Aliens Are The Best People 1998 For 23 years the technology library at ASU, was a close friend of mine. Fond memories of the ASU libraries got the best of me today. I spent most of the day combing the stacks for answers to questions. I found none and realized the reason I haven't been there in several years, it's too hard to find minutia among a million books of maxima. Minutia is there, but it could take days to find each bit of it. In the 70s and 80s that was fine. There was no other way. Even the slowness of the library was a wonderful thing which I savored. Each question answered was a jewel I cherished, partly because of the work it took to earn those jewels. That time of life and that experience is over now. I'll probably never go to a library again. It's a realization that's made me very sad today. The anticipation, the feeling of walking through the front door, the quiet, the smell, the tone of every library I've been in... have all been the same everywhere in the world.
Home again and with library nostalgia put to bed, I've figured out why I haven't been to the libraries recently. In the last three years the internet has grown beyond belief. It's gong to get MUCH bigger in the next few years. Each search engine has it's own specialty, but soon one of them will become better than any others. For now, it takes several search engines to find what you want. Each gives very different results. The last year has seen the greatest improvement. Just a year ago it was almost as hard to find anything on the internet, as it is in a library.
Today, I was mostly interested in finding current statistics on IQ... for the entire human population. The most recent I found was from the 1960s. I realized while searching, that this is my oldest intellectual pursuit. I've been studying intelligence longer than anything else, and more consistently than anything else. BB often laughed at my obsession, on Saturday mornings in the Long Beach library. They were usually reading anything they could find about homosexuality, always looking for confirmation to overcome constant denigration by the Navy, and society in general. One of the librarians realized their interest and began looking for books to suggest. She was often excited to see us, and dragged BB into the stacks to show them a book.
My only real interest in life is intellectual improvement. It's like fixing roads that work fine, but can always use a turn lane or signs pointing out roadside attractions.
I have many, but my first intellectual fixation began like this:My two older brothers started me on the path, by demonstrating a failure of their intelligence. On the corner of 86th St. and Highland, Steve and Bob were the impetus of my first epiphany. I knew they were up to no good, but I didn't care. My brothers asked me to go for a bike ride with them. I recall the knowledge at that moment, that they had never included me in anything they did. I could tell by their demeanor that they were planning something bad, but I didn't care. I jumped on my tiny kids bike, which I'd outgrown, and headed down the driveway. Steve and Bob rode along with me at a slow walking speed. Happy to be doing something with my brothers, I pedaled fast as I could going East on Mariposa then North to Chaparral and West to 86th street.
Steve and Bob were starting to get excited and I suspected their plan was about to begin. They stopped at the corner of Highland and 86th St. They pointed West down Highland street and told me to go home. For a moment I was confused about their motive, but it didn't take more than a moment to sort it out. They thought it would be funny to get me lost. My brothers couldn't understand that their plan failed. They couldn't understand that I knew this wasn't OUR Highland street. Standing on the sidewalk, I explained it to them in several different ways, even describing the path to take to get to OUR Highland street.
My epiphany came with the realization that my brothers lacked something I had. My brothers were unable to evaluate the situation, and realize that I wasn't falling for their scheme to get me lost. Even when I told them I knew what they were up to, they didn't understand that I was smart enough to figure it out. While pointing at the street sign, Steve and Bob just kept insisting that this was our street. I finally rode away, leaving the two of them standing in the street.
It took several years of studying people's mental behavior, but I finally discovered that the concept which intrigued me was called intelligence. On that corner the concept appeared as a fully formed though in my mind. A true epiphany. I have now spent 33 years on this subject. I have far too many ways of testing people. Mostly irrelevant questions with a subtle hidden intent. That hidden intent is the key. It's the question behind the question. The secondary question is answered by the total response. Words in the reply have little or nothing to do with the intent of the question. It often gets me labeled as a nutball, but I just learned a great deal about the labeler. Once in a while I have an excited happy moment as someone is able to see through my attempts, and confronts me with their impression of what I'm doing.I call them aliens, because they don't belong to the human population. They must be from a different planet.
Aliens are the best people. They come in every form, but all have one thing in common, much higher than average intelligence. Closer to average intelligence and I can teach them what I'm doing. Many people get excited by the idea, but soon seem to forget how it works. Below average IQ and I can't even get the concept into their head for an instant.
