Quote of the day
Tommy linked up 100 of George Carlin’s best lines. My fave:
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Blah, blah, I know. Median, yada, yada. Still funny.
Update: Make it two quotes today:
In a just universe stupid would hurt.
May 15th, 2007 at 10:33 am
I’ll bet using the median makes it worse/funnier, not better/less funny. The mean is almost certainly skewed to the right, as there is no limit to how smart one individual can be, but no one, not even Oliver Willis, gets assigned a negative IQ.
May 15th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
“The very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, “You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.”
May 15th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
>Blah, blah, I know. Median, yada, yada. Still funny.
Actually, since intelligence is distributed according to a left bounded guassian distribution (you can’t have an negative IQ, but there is no corresponding hard maxmimum limit) MORE than half of the population has below average intelligence (the mean of the distribution is higher than the median).
May 16th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
“In a just universe stupid would hurt.”
Know what I know about Carlin, I’ll translate that: “If I had the power and could do it secretly, I’d hurt people I hate.”
In fact, in a free society, the smarter will tend to be the more sucessful and the less smart will tend to be less successful. To the extent that one serves his/her fellow human beings, one will succeed in the marketplace.
So ease up George, advocate a free society and you’ll get your wish to some degree (I once had 3 credit cards, for example. That was dumb, and it did hurt.)