Bill Gates Skipped All His Classes But Got A's Anyway

IdiotInCharge said:
If you start setting bars, they will be manipulated for political gain, and that destroys the democratic process. Yes, it's annoying that not everyone is informed- but many who are 'informed' are rather much misinformed, and given that a vote in an election is based on a prediction or belief of what a particular person will do when they get into office- whether they will or won't, or even can- even being informed doesn't mean a whole lot in the end.

Better to keep participation open and deal with the consequences; if the situation becomes egregious, the people will express it with their votes, i.e. packing every legislative body across the country with conservatives of all types after Obama whined about 'obstruction' (also known as checks and balances working as intended) and proclaimed that he'd start using executive orders to enact his 'policies'.
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So just having voters that always vote straight D or R no matter what because they have absolutely no clue what they are voting on is just fine?

These same people would vote yes for their "party" if something like - " Local Amendment 1 - Implement plan to reduce poverty" was on the ballot and the real text of the amendment was - "Kill all those under a certain income level and use their bodies to build a dam."

Makes no sense.

If there is no bar set, the whole process goes down the drain.
 
cyclone3d said:
So just having voters that always vote straight D or R no matter what because they have absolutely no clue what they are voting on is just fine?

These same people would vote yes for their "party" if something like - " Local Amendment 1 - Implement plan to reduce poverty" was on the ballot and the real text of the amendment was - "Kill all those under a certain income level and use their bodies to build a dam."

Makes no sense.

If there is no bar set, the whole process goes down the drain.
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It's not 'just fine' at all; but it's better than the alternative. See Gerrymandering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for an example of one issue where we haven't yet found a solution that won't be abused.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
It's not 'just fine' at all; but it's better than the alternative. See Gerrymandering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for an example of one issue where we haven't yet found a solution that won't be abused.
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An easy fix for this would be to require the bills or whatever to be read by the voters prior to voting on them. They bills or whatever would be required to be put in plain English so that anybody with at least a 3rd grade education should be able to understand.

The same goes in voting for politicians. They voters should be required to know what each politician stands for. This would have to be approved by the person seeking office AND also be able to be backed up by facts, voting records, or whatever that makes sure that politicians are being honest in what they are going to do once they are in office.

If they get elected and then do something contrary to what they said they would do, a new vote is required to determine whether or not they are allowed to stay in office or get kicked out. The reason for the vote would have to be in plain English on the ballots.

Some things need to be made such that it is to much of an inconvenience to participate in for those who do not really care.

And those that really do care would welcome the change.

It would be a huge move in the right direction.
 
pothb said:
Well... thats high school. And High School is terribly easy.
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i also found that test given through Omni magazine and found i could join the six sigma society. didn't use the membership for while we were deployed,but interesting when we got back to conus. You;d be quite amazed at how many of the electronics tech rates did very well, and that did 't particularly want to be officers.. More for bragging rites than anything else.
 
TheCommander said:
IQ can give "some" insight about a person's thinking but overall IQ is pretty meaningless
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hahahaha no. youve got it ass-backwards: IQ means a lot but it cant give you insight into the persons thought process or common sense. its raw intelligence quantified, it doesnt tell you how the person will apply it however
 
Darkswordz said:
Geniuses and visionaries are just a different cut of folk. They don't think and act like regular people.
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Bill Gates announces a Windows GUI OS
Steve Jobs: Bill, you are stealing from us!
Bill Gates: It's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV only to find out you had already stolen it.

Not that he isn't smart but that Xerox crew was ahead of its time
 
IdiotInCharge said:
If you start setting bars, they will be manipulated for political gain, and that destroys the democratic process. Yes, it's annoying that not everyone is informed- but many who are 'informed' are rather much misinformed, and given that a vote in an election is based on a prediction or belief of what a particular person will do when they get into office- whether they will or won't, or even can- even being informed doesn't mean a whole lot in the end.

Better to keep participation open and deal with the consequences; if the situation becomes egregious, the people will express it with their votes, i.e. packing every legislative body across the country with conservatives of all types after Obama whined about 'obstruction' (also known as checks and balances working as intended) and proclaimed that he'd start using executive orders to enact his 'policies'.
Click to expand...

Personally, the democratic process is nothing to be especially proud of. This is why state Senators were originally to be appointed by the state legislatures, typically from within their own ranks -- which meant that, while the House was to be directly elected and would represent the "average Joe", with the Senate you would have someone appointed by people who typically had some education, savvy and political sense. So the Senate was intended as a check or balance against the House, and vice-versa. It wasn't until 1911 that people decided they wanted to directly elect the Senate too -- and passed the 17th Amendment (ratified in 1913).

In any case, my own feeling is that ANYONE who actually wants power over their fellow man and is crazy enough to even WANT to run for Congress (or President) is someone who should never be given that amount of power in the first place!

Personally, the best option to get at least a few members of Congress who are at least semi-honest, avoid the entire system of political contributions, special interests, etc. is to completely get rid of voting completely and make service in Congress like jury duty. Essentially, draw someone's name out of hat, exclude anyone with serious mental issues or who had ever committed a felony, require their employers to hold their job during the period they served (and have the government pay for replacement help in the interim), require them to go to Washington for four years, do their service to their country, and then, after four years prohibit them from EVER holding any public office ever again, and from ever being allowed to receive any Federal contracts or from having a controlling/significant voting interest in any corporation or company that ever received a Federal contract. In other words, being in Congress should be a DUTY to your country, your should be paid to do it, but you shouldn't ever get an untoward benefit from it or be allowed to wield undue influence. With our current system, you are pretty much guaranteed that to ever get elected to Congress or the Presidency, you already have to be totally corrupt and bought and paid for by some group or the other!

Of course, I also like a suggestion once made by a friend of mine's dad: we need to change the law such that Congress members are elected for life -- but maintain the current term lengths......;)
 
vasta said:
Bill Gates announces a Windows GUI OS
Steve Jobs: Bill, you are stealing from us!
Bill Gates: It's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV only to find out you had already stolen it.

Not that he isn't smart but that Xerox crew was ahead of its time
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Neither of them really invented anything, but they were great businessmen and "doers." They all had guys like Wozniak and the people at Xerox PARC to play off of.
 
You guys are amazing, I mean you guys passed high school and entry level college courses without attending, I am so surprised you haven't founded the next Microsoft!

Seriously though, the ASVAB? Really? lol
 
I got 129 on my GT and had to do the whole test in 40 minutes because I left my packet on the bus lol, awesome start to my career lol. That said I think things may have changed because I thought 130 was the max, but it was like 10 years ago in a few months, I can't remember lol
 
aeliusg said:
Neither of them really invented anything, but they were great businessmen and "doers." They all had guys like Wozniak and the people at Xerox PARC to play off of.
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Some seem to forget...Right place right time... Once the money starts flowing our business first second and last economy buys you a lot of leeway to make tons of mistakes.... I mean crash the whole economy and get a bonus now a days.
 
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well he learned early how to dodge stuff and yes world of modern IT is a product of people like the Woz even if others where selling it

Bill was a programmer tho ? Basic..etc, Jobs didn't know how to code
 
pothb said:
Well... thats high school. And High School is terribly easy.
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Everything is easy, if you do it long enough...you trained for college by going to high school.. you trained for high school by going to middle school.... you trained for middle school by going to grade school... and you trained for grade school by your parents... and prior to that, you just learn once you are born how to talk and interact.... its in your DNA to learn to some extent or another...some people are just better at anything you think you are good at... welcome to life...lets go get hammered now...
 
Uvaman2 said:
Some seem to forget...Right place right time... Once the money starts flowing our business first second and last economy buys you a lot of leeway to make tons of mistakes.... I mean crash the whole economy and get a bonus now a days.
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Right place right time... then things get changed... Rockefeller was a big example of this... what he did will most likely never happen again just because of all the laws in place now...he ran roughshod over just about anything you could possibly imagine to become what he became.... decades later they broke him up, but the damage was already done...interesting fellow indeed....

Bill Gates just repackaged bread and added a twist tie to keep it from going bad... and made a shit ton of money off of it...but he had to do all the legwork, which is something most of us would never do...
 
SS_Wehrwolf said:
Everything is easy, if you do it long enough...you trained for college by going to high school.. you trained for high school by going to middle school...
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You say that, but some people..... well... lets just say they don't do so good. Or well, if you wanna be grammatically correct. I hated english. >_>
 
__hollywood|meow said:
hahahaha no. youve got it ass-backwards: IQ means a lot but it cant give you insight into the persons thought process or common sense. its raw intelligence quantified, it doesnt tell you how the person will apply it however
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I don't think IQ means as much as people like to think; having been able to score very high on an IQ test hasn't enhanced my life much, I certainly don't feel like I belong in the 99th percentile. I look at it more like having the capacity for thought and perhaps problem solving, but actually doing those things on a consistant basis is something else entirely, because life is happening while we're trying to be these thinking machines, and life can seriously mess up your ability to think (I failed two of my final exams, and got D's on the other two when my girlfriend died two weeks before the end of the school year; I could barely function through almost midway the next semester). The only real thing that scoring high on an IQ test indicates is.......that you're good at taking IQ tests. Which I am. I don't know why, but I could always ace all sorts of multiple choice tests as long as I had some knowledge of the subjects, it's how I got through school. The only other thing? IQ tests are made by other people who score well on IQ tests. So they're kind of skewed to measure, and apply value, to the same type of thinking. I kind of wonder how DaVinci would have scored. Or Mozart. Franklin. Edison. Being a genius comes in all sorts of forms, not just being able to be a human calculator, memorize long lists of numbers, or be able to imagine a 3D image of something and rotate it around.
 
SS_Wehrwolf said:
...its in your DNA to learn to some extent or another...some people are just better at anything you think you are good at... welcome to life...lets go get hammered now...
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:D Sounds good to me!
 
nightfly, your setup seems to suggest that you think we disagree a bit, but your personal anecdote plainly bolsters my point

nightfly said:
The only real thing that scoring high on an IQ test indicates is.......that you're good at taking IQ tests
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jaden smith tier statement :D of course you have to be educated to perform well on a mainly academic test...but thats only half of it. the other half is the innate, immutable, & very measurable capacity of your mental faculties
 
I hated highschool and like some others in this thread hardly attended class (slept most of the time) and never did my homework assignments. I did almost always get A's and B's on my quizzes and tests however, a majority of my classes used a percentage system where homework accounted for a large portion of your final grade in addition to said tests and quizzes. I always ended up with C's and sometimes B's. Hard to fathom one could get A's when completely ignoring their assignments unless they simply didn't count for anything.

Only classes I ever aced and really cared about/enjoyed were my Cisco Academy courses my Jr. and Sr. years. I spent the time that I should of used for homework studying/learning about computers and networking, my passion is now my profession and I make good money doing it. It worked out for me but that's not always the case for everybody. Highscool did help me develop sound social skills that would greatly benefit me later in life, so there is that.
 
nightfly said:
I don't think IQ means as much as people like to think; having been able to score very high on an IQ test hasn't enhanced my life much, I certainly don't feel like I belong in the 99th percentile. I look at it more like having the capacity for thought and perhaps problem solving, but actually doing those things on a consistant basis is something else entirely, because life is happening while we're trying to be these thinking machines, and life can seriously mess up your ability to think (I failed two of my final exams, and got D's on the other two when my girlfriend died two weeks before the end of the school year; I could barely function through almost midway the next semester). The only real thing that scoring high on an IQ test indicates is.......that you're good at taking IQ tests. Which I am. I don't know why, but I could always ace all sorts of multiple choice tests as long as I had some knowledge of the subjects, it's how I got through school. The only other thing? IQ tests are made by other people who score well on IQ tests. So they're kind of skewed to measure, and apply value, to the same type of thinking. I kind of wonder how DaVinci would have scored. Or Mozart. Franklin. Edison. Being a genius comes in all sorts of forms, not just being able to be a human calculator, memorize long lists of numbers, or be able to imagine a 3D image of something and rotate it around.
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If you consistently score well on IQ tests over time, you're more intelligent than people who don't, there's no way around it. The same could be done with tests for grip strength or fine motor control; sure, just because you do well wouldn't make you a great athlete, but great athletes would never do poorly compared to the population mean over time. So, regardless, I doubt any of those "geniuses" would score less than 100 on any conventional battery of tests, and the validity of IQ is not called into question on that basis. The problem is quantifying and quallifying scores well above the mean, which becomes a game without much point to it like you said. Yes, it's true, "genius" is not only IQ, but that doesn't mean IQ is meaningless or that people on the wrong end of the bell curve are going to make it over the hump any time soon in objective pursuits. So let's not give false hope to the college dropouts out there. :(
 
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