Here's a problem for the high IQ people on Futurework List.
Problem: Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is
married,
but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?
A. Yes
B. No
C. Cannot be determined
You will almost certainly get the answer wrong on first pass. But try
again, and think backwards and forwards and then you can be certain you've
got it right.
This is a type of problem that's not presented in a normal IQ test because
even high IQ brains take an energetically-miserly short-cut -- the same as
most everybody else. In a state of nature, most brains have to respond
with a quick response -- or they're dead. I'm minded that Bernanke suffers
from this affliction with the latest QE2 announcement. If he were to try
and think through his problem in the same way that the J.A.G. problem can
be solved, and look at the other side of his apparent munificence of $600b
then he might begin to wonder if the recipients will:
A. actually receive it, or will the banks trap en route?
B. if they receive it, will they spend it or save it (because they are now
very worried about the future)?
C. if they spend it will it give them the same excitement and satisfaction
that, in previous generations, they gained from buying a car, or TV or that
lovely new home in the suburbs? In short will they be able to get the
economic machine going as their forebears did between about 1780 and 1980
-- but without a vast credit industry (or the government) thrusting money
at them?
(The J.A.G. problem comes from an article in last November's Scientific
American by Keith E. Stanovich, "Rational and Irrational Thought: The
Thinking That IQ Tests Miss".)
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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