What are the intellectually MOST rigorous jobs?

[j93]

The notion that an average high school student can train for six months and be a passable conductor for an orchestra is really hard to justify.

Its not hard to justify because you only need to learn one score to be passable and one can learn how to do this one score in six months spending 10 hours a day to practice. Its also possible to passable as an good pianist and learn how to play the third movement of the moonlight sonata by spending 10 hours a day on it. Under scrutiny that player probably could not play easier pieces and unravel but yes it sure is possible to train one to be passable in 6 months.

I don't disagree with the general premise but 3 of those examples were just not true.

 

[Tibarn]

I'd like to see a high school student with 6 months of training safely land a plane in the Hudson River.

 

[elect_eng]

Its also possible to passable as an good pianist and learn how to play the third movement of the moonlight sonata by spending 10 hours a day on it.

Clearly we are each operating with different definitions of the word passable. So, perhaps we don't disagree very much.

Even if you are correct about the above statement, this is not passable in my book. What you are describing is not a passable professional pianist, but someone who could fool the average layman for a few minutes. There is a big difference, and any musically trained person would hear and see that the player was an amateur.

However, I would be impressed if an average high school student did this. Although, after witnessing it, I would then conclude that this is not an average student at all, but someone born with a real gift. I mean, come on now, the first two movements are child's play, but the third movement at full tempo, played convincingly, with no background? That's an indication of talent. Even if it is an intermediate piece, the tempo would be more than the average person could muster in 6 months, starting from ground zero.

But, the above is your example, not mine. I really don't need to deny your claim. However, a professional conductor would need to be much beyond the "trained monkey" you are describing.

Tibarn, also clearly states the point I was alluding to before with my question, "how comfortable would you feel?". Training a pilot in 6 months with all the modern day systems is certainly possible, but you would know in your heart that if any emergency came up, your odds of survival would be significantly compromised. Training and preparation are the only things that stave off panic when the adrenaline starts flowing. Of course, there are always those few fearless people, but again, now we are no longer talking about the average person.

 

[Astronuc]

Jobs, which require a good set of intelligence and hard work?

Many jobs require intelligence and hard work, especially if one wishes to be productive. Certainly many jobs in scicence, engineering and technology require intelligence and hardwork. For example, application of systems of partial differential equations, particularly non-linear partial differential equations (NL Navier-Stokes), require intelligence, skill and hardwork.

Many projects in which I'm involved are well beyond the average high school student, and in fact, well beyond the average university student.

Any PhD who is doing a job that could be accomplished by a high school or university undergraduate student is 'underemployed'. It's one thing to plug numbers into a formula, but it's quite another matter to develop the formula based upon one's understanding of the physics of what one is modeling/simulating. That's where the intelligence, skill, experience and hardwork come in.

 

[Blenton]

Does the second poster seriously think that electrical engineering is the second hardest intellectually rigorous job out there?

 

[Count Iblis]

I'd like to see a high school student with 6 months of training safely land a plane in the Hudson River.

That pilot I think was a former fighter pilot. It doesn't take a long time for a high school graduate to learn to land a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier at bad conditions in the middle of the night.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

That pilot I think was a former fighter pilot. It doesn't take a long time for a high school graduate to learn to land a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier at bad conditions in the middle of the night.

I sincerely hope you are joking. Pilots go through rather rigorous training. You might be able to learn to fly a single engine prop plane in a few months but a jet fighter? You realize that enlisted (military straight out of high school) don't become pilots right?

 

[Count Iblis]

I sincerely hope you are joking. Pilots go through rather rigorous training. You might be able to learn to fly a single engine prop plane in a few months but a jet fighter? You realize that enlisted (military straight out of high school) don't become pilots right?

I'm not saying that it can be learned in a few months. But it isn't many years either. So, I think the point I made earlier that most jobs can be learned by high schoolers in a year still stands. Because even if we look at highly specialized jobs, many of these can still be learned in a period of a year or so. And most jobs do not require highly specialized training at all.

 

[Cyrus]

That pilot I think was a former fighter pilot. It doesn't take a long time for a high school graduate to learn to land a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier at bad conditions in the middle of the night.

Says the person who has never flown an airplane in his life - hilarious.

 

[gravenewworld]

Outside of academia there are almost no jobs that requires more knowledge than the average high school student can master in half a year.

All the people at my company who are behind the medicines that you take would beg to differ. In fact, I guarantee you some of the people at my company are smarter than most people in academia. The people who come up with the ideas behind medications and where to start from are absolutely f*cking brilliant. The human body is an absolute mine field littered with traps and pitfalls that can kill an experimental drug at any point. The fact that we even have medicines that are entirely synthetic that can get around all the hoops is absolutely incredible if you actually had an idea of how complex creating a new medicine from the ground up really is.

Sorry but they don't teach pharmacology, pharmacodynamics/kinetics, medicinal chemistry, and drug metabolism to people who haven't mastered even the basics of college level chemistry, biology, anatomy, and physiology.

 

[j93]

I'd like to see a high school student with 6 months of training safely land a plane in the Hudson River.

You realize that landing a plane in the hudson river is not a task that every commercial pilot can do and at that it is not a task that even the top percentile can do successfully 100 percent of the time. There are tons of examples of pilots trying that maneuver only to crash and burn.

 

[j93]

In fact, I guarantee you some of the people at my company are smarter than most people in academia. .

You know that this is not true especially at the level where your guaranteeing. Are you saying you can guarantee that they are smarter than their academia counterpart or your average theoretical math academic or the same for physics or ...

 

[gravenewworld]

You know that this is not true especially at the level where your guaranteeing. Are you saying you can guarantee that they are smarter than their academia counterpart or your average theoretical math academic or the same for physics or ...

You can't compare what pharmacologist does or a chemist does to a physicist or mathematician. But yes, the chemists and pharmacologist who work where I work are probably smarter than most chemists and pharmacologists who work in the same fields in academia. I have no problem saying this at all. We do tons of R&D just like academia does and write articles in the same journals that academia does.

 

[turbo]

There are very smart people working in universities, but it's a whole new world out there for chemists, physicists, mathematicians, engineers, etc, when they get out into the job market and try to function at a high level in their field. Then they find out not only how to solve problems, but to analyze them and model them so that they can be solved. As a process chemist, I spent about a year and a half documenting the heat and mass balances of all the non-potable water systems in a very large pulp mill. We had to come up with algorithms that would allow us to model systems, subsystems, and individual components in order to optimize the efficiency of that plant. One REALLY big help was a newly-minted ChemE who was a whiz at Fortran and who pitched into turn our models into code that would run under the company's SAS package and deliver intelligible results. When you're in heavy industry with high costs associated with raw materials, energy, and labor, and you can tweak out an extra few percentage points of efficiency here and there, the savings can pay your salary for years. Pulp mills are exceedingly complex systems, and they don't come pre-built with instruction manuals - if you are a chemist or an engineer, you essentially have to find out how to discover the rules, and then determine if you can safely bend or break them in order to optimize production and quality and minimize production costs. Later, you might be able to codify what you have found so that somebody else can plug in some values and make changes necessary to preserve the gains, but that's way down the road, after the model is developed, tested, tweaked, and found to be repeatable and reliable. Until then, you're forging new territory.

New challenges come up almost daily, and you have to rely not only on your training, but on your imagination, intellect, and work-ethic to address them. Note that this does not describe a person's field, but jobs in which you use the skills in your field(s). There are some really demanding jobs out there. Certainly Astronuc's position couldn't be held by a HS graduate (or even a PhD) with only 6 months' training/experience in the field. BTW, when I was consulting with pulp mills and training the operators of their black liquor recovery boilers, I was required to carry a million dollars worth of liability insurance. How many HS students (even with the requisite 6 months of training) could come up with industry references that would prompt an insurer to issue such a policy? I could operate without such liability coverage when consulting for paper mills, but chemical recovery boilers are extremely dangerous beasts if not operated to strict guidelines (including solids % of black liquor, firing rates, bed temperature, etc) and given the fact that most of them operate at above 600psi tube-pressure, smelt-water steam explosions or a failed rapid-drain in upset conditions could result in much death and destruction.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I'm not saying that it can be learned in a few months. But it isn't many years either. So, I think the point I made earlier that most jobs can be learned by high schoolers in a year still stands. Because even if we look at highly specialized jobs, many of these can still be learned in a period of a year or so. And most jobs do not require highly specialized training at all.

I'll be liberal and grant that an average high school grad after approximately one year of training just might be capable of landing a jet fighter under optimal conditions. On a carrier? I'm not so sure but let's leave that. The primary reason people receive as much education and training for such a job is that conditions are not always optimal. Pilots of jet fighters in particular are probably far more reliant on instruments than any other type of pilot. I'd imagine (I'm not a fighter pilot) that these pilots require at least some knowledge of the rudements of what their instruments do and just what these functions mean for them. If something goes wrong they need to be able to figure out what has gone wrong and what to do about it. Quick and dirty if-then rules just don't cut it when people's lives are on the line.
Air force pilots are all officers (as far as I know). To make officer one must have a college education. Mathematics, mechanics, and physics knowledge above and beyond what is necessary to graduate high school is most certainly necessary for an air force pilot. And we are just talking about someone who operates a complex piece of machinery here. We haven't even gotten into the people who design such things.

Yes, the vast majority of jobs can be done by a high school graduate. The vast majority of jobs are in fact done by high school graduates without higher education.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The human body is an absolute mine field littered with traps and pitfalls that can kill an experimental drug at any point.

This has to be one of the most unusual characterizations of the human body I've ever read. The experimental drug becomes a sort of torn-shirted, sweating Indiana Jones like hero, leaping over abysses, dashing past spiked pendulums, and skittering underneath descending walls in the nick of time. And the human body is the enemy: a guerrilla warfare jungle outfitted with explosive and other booby-traps, whose hostile intention is to kill our hero: the experimental drug.

I never realized pharmacologists see the human body in such an unusual way.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Jobs, which require a good set of intelligence and hard work?

A question about rigor begs for rigorous definitions.

I looked up the word "rigorous" in the Merriam-Websters:

1: manifesting, exercising, or favoring rigor : very strict
2 a: marked by extremes of temperature or climate b: harsh, severe
3: scrupulously accurate : precise

To be rigorous, then, means to be very strict, scrupulously accurate, or precise.

A look at the word "rigor" itself, is also instructive:

1 a (1): harsh inflexibility in opinion, temper, or judgment : severity
(2): the quality of being unyielding or inflexible : strictness
(3): severity of life : austerity b: an act or instance of strictness, severity, or cruelty
2: a tremor caused by a chill
3: a condition that makes life difficult, challenging, or uncomfortable ; especially : extremity of cold
4: strict precision : exactness <logical rigor>
5 aobsolete : rigidity, stiffness b: rigidness or torpor of organs or tissue that prevents response to stimuli c: rigor mortis

Definition 4 is the operative one here. (I find in the context of the other definitions, it takes on useful connotations of "inflexibility, severity, rigidity"; of being unyielding.)

Jobs (using that term non-rigorously) that favor intellectual rigor, would be those that require scrupulous intellectual accuracy, exactness, strict precision.

Intellectual is defined as:

1 a: of or relating to the intellect or its use b: developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience : rational c: requiring use of the intellect <intellectual games>2 a: given to study, reflection, and speculation b: engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect <intellectual playwrights>

Intellect, the noun, is defined as:

1 a: the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will : the capacity for knowledge b: the capacity for rational or intelligent thought especially when highly developed
2: a person with great intellectual powers

b is probably the operative definition here.

 

[D H]

Outside of academia there are almost no jobs that requires more knowledge than the average high school student can master in half a year.

This has to be one of the most intellectually dishonest statements made on this forum yet.

======================
Back on topic. Practically every intellectual endeavor has some aspects that demand rigor -- and a whole lot of BS as well. The BS factor is part and parcel of any intellectually demanding job. What you do with your career is up to you. You can focus on the hard stuff or revel in the BS. There are PhD pure mathematicians who revel in the BS and college grads with only a BS who have jobs that demand lots of intellectual rigor.

This thread has a high noise-to-signal ratio in part because the original post is rather vague and invites garbage like that quoted at the start of this post. What are you really asking, avant-garde? What are your goals in life?

 

[zoobyshoe]

This has to be one of the most intellectually dishonest statements made on this forum yet.

What is "intellectual dishonesty"? It sounds like a completely artificial sub-category of dishonesty: "Marvin is intellectually dishonest, but otherwise you can trust everything about him." Or the converse: "Jane is intellectually honest, but emotionally she lies like a rug." Sounds nonsensical to me.

 

[Cyrus]

Jumbo shrimp?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Jumbo shrimp?

You remember the French interviewer whom Mike Meyers (Austin Powers) can't forget and will never forgive: "Tell me, do your films lie at 24 frames per second?"

 

[D H]

What is "intellectual dishonesty"?

Are you intentionally trying to increase the noise-to-signal ratio in this thread?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_dishonesty
Intellectual dishonesty is dishonesty in performing intellectual activities like thought or communication.

http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Intellectual-dishonesty
Intellectual dishonesty is the creation of misleading impressions through the use of rhetoric, logical fallacy, fraud, or misrepresented evidence. It may stem from an ulterior motive, haste, sloppiness, or external pressure to reach a certain conclusion. The truth value of work may be lost as a result.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Intellectual dishonesty
ntellectual dishonesty is the advocacy of a position known to be false. An argument which is misused to advance an agenda or to reinforce one's deeply held beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence contrary.

The terms intellectually dishonest and intellectual dishonesty are often used as rhetorical devices in a debate; the label invariably frames an opponent in a negative light. It is a round about way to say "you're lying".

To add to the Urban Dictionary definition: Calling someone intellectually dishonest is is a round-about way of saying "you're lying -- and you know it."

 

[zoobyshoe]

Are you intentionally trying to increase the noise-to-signal ratio in this thread?

Hmmm...no.

To add to the Urban Dictionary definition: Calling someone intellectually dishonest is is a round-about way of saying "you're lying -- and you know it."

Thank you for the definitions. If you read them carefully you'll see that none of them effectively separates 'intellectual' dishonesty as a phenomenon from dishonesty per se. It remains an artificial sub-category.

As your Urban Dictionary says, the term is a "rhetorical device". "The label invariably frames an opponent in a negative light." This latter effect is an emotional one arising from the strategic deployment of a taint or stain, and that is almost certainly why it gained currency, despite being infelicitous and contrived. To say someone is dishonest is pretty serious. To say they're "intellectually dishonest", in an academic setting, is to conjure the apparition of an especially heinous kind of dishonesty in those circumstances, even though the term doesn't actually make much sense if you examine it closely: all dishonesty involves the intellect as well as the emotions. But the cry of intellectual dishonesty is the equivalent of holding your nose and making a sour face when, despite it's having been loud, you couldn't actually smell the fart.

Anyway, CountIblis is clearly not being dishonest. The worst you can say is that he precipitously threw out an assertion based only on a naive personal analysis.

 

[swat4life]

I'd go with Trancendental Meditation specialist (i.e. full-time instructors/experts). Now before someone goes throwing their pocket protector at the screen, I'd encourage an interesting look at the International Journal of Neuroscience and a fantastic study published there:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a768445194?words=increased,brain,coherenceMost people define "intelligence" very narrowly and mainstream universities disproportionately are skewed toward very limited left-brained thinking.

However, whole brained focused learning and activities are empirically correlated with almost every test of intelligence there is. I chose the above job/career, etc because I know of no other job that leads to such eye-popping development of whole-brain development and the associated enhancement of the higher faculties of mind.

I didn't say there WEREN'T any others...

I simply said I know of no other jobs/careers etc that have been written about, studied and for which respectable, peer-reviewed research is available to prove the validity of this contention.

//
PS
Here's the abstract of the study above

Abstract
Two studies investigated frontal alpha lateral asymmetry and frontal interhemispheric coherence during eyes-closed rest, Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice, and computerized reaction-time tasks. In the first study, frontal coherence and lateralized asymmetry were higher in 13 TM subjects than in 12 controls. In the second study (N = 14), a one-year longitudinal study, lateral asymmetry did not change in any condition. In contrast, frontal coherence increased linearly during computer tasks and eyes-closed rest, and as a step-function during TM practice—rising to a high level after 2-months TM practice. Coherence was more sensitive than lateral asymmetry to effects of TM practice on brain functioning.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Thank you for the definitions. If you read them carefully you'll see that none of them effectively separates 'intellectual' dishonesty as a phenomenon from dishonesty per se. It remains an artificial sub-category.

I believe that the term is actually supposed to be separate from "lying" and even persons who "knowingly lie". A person may give an explanation or argument which seems consistent with itself, and the person believes is true, but which ignores certain facts or is based on false assumptions. This isn't dishonest in the classical sense that one is lying so you can not say "you are dishonest" without sounding as though you are outright calling the person a liar but one might say "you are ignoring the logical and intellectual pitfalls in your argument" or "you are being intellectually dishonest". You might say that the argument itself is 'dishonest' (due to ignoring of facts and being based on false assumptions) though the person making it may be honest in their belief and delivery. Such a person may commit yet another level of dishonesty by using such an argument intentionally to gloss over facts and uphold false assumptions for some purpose or other. This would be separate from the 'dishonesty' inherant in the argument and would be a sort of obfuscation and more like the classic definition of dishonest as you point out.

I'd go with Trancendental Meditation specialist (i.e. full-time instructors/experts). Now before someone goes throwing their pocket protector at the screen, I'd encourage an interesting look at the International Journal of Neuroscience and a fantastic study published there:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a768445194?words=increased,brain,coherence


Most people define "intelligence" very narrowly and mainstream universities disproportionately are skewed toward very limited left-brained thinking.

Intelligence is not necessarily measured by actual brain activity.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I believe that the term is actually supposed to be separate from "lying" and even persons who "knowingly lie". A person may give an explanation or argument which seems consistent with itself, and the person believes is true, but which ignores certain facts or is based on false assumptions. This isn't dishonest in the classical sense that one is lying so you can not say "you are dishonest" without sounding as though you are outright calling the person a liar but one might say "you are ignoring the logical and intellectual pitfalls in your argument" or "you are being intellectually dishonest". You might say that the argument itself is 'dishonest' (due to ignoring of facts and being based on false assumptions) though the person making it may be honest in their belief and delivery. Such a person may commit yet another level of dishonesty by using such an argument intentionally to gloss over facts and uphold false assumptions for some purpose or other. This would be separate from the 'dishonesty' inherant in the argument and would be a sort of obfuscation and more like the classic definition of dishonest as you point out.

The Websters has a note at the bottom:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dishonest

"dishonest implies a willful perversion of truth in order to deceive, cheat, or defraud <a swindle usually involves two dishonest people>"

and that's what I've always understood. You can't be dishonest by ignorance, self-delusion, or neglect of rigor. You can be wrong, certainly, but not dishonest.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

The Websters has a note at the bottom:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dishonest

"dishonest implies a willful perversion of truth in order to deceive, cheat, or defraud <a swindle usually involves two dishonest people>"

and that's what I've always understood. You can't be dishonest by ignorance, self-delusion, or neglect of rigor. You can be wrong, certainly, but not dishonest.

Which is why it is a separate thing. It generally targets the argument and not so much the person. It does partly target the person though and as you have pointed out the choice of words makes it an ad hominem in nature while it cloaks itself in an attack on the argument.

But we digress. I think we mostly agree at any rate.

 

[swat4life]

Intelligence is not necessarily measured by actual brain activity.

Of course. Was this ever suggested or stated? Perhaps you're not familiar with the basics of neuroscience. If you are, you know that most people do not efficiently use the whole brain. It's quite similar to a man or a woman who mostly uses his "left" hand or his "right" hand - while the opposite hand lies limp at the side and grossly underdeveloped vis-a-vis the other side.

Whole brain development is "rather" similar to hand Ambidexterity - mental/cognitive ambidexterity if you will.

One of the advantages of whole brain usage and development is that the normal mental faculties that are woefully under-developed through standard education - <insert name of top tier university here> it's pretty much the same - gets utilized.

With more of the brain/mind being used (one could debate if they are synonymous we all know...) of course all measurements of intelligence demonstrate a noticable enhancement.

Someone actively involved in a job where the brain’s response to somatosensory stimuli are more widely distributed across the cortex on a regular basis, leads to permanent whole brain usage, i.e. active usage of all of the intellect not just SOME of it - CONSISTENTLY.

To get technical with regard to the actual technical measurement of intelligence, those with whole brain integration consistently score noticably higher on:

1) IQ Tests
2) The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking

and several other standards for measuring intelligence.
To illustrate it using a more right brained conceptualization/presentation, here's a quick little image from google:http://www.wblrd.sk.ca/curr_content/adapthandbook/learner/images/brain3.gif

In other words, when you have a job which causes actual PHYSICAL CHANGES in the make up of the brain and hemispheric connectivity which leads to long term integrative thinking, you LITERALLY BECOME MORE INTELLIGENT.

This assertion is not just a personal opinion; it's supported by research found in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences ( check ---> for anyone who's interested 12 (1991): 1105–1116.)
-
In sum, the subtle proposition I'm making here is that while scientists may think well of their type of specialized analytical work and the assumption of how intellectually rigorous it is, the fact is for the most part they are using very limited portions of their intellect due to the standard, lop-sided academic training anyone who's gone to a top tier university no doubt received.

True, many scientific jobs require, above average or even superior development of a few portions of the intellect - principally left-brained cognitive skills related to numbers, analysis and speech (well, if they aren't wearing braces, lol) - this is FAR from a fully complete usage of one's intellectual capabilities.

From my own personal experience, having been raised by scientists and having received degrees in the sciences, I found portions of my own intellect woefully less developed in relation to those portions such as creativity, unbounded imagination (i.e. imaginative exercises not constrained by linear logic), intuition, etc. essential for superior intellectual and cognitive decision making in a leadership position once I became an investor and business owner.

Unfortunately, I'm still overly dominant in the use of my left brain and actively practice exercises to advance hemispheric integrative thinking.

In any case, I'd encourage anyone interested in the practical application of these ideas to explore this topic because the benefits to this type of usage of one's intelligence are astounding - whether it's a new job you want, research funding, vastly higher financial net worth, or even enhanced moral reasoning capability - it's all there...

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Of course. Was this ever suggested or stated?

It seemed to me that you proposed TM experts as a candidate for for most intellectually rigorous 'job' based on evidence of increased neural activity.

 

[Count Iblis]

I've read that the brain evolved fast as a result of social interactions. Our ape-like ancestors lived in social groups where being slightly smarter than average gives you a huge advantage.


It turns out that being able to deceive others is the prime reason for this. Experiments with young children have shown that the children who are better at lying score higher on IQ tests and do better at school. So, quite literally, if you can fool others and get away with that, the others really are fools compared to you.


So, you would expect that the intellectually most challenging job would be one that requires you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal" Academia and other disciplines where there is an inherent purpose to the particular job being done, are potential exceptions to this rule.

 

[rootX]

I've read that the brain evolved fast as a result of social interactions. Our ape-like ancestors lived in social groups where being slightly smarter than average gives you a huge advantage.


It turns out that being able to deceive others is the prime reason for this. Experiments with young children have shown that the children who are better at lying score higher on IQ tests and do better at school. So, quite literally, if you can fool others and get away with that, the others really are fools compared to you.

Reference please

So, you would expect that the intellectually most challenging job would be one that requires you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff_investment_scandal" Academia and other disciplines where there is an inherent purpose to the particular job being done, are potential exceptions to this rule.

I am not sure how you are coming at this conclusion

 

[zoobyshoe]

Experiments with young children have shown that the children who are better at lying score higher on IQ tests and do better at school.

Question: does it show that children who are better at lying automatically resort to lying, or employ lies more often than other children?

 

[Count Iblis]

If I remember correctly, a test was done in which children were given some toy, but that toy was hidden in some box or something. The child was asked not to peek inside. The child was then left alone in the room. After some time, the experimentor comes back, ask the child if he/she has peeked inside. The child knows that if he/she answers "no", he/she will get a reward. Unlnown to the child, all actions of the child can be observed.

The results of these test show that children who are inclined not to stick to the rule and then not confess that they've violated the rule, do better in intelligence tests.

 

[zoobyshoe]

If I remember correctly, a test was done in which children were given some toy, but that toy was hidden in some box or something. The child was asked not to peek inside. The child was then left alone in the room. After some time, the experimentor comes back, ask the child if he/she has peeked inside. The child knows that if he/she answers "no", he/she will get a reward. Unlnown to the child, all actions of the child can be observed.

The results of these test show that children who are inclined not to stick to the rule and then not confess that they've violated the rule, do better in intelligence tests.

It seems to me the conclusion to be drawn is not about "better liars", but about people with disregard for authority.

 

[junglebeast]

I don't think there's any job more mentally demanding than being a professor working towards tenure who has to juggle teaching college courses with writing grant proposals and doing state of the art research in a real field of science to publish in peer reviewed journals.