspondence U. from which I expect to graduate this semester or the next grants 30 semester units of credit in a particular field for scoring above the 30th percentile on the GRE Subject Test in that field. Since I have no existence outside of taking tests, I plan on taking 10 Subject Tests and graduating with 8 majors and over 350 credits. All this, naturally, will be worthless in terms of finding meaningful work. The GRE's in fields such as sociology or education are very easy because test takers are competing with sosh or ed majors, who tend to be less bright and studious than students in the hard sciences. Correspondingly, the math & physics GRE's are nasty. Of course, the whole procedure feels like an extended (funny-sad, not funny-ha-ha) joke.
As does higher education as you and I have experienced it. I just took the sosh GRE and feel good about my performance, so I'm entitled to make sociological pronouncements:
The larger a population, the more a culture must squander the lives of its members. Otherwise, too many people would accomplish stuff, and cultural stability would be lost (as would the S. S. Minnow, if not for the courage of her fearless crew). Heat sinks are designed to radiate excess heat. U.S. colleges are time sinks, which function to waste about 10% of a person's adult life. They also function as places for physically (and often mentally) inferior but economically elite males to hook up with females. Young women might pair up with blue collar males if college didn't function as an agent of economic segregation. College is about lots of things, but learning is not its central cultural function. My main pleasure in college is in being a disruptive presence, but even that is usually too much effort.]
A LETTER FROM CHRIS HARDING
Dear Rick Rosner:
In view of comments about those with journal subscriber status only it seems to me that those who have simply received the journal and who show a history of zero input to it are perhaps no more than intellectual tourists or culture vultures or even voyeurs in some cases whose presence is hardly desirable and even off-putting to extraordinary minds and whom we can do without. I don't like the idea of providing a peep show for these people as if this were something expected of us as some sort of atonement for our crime of being clever! I would hope we might leave the idiocy of the lower order behind us for good and become ourselves for a change. I know a few people who while they could not qualify for either the old Mega Society or the current one do have extraordinary ideas, speculations or full-blown theories--they are the life blood of any truly intellectual organization and are people the Mega Society ought properly to court. Thus I am proposing that subscriber status be open to only the creative and productive minds of the greater community. If anyone wants to subscribe who can't pass whatever tests are deemed the current entry ticket then let them forward material that demonstrates extraordinary creativity at least. I am proposing that we define creativity in terms of mind or intellect not emotion and that we state that we only seek persons who are locked out from the greater scientific community by virtue of their superior creative minds. I am certain the fusion of the two types would be wholly beneficial to us all. I don't like the contamination of the social animals enumerated above. There are places to socialize for those who want to do so. Those who claim failure of outlet in this regard are snobs and empty heads.
On the matter of the Wone-Harding approach to artificial intelligence which has been reported in Noesis and commented on more recently by one of our members (or subscribers?) I can report that the code has been written to demonstrate a workable model but that this has so far been very limited in terms of effective output. At the time of our first run attempts Peter promptly pointed out to me that the technology would eventually catch up with it. Basically speaking, as currently conceived no computer in the world would have any chance of mimicking fully the functions of the human brain in full flight! Since then, I have been blessed with a likely significant insight--it is as though what we were attempting to do was devise a system "to solve everything in the visible universe" so to speak to get at the simplest of selective things. While no code has so far been written for it, the answer would appear further to lie in the implementation of Shannon negentropy--the so-called needle in a haystack maths.
Sincerely,
Chris Harding
[Editor's comments: The pro-subscriber argument that comes most readily to mind is that I can't afford to edit Noesis without the money from your subscriptions. One reason Ron Hoeflin had to abandon the editorship was that there weren't enough people paying dues to make it economically worthwhile.
I'm flattered by subscriber interest and surprised at those who re-up. I've completely internalized societal contamination; the attention of some subscribers won't soil me more than I've soiled myself. Many subscribers are borderline cases who will eventually qualify or who could qualify if they didn't have better things to do. Finally, subscribers aren't beating down my mailbox. I feel good that 50-or-so people receive Noesis; I'd feel better if there were more interested subscribers and members in order to have a self-sustaining enterprise. In Marooned in Real Time, SF author Vernor Vinge says that a minimum of 200 humans is needed to maintain a breeding population with sufficient genetic diversity. Some similar number might be necessary to guarantee the continuity of an organization.
Which reminds me--A Fire Upon the Deep, also by Vinge, is the best blockbuster-type SF novel I've read in a couple years. It has a huge time scale, suspension of disbelief bizarro aliens, and an interesting cosmology. I don't read much SF anymore 'cause it usually disappoints, and I didn't much like Vinge's Marooned, but A Fire Upon the Deep reflects a lot of focused imagination by the author.]
A LETTER FROM DONALD SCOTT
Dear Rick,
Thanks for your response to the questions I put before you. I found your response helpful!
However, as usual I have a few questions. I will not try to take up a lot of your time. The questions are as follows:
In issue no. 70 you said you think that appropriate training could make almost everyone much more intelligent, What do you consider appropriate training and could I train myself to become much more intelligent?
Also, I went to a library and I found an old copy of the magazine Omni. In it they had a copy of the Mega Test. As soon as I looked at the test, I instantly knew the answers for a few of the questions.
The questions pertaining to the test are as follows: On the same page of the Mega Test, Ronald K. Hoeflin said, "The average person could only get one of the problems right." Since I'm almost certain that all of the above answers are correct, then am I above average and what does that make my IQ.?
I never thought of myself as having above average intelligence. As far as the rest of the test, I probably could solve more of the problems, but I'm much more interested in becoming far more intelligent.
I really don't like taking up so much of your time, but I feel that I could get the answers I need by asking you.
Sincerely,
Donald Scott
[Editor's comments: All five of your Mega Test answers are correct. Thanks for thinking I'm a source of information. Obsessive reading is the most sure-fire way to at least not get stupider. Various authors including Stephen King and Gore Vidal talk about reading thousands of books. I had one teacher who set a reading target of ten books a month, and I shoot for 150 books a year.
You could try Ron Hoeflin's Mega Test, or one of the other tests he's created. However, to do a thorough job, you should set aside a least 30 hours. I spent at least 90 hours on it. Other tests will give you an IQ score in only two or three hours. Being assigned an IQ score isn't necessarily helpful in becoming more intelligent. I know very little of your background, what educational resources you have access to, and what your specific goals are.]
A LETTER FROM PETER SCHMIES
Dear Rick Rosner<
Enclosed are two problems that you may use for the "Short Form Test."
My answers to the three analogies in Noesis #72:
Sincerely,
Peter Schmies
[Editor's comment: You got 11 and 13 right. Your guess on number 12, thighs, rhymes with the right answer. We'll run the answers in the next mailing.]
16. A goat is tied to a post on the circumference of a circular meadow with a diameter of 100 meters. Determine the goat's "radius of action" when the pasture ground within its reach is exactly one half of the circle's area.
17. In what order are these signs arranged?
E I S H 5
A LETTER FROM BOB HANNON
PLUS HIS LETTER TO CHRIS LANGAN
FOLLOWED BY LANGAN'S REPLY
VELOCITY IN SPECIAL RELATIVITY
BY ROBERT HANNON
[Mr. Hannon sent two articles. Because of space limitations, I'm running the shorter piece. If I receive requests for his other article, "The Special Relativistic Transformation of Mass," I'll run it in a subsequent issue--Ed.]