Consequences of Low Intelligence

Consequences of Low IQ

Many of the strange things happening in business, finance, and within the courts nowadays is the result of the lowering of IQ over the past 100 years.  Bruce Charleton has been studying this for some time.  You can read about his findings in this article.  

In finance, we have hordes of people who cannot link numerical analysis to business fundamentals like honesty, employee spirituality, architecture, sensibility, creative flow, and the like.  For intelligent people, this is easy to do.  But, tell me when was the last time a Harvard MBA explained this to  you?  We have ignorant leaders who know how to handle the bottom like with “cuts” in spending, but have no idea how to generate revenue, and seem to not link up the cuts in spending to decreasing revenue.  American automotive companies are the biggest example of cutting your costs and pressuring suppliers, which will eventually crash the entire system of industry.  Low IQ leaders attack problems piecemeal, and have no sense of the system, and cannot think more than one level of cause and effect.  

Knowing details of finance, law, supply chain, revenue, costs, etc, is not enough intelligence to run a complicated company.  Systems knowledge is a must, or you will crash the system.  Having an MBA will not cut it, because the MBA does not select for intelligence.  

We have an entire civilization built by a people who were 15 points ahead of us in IQ.  They built the system we are using.  However, we no longer understand the system, and it keeps crashing due to the “fake” intelligence of paying attention to the bottom line - which is not even half of the required intelligence to run a complicated enterprise.  The MBA is perhaps the biggest scam of the age.  You cannot apply a financial or business formula and think that is all there is to running a company.  

We have people on the courts making decisions that are clearly low IQ.  I actually read court decisions.  In my background I have had to parse sections of codes for industry, law, and technical standards to apply to a concrete project or operation.  It is a matter of keeping track of categorical concepts, subcategories under those concepts, precedence of applicable code, cross references, and categories of interpretation underneath all this analysis.  In the past, a lot of people could do this.  Nowadays, fewer people are able to keep up and hold all this stuff in their heads to make a decision or judgment call.    

Reading court decisions nowadays, it is clear that the participants have no concept of a clearly defined term and concept.  They have no solid grasp of the principle of Mutual Exclusion.  They have no firm grasp of the logical functions of AND and OR.  You will find terms that have a mysterious meaning that can be interpreted by the individual in many ways.  You will find the lack of precedent on important related cases at hand, and instead the reliance upon fuzzy mysterious concepts that are ill defined, and more apt to be of use in poetry or music.  

What are the consequences of such madness?  We introduced reason as a method of settling differences in a court of law based on common understanding and agreement of terms.  When we do not use reason, and defined terms, what are we arguing?  We are arguing feelings.  What is the problem with this?  You cannot argue feelings.  If two people hate each other, you will not stop the hatred by arguing logic.

What are the further consequences of this?  Arguments will be settled by force.  What type of force?  There are many  types of force.  There is the barrel of a gun and the club, like a mob during a violent protest.  There is intimidation, which is the American Political Modus Operandi at this time.  There is charisma, which was used by dictators like Napoleon and Hitler to great power and often destruction.  There is hypnosis using the media.  There is seduction, the most common form of power maneuvering known to Man.  There are many kinds of force to be used by anyone so inclined to use such methods.  

We are no longer a nation of Laws, but a nation of Men.  We do not have the IQ to maintain the civilization we were given.  Each fool is arguing his concrete case without reference to the overall system - context.  Each fool on a court is arguing his feelings. Each fool on the street is throwing Molotov cocktails to impress his girlfriend he slept with last night for the first time.  

Religious fanatics do not discuss theology, but grab any random scripture from the Bible or Koran, and uses his feelings to discern the interpretation instead of studying the last 2000 years of argumentation from the Fathers of the Church.  

But, I guess this is what it is like to live in a Third World country.  Everything is chaos and Force rules.  Keep your head down so you do not get shot at.  

But to be a Man requires that we do not complain without offering a solution.  Complaining without offering a solution is whining.  What are we to do?  Study Machiavelli.  Study Robert Green’s “The 48 Laws of Power.”  Never appear to be weak.  Destroy your enemy totally when attacked.  Force rules, and you cannot afford to be weak.  

That is the world we have now.  There are no Laws.  There are only Men.  Strong men and weak men.  Do not be weak.

That is the point.  The only point.  It can be a hard pill to swallow.  It does not go down easy.  But, that is where we are.  You cannot wish it to be otherwise.  Because you will be killed for wishing. 

Have fun and enjoy!

///

Freddy Martini  

Cold Shower Week One

Cold Shower

Cold showers are recommended for several reasons.  I will report my first hand experiences.

The How and the What

The first week was the adjustment period.  I have been doing it for just over one week.  I would bathe or shower as usual.  Then, after I was finished with cleaning, I would turn the faucet knob right one inch at a time.  I was easing into the cold.  The warmth was still there, with increasing cold.  Once the cold hit me fully, my body would get shocked and I would get a bit dizzy.  At this point I would exit the shower and that was all for the first week.  On the seventh day, I was getting used to the shock, and I figured that if I would not anticipate the shock, perhaps it would not be as shocking.  It is perhaps like a gun: when you fire the gun at the target, you will have more accuracy if you do not anticipate the recoil.  Make the bullet firing surprise you.  The same with the cold shower.  It worked!  After I psyched out myself, I could stay under the cold for a while longer.  Thus, the second phase - I do not get dizzy and exit, but I feel the cold, unanticipated, and I rotate under the spigot for a little more time, making sure that my entire body has flowing cold water on every spot - front, back, face, neck, etc.

The Why

Why take a cold shower when it shocks your body and is uncomfortable?  There are some health benefits on cold showers - physical heath benefits like fat loss, better hair, better skin, etc, but I was after a more lofty goal: spiritual.  I wanted to approach it as meditation.  

I think in our modern world, we are not exposed to stimulants like our ancestors were.  Thus, the little things have the ability to bother us.  Pebbles in our shoes, greasy hands, sweat dripping into our eyes - these things may drive us nuts if we are not hardened to common irritants.  A cold shower shocks every part of your skin.  When it hits your face, you have the same reaction as it someone threw you into a cold river.  Thus, it throws a large stimulant at your system, and thus, during the rest of your day, mild irritants are dialed way down to the periphery of your consciousness.  That fat guy in the office who throws tantrums?  Well, he is just part of the background noise, and you barely notice him any longer.  When you exit your car and drop your cell phone on the concrete as you are walking toward a restaurant entrance - it no longer breaks your stride or injects stress hormones to throw you off for a few minutes because it is now just minor background noise, and does not irritate your senses because the cold shower conditioned you for shock, and irritants no longer register as irritants, but as noise.  

Conclusion

Like hard exercise makes us physically tough.  Like trials make us hardened characters.  A cold shower in the morning is a good way to turn all your irritants into background noise.  The irritants are dialed down from a 10 to a 3.  

Is this worth the discomfort?  Yes it is.  When your mind and body can focus upon the task at hand and ignore the background noise and irritants, you have a large gain for a minuscule cost.  

And, you get all the physical health benefits to go along with that.  Targeted exposure to Eustress increases our effectiveness, and we live that much more intensely and excitedly.

///

Freddy Martini  

Fundamentals of Analysis

Fundamentals of Analysis

What is the essence of analysis?  It is categories.  It is like biological organization into animal and plant kingdoms.  Perhaps it can be vertebrates or invertebrates.  Under each category are subcategories that do not cross fit into both categories.  It is mutual exclusivity that defines analysis.  Break things into categorical pieces, and ensure that the pieces within a level are mutual exclusive categories.  This is the process of analysis. 

We Have a Fire

Let us take a concrete example and perform some analysis.  We have a fire.  A building burned down.  What is required for a fire?  Three things: (1) Oxygen, (2) Fuel, and (3) Sufficient Heat.  This is called an AND gate in logic, which means, all three factors must be present, or Fire does not exist.  Take away any one of these three, and there is no fire.  So, let us ask the question.  Was there sufficient oxygen?  Probably so, unless we were under laboratory conditions where someone removed oxygen, we can safely assume there was a 20% concentration in the air.  Was there fuel?  What can be fuel to a fire?  Wood, gasoline, cloth, dust, organic material, etc.  One must identify the fuel.  What else do we need?  We need a source of heat.  What could be a source of heat to ignite the Fuel?  Cigarette lighter, stove, matches, hot wire from a shorted electrical circuit, pilot light from a gas stove, flint material rubbed together to produce a spark if near gasoline.  Thus, to establish the cause of the fire, one must identify the three things necessary to make the fire, and clearly connect them to the physical manifestation of the three requirements.  What gave oxygen?  Air.  What gave fuel?  Gasoline.  What gave heat?  A hot stove.  Congratulations!  You have performed basic cause and effect, and have identified by analysis the cause of the fire.

Murder Scene

Let’s use an example with identifying a suspect for a crime.  There is a dead man on the floor of a hotel on the second floor.  The dead man is 230 pounds, muscular, and 29 years old.  His arm is broken, and his face is smashed in.  The door bolt is broken and the door handle on the bathroom door is broken off.

Who could have done this?  Let us look at the first thing: Skill.  Who would have the skills to do this?  Who can break off a door bolt?  A strong man - perhaps a muscular man.  Could it be a school girl?  No.  A teenage 11 year old boy?  No.  An 80 year old woman?  No.  A 70 year old man?  No.  To overcome and kill a man 230 pounds and muscular, what would he look like?  Probably muscular, very strong, not a skinny pimply faced teenager.  Probably a trained fighter, boxer, or martial artist.  

So, we have established categories above, and excluded a lot of options in the analysis.  Male, 20-35 years old, muscular, fighting skills, strong as hell, strong hands.  So, this eliminates a lot of people so that one can focus on the profile of the suspect.  You do not strip search a 100 year old woman in a nursing home to see if she was the suspect, even if she hated the dead man and said she wanted to kill him.  She just could not have done the job.  Maybe hired for the job, but not performed the job.  

Rapid Heart Pulse

What is the cause of a rapid heart pulse?  Adrenaline causes the heart to pump faster.  Why does the heart pump faster?  What does the heart do?  It mainly provides oxygen to all things in the body.  Thus, when the heart beats fast, something in the body is asking for more oxygen.  When you run fast, your muscles need more oxygen, and secrete chemicals and hormones to signal the need for oxygen, which signals an increase in adrenaline, which raises the heart rate.   Something is lacking oxygen, and demands action from the heart to provide the extra oxygen by pumping faster.  If you are resting in your bed and your heart is racing, what does this mean?  Something is asking for oxygen.  Perhaps your lungs are clogged from pneumonia and your body is not getting enough oxygen from a regular heart rate, and thus, the system demands faster pulse to make up for the deficiency.  Perhaps you are scared to death of something, and your body signals with chemicals and hormones to prepare for Fight or Flight, which raises the heart rate to prepare for very intense muscle movement for a Fight or Flight.  

///

What is the takeaway?  Ask yourself “What are the necessary conditions for this to have happened?”  “What could have caused each one of these conditions?”  Write down all the conditions, and trace backward to a cause of the condition.  Make a picture of cause and effect.

///

Freddy Martini  

Applied Knowledge

Applied Knowledge

We do not get paid for what we know.  We get paid for doing.  We do not get paid for time.  Applied Knowledge is where we get paid.  The flip side is the “time is money” way of thinking.  This is false also.  We do not get paid for “putting in the time” even though some people fool themselves into thinking this way.  We get paid for creating value.  If we spend time without creating value, someone will get fired or some company will go bankrupt, or something will eventually happen that will break the system.  Hours are meaningless.  This is perhaps the most painful thing for people to learn coming out of the factory age.  Working with manual labor in a factory, people made the classical and critical mistake of confusing correlation with causation.  A guy works 60 hours in one week, and gets paid for “time.”  In many instances, an increase in time correlated with increase in unit output, although everybody knows that companies do not get paid for the time they keep employees working, but for the output they produce.  Thus, it was very easy to confuse time and money.  Now that we live in a post industrial age, time and money are so completely disjointed, they are anti-correlative, i.e., usually those who spend the most time “at the office” are usually the least productive.  Production is now completely correlated with mental focus, and not time.  The problem is that manual laborers with a scarcity and poverty mentality - perhaps 80-90 of the population keeps this mentality - still hang on to the “time is money” ritual because for a large part of the 20th century, this correlation existed.  

It no longer exists.  In fact, it never existed.  We just assumed causation when in fact we were experiencing correlation from our brief experience of factory industrialization.  Where are the most productive people most of the time?  Out and about, on vacation, traveling, golfing, socializing, making contacts, and having a blast.  Those of us who are clinging to manual labor rituals and attitudes - where are we?  Making less than $200K always.  Nobody breaks the $200K mark with Work Ethic - you must be absolutely focused on Value Creation to crack that level.  

One can learn all about this with Steve Siebold’s book, “177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class.”

What is another consequence of this old manual labor way of thinking?  You put in the time in school, and now you deserve high pay.  This is another case of confusing correlation with causation.  Again, any form of wealth comes from Value Creation.  Knowledge and certificates are not tradable for wealth.  Only applied knowledge is tradable for wealth.  Mathematical equations are not valuable; mathematical equations solving a problem with a machine for which people purchase is tradable for wealth.  A certificate in psychology is useless.  Applying psychological knowledge to solve a problem with a client who is rich and working through his “head trash” on a multimillion dollar deal is tradable wealth.  

What is another example of industrial poverty mindset?  When we spend hours working on our house or on our cars, we are making the same mistake (with the exception if we are a mechanic or construction worker).  When you spend 5 hours doing something a mechanic can perform in 30 minutes, and you think you “saved a lot of money,” you are making an extremely foolish error.  You pay $100 to a mechanic for a job versus you spending 5 hours?  Think about that.  You can take one hour and think up of new ideas worth at least $200 dollars to cover the charge.  Spending 10 minutes in meditation will gain you well over $100 in value.  Thus, that 5 hours you wasted working on your house or your car could have been spent on things ten times more valuable than the $100 you could have paid a mechanic to do.  This is the foolishness of thinking in a poverty and industrial mindset.  Time is not money.  Time is Life.  

We all need to think Value Creation, and tradeoffs.  You can never get back Time.  So, never trade time for money, or never put yourself in a position with this mindset.  

Then, strange good things begin to happen.  When you “spend” that $100 for the mechanic to fix your car, you will notice that for some strange reason, you have more money and time.  You just never noticed the value of money and time before.  Now, you know. 

///

Freddy Martini  

Random Notes 20150607

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Random Notes 20150607

A Real Man Finds the Way

It amazes me that many men do not understand that the core quality of a Man is he who finds a way.  This means, we are responsible for winning, no matter what.  You cannot argue your way away from responsibility and say it is not your problem.  You must creatively pursue ends toward the goal with absolutely no excuses.  We are paid to win.  When we lose, we gain nothing; thereafter, we must regroup to fight the next obstacle with greater magnanimity and creativity, and pure force of will.  There is no option for inaction - absolutely none.  Inaction is losing, and that is intolerable to Men.  We must find a way to Win or Die.  

Southern Heat on a 30-40 mile Bike Ride

Living up North for 8 years in Indianapolis, I needed a way to acclimate to the Houston heat for the summer.  I grew up in the swamplands of South Louisiana about 2 hours from New Orleans, so I have some genetic history with this type of climate, but still - It has been about 15 years since I have had to live in the heat and humidity of the Gulf Coast climate.  

So, what is a dude like me to do to solve this problem?  If you read this blog, you know I am the most analytical guy on the planet, so I devised a plan that is fail safe.  Well, fail safe if I do not die of heat stroke!  I take the hottest point of the day, and I ride my bike for at least 30 miles within the space of two days.  Today, I will actually make 40 miles in the heat, counting yesterday.  Does this work?  Well, I was at a family event a few weeks back outside with boiling crawfish.  A few people there who never left the Gulf Coast climate in their lives were complaining about the heat, and I was feeling just fine, and had not even noticed the heat.  So, that is one solid data point.

When I was riding yesterday, I think the temperature was between 91*F (32.8*C) and 93*F (33.9*C).  

Houston People and IQ

The population is skewed toward a lower IQ over here.  When shopping for commodities, Wal-Mart is just an unpleasant place to be.  We all have been to the websites making fun of Wal-Mart people, and over here, the humor is reality.  You will see obese people riding battery powered buggies all the time, and you will see obese people wearing very short shorts.  I prefer to shop at higher value places like Costco and Sam’s Club where the people serving you tend to have higher IQ’s and do not just stare at you with a blank face when you speak to them in complete sentences with correct English grammar and pronunciation, and speak clearly with authority.  

I find that even among technical people over here, who tend to be on the higher end of the local IQ spectrum, they are not accustomed to higher level abstract and creative thinking as I was accustomed to when I lived in Indianapolis or in California.  I have to push them.  I have to give them responsibility, and not just hand them the answers without creative effort.  It is as if they are still in school, expecting to only deliver the “right answer” to the professor, when in fact, a man is responsible for creating new worlds with absolutely no excuses.  If there is an obstacle we must overcome, there are no excuses, we must overcome them.  This requires creatively coming up with one alternative after another until the best idea pops out and you move forward with the best idea of many.  Standing still and waiting is never an option when working with high achievers, unless you are meditating and focusing upon the solution.

Cold Showers

I have been reading Tim Ferriss and specifically his book, “The Four Hour Body.”  I decided to try out a cold shower.  Now, I am 41 years old and live in Houston, so this will be a shock to my system.  So, I showered as normal with warm water and slowly turned down the temperature.  As it got colder, it got to a point of shock where I would normally shout something like “Yaaaa!”  Trust me, your senses are wide awake after this moment.  You feel alive.  You feel energetic.  The Eustress brings out all sorts of consciousness in the moment you would not have otherwise.  Perhaps it can be a form of meditation “on steroids.”  I will continue to experiment with this in the next few weeks and see where this goes. 

///

Freddy Martini