Friday, January 21, 2005
Clever men less likely to kill themselves | The Register
Whilst University types may be taking some solace from this report, there's a lot about it that doesn't seem well thought through.
For example, dentists are the most suicidal of professionals - and yet they have to be intelligent to go through years of medical training and dental school. Okay, you may argue that peering into people's mouths all day is not a great sign of intelligence, but nonetheless it flies in the face of the above research.
And the reasoning given is not conclusive. It seems much more likely to me that people with lower scores in intelligence tests had an intellectually unstimulated upbringing, which is more common in deprived familes - and it would be this deprivation that would cause them to have reason to kill themselves.
Society is a complex system, people also, and understanding people is not easy - which makes for a challenge for interactive systems.
Whilst University types may be taking some solace from this report, there's a lot about it that doesn't seem well thought through.
For example, dentists are the most suicidal of professionals - and yet they have to be intelligent to go through years of medical training and dental school. Okay, you may argue that peering into people's mouths all day is not a great sign of intelligence, but nonetheless it flies in the face of the above research.
And the reasoning given is not conclusive. It seems much more likely to me that people with lower scores in intelligence tests had an intellectually unstimulated upbringing, which is more common in deprived familes - and it would be this deprivation that would cause them to have reason to kill themselves.
Society is a complex system, people also, and understanding people is not easy - which makes for a challenge for interactive systems.
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(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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