Quote:
Originally Posted by Xander
Actually the correlation is there. Many intelligent people can become depressed and feel misunderstood because of their intellect.
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It was tongue in cheek, but good clarification. (I also find it amusing that smart people can't solve their own problems... but I realise a lot are too young to do much about it... though honestly, if you are *that* smart and on the internet, you can solve it. The reality is that most people that are "smart" but not "genius" really over estimate their own intelligence, leading to them being arrogant and standoff ish. The problem then lies with being an ass rather than smart.
FWIW, I never had a problem with people and intelligence - I had a problem with head in clouds, regardless of how smart they are.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Santtu
No matter how much safe-guarding there can be on any published information, the human factor can never be taken away. Not if the papers would go through a thousand committees before being published. Not that the human factor should be taken away.
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I agree entirely. I meant it as a battle between two world views more than a glorification of statistics. No data is perfect; but ignoring data without evaluating its worth is the weakness I was describing.
Data is only as good as what it measures - the human element exists both in the gathering and in the interpretation. Most mistakes are made not understanding what was measured - if you don't work with cutting edge data, most of the bad stuff gets pruned out. It's just two sides of the same error coin - over dependence and ignoring it.