Blessed! Once more.

Woke up with a bad back again, but still glad I'm taking my breath. Almost died last night. Serious. Okay, perhaps not dead, dead, but probably crushed and definitely not able to be typing away like now….

While crossing a traffic junction after class in the late evening, a weekend-plate Honda zoomed right past our paths, clearly having been mistakenly thought that red lights meant “danger, go, and speed faster!” It zipped by so fast, ALow* was clearly shocked for an instant, before breaking out into curses & swears using all his tort law knowledge (the tort tutor must be very pleased that he remembers all his tort principles. Keke.).

ALow* was shocked because for that split second, if I kept my pace, or had taken a slightly bigger step ahead of him, I would probably have gone home to the emerald courts, up the sapphire skies. But it was not time yet. Haha…

After the car had whizzed out of sight, he turned to me and asked what made me slow down my pace at the instance that car made its dash towards us. I looked at him, blinked blankly, before struggling a lame answer like “my bag was too heavy. I had my notes and statutes in it. I couldn’t walk fast”. ok, that ain't exactly lame, cos my bag was really heavy, but..... Actually, I was equally puzzled. Seriously, I had not heard the booming engine signaling the charge like he did. But really, everything happened at such an instant, I truly cannot tell why or how I have just halt.

Anyway… It took me quite a while for the episode to sink in. Even as we take our last few steps on the tar ground and onto the red brick pedestrian curb, I was still chirping about the possible reasons why the driver had accelerated when we actually had the right of way (much to ALow*’s annoyance. heheh..).

After pacifying his frustration towards the inconsiderate driver, his question started sinking into me.

Why? Why did I slow down? Did I really and actually slow down?

* shrug * I don’t know. I really don’t. I was in some kind of daze at that late hour... But I know I did pray that I be guarded and guided through the week… and someone did say he would keep me in prayers too!


The angel stranger took the empty seat beside me on Sunday (again!) cos he was really late, and there was a convenient seat that I had deliberately left empty nearest the aisle.

On my right was an amiable young lad. He had, during the friendship break asked me if I was alone just like him, and I told him yes. He must have had felt pretty bewildered when the angel stranger and I started chatting during the break, and whispering short exchanges through the service like we were friends. Thinking back now, I felt a little bad that the boy must have felt kinda neglected as I might have, if I were him…. In fact, I do feel bad also cos I cannot even remember his name...

Anyway, back to the angel stranger... WH* seemed like he is quite a natural people-person. He responds to people very well. I really cannot remember the last time anyone would take an interest, and said he would keep me in prayers voluntarily. In fact, I cannot remember anyone who had used this approach - no questions asked about what I wanted to pray for… he just asked when my exams was (he actually remembered I was doing a course!) and said he would keep me in prayers…. And when the skies started to drip a few drops of rainwater as we parted, he asked if he could give me a ride somewhere (Note! Note! The question was not if I'd wanted or needed a ride...). The idea was later dropped as he had another lunch appointment, and we could not reconcile the directions we were each heading. Nevertheless, he was thoughtful enough to offer his black brolly (even that left an impression...), and asked if I had one. All without much fanfare.

It felt good that someone had shown such concern without seeming like he was patronising me.... and this was only our third encounter! I mean… sometimes, we will not even offer our own brolly to a long time friend if it means depriving ourselves of it in the face of the threatening skies, right? much less a casual acquaintance just met… (and especially if the walk to the car is two streets down without any shelter !)

Even through this, I think I have learnt something...

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Anyway..... Can this be true? Had he been a figment of my imagination? Haiz… I was and still am obviously swooned… haha… if only he was as young as I'd wish he is…. ay.......

Nonetheless, blessed, blessed am I, or so, was I reminded. That strange cloud of vexed emotions in me on Saturday was quickly dispelled by the time the new week begun… for I realised I had been blessed once again.

The Kind of smart that IQ tests miss

By Keith Stanovich
The writer is professor of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto

In 2002, cognitive scientist Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University won the Nobel Prize in Economics for work done with his longtime collaborator Amos Tversky (who died in 1996). Their research had to do with judgment and decision-making – what makes our thoughts and actions rational or irrational. They explored how people make choices and assess probabilities, and uncovered basic errors that are typical in decision-making.

The thinking errors they uncovered are not trivial mistakes in a parlour game. To be rational means to adopt appropriate goals, take the appropriate action given one’s goals and beliefs, and hold beliefs that are commensurate with available evidence. It means achieving one’s life goals using the best means possible. To violate the thinking rules examined by Kahneman and Tversky thus has the practical consequence that we are less satisfied with our lived than we might be, Research conducted in my own laboratory has indicated that there are systematic individual differences in the judgment and decision-making skills that Kahneman and Tversky studied.

Ironically, the Nobel Prize was awarded for studies of cognitive characteristics that are entirely missing from the most well-known mental assessment device in the behavioral sciences: intelligence tests. Scientists and laypeople alike tend to agree that “good thinking” encompasses sound judgment and decision-making – the type of thinking that helps us achieve our goals. Yet assessments of such good (rational) thinking are nowhere to be found on IQ tests.

Intelligence tests measure important things, but they do not assess the extent of rational thought. This might not be such a grave omission if intelligence were a strong predictor of rational thinking. But my research group found just the opposite: It is a mild predictor at best, and some rational thinking skills are totally dissociated from intelligence.

To an important degree, intelligence tests determine the career of millions of people. Children are given intelligence tests to determine eligibility for admission to school programmes for the gifted. Corporations and the military depend on assessments that are little more than disguised intelligence tests.

Perhaps some of this attention to intelligence is necessary, but what is not warranted is the tendency to ignore cognitive capacities that are at least equally important: the capacities that sustain rational thoughts and action.

Critics of intelligence tests have long pointed out that the tests ignore important parts of mental life, mainly non-cognitive domains such as socio-emotional abilities and interpersonal skills. But intelligence tests are also radically incomplete as measures of cognitive functioning, which is evident from the simple fact that many people display a systematic inability to think or behave rationally despite having more than adequate IQ.

For a variety of reasons, we have come to overvalue the kinds of thinking skills that intelligence tests measure and undervalue other important cognitive skills, such as the ability to think rationally.

Psychologies have studied the major classes of thinking errors that make people less than rational. They have studied people’s tendencies to show incoherent probability assessments; to be overconfident in knowledge judgments; to ignore the alternative hypothesis; to evaluate evidence with a “my side” bias; to show inconsistent preferences because of framing effects; to over-weigh short-term rewards at the expense of long-term well-being; to allow decisions to be affected by irrelevant context; and so on.

All of these categories of failure of rational judgment are very imperfectly correlated with intelligence – meaning IQ tests tend not to capture individual difference in rational thought. IQ tests measure mental skills that have been studied for a long time, whereas psychologists have only recently had the tools to measure the tendencies towards rational and irrational thinking.

Nevertheless, recent progress in the cognitive science of rational thought suggest that nothing could stop us from constructing an “RQ” test.

Such a test might prove highly useful. Sub-optimal investment decisions have, for example, been linked to overconfidence in knowledge judgments, the tendency to over-explain chance events, and the tendency to substitute affective valence for thought. Errors in medical and legal decision-making have also been linked to specific irrational thinking tendencies that psychologists have studied.

There are strategies and environmental fixes for the thinking errors that occur in all of these domains. But it is important to realize that these thinking errors are more related to rationality than intelligence. They would be reduced if schools, businesses and government focused on the parts of cognition that intelligence tests miss.

Instead, these institutions still devote far more attention and resources to intelligence than to teaching people how to think in order to reach their goals. It is as if intelligence has become totemic in our culture. But what we should really be pursuing is development of the reasoning strategies that could substantially increase human well-being.

(This article was taken from "The Straits Times", Wednesday, April 08, 2009 A22, Review & Forum)

Complete article in:
What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational Thought
Hardcover: 328 pages
Publisher: Yale University Press; 1 edition (January 27, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 030012385X
ISBN-13: 978-0300123852
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I Wish...

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What’s wrong with a wish?
Something nice for your friends.
When the day’s not so great
You can change how it ends
It’s a wonderful gift
To wish someone a wish
But it seems that not everyone sees it like this

I wish all my troubles away
All my dreams come true
I wish for blue skies every day
And I can wish it for you
Why would I wait
For what a wish can create?
Why should I work so hard?
I wish, ‘cause wishing is great!

A wish is the best
No disappointments or tears
If something bad happens
I make it disappear
If there’s something I want
There’s no reason to fret
There’s no wish limit on all the things I can get

I wish all my troubles away
All my dreams come true
I wish for blue skies every day
And I can wish it for you
Why would I wait for what a wish can create?
Why should I work so hard?
I wish, ‘cause wishing is great!

When I wish, it feels right
The whole world’s shiny and bright
I know wishing makes everything all right.
Where there’s a wish
There’s a way
So I’ll keep wishing each day

I wish all my troubles away,
Doesn’t anybody see?
I wish for blue skies every day.
I wish there were others like me,
Others like me
Who like to wish all day long
Is there something I can do?
Wish I knew!

~ Stephanie Beard ~

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