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John Michener's avatar

Just a note. In general, you can't plot 3 variables in a plane. It works in ternary diagrams because the three components have a constraint of adding to 100 %, which means that there are really only 2 degrees of freedom. But with intelligence you have no such constraint. It is worse with personality factor analysis because ~ 5 factors (+ intelligence) account for most of the variation in human populations, and the factors are not fully orthogonal.

Subcomponent analysis of intelligence is far outside of my domain, but a lot of work has been done over the past century and there are a number of subcomponents that are not orthogonal.

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Windsor Swan's avatar

I only half know what you mean. I also had the thought to make it 3D, but too much hassle. Would a sphere help you out?

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OldManFlappyNuts👹's avatar

I enjoy your writing and theories, they’re entertaining

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Windsor Swan's avatar

Thanks man

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John Michener's avatar

I doubt that a sphere would help, because the surface of a sphere is characterized by a constant radius and there is no reason for the components of intelligence to be constrained to some fixed total norm. Think multi-dimensional amoeba

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Windsor Swan's avatar

Intelligence is constrained by the brain and the brain is basically a sphere.

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John Michener's avatar

But you are trying to map components of intelligence, not physical components of the brain, if you treat each component as an independent vector you are going to be in a multidimensional space even if you are only following the principal components.

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Windsor Swan's avatar

"But you are trying to map components of intelligence, not physical components of the brain"

Its the same thing.

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John Michener's avatar

I don't think you can map the physical connection map (if that thuly exists) to the intelligence component map in abstract space. But this is not my field, I am a physicist / engineer and am far outside my expertise area here.

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Windsor Swan's avatar

Not sure, its just a theory.

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