My goodness,

you guys really are at it. I just flew over the most posts, so again I will be guilty of not reading your comments, my apologies.

Do you even have the same definition of what (more) intelligent means?
I wouldn't even think about comparing the intelligence between two groups of people or a profession.
There isn't even a correct definition of what philosophy is for some people here, it seems.

Is it even a good question, if I may ask? That is a question that I would try to answer before I even bother to answer the question. Yes, you are all wasting your time.
And hereby I join you.

As I pointed out before, you can only find out if you let them fist fight. There is a certain rhetoric in that.
Anyways, if I didn't bother about that and just answered the question as for the simpel reason to find the best possible answer, my answer would be clearly the philosopher.
And here's why. (And the simplicity is my intention)

The question itself puts mathematicians and physicists in one and the same category opposed to philosophers. So philosophers are already ahead.
And mathematics or physics are both a category of philosophy. Some of the most important mathematicians or physicists from the past were philosophers in their own time. Every mathematician or physicists is arguably a philosopher to some degree.
And as mathematics and physics developed from philosophy over time as each a form of specialization with increasing precision, they seem to be of much more value and importance than philosophy, because of how society works today.
But,
philosophy is and will always be on top intellectually.
That's how I would determine who is more intelligent.

But ultimately, I think the only way is fist fight.

Street philosophers have too much an edge in fisticuffs.

100% disagree with this, and you should stop repeating it too. What nonsensical empirical data do you have about the motivation for study? It's self evidently false since otherwise you'd have all the smart people in one field, but that simply is not the case. It comes down to largely interest, amongst other factors you overtly overlook.

Tooth, another answer to your question statement, we don't have to argue. I can say nah. You can say nah. It's entirely a choice to use that framework to exchange. It's actually not much of a matter of better or worst in some view.

Growing, developing, or cultivating intelligence is actually doing and being much more than arguing, so arguing fits within a framework of reality I do believe we share no less than it's worth experienced. Arguing at a book is slapstick.

A related real point is "what else besides that is there?" is not a competitive question. It is curious and you must first know something which is "that" to ask what else besides "that" is there. Curiosity and Wonder are philosopher values even scientists and mathematicians adore. No competition required have those values in experience. We just can and do. So it's sharable reality alright.

That's not a threat to free anything capitalism. But, We are free to compete by choice and not compulsion. eh?

Prove it lol!

I mean call them rodents or new age preppy mise to be safe. You are probably right but they are so similar and the main pics in the link are not closer to the gif than some kinds of mise in overall look.

Is it your belief that intelligent people are going into biology and sociology at the same rate they're going into physics and philosophy?

Why is there such an enormous intelligence differential between people who enter sociology and people who enter linguistics? I don't believe the pay is terribly different. What factors make people choose one over the other, and why do they cluster so strongly with intelligence?

Until you can offer some viable theory, I'm going to posit intellectual challenge/stimulation as a key part of the reason for why the brightest end up in physics and philosophy.

Random probably irrelevant point.

In my experience females outnumber males in the biological sciences, while males outnumber females in the other sciences.

In other words the brightest girls are likely to find themselves into biology; not sure how that effects the ratio of biologists IQ to IQ of other sciences.

That's sexist.

Its a joke, right ??

I think my point is that the IQ of top biologists are likely higher than some might expect due to the sex differences.

Although I am just speculating without much data.

You're making flawed arguments again. First, I'd like to see some data to suggests an "enormous intellectual differential" between linguistics and biology. Not because I'll be miraculously convinced of your (flawed) argument if you do, but because you need to learn to back your outlandish claims up with data. And you call yourself a scientist? Who overtly disregards the method?

That aside, here's the issue with what you're saying. Take three ordinary children. One becomes a janitor, one an accountant, and one an astrophysicist.

Your premise is that an innate measure of "intelligence", genetically embedded from birth (as I'm sure you'd agree), is the key factor responsible for which child ends up in which career. You overlook other factors that are logically far more relevant here such as country of birth, socioeconomic upbringing, early childhood education, their cultures, and motivations. What if we take 100 kids of below average intelligence and have scientist parents adopt them and put them into science institutes and sciencify their entire lives from birth? Of course we'll get some astrophysicists. But this was a product not of intelligence.

Now take three people who are equally intelligent by every measure. One's father was in the air force, one's mother is 6'3", and one is an orphan. They're by all measures equally intelligent. One goes on to have a career as a professional athlete (perhaps because they're 6'10"), the other becomes a pilot, and the other an astrophysicist.

People end up where their interests lie, regardless of intelligence. For instance, I'm an arts student duel majoring in linguistics and philosophy. I enjoy both disciplines very much and do exceedingly well in both (I.e. not out of my depth in either). I don't yet know whether my career will be more linguistics-oriented or philosophy oriented. In either case, it'll come down to preference, and perhaps other factors like career options etc. According to you, if I choose philosophy my innate intelligence is now capped, whereas if the coinflip is different, I'm smarter?

Your argument begs the question and your logic is clouded by bias and prejudice. I'll be the first person ITT to speak up and say you have a point or that I've changed my mind, but only if you can refine your logic.

Fwiw I DO think top physicists are IQ smarter than top philosophers. But to say one is smarter than the other requires a definition of smarts more narrow than IQ or SAT score. You're making irrational arguments when we don't even have a definition of intelligence and this is probably why your logic is falling apart.

Yes.

Don't take this the wrong way, but plz stop posting.

Again, I'm the only person who's posted any kind of data whatsoever in this discussion. And no, I don't call myself a scientist for the purposes of this discussion. Anyway, biologists get crushed by linguists and philosophers on the verbals SAT, and crushed by nearly all other sciences on the math SAT. They're just dopey people, on average.
That's not at all part of my premise. My arguments are identical even if intelligence is 100% determined by environmental factors from 0-10 (although we know it's not - it's highly heritable).

I think one of the problems of studying philosophy, and why so many philosophers are stupid in a practical sense, it that it gives you a conceit that you understand rational thinking better than others. To wit: your response here.

I cite a number of reasons why high intelligence is more likely clustered in physics than in philosophy at the top end.
You come back with an absurd artificial scenario - God decreeing that Group A are phyisists and Group B are sociologists - and then using that absurd scenario to go AHA! See! Sociologists aren't less intelligent in my made up example! So how much can intelligence matter in picking a major? Obviously not that important!

I realize you're just trying to set a baseline for the discussion at which you're comfortable and have a handle, but dude. Intellectual discussions move far faster than that. You're trying to reduce turbulent flow to laminar flow so you can run your simple equations. Meanwhile, the river is laughing at you.
This is true. The question is, to what extent does intelligence inform the choice of major, and to what extent does a major attract an intelligence, and why? That's where the discussion is at. You seem to be back at Philosophy101 trying to argue against an absurd imaginary strawman (because you don't understand perfectly clear metaphorical speech? I don't know) that people pick professions mostly because it appeals to their intelligence.

The question we're debating is this:

Are the brightest minds attracted more to physics or philosophy, and why?

I list several reasons why it's physics: greater impact on the world, the depth of the intellectual challenge, boredom that the truly bright will find in philosophy as a career pretty quickly, the honing power of reality, etc.

No, that is not the argument I'm making at all. I'm bemused that that's not obvious to you. I'm arguing that biasing factors in the selectors of major/career weight the highly intelligent toward physics, on average. You seem to think that I'm arguing that an individual who chooses the less intelligent subject is less intelligent.

There's no "logic" as such because it's an imprecise mishmash of observations and weak data. That doesn't mean we can't get the right answer. It does mean that the right answer is far outside the talents you'll learn in an academic philosophy course.

Why?
A common sense definition works fine.

Let me make a suggestion. Take a few advanced physics courses. If you're truly bright and give it a go, you'll feel your mind light up like it will never do in a philosophy course. You will need to push yourself to re-architect your mind. You will discover how flabby and stupid and broken it is in hundreds of ways, that you were completely unaware of while studying philosophy. There is no mental honer like advance physics and math. Although anything that's complex and precise and highly unintuitive can get the job done.

The data you posted is beyond ridiculous and shows nothing. Physics is one of the smallest majors period ~6500 in 2012-2013 including 2nd majors while history/social science had ~178,000 the same year. Thats obv degrees granted and so isn't comparable in terms of GRE, but if you want to continue talking about which subjects attracts more of the top minds by looking at average test scores (bizarre to begin with) you should be looking at something ~top 10% of majors like history/sociology when comparing to all of physics. I would bet alot that physics would lose there and get absolutely waffle crushed by things like CS, EE, Bio etc. So you want to use something like standardized test data averages (again terrible metric) the real question is why are so few bright people majoring in physics?

No, but you side with science in this debate. So now you're going after semantics; how noble.

Opinions, merely opinions.

Note the difference between this and the title of the thread. They're completely different. The thread is discussing peak intelligence comparatively and you're now discussing motivations for study.

These are not reasons for physics being the answer. They're your own personal preferences for choosing physics. First of all, to suggest physics has a greater impact on the world is a very bold statement (worthy of its own thread) and secondly, to suggest that this is some sort of standardised criterion that people universally value when deciding majors, is absurd. These are your personal values on why you chose physics and you're conflating this with some sort of universal rubric which doesn't exist.

You made it very clear that this is what you're arguing when you made the following sweeping statements:

Remind me again how you can consolidate these statements. Or maybe this is a good time for a concession?

I trust this is a synopsis of your argument?

The common sense definition of intelligence is not equal to SAT scores or IQs.

Did you even look the graph I posted? I bet you didn't or you wouldn't be posting stupid rebuttals. It's broken down into subject sizes which are fairly comparable (within 2-4x). In your numbers above you're lumping all categories together in "history/social science" where the data has them well stratified.

And it applies even generally in the sciences vs history/social science. Science verbal scores are superior to the verbal majors on average, while crushing on math.

Um, no? That's idiotic.

Besides, we have far more data on the preeminence of physics majors.

Your premise is flawed to being with, so this is pointless.
What other metrics would you suggest? I'm offering one; offer another?

I don't "side" with anything. It's you who's siding when you deny the data, because you don't like being intellectually bounded/labeled (in your mind), by choosing a comparatively easy/non-intellectual subject like philosophy.

Where do the brightest people go, and why, are valid topic for discussion relative to the OP. You got completely butthurt by me suggesting many reasons why they go to physics rather than philosophy.
Obviously physics has a far larger impact on the world, thought, politics, than philosophy does, which is mostly a backwater/useless profession these days - less important than even economics theory. I mean, it's not even close.

When do you get to learning about "straw men" in your philosophy degree? Bump this thread when you do.

I would dearly love it if you made thread: which is more important to the world: a physics career or a philosophy career? You could throw janitorial services in there as well for a three way, so it's not boring for the participants.
No, but they're a good proxy for it, ceteris paribus, and that's something that holds in the modern world with universal education.

I looked at the graph you quoted on this page. It says nothing about the size of each field. GRE is also heavily biased against the humanities since alot of the smartest humanities students apply to law school and don't bother with the GRE. But it's all irrelevant. We know (or should know) that the average physics major isn't very bright, thats not what the thread is about anyway.

Where? And specifically physics majors compared to top physics sized bins of other majors.

Even you gotta see the flaw in comparing the average of say the University of Michigan to the rest of the nation, where Michigan will obv crush, and then turn around and claim that the smartest students end up at Michigan, right?

No, its not pointless. If we made all physics majors and the top 6500 CS majors take tests who would win? Can I then ask why so few smart people seem interested in studying physics compared to CS?

I don't have to suggest any to point out how dumb your argument is. The average physics major (like the average any major) flat out isn't very bright so we shouldn't even be discussing averages to begin with.

I disagree with the question.
You ask Stephen Hawking and he would say he is a "Philosopher who specialises in Physics."

In fact, physics used to be under the umbrella of philosophy.
Take for instance, the birth of physical sciences, which began with people like Aristotle; one of the most famous philosophers in history. He would never agree that his work on physical science was not philosophy.

Also, philosophers first came up with the idea of the atom along with matter is the same as energy. (Long before Einstein's e=mc squared.) Is this not physics?

Maybe for the sake of definition there's some use in splitting the fields up; but the thinking processes remain the same.

When Hawking is speculating about black holes; he is not doing physics, he is philosophising.

So, you agree with me then?

@Glevr

I was just quickly reading some of your posts.
"I wouldn't even think about comparing the intelligence between two groups of people or a profession."

I've talked to someone from MENSA who had one of these whopping "so-called" IQs of 150. When I asked him, he didn't even know the definition of the word intelligence. (Or at least, he couldn't explain it.)

It seems they are trying to gauge people's intelligence by testing them on things like their knowledge of obscure words such as "nebbish." If you know the definition of that word, you get +1 to your IQ.

MENSA strikes me as a group of people who are simply interested in inflating their own egos rather than a genuine attempt to understand and compare human intelligence.

So yeah, I agree with you Glevr.

In Medieval Europe barbers would perform surgery, amputate limbs etc. Don't see why we draw so much distinction between cutting hair and medicine when it used to be the same, amiright?

Cram, as you argued pretty much the same point later, I was rather thinking of this:

But I'm fine if we agree on other points as well.

And mathematics or physics are both a category of philosophy. Some of the most important mathematicians or physicists from the past were philosophers in their own time. Every mathematician or physicists is arguably a philosopher to some degree.

You take the words out of my mouth.

Glad to see there's some sanity 'round here.